Shiro & Scott, Thursday afternoon

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Scott comes upon Shiro taking part in a time-honored tradition: punching bag murder. When Scott asks what's wrong, he gets an earful.


After some time at Xavier's, one would not be surprised to learn that he all but owned stock in Everlast. Shiro was well on his way to considering it, too. The heavy bag he was working on wasn't red anymore so much as brown and black. A brutal melee of flaming punches and kicks had left the leather crispy, but he showed no signs of stopping. One fiery spinning kick nearly ripped through the bag, and Shiro paused for just a moment to asses the pain in his foot before deciding to ignore it and continue beating the bag.

"I hope you're planning to replace that," came Scott's voice from the doorway of the gym. "Some of the rest of us need it to take out our frustrations on, too." He gave Shiro an assessing look as he came further into the gym, somewhat warily. The two of them hadn't talked much since that rather... heated conversation over Shiro's little problem (and how it related to Scott's little brother). "Dare I ask?"

"Long day," Shiro replied curtly. Long week, too. And long month. In fact, December felt like years ago. He punched the bag for emphasis, leaving a fist-shaped brand. His fingers steamed. "I will dispose of this and replace it when I -" am not feeling so murderous "- am done."

Scott rolled his eye as Shiro turned back to the bag. "Uh-huh." That was uncharitable, though; Shiro might be having a bad day Due To Serious Issues, in which case he probably deserved some carefully disguised sympathy (because open sympathy wouldn't be taken well at all, oh no). "You know, we do have digital cameras available - if you wanted to take a picture of whoever pissed you off so much and attach it to the bag, I find that it's sometimes very therapeutic."

Shiro grunted at that, which to him passed for a laugh. "I can only imagine several scenarios where that will end badly for those involved. And then the picture would not last long anyway." He pulled the tie from his hair to let sweaty locks fall. He hadn't got his hair cut in ages but he liked the look, as annoying as it was when it got in his way.

Scott went over and sat down on one of the benches, just watching the younger man for a long moment. Time to do my leaderly duty... Plus Shiro really didn't have that many people to talk to, he thought. Not these days. "So what's with the bag-murder, anyway?"

There was a moment of silence before Shiro answered. "I woke up to some bad news," he replied, carefully unraveling the burnt wrappings around his hands. "Fucking glitter everywhere."

"I'm... not following." Although Scott was positive that he should be.

It was too embarrassing to admit. Shiro ran a hand through his hair and sighed as he considered how to word his thoughts without sounding like the world's biggest bastard. "I saw Clarice's messages to Kyle this morning and . . . it stirred some memories I would rather not recall."

Days of Our Mutant Lives... "I see. Regrets are a bitch," Scott said, even as he wondered if it was regret, or something else.

"Something like that." Shiro drained his bottle of (now warm) water, the plastic slowly melting in his hands. He fought down the urge to just obliterate it entirely.

"In other words, not quite that. Jealousy, then?" Scott said idly, wondering why he was poking. He didn't particularly want to provoke an explosion.

And yet that was exactly the trigger. "Of course I am jealous!" he shouted. "And isn't it pathetic? I am jealous of dogboy! What is wrong with me, Cyclops?" It wasn't an angry, rhetorical question, though. "I have no friends. I cannot survive one day without thinking of your brother and what I nearly did to him, and he still will not talk to me. I do not know how I manage to get myself to school, much less pass my classes. One of the best human beings I have ever met prefers a fool's company to mine. I cannot move or lift or fly like I used to. Do you know that my birthday was last Saturday? I am twenty-one years old now, supposedly a milestone in this country, and the only people who even acknowledged it are my sister and Artie. And they gave me a card with both of their names on it. She did not even give me something of her own."

Shiro looked at Scott in the eyes, his face expressing exhaustion and sadness and downright self-loathing. "What am I? I have burned away everything I cared for and now there is nothing but ashes."

It took a long moment for Scott to mentally compose a reply. "You're going through a hard time right now," he said, and somehow managed to make it not sound like a platitude. "It's magnifying everything, even the smaller issues. That's why it feels like an insurmountable situation."

"I don't want this. I never wanted any of this." Shiro ran a hand down the bag, his fingers scorching into it. "I have made so many mistakes and I do not know how to repair them. And most of all, I hate pitying myself. I feel like a brain-damaged child for caring about this."

"One thing at a time - and stop running yourself down, I'm almost positive that's not helping your outlook." Never failed to feel bizarre, when he found himself giving advice in these sorts of situations. Address the trigger, first? Since it was probably the easiest. "You say you're jealous of Kyle. Why?"

"I thought that is obvious," Shiro said wryly. "It is weird seeing someone you used to be involved with now involved with someone else, ne?"

"Yes," Scott said, "but weird doesn't equal jealous. And doesn't always send someone down to massacre a punching bag."

"Maybe I am just that special." Or maybe, despite the catastrophes that were his past relationships, he'd never gotten over them, and he didn't want them to get over it, either. "I am alone, and she is not. It is easy to take my frustration out on someone else, ne?"

"What kind of terms are you on with her now?" Scott asked curiously, mentally plotting out his next conversational options, depending on Shiro's answer. There was 'alone' and then there was 'alone'.

"I suppose as pleasant as we could be." She hadn't laughed him out of the infirmary when he'd asked her out on Valentine's Day, at least. That counted for something.

"Pleasant is a good basis to build on," Scott said. "You called her one of the best human beings you've ever met." Which was actually pretty sweet, and Scott had to wonder if Clarice knew just how well Shiro still thought of her, ex- or not. "That sounds to me like someone you might like to count as a friend, even if not a... well, not a romantic one."

Shiro slumped against the wall. "How do you do that? I cannot simply ignore what was or what I still feel. No one is friends with old girlfriends."

"Bullshit," Scott said amiably. "Betsy and I get along. Well, in a weird sort of way that might not look like it sometimes, especially when she goes crazy and I have to blast her in the head... but I still care about her, and her well-being," Scott said more seriously. "And I still trust her. If you can say the same about Clarice, that is something important."

That brought some hope. "Do you think . . ." Shiro glanced around nervously, as if afraid of Scott's reaction to his next question. "Do you think that Alex and I can be friends again, then?"

Maybe it was a sign of the advancing burnout he'd been talking to Jean about, but Scott couldn't bring himself to summon up even a flicker of protectiveness, let alone anger. "Well," he said instead, almost gently, "it has to work both ways. And that one may take some work... you know, given the problems the two of you have with, uh, physical proximity, have you thought of emailing him? It might be a safe way of talking about what happened."

"I should." Shiro sighed and looked up at the punching bag. "I'm sorry. I did not need to burden you with my problems. This is why I am supposed to go to therapy." As much as he loathed it.

"Do I look overly burdened?" was Scott's dry reply. "So long as you remember I'm your field leader, not your therapist, and so anything I say in terms of life advice should be taken with a very large grain of salt, I think conversations like this are fine. Then again, I have managed to survive an insane personal life, so maybe the grain of salt doesn't need to be quite that big."

Shiro smiled weakly and pulled himself back to his feet. The tight knot in his chest had loosened some. "I ought to replace this now," he said, and floated upwards to free the bag from its attachment to the ceiling.

"Let me give you a hand," Scott said, getting up. "Pride aside, you don't necessarily have to do even the little things on your own, you realize." Let alone the big ones.