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xp_logsScott runs into Amanda on the back porch and they talk rather candidly about sharing the 'abducted and tortured' thing.
It was just like old times. Amanda leaned on the rail of the back porch, looking out across the lawn without really seeing anything, and blew out a cloud of smoke. Funny how much things changed, and yet didn't. She almost expected Angelo to appear to join her, except she knew he was in the gym, working things through.
The door opened, with a creak that suggested that the hinges needed oiling, but the person who stepped out onto the porch to join her was not Angelo. "You'd be surprised how few smokers actually use the smoker's porch anymore," Scott said. "This latest batch of kids are alarmingly clean-living types, at least on the surface. Makes you wonder what they get up to when we're not looking, though."
She started a little, covering with a quick drag. "They're a good bunch," she agreed, giving him a brief nod. "Less trouble than we were, at least with the talking back," she added wryly.
Scott just shrugged. "The talking back was tolerable," he said, "even if I used to bridle at the 'Captain Fuckwad' crap."
"Clash of personalities," Amanda said, with a slight shrug. "At least it was with me. I was just so pissed off most of the time, and you were the handy target, being the bloke in charge." She smiled a little wryly. "I was a right pain in the arse, I know."
He glanced down at her, rubbing absently at the scars on the side of his face. "Well, you did get into more than your share of trouble at times, but events conspire against us all more often than not, around here." He looked back out at the grounds, the lawn stretching out in front of them until it met the trees. A few of the younger kids were out there playing what looked like tag. "I know Angelo's having a hard time, with what happened to Forge," he said, the change of subject abrupt. "Nathan mentioned something to me about encouraging him to take a road trip. Do you think that would help?"
Amanda nodded, absently flicking ash from her cigarette. "We talked about taking a break, when we were there, before things happened," she replied. The sunlight catching her face showed the paleness, the weariness and sadness around her eyes. "I think he needs to get away from here for a bit, to be honest. Just get a chance to catch up with himself. It's been a tough few months, for him especially. He's still healing up from the beating he got, and then there's this on top of it." Her own issues didn't help things.
"Not to mention almost getting blown up earlier this year," Scott pointed out, "or getting caught up in a hostage situation... I think I should probably quit right there, shouldn't I?" He gave her a brief, crooked smile. "The unfortunate thing being that the litany of calamities is not necessarily unusual for an X-Man, and I don't just mean Nathan."
"Yeah, 's been a fu... bloody awful year for him. And I know it's part of the deal - that's part of the problem. He beats himself up because he thinks he should be coping better since these things always happen to people." Amanda took another drag of her cigarette. "I mean, I get it. We're in a dangerous business, both of us. Things are gunna happen." The fact she was wearing a shirt over her tanktop was testament to that. "No matter what we do."
It had been concern for Angelo that had nudged him towards the porch, when he'd spotted Amanda there from another window. It struck him, however, that the two of them had something in common that they hadn't had, before...
He didn't launch right into it, however. He'd learned a little bit about subtlety, lately. "I'm glad," Scott said, keeping his tone conversational as he sat down in one of the other chairs, "that you're... largely okay, by the way. We weren't sure that night whether we'd get into that building and disrupt the ritual in time to do any good."
She snorted a little. "You and me both. The whole getting used as a conduit thing would have been too fucking ironic a way to die." Black humour as a shield was the standard over at Snow Valley. But looking over at Scott, her face softened a little. "Thanks, by the way."
Scott's smile was just as quick, but more natural, and he gave her a brief nod of acknowledgement as he turned his attention back to the kids playing on the lawn. "I remember finding it hard, to say thank you," he said after a long moment. "When I was in your position." Scott realized that he didn't actually know if Amanda knew any of the details of what had happened to him last summer. "It wasn't that I wasn't grateful - I was, I was thankful to be out of there and alive. But there was this part of me that just couldn't quite stop being angry that it had taken so long. I'm going to guess that with you, most of the anger's directed at the irony thing, and Candra."
