Scott and Garrison, backdated to March 26th

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Backdated to the afternoon of March 26th. Garrison and Scott have a conversation in the hangar while Scott's working on the Blackbird. Then they retire to Harry's.


There was jazz playing over the hangar speakers as Scott worked on the damaged engine. 'Ornithology', to be specific, a collection of Charlie Parker's more rare recordings. It was good music for hangar work, kept him focused. 'Night in Tunisia' was halfway through when he heard the hangar doors opened and looked around to see that it was Garrison. He raised his free hand in a wave.

"Hey." Garrison waved back, walking into the hanger. He hadn't gotten a good look at the Blackbird yet, and was surprised at the amount of damage. They'd said it would be some time before it was back on-line, but he really hadn't understood how bad it was. How that even made it back to the school was beyond him. "You, uh, really fucked up your plane, chief."

"I did no such thing," Scott said wryly, turning his attention back to the repair work. If he could just finish this last bit.. "Although I'm sure the detour to Florida to pick me up didn't really do it any good." He leaned back, giving the top of the engine a small pat, distinctly affectionate. "She'll be fine. She's actually seen worse, believe it or not. There was the small-scale nuclear explosion, and the summer that she got both hit by lightning and nearly fried by EM discharge..."

"Wait, that's right. You tried to get yourself blown up, and then other people wrecked your plane." Kane snapped his fingers. "You know what? I think my first statement was a little better. By the way, I think I heard people yelling at you all the way from the New York field office. How are you holding up?"

"Well, I'm still catching Jean occasionally trying to strangle me in her sleep..." Scott said, deadpan. "Other than that, everyone seems to have pretty much yelled themselves out. Although Charles didn't yell, and that was the frightening thing. We had a long, involved conversation about the lack of value I place on my own life and I've had this almost overwhelming urge to camp out on my therapist's lawn ever since. Funny, no?" Only the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth gave away the fact that he was joking.

"About time. Important problem in a leader. If he doesn't value his own life, it's really hard to convince yourself that he values yours." Kane said, leaning on the side of the bracket. "That JTF2 lecture on why you don't let generals lead from the front. I think most of the yelling is because you freaked out a lot of people. Summers not come back? That had the feeling of a decidedly new thought for most of the mansion."

"They know I'd step in front of a bullet for any of them," Scott said, and this time, he wasn't joking. "I think this is the first time some of them realized that my gut instinct is to not ever let them do the same." He reached for a wrench. "I figure my problem is that somewhere along the line I let myself decide that I was probably never going to live to see thirty-five. As Ororo was pointing out to me, I've cheated death a few too many times. Getting entirely too blase about consequences."

"You know, Scott, that's not always what people want in a leader. We trust you to make tough decisions. That doesn't mean you before them." Kane's tone was still light, still without criticism. One of the things that most of the school was learning was that Garrison had the ability to say what he thought without expecting anyone else to agree without taking it personally. "We trust you to make the choice to have to leave someone behind to get the rest out. Ororo too. That's why people are freaked and yelling at you. That one day you're going to choose some sort of self sacrifice instead of making the right decision."

"See, I'm still not sure that I made the wrong decision with the information I had at the time. The wrong decision for my own welfare, sure, but..." Scott paused, looking down at his grease-streaked hands. "What set me off was waking up feeling different. Not just sick, but like I was about to explode. I knew that the containment measures weren't going to work, they'd been incautious about talking about it around me. The idea of creating any more victims... well." His lips twitched briefly. "My powers were also frying my brain like an egg at the time, so it's not like I was thinking clearly. The one thing I've noticed, making leadership decisions in the field, is that it always feels painfully real - I'm always too aware of the consequences. But I felt totally detached, when I stole that plane -like it was a tactical simulation, and I was just watching. Probably a consequence of the fever and the powers overload, but that doesn't make it any more unnerving in retrospect."

"I can imagine. My inspector once told me that the most frightening situation that he'd ever been in wasn't the three times that he had to go into an identified drug site first. The most fightening one was the first time having to send someone else in there." It could have been a watercooler discussion about last night's Seinfeld, from the tone. "When you went off, brain boiling like a hot pot not withstanding, people are going to wonder whether or not you trust them. If you're going to fight for them, you can't make actions that seem to say you don't trust them to fight for you."

Kane picked up a wrench and put it back down. "Which is why if Jean does strangle you, there might be mild applause." Kane grinned. "But if you put the wrench down, I'll buy you a drink and some overdone fries at Harry's in a honour of you not blowing up."

"And take me away from my plane?" Scott asked. But he put the wrench down.

--

"-no, really, twice," Scott said. "In... three weeks, I think it was. The first time, 'Ro was transporting a patient to Muir, and the plane got hit by lightning just short of the Scottish coast. They had to make an emergency landing. The second..." Scott couldn't help a bit of a sigh, despite the largely jovial nature of their conversation at Harry's so far. "Well, a pick-up that went bad. The poor kid took a chunk out of the wing. But I swear I spent the next six months praying every time we went out that we wouldn't break the plane this time." He cracked a smile again, the memory of Sienna Blaze receding, if not fading. "Just because Charles buys us expensive toys doesn't mean he appreciates the enormous repair bills. And then there was the time we nearly crashed into the hangar..."

"That's it. I'm taking the bus from now on." Kane said into his drink, taking a sip. "Or we'll get a new van, and coat it with the same stealth stuff as on the plane. It will be the X-Van, Xavier's newest vehicle in fight against evil mutants. Missiles really shoot. Requires four double A batteries."

