Monday afternoon, Scott and Pietro in Portugal

[x-ccelerate.livejournal.com]

Scott comes by to drag Pietro home. Pietro is stubborn, but Scott is uniquely well-equipped to drill through thick skulls.



If sheer frustration were a palpable substance--say, a gas--it would have been emanating from Pietro's hotel room in such volume that the hotel would have had to evacuate and call in a hazmat team days ago. As it was, the other guests just tended to avoid that end of the hallway, and housekeeping made absolutely sure to call ahead.

Dead end after dead end after dead end; all his leads had evaporated like so much smoke, until one began to worry that it would combine explosively with the frustration. Pietro idly calculated how long it would take him to interrogate every single remaining person who had ever set foot on Attilan. The way things were going, that might be the only thing left to try.

His frustration was interrupted by a solid knock on the door.

"The sign on the door reads 'Do Not Disturb' in half-a-dozen languages," Pietro snapped loud enough to be heard through it. "I congratulate you on your truly panoramic ignorance. Go away."

"Open the damned door before I blast out the lock, Maximoff." Scott's voice wasn't quite harsh, but it was very firm. There wasn't much doubt, based on his tone, that he meant what he said.

"Summers?" Pietro's eyebrows climbed, and he levered himself out of his chair to undo the bolt. "I suppose I should have expected this at some point," he said as he opened the door. It came out a good deal more surly than wry.

"Be glad I didn't bring your sister with me," Scott said, stepping in. He had the travelworn look of someone who'd come directly from the airport, and was carrying a single small bag that clearly had only one change of clothes in it. "I was tempted."

"That doesn't surprise me at all." Pietro locked the door behind Scott and fell gracelessly back into his chair. "This is my official scruff-dragging, is it?"

"Unless you honestly think you're doing some good here." Scott set the bag down beside a chair and sat down, himself. "Do you?"

Pietro shrugged. "There are a few Portuguese never-weres who have miraculously come to the conclusion that falsely claiming credit for the disaster was not, as previously surmised, the best of all possible ways to make names for themselves. Some of their bruises are quite fetching."

Scott's eyes narrowed. "Oh, so I see that when I mentioned to Charles that I might want to bring his chequebook just in case I needed to bail you out, I wasn't being entirely facetious." He put his feet up on the small table between them; it had been a long flight, and he was tired. "Did it make you feel any better? Beating on the stupid would-be terrorists?" There was no edge to his voice, despite his words.

Pietro rolled his eyes. "Oh, please, give me some credit. The Portuguese authorities barely know I'm here, and I've given them no reason to suspect me." He dropped his gaze for a moment. "And no, it didn't. They didn't know anything."

"It sounds like you've hit something of a dead end." Scott sighed. "I guess the question is whether you're ready to admit that you have, or not."

"I've hit something of thirty-seven dead ends. And counting. And I'm not ashamed to say so. That happens in any investigation." Pietro's expression went mulish. "But somewhere there's someone who knows what happened. It's just a matter of finding whoever it is and doing what it takes to get them to tell me."

"And if it's not a who? Or if the who wound up wherever Attilan is?" Scott asked, but patiently. Berating him wasn't going to do any good. Honestly, Scott doubted whether sweet reason would, either, but he needed to at least try. "Are you ready to stay here indefinitely?"

"Crystal's body hasn't been recovered yet," Pietro said, not looking at Scott. "She's down there under the ocean somewhere, or floating out in space or wherever the rest of the victims ended up, when she ought to be flying free. And I can't stand to sit around doing nothing when nobody's being made to answer for that."

Scott managed not to flinch at the comment about Crystal's body. Or think about what might have happened if he'd shown this same sort of persistence at Alkali Lake. "Then don't sit around doing nothing. Come back. Talk to Charles or Moira about what kind of mutant power might have been responsible for this. Come at it from a different perspective." He paused, then went on, more gently. "She would be lecturing you right now, you know. She did like to lecture."

"Yes," Pietro said shortly. "But if she were here to lecture me, I wouldn't need one; that's the whole point. She's not. And I can't do anything about it." His jaw set. "I've never been good at powerlessness. Or losing people I care about." He glared at Scott over those last words, as if daring him to comment.

Scott didn't, at least not aloud. His eyebrows went up, briefly, and he looked away, giving a sigh that might have been a laugh, on another day, under better circumstances. "Pietro..." he finally said, but trailed off. "I buried myself in work, after Alkali Lake. You know that. That's how we met."

Pietro nodded. "I was freshly disillusioned, you were recently bereaved, and we agreed on very few things other than that my father didn't deserve a sophomore attempt at mass murder." His voice was very flat. "Good times."

"It doesn't work. It just makes the whole process of grieving more protracted. The more heads you knock together and the more leads you chase down, the harder it's going to be to face what's happened in the end."

Pietro shook his head. "It's not the same. You buried yourself in unrelated work specifically so you could avoid what had happened. I'm trying to find out everything about what happened--I face it every day." He shrugged. "Points for trying, I suppose, but sometimes dedication isn't actually unhealthy."

Scott just raised an eyebrow - and sized up Pietro's chair. Traditional armchair, exposed wooden legs... one to the back right leg, the part of his brain that analysed angles informed him, and Scott made a thoughtful noise, rubbing at the scars on his face. The very low-powered and narrowly focused optic blast still managed to shatter the leg of the chair, knocking it off balance and sending it falling backwards.

Pietro sprawled full-length on the floor, and lay there a moment from pure shock. He was back on his feet in short order, snarling visibly. "What the hell was that, Summers?"

"I think you call that the 'direct approach'," Scott said. He hadn't budged from his chair. "As for me, I think I call that restraint. It was a lot more tempting to aim for your head - at least an optic blast would have made an impression."

"When in doubt, break something. Standard X-Men tactical doctrine, of course." Pietro brushed himself off with hands that were unaccountably shaking, just slightly. "She was supposed to be safe," he muttered finally. "Away from the team backsplash, away from the random Xavier's insanity. Safe at home. And then this happens."

"Yes, she was supposed to be. But she wasn't." Scott moved, but only to lean forward in his chair, his hands resting lightly on his knees. His voice was level, almost unnaturally so. "Maybe there are answers as to why out there, Pietro... but you've done all you can here. Come back, get some rest, look at it from another angle." Back to where I can sic Charles on you..

"I'm rested. Fatigue isn't my problem this time." The protest was halfhearted at best, and Pietro sighed. "I suppose I have done everything I could. Not very much, all told."

"There are different kinds of rest," Scott said, but under his breath as he himself rose. "I'm going to go downstairs and pay for the damage to the chair. You can pack - I've already got your return ticket."

Pietro snorted as he turned to gather up his things. "Imagine my surprise. You'll have to, anyway, since I'm not particularly."

"I'm very predictable. I like to think of it as one of my virtues," was Scott's parting rejoinder as he headed for the door. "Don't make me come up here and destroy more furniture, Pietro - I'll be in the lobby."