xp_logs | Angelo and Scott, Friday morning

The debriefing.

Angelo was at the Situation Room within five minutes of the time he'd been told. He hadn't really wanted to come, but this wasn't one of the things he was willing to actively avoid.

Scott was sitting there waiting for him, only one of the screens - the one at his elbow - active. He gave Angelo a long, assessing look as the younger man stepped into the room. Less shocky than the previous night, he thought. Which was why he'd waited to do this until this morning.

Angelo nodded to him in response to the look, eyes alert to the point of wariness. "Mornin'."

"Morning," Scott said simply. "Are you all right?" Physically, he meant; he hoped Angelo would catch the distinction.

"Hardly a scratch on me", Angelo said with a shrug. "Didn't sleep so well, though."

"I can imagine. We don't often see quite that much... carnage," Scott said, opting for the word only after a moment's thought. Unfortunately it was too apt. "So. Tell me what happened?" He reached out and triggered the Situation Room's recording system.

Angelo hesitated briefly, not sure where to start, then decided there was an obvious beginning after all. "I was at Amanda's an' Miguel showed up. He'd been pretty badly beat up, broken wrist, an' he said they'd taken Alejandra an' Professor Lee. 'Manda did a locator spell an' roused the others, an' we went to the tunnels."

"We?"

"Me, Mark, Angie, Doug, Amanda, Sarah, Mark, Jubilee an' Miguel", he recited flatly.

All of them. Wonderful. That pretty much completely excluded any further contact with the authorities about what had happened. Also meant that the team as a whole couldn't know the details of this, which was bothersome. Scott reached out and turned the recording right back off.

"And you called us in on your way into the tunnels?"

"As we were headin' out of the brownstone, pretty much. It wasn't a long way, an' Sarah knows her way 'round the tunnels."

"All right. Go through the rest of it," Scott said, leaning back a little in his chair. "What happened between then and when we found you?"

"We went in", Angelo said quietly. "We had a plan, it was a good one..." And he went on to detail the rest of what had happened, including his breaking the cultist's neck, but leaving out the truth of the healing.

Scott just listened, his expression remaining calm and neutral throughout Angelo's explanation of the previous night's events. Only when the younger man had obviously finished did he react, and only by shifting slightly in his chair, one hand going up to rub almost absently at the scars on the side of his face.

"Not a good situation," he said finally.

"We did what we had to do", Angelo said in flat... not quite defiance, but defensiveness.

Scott noted the defensiveness. Given that it was in response to what had been a pretty neutral comment... "Did you?" he asked carefully. It was the equivalent of poking an open wound with a stick, but he needed to know what was under there.

"You saw what those sick... what they did", he amended his words. "Not just Alejandra, not just the one that shot Miguel... you saw."

"And I've seen the work of other sick, bigoted bastards."

"An' you're gonna tell me you never wanted to kill them all?" Angelo demanded, pushing himself back up and starting to move restlessly.

"I didn't say that," Scott said, his voice still level. "Mostly because I can't say that. But you took seven other mutants into those tunnels with you. Most of whom have had pretty intensive training at one point or another. So - did the cultists have a chance?"

"Seven mutants an' one human", Angelo reminded him challengingly. "Even if Miguel went an' got himself shot, he was still there. An' he was tough enough to get away when they left him for dead." He wasn't consciously avoiding the question.

Scott didn't shake his head. Or sigh. Or any of the other reactions that popped into his mind. The fact that Angelo hadn't answered the question told him as much as if he had.

"You were right to go," he went on in that same calm voice, "and right not to go alone. I want to make sure you know that. But what happened worries me." He had meant to say 'concerns', but the less formal choice of words had slipped out. And maybe that was a good thing, because it was Angelo he was worried about.

Angelo looked at him for a long moment, not sure what to say. "So... if I was right to go, an' take the people... what's the part of what happened that bothers you?" It wasn't that he couldn't guess. But he couldn't see it as anything other than defence of himself and his friends, and God knew how many people in the future. And revenge.

"The same thing that worried me when you went to Trask's house back in January," Scott said after a moment. "Except in this case, you followed through."

"It was..." he said slowly. "I've known Miguel since we were yay high. Longer than anyone here 'cept my mom. An' then he's shot an' down an' bleedin'... I thought he was dead."

"And so you reacted?"

"I didn't know what else to do", Angelo said, his voice dropping. "For Alejandra, I'd've taken an army in there... hell, I as good as did. But when it was Miguel... I know what he did to me, no forgettin' that, but... didn't seem to matter, right then."

"Angelo, do you think I brought you down here to read you the riot act?" Scott asked, to forestall anything further on the subject of Miguel. It was something Angelo was going to have to deal with, think hard about - it went without saying that an X-Man couldn't just react even when someone they cared about was in trouble - but Scott didn't know that he was the best person to help the younger man do that. "I didn't. But just because this has to be off the record to protect Snow Valley doesn't mean it didn't happen."