Pulling herself up to sit on the rail, Amanda nodded. "This is after the earthquake, yeah?" she confirmed and then went on, swinging her legs slightly. "It was only a couple of days for me. Longest couple of days of my life, but not as bad as you." She paused, trying to think it through. "It's always been the risk, for me. My powers, the job I do... Someone was bound to want another go." She looked down, a little ashamed. "And as bad as I feel about the kids getting taken, I'm sort of glad it panned out the way it did. If they'd had the rocks already, all they would have needed to do was take me off the street any time if they needed me. And then there wouldn't have been any way to track me down until it was too late."
"I went through a few weeks last summer where I could hardly stand to look at myself in the mirror because I wished... well, I wished that I'd let Alex take his chances and looked for another way to get him out. Not just because it was a stupid choice, to hand myself over, but becaues of what happened afterwards. So I get it," Scott said quietly, still gazing out at the grounds, "in a weird sort of sway."
She snorted again, giving him an amused glance. "Is there something really wrong about the fact the thing we have in common is being done over by bastards?"
"No," Scott said, with a soft chuckle, "I think what's really wrong is that we're not the only ones. Just two of the most recent." He looked back at her finally, hesitating for a moment. "It just takes time," he said at last. "I know you're probably hearing that from everyone, and it sounds like a platitude, but it's actually true. It's a question of feeling comfortable in your own skin again. Which is hard, because in situations like this... you lose even that." After another moment he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt - long-sleeved, even in this heat - far enough to let Amanda see the scars around his wrist and a few of the smaller circular scars from the electrode burns. "It doesn't help that you have the reminders."
She took in Scott's gesture, her own hand moving unconsciously to finger the pink raised band of scar tissue around her own wrist. "The hard part," she said after a moment. "Isn't what I think about this, this and the rest." She gestured towards her back. "It's how people react to it. Or maybe how I see them as reacting. I cover them up because I don't think I could handle people - my friends, the kids - looking at me and feeling guilty. Or sorry for me."
"You don't want them to see you as a victim. Or someone they failed." There was only the faintest trace of a question in Scott's voice. He was fairly sure that was what she meant.
She nodded. "Yeah, pretty much." A shadow crossed her face, thinking of Remy. "Doesn't help that some of them are, already."
"You know that's inevitable, right?" Scott asked, almost gently. "They care about you, and they weren't able to stop you from being hurt. I can remember times last year I looked at Charles and I could see the guilt in his eyes. Guilt, when he hardly left Cerebro for five days, looking for me... just because it took him five days."
"But it wasn't their fault. It wasn't my fault. The only people who should be feeling guilty are the people who did it. Except they wouldn't, obviously." Amanda stubbed out her cigarette, pitching the butt in the ash bucket that still remained. "I don't want to be a burden. I've been enough of one already."
Scott thought for a minute, before he answered. "I don't know if you know this," he said, more hesitantly, "but last summer, about a week after they brought me back... Jean left. For complicated reasons that I won't get into, except to say that it had to do with what happened to me, and what had happened to her earlier in the year... but she had to go. I won't say that it wasn't hard, but I look back on it now and what I see is that she trusted me to work on my own recovery." Scott shrugged a little. "I think you can expect that from your friends. Maybe not right now, not when it's all so fresh, but once it fades a little..."
He trailed off, was quiet again for a moment. "What I understood, especially with what happened with Jean, is that I wasn't the only victim in that situation. It's a different kind of hurt for the people who have to do the searching or the rescuing... or the waiting. Maybe not so overwhelming, but it's still there."
The swinging of Amanda's foot slowed and then stilled. "Huh," she said, thoughtfully. She hadn't thought of it that way, focussed as she was on herself and Angelo.
"It's even harder for capable people," Scott said, remembering the day he and Jack had talked about this. "If you're strong and resourceful and willing to take risks for the people you care about... it hits you harder, when you can't stop these things from happening." He smiled a bit wryly. "The first time my therapist told me that, I started to understand a lot about myself, too, and why I used to want to gut myself every time one of the kids got hurt."
"I never thought of it like that," Amanda said slowly. "Makes sense, tho'."