"But what fun would that be?" Scott asked, giving him an innocent look. "Besides, I have happy plane memories, too. Dropping Cain like a human bunker-buster was a lot of fun. So was outracing a flight of Libyan MIGs to the Tunisian border with a cargo hold full of screaming mutant kids we'd just rescued..." His tone of voice made it very clear that he had just gone to the Pilot's Happy Place, with the memory. "And hell, we made it out of that without a single bullet hole. Really, the plane horror stories are just our version of the kids' demon invasion tales."

"Neither of which really are conducive to a calm and relaxed surity about the job. Less mucking with dimensions and the Libyan airforce, more use of public transit and tree planting or something." Kane took a gulp of beer. "You don't think the incidents are the world's way of explaining why people shouldn't use a stealth jet like the camp SUV?"

"It's the world's way of saying something, but I don't think it's anything quite that polite." Scott took a sip of his beer, then laughed under his breath. "I'm fundamentally a pessimist, in case you hadn't noticed that yet. I suppose there's a certain irony to that, given who my employer is."

"Well, there's pessimism and defeatism. I like to rely on a healthy dose of urban cynicism myself, but it's not the same as assuming the Professor is wrong. Just that his being right is likely going to involve a few more dinged up planes on the way than he may hope."

"You know, I strongly suspect that there are times that the Blackbird leaves and he immediately wheels himself down to Cerebro to camp out until we've safely retuned," Scott said idly, reaching out to take a french fry. "It's part of the reason I don't really like stripping the mansion, no matter what we're heading out to do."

"Until you've got four dozen X-Men, I don't see that happening anytime soon. Still, with the recruiting you guys are doing, it might only be a couple of years until you start to hit those numbers." Garrison finished off his drink. "You're going to need a bigger plane."

"We few, we happy few - we increasingly crowded band of brothers. At this rate we're going to start fighting over parking spaces, too. Maybe we should think about opening branch offices," Scott said, deadpan. "We could come up with all kinds of kick-ass names. X-This and X-That..."

"If you start to factor in new names for all these new mutants, half will run away in fear, half will choose something dumb that they think is totally 'extreme'," Garrison made quote marks with his fingers. "and Cain will go back into exile in protest."

"What, you mean someone might choose something more appalling than 'Tinky Winky'?" Scott gave a sight that was more than half a laugh. "I still need to see if I can't talk Clarice into something different. And check on how she's doing, with those burns... and possibly give her a lecture on what not to do while fighting a pyrokinetic." He laughed again, more wryly this time. "Backing off and waiting for the woman who can make it rain being high on the list. But she did fine, even so..."

"You know, Clarice's taste is bad enough that I'd stick with Tinky Winky out of a sense of self-preservation against what else she might come up with." Kane shook his head. "See, I've made it a point to try and hide behind the invulnerable people in those situations. I keep telling Marie that using her as a human shield is my way of showing that I care."

"See, I'm not so good about finding the invulnerable people at the right moment," Scott said, "but I have a telekinetic wife who takes serious objection to people shooting at me. She comes in very handy at times."

"Except when you're doing dumbass things. Remember, she's a doctor too. You could end up finding a stethoscope rammed up anywhere if she gets pissed off enough." he pointed out affably.

"Never mind Jean and stethoscopes. It's the Scottish redhead you should never piss off, even if she's only around here half-time these days. She keeps personalized instrument kits in the freezer for the people who've especially earned her ire. Longstanding tradition," Scott said blithely. "Marie's hair is reddish in certain lights, don't you think...?" he added idly. "I'd keep that in mind. Redheads are vengeful creatures."

"Chestnut. Her hair is chestnut." Garrison said firmly, having learned a long time ago that red-heads were the devil. Nothing at the school had dissuaded that opinion. "Besides, I've done a spectacular job of not getting hurt while on this team, thus avoiding the ice cold metal scrotum pincers."

Scott actually gaped at him. "Kane. Stop talking. Right now. You do not say things like that," he said, struggling manfully to hold back laughter, "you do not eversay things like that. Haven't Ororo or I warned you yet about tempting fate?"

"Bah. I am safe from your weird American curses. No one messes with a Mountie." Kane waved for another round. "Besides, it looks like half of your injuries come out of your students, and I'm not enough of a target. Black leather draws a lot more fire than the badge down here."

"And I call myself a pessimist. Speaking of our students..." Scott got what could only be described as a mildly devious look. "Think you might see your way clear to pitching in with the driving lessons?"

Garrison shrugged. "I can do that, as long as I don't need to donate my car. It would end up in the lake with the first leadfoot that doesn't understand what a V8 really means."

"Spectacular. I'm always trying to pawn off driving lessons. Not my favorite thing in the world to do, but I've done it for years and it's become one of those Things Scott Does." Scott shook his head somewhat quizzically. "It's not that I'm not fond of the kids. They just drive like lunatics."

"Well, between driving and self-defense, I'm basically teaching the first two months of the Academy here." Kane nodded, as he helped himself to his second drink. "Besides, the ones that don't drive look like they they'll be a passive bunch. I doubt Laurie's going to turn out to be a speed demon or something."

"If there's one thing I've learned, teaching the kids, it's don't make assumptions," Scott said dryly. "They will always surprise you."

"See, this is why I didn't go into teaching. I'm more comfortable with the surprises that lead to a jointlock and handcuffs." Kane said.

Scott opened his mouth - and then closed it again. "Don't worry," he said, grinning. "I'm not going to say it."

"Good. Because I lent my handcuffs to Jean yesterday."