"Don't know what you want me to say. Sure, it happened. I jumped off the cross an' broke some guy's neck. Might've killed one of the others, I don't know, I know I hurt him." He didn't mention the ones he'd shot and crippled. "Why'd you bring me down here?"

Yeah. There was a real problem here. "I want to know," Scott said, choosing his words very carefully, "if you think you can just pick up and carry on with the team as if this didn't happen."

"X-Men don't kill", he said with another small shrug before his shoulders hunched. "So, no, I guess I can't."

Better. "I don't want to lose you, and I don't think you want to be lost," Scott said after another moment. Still calmly. Sometimes he wondered if there was something wrong with him these days, that all manner of shit could happen and he still managed to be calm. "So I'm thinking you need a little time here. Even just seeing what you saw is something you need to talk to someone about. I'd say the same to any team member who'd just been through something like that." He smiled a bit weakly. "You should have seen the line-up outside Charles's office after Youra."

"I read about Youra", was the quiet response. "Not surprised." He wasn't going to admit to needing time - he knew Scott was going to bench him, but that didn't mean he had to welcome it.

The silence stretched on for another long moment. "I'm not... judging you," Scott finally said, very quietly. "I hope you can believe that. I can't judge you, because there have been times I've come so close to doing the same thing. And I do know what it's like to be the one whose decisions are responsible for killing someone. You did... what you felt you needed to do, with the closest help you had to hand. I just don't want to see what happened then do any more harm than it already has." To you especially.

"I'll go see Jack", Angelo allowed. "Go back up to every week for a bit, maybe. An'... d'you think we can get Alejandra in with Samson? I mean, she's nineteen, maybe she's too old, would Jack be better?"

"I'll ask Charles what would be best for her. We'll make sure she gets the help she needs." Scott paused again. "I need you to take some time off active duty while you're processing this," he finally said. It had to be said explicitly, it seemed.

"I thought you were gonna say that", was the resigned response.

It gave him some hope that Angelo wasn't kicking up a fuss about this. "If I had to say it, and you knew it was coming," Scott said, almost briskly, "then we're still on something approaching the same page, Angelo. And that's good."

It might just have been the wrong kind of hope. "If you say so. I guess I'm back to where I need to think about stuff again."

"I don't want to lose you," Scott said again, quietly but still forcefully as he met Angelo's eyes again. "You're a good team member. A good X-Man. But there has been some stuff lately that you need to take the time and think about. Not just what happened last night." In fact, he was willing to bet that all of this was as much cumulative as anything else. Something else Scott knew all too much about was having the world kick you in the head, over and over and over, and what that could do to the decision-making process.

"When was the last time I got benched?" he said, almost meditatively. "Tel Aviv, I think." It said something, in a way, that he was measuring time between benchings and disasters.

"There aren't a lot of us who haven't been benched, one way or the other, usually more than once," Scott pointed out. "Hell, I don't think anyone's going to beat my record anytime soon."

"Well, you've been doin' this longer than most of us." And God knew it was a tough life to keep up.

"I want you to feel free to come and talk to me, too, okay?" Scott said, and the sigh finally escaped. "Not in any sort of structured way - just, if you need to talk. About what's going through your head after this. Not even just vis-a-vis the team."

"I... d'you know, I don't even know." It was an honest admission. "You say I'm a good X-Man, but what happened last night... that's me, too. An' I don't think it's ever gonna stop."

Scott proceeded to have one of the best ideas in the history of his brain. He had some commonalities with Angelo on this subject, after all... but he knew of someone who had a lot more. "I know," he said. "I think, actually, I know someone you should talk to, who can probably understand that all too well."

Angelo looked at him curiously, running through the possibilities in his mind. There were rather too many, when you stopped to think. "Yeah? Who?"

Scott smiled slightly. "Go talk to Nathan, Angelo," he said, almost gently.

Angelo hadn't been exactly relaxed before, but now he stiffened up completely. "I... but... he doesn't know about it. I don't want to tell him." After Trask, after that whole discussion, he was genuinely afraid of what Nathan would think of this.

"He can keep Snow Valley's secrets." But that wasn't the issue. "And I don't know, Angelo... what's less hard? Telling him, or keeping him in the dark as to why you're benched and back to seeing Jack once a week?"

"Keepin' everyone else in the dark", Angelo muttered, but that wasn't the point and he knew it. "I don't know. Least if he doesn't know, he can't... say anythin'."

"Think about it," Scott said, and knew he'd pushed enough. He rose, his faint smile slightly pained. "And we'll leave it there, okay?" I think I've added to how hard this is quite enough for one morning.

"I'll think about it", Angelo promised, only a little grudgingly. "An'... yeah. Okay."