Angelo and Scott, Saturday afternoon

[x-skin.livejournal.com]

Angelo decides it's time he goes to talk to Scott about what happened at Trask's house. Scott has quite a lot to say to him, and it's not quite what Angelo expected.


He'd been putting this off, but Angelo knew he had to go and see Scott eventually. And since the news had reached Marie, who knew how far it might get before he got round to it, if it wasn't now? Especially since Scott was leaving again soon. So, dog at his heels so he could take her out afterward, he made his way down to the headmaster's office.

Scott had forgotten some of the things he wanted for Budapest in his early-morning raid of his office computer. Easily enough fixed, though, and he was sitting at his desk now, loading up his laptop with the relevant files. We never got to talk about performance assessment methodology. I wonder what they'll think of our cross-evaluation style...

Joyita, long-since used to everyone in the mansion, didn't make any kind of alerting noise as they approached the office. That meant it was up to Angelo to knock on the door, a little reluctantly.

"Come in," Scott called, and don't be Lorna or Shiro, please... As the door opened, Scott couldn't help feeling a bit chagrined. "Angelo," he greeted. "I was going to come find you today, before I left tomorrow..."

"I figured you might be", was the quiet response. "Just thought you might not have time."

"Well, it has been a week." Scott gestured to a chair. "How's Nathan? I haven't had a chance to check on him since Thursday." Asking about Nathan was a better, more subtle way of approaching discussing what Angelo had done as a result of what had happened.

"Sittin' up", Angelo answered, taking the offered seat. "Still not allowed out of bed, but he's gettin' there."

"Glad to hear it. I'll go see him before we go." Scott leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together. "So. How are you doing?" He was tired of being the forceful one, this week, the one who laid down the law or demanded answers or pushed people to examine their behavior. Time to take a different approach and see if it maybe didn't work just as well.

"Okay, I guess", he said with a slightly confused shrug - he wasn't used to this approach from most people after he'd screwed up. "Far as things go."

Scott's lip curled very slightly. "You'll note Cain and I didn't say anything publicly. It wasn't just because we didn't want to add to the drama, either. I wanted to give you time to think. Have you?"

"Yeah, I've thought. Talked to Marie, too." That was all he was getting, because Angelo still hadn't come to any decisions.

"How'd Marie - oh, Amanda," Scott said, coming up with the likely answer to the question before he'd finished asking it. "Hey," he said suddenly, following a strange impulse, "did you ever hear about what I did at the Hellfire Club that time, when Jean was gone? It's not in the files."

Angelo tilted his head, curious even despite his awareness that this story was probably leading into a Lesson. "Don't think I ever did, no."

"The day we found out she was there, I... lost it, basically. Drove into town on my bike, walked right into the Hellfire Club shouting her name... plowed my way through a significant number of security guards." The corners of Scott's mouth turned down. "I probably put a couple of them in the hospital, actually. I got to Jean, but she threw me back down the stairs, and by then the police had arrived."

Angelo was silent for a long moment, not sure how to respond. Finally, "...so what happened after that?"

"They hauled me off to jail. Were in the process of getting the paperwork done when Sebastian Shaw showed up and told me he wasn't laying charges." Scott took a deep breath, then let it out again. "So the only reason - the only reason I was able to turn around and figure how to save my wife was because Sebastian fucking Shaw decided it would be a better plan to let me get her out of his Club than to do it himself."

He just lapsed into listening silently again, letting Scott talk about himself for a while before the inevitable turn back to what Angelo had done.

Scott smiled slightly at the faint air of patience Angelo seemed to have. "My point is, I wouldn't have been able to do what I did, in jail. If the police had gotten there before us... okay, so yeah, since Trask wasn't there, if you'd kept your mouths shut the charges would have been a lot lighter than the ones I was facing. Doesn't mean they wouldn't have gotten in the way of you working to help find her and bring her in, in the future." Scott paused for a moment. "I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I understand why you did it... but we need you." There was a note that sounded almost like a plea in Scott's voice. "We need you here, with us. You're one of the few people on the team who does have a good understanding of the whole Askani angle... we need that, to figure out what she's doing."

"The whole Askani angle's half of why I went after her", Angelo said after a moment's thought. "If it was just Nate... well, okay, I'd probably still have done it, but what she's doin' to Askani... an' Nate'll be safe if she's just brought in, but..."