"Take Angelo. He's seen the X-Men do so much. Save lives, win fights we maybe shouldn't have logically won... stop tsunamis. We don't fail very often, Amanda," Scott said simply. "He's been trained over the last year to believe that odds mean shit and if you fight for something hard enough, you'll get it. And the problem is, the thing that took me years to learn... that's not always true. I suspect that's one of the things he's struggling with right now."
She nodded. "He felt like he let me down. Me and the kids. He tries so hard, puts so much on himself..." She let the thought trail off. "'S different, with the Trenchcoats. We've done things, stopped some right bastards, but in the end, it's just the job. We do our best, but sometimes we're going to lose." Like in Uganda, where coming out alive had been the greatest victory.
"It's just the differences in the job, I think. We're so often jumping into things that are already in the process of exploding, or making them explode... it's a different mindset. You don't have room to be anything but... insanely driven, when success or failure comes down to split-seconds in battle." Scott gave her a quick smile. "I think about this sort of thing a little bit too much," he confessed.
"'S your job, innit?" she replied with a brief grin of her own.
"That and assorted other applications of my natural sadism, yes." Scott shook his head, the smile coming back and lingering this time. "Anyway. I think you two will find your way through this, and that's the absolute limit of my relationship-oriented advice, believe me. As for the rest of it..." He paused for a moment, then shrugged. "It will get better. And if you catch any of your friends angsting too much... you know now where they might be coming from. You can tell them that it's not about you, and maybe nudge them towards someone who can help them talk about how this has all affected them. Or," he added, a bit mischievously, "just smack them upside the head. Or both."
"I leave the head smacking to Sof. She's got the degree for it," Amanda said, grinning easily, before glancing at her watch. "And speaking of the relationship, I should go and make sure he isn't breaking his hands on the punching bag. Maybe talk about that trip, see if he's still up for it." Sliding down off the rail, she approached Scott, holding out her hand for him to shake. "Thanks, tho'. For the advice. It's something I can work with, yeah."
Scott shook her hand. "You're welcome. Enjoy the trip, all right?" He released her hand and rose, himself. "I think the game of tag over there is getting a little energetic. Time to go step in." He gave her one last crooked smile and headed down the steps. "The fun never ends around here," he called back over his shoulder.
It was just like old times. Amanda leaned on the rail of the back porch, looking out across the lawn without really seeing anything, and blew out a cloud of smoke. Funny how much things changed, and yet didn't. She almost expected Angelo to appear to join her, except she knew he was in the gym, working things through.
The door opened, with a creak that suggested that the hinges needed oiling, but the person who stepped out onto the porch to join her was not Angelo. "You'd be surprised how few smokers actually use the smoker's porch anymore," Scott said. "This latest batch of kids are alarmingly clean-living types, at least on the surface. Makes you wonder what they get up to when we're not looking, though."
She started a little, covering with a quick drag. "They're a good bunch," she agreed, giving him a brief nod. "Less trouble than we were, at least with the talking back," she added wryly.
Scott just shrugged. "The talking back was tolerable," he said, "even if I used to bridle at the 'Captain Fuckwad' crap."
"Clash of personalities," Amanda said, with a slight shrug. "At least it was with me. I was just so pissed off most of the time, and you were the handy target, being the bloke in charge." She smiled a little wryly. "I was a right pain in the arse, I know."
He glanced down at her, rubbing absently at the scars on the side of his face. "Well, you did get into more than your share of trouble at times, but events conspire against us all more often than not, around here." He looked back out at the grounds, the lawn stretching out in front of them until it met the trees. A few of the younger kids were out there playing what looked like tag. "I know Angelo's having a hard time, with what happened to Forge," he said, the change of subject abrupt. "Nathan mentioned something to me about encouraging him to take a road trip. Do you think that would help?"
Amanda nodded, absently flicking ash from her cigarette. "We talked about taking a break, when we were there, before things happened," she replied. The sunlight catching her face showed the paleness, the weariness and sadness around her eyes. "I think he needs to get away from here for a bit, to be honest. Just get a chance to catch up with himself. It's been a tough few months, for him especially. He's still healing up from the beating he got, and then there's this on top of it." Her own issues didn't help things.