"There's another reason we need you," Scott said. "Nathan, Jean, Wanda... they all have a very deep understanding of the Askani and what they believed, but with them, it seems... closer to a native understanding, if that makes sense. Nathan and Wanda had Askani memories and language and knowledge deposited directly into their minds. Jean sees them through a psi's eyes - when she talks about their techniques, the patterns and the like, I can't follow her." Scott straightened, rubbing at his jaw. "Trask's understanding... her misunderstanding, sounds to me more like a reaction conditioned by thinking of our time, not theirs."

"But Nathan taught me", Angelo finished, getting where Scott was going with this. "An' Askani herself, a couple times. So I got it right."

"But you still apply it to your life in your own way. I think you might have a better grasp on where you could have gone wrong, if you'd been unguided, like Trask. Are you seeing what I'm getting at here? On this subject, you've maybe got one foot a little more firmly planted in the here and now."

Angelo considered that, then nodded slowly. "Yeah, I think I do see. So you're gonna keep me around, then?" The last was wry.

"Not only that," Scott said, a bit more grimly, "but while I'm gone, I want you to think about whether you would feel up to doing something very specific for me. I'm guessing that it's probably occurred to you, given the similarity in ideologies, that there is at least a possibility that Trask might have had something to do with the Preservers."

Angelo went very still at that, the tense coiled kind of stillness that only came in situations like the current discussion. "It did occur to me, yeah. What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to decide whether or not you'd feel comfortable talking to Devlin," Scott said, simply. "Or maybe even one of the junior Preservers who are still in custody."

"I wouldn't get a word out of them", Angelo said flatly. "They know who I am."

"Yes," Scott said, "they do. The younger ones, in particular. The unpredictable, angry young mutants." He stressed each adjective, deliberately.

Angelo gave him a long look, increasingly knowing, then grinned. "You sneaky bastard."

"If you don't have any ethical problems with poking caged bears, you might actually get them to blurt out something useful." Scott shrugged, holding his hands out, palms up. "I need to ask Charles to look into where they are, and whether it's possible to get you in there. You don't have to make the decision right now. I just think it would be really good to see if this is anything more an coincidence."

"If the caged bears are Preservers, I'll poke them all you want", Angelo said grimly. "I'll think about it." Then, after a moment, "Thanks. You know, sometimes..." He trailed off, not sure if he should finish that thought.

"Sometimes...?" Scott's tone was gentle, but encouraging.

"I can go through all the therapy in the world", Angelo said, looking down, "but we both know I'm not gonna come out of it with a shiny clean new soul. An' Marie said everyone here's got their dark, but it's not true. I look at... okay, not Jennie an' Marius, they've both got their scars, but... Laurie, for definite. Kyle, some, an' definitely Angel - she might not be trainin' yet but you know she will when she's old enough. I look at them sometimes an' I miss feelin' like the team an' the school was all as screwed up as I am."

"Do you think Laurie and Kyle, and anyone else who decides to train for the team aren't going to wind up with scars of their own, even if they don't start with them?" Well. There was a grim way of looking at it. Unfortunately true, though.

"No. But... Scott, they're just kids." That was almost pleading, for some reason he didn't fully understand even himself. "Look at Laurie, she gets upset by people drinkin' underage. How's she gonna deal if she reads the files about me?"

"She'll deal with it," Scott said, "or she won't. That's up to her, Angelo. A function of her growing up, if you want to put it that way. Because she doesn't just have to read your file. She has to read mine, and Jean's, and Lorna's, and Nathan's, and every other X-Man whose life has included things that might shock her. And she has to accept that, and accept them as their teammates, people in whose hands she'll trust her own life... or she's not going to make it as an X-Man." Scott met Angelo's eyes, levelly. "Because the difference between her, or Kyle, or any other potential trainee, and those of us wearing black leathers is that we've already proven ourselves."

"Even when we make stupid mistakes?" Angelo asked with an edge of wryness back in its, not looking away.

"Our mistakes don't wash away our successes. And you're yet another perfect example that most X-Men are harder on themselves than the rest of the world is. You'll know," Scott said more quietly, "if the day ever comes when you've gone too far. No one else will have to tell you. And you know that day's not today, or you wouldn't have come down here to find me."

Comments

[xp_daytripper]

Great log, guys. :)

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

Very nice log guys. Laurie why like to note that she's not scarless, just not as badly as some in the school. She's still got a fair amount of normalcy.