"Not to mention almost getting blown up earlier this year," Scott pointed out, "or getting caught up in a hostage situation... I think I should probably quit right there, shouldn't I?" He gave her a brief, crooked smile. "The unfortunate thing being that the litany of calamities is not necessarily unusual for an X-Man, and I don't just mean Nathan."
"Yeah, 's been a fu... bloody awful year for him. And I know it's part of the deal - that's part of the problem. He beats himself up because he thinks he should be coping better since these things always happen to people." Amanda took another drag of her cigarette. "I mean, I get it. We're in a dangerous business, both of us. Things are gunna happen." The fact she was wearing a shirt over her tanktop was testament to that. "No matter what we do."
It had been concern for Angelo that had nudged him towards the porch, when he'd spotted Amanda there from another window. It struck him, however, that the two of them had something in common that they hadn't had, before...
He didn't launch right into it, however. He'd learned a little bit about subtlety, lately. "I'm glad," Scott said, keeping his tone conversational as he sat down in one of the other chairs, "that you're... largely okay, by the way. We weren't sure that night whether we'd get into that building and disrupt the ritual in time to do any good."
She snorted a little. "You and me both. The whole getting used as a conduit thing would have been too fucking ironic a way to die." Black humour as a shield was the standard over at Snow Valley. But looking over at Scott, her face softened a little. "Thanks, by the way."
Scott's smile was just as quick, but more natural, and he gave her a brief nod of acknowledgement as he turned his attention back to the kids playing on the lawn. "I remember finding it hard, to say thank you," he said after a long moment. "When I was in your position." Scott realized that he didn't actually know if Amanda knew any of the details of what had happened to him last summer. "It wasn't that I wasn't grateful - I was, I was thankful to be out of there and alive. But there was this part of me that just couldn't quite stop being angry that it had taken so long. I'm going to guess that with you, most of the anger's directed at the irony thing, and Candra."
Pulling herself up to sit on the rail, Amanda nodded. "This is after the earthquake, yeah?" she confirmed and then went on, swinging her legs slightly. "It was only a couple of days for me. Longest couple of days of my life, but not as bad as you." She paused, trying to think it through. "It's always been the risk, for me. My powers, the job I do... Someone was bound to want another go." She looked down, a little ashamed. "And as bad as I feel about the kids getting taken, I'm sort of glad it panned out the way it did. If they'd had the rocks already, all they would have needed to do was take me off the street any time if they needed me. And then there wouldn't have been any way to track me down until it was too late."
"I went through a few weeks last summer where I could hardly stand to look at myself in the mirror because I wished... well, I wished that I'd let Alex take his chances and looked for another way to get him out. Not just because it was a stupid choice, to hand myself over, but becaues of what happened afterwards. So I get it," Scott said quietly, still gazing out at the grounds, "in a weird sort of sway."
She snorted again, giving him an amused glance. "Is there something really wrong about the fact the thing we have in common is being done over by bastards?"
"No," Scott said, with a soft chuckle, "I think what's really wrong is that we're not the only ones. Just two of the most recent." He looked back at her finally, hesitating for a moment. "It just takes time," he said at last. "I know you're probably hearing that from everyone, and it sounds like a platitude, but it's actually true. It's a question of feeling comfortable in your own skin again. Which is hard, because in situations like this... you lose even that." After another moment he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt - long-sleeved, even in this heat - far enough to let Amanda see the scars around his wrist and a few of the smaller circular scars from the electrode burns. "It doesn't help that you have the reminders."
She took in Scott's gesture, her own hand moving unconsciously to finger the pink raised band of scar tissue around her own wrist. "The hard part," she said after a moment. "Isn't what I think about this, this and the rest." She gestured towards her back. "It's how people react to it. Or maybe how I see them as reacting. I cover them up because I don't think I could handle people - my friends, the kids - looking at me and feeling guilty. Or sorry for me."
"You don't want them to see you as a victim. Or someone they failed." There was only the faintest trace of a question in Scott's voice. He was fairly sure that was what she meant.
She nodded. "Yeah, pretty much." A shadow crossed her face, thinking of Remy. "Doesn't help that some of them are, already."
"You know that's inevitable, right?" Scott asked, almost gently. "They care about you, and they weren't able to stop you from being hurt. I can remember times last year I looked at Charles and I could see the guilt in his eyes. Guilt, when he hardly left Cerebro for five days, looking for me... just because it took him five days."
"But it wasn't their fault. It wasn't my fault. The only people who should be feeling guilty are the people who did it. Except they wouldn't, obviously." Amanda stubbed out her cigarette, pitching the butt in the ash bucket that still remained. "I don't want to be a burden. I've been enough of one already."
Scott thought for a minute, before he answered. "I don't know if you know this," he said, more hesitantly, "but last summer, about a week after they brought me back... Jean left. For complicated reasons that I won't get into, except to say that it had to do with what happened to me, and what had happened to her earlier in the year... but she had to go. I won't say that it wasn't hard, but I look back on it now and what I see is that she trusted me to work on my own recovery." Scott shrugged a little. "I think you can expect that from your friends. Maybe not right now, not when it's all so fresh, but once it fades a little..."
He trailed off, was quiet again for a moment. "What I understood, especially with what happened with Jean, is that I wasn't the only victim in that situation. It's a different kind of hurt for the people who have to do the searching or the rescuing... or the waiting. Maybe not so overwhelming, but it's still there."
The swinging of Amanda's foot slowed and then stilled. "Huh," she said, thoughtfully. She hadn't thought of it that way, focussed as she was on herself and Angelo.
"It's even harder for capable people," Scott said, remembering the day he and Jack had talked about this. "If you're strong and resourceful and willing to take risks for the people you care about... it hits you harder, when you can't stop these things from happening." He smiled a bit wryly. "The first time my therapist told me that, I started to understand a lot about myself, too, and why I used to want to gut myself every time one of the kids got hurt."
"I never thought of it like that," Amanda said slowly. "Makes sense, tho'."
"Take Angelo. He's seen the X-Men do so much. Save lives, win fights we maybe shouldn't have logically won... stop tsunamis. We don't fail very often, Amanda," Scott said simply. "He's been trained over the last year to believe that odds mean shit and if you fight for something hard enough, you'll get it. And the problem is, the thing that took me years to learn... that's not always true. I suspect that's one of the things he's struggling with right now."
She nodded. "He felt like he let me down. Me and the kids. He tries so hard, puts so much on himself..." She let the thought trail off. "'S different, with the Trenchcoats. We've done things, stopped some right bastards, but in the end, it's just the job. We do our best, but sometimes we're going to lose." Like in Uganda, where coming out alive had been the greatest victory.
"It's just the differences in the job, I think. We're so often jumping into things that are already in the process of exploding, or making them explode... it's a different mindset. You don't have room to be anything but... insanely driven, when success or failure comes down to split-seconds in battle." Scott gave her a quick smile. "I think about this sort of thing a little bit too much," he confessed.
"'S your job, innit?" she replied with a brief grin of her own.
"That and assorted other applications of my natural sadism, yes." Scott shook his head, the smile coming back and lingering this time. "Anyway. I think you two will find your way through this, and that's the absolute limit of my relationship-oriented advice, believe me. As for the rest of it..." He paused for a moment, then shrugged. "It will get better. And if you catch any of your friends angsting too much... you know now where they might be coming from. You can tell them that it's not about you, and maybe nudge them towards someone who can help them talk about how this has all affected them. Or," he added, a bit mischievously, "just smack them upside the head. Or both."
"I leave the head smacking to Sof. She's got the degree for it," Amanda said, grinning easily, before glancing at her watch. "And speaking of the relationship, I should go and make sure he isn't breaking his hands on the punching bag. Maybe talk about that trip, see if he's still up for it." Sliding down off the rail, she approached Scott, holding out her hand for him to shake. "Thanks, tho'. For the advice. It's something I can work with, yeah."
Scott shook her hand. "You're welcome. Enjoy the trip, all right?" He released her hand and rose, himself. "I think the game of tag over there is getting a little energetic. Time to go step in." He gave her one last crooked smile and headed down the steps. "The fun never ends around here," he called back over his shoulder.
