Garrison and Laurie log

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

Posting a bit early due to timezones.

Laurie talks to Garrison, it doesn't go so well.



Laurie looked up, the light of the television washing her face to a ghostly pale as she sat on one of the comfy common room couches.

"Garrison." she said, a tentative smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. "Were you wanting to watch something?"

She hadn't been avoiding him since their run in a month or so ago, but the mansion was a large place, and she had 'not tried' to talk to him. She supposed it was somewhat the same thing, even if the actions were slightly different.

"Nope. Television at Harry's works fine." Kane said, finishing off his quick sandwich. He was supposed to meet Adrienne for the game around ten, damn west coast games, and had taken a minute to grab a bite before heading out. However, his path had taken him through the living room where Laurie had been curled up, unseen, and watching 'The Hills' it seemed. In all, Kane couldn't really imagine a worse random meeting at the mansion.

It wasn't exactly the opening for a conversation she'd been looking for, but she supposed beggars couldn't be choosers. "Did you have a moment before you go?" she asked, moving into a more comfortable position on the couch. "There's some stuff I'd like to talk to you about."

"Oi." Garrison muttered and looked at his watch. "You've got 24 minutes until Purcey throws his first pitch."

Kane was will aware that he was being overtly unfriendly. Laurie was a trainee, not his responsibility, and after the last month of incidents and nonsense on the journals, he was pretty much fed up with her. Not that he was going to go out of his way to lash her about it, but having one of her 'deep discussions' about whatever random issue was bothering her today seemed about as much fun as pouring hot sauce into his own eyes.

"Why are you...were you so tough on me?" Laurie asked him, wincing slightly but going on anyway. This was possibly not going to go as well as she'd hoped.

"Because this isn't a game. It's life or death for you and the rest of the team out there, and if you don't want to take it seriously, it's better to get rid of you now before you get yourself, or worse, some one else killed."

"Direct." Laurie muttered, almost to herself. "I'm sorry I used my powers on you. I sort of had a first hand demonstration recently of why it's not good to totally rely on them."

"Not the point." Kane said unkindly. How thick were these kids? "It wasn't that you used your powers. You ignored your training because you figured a shortcut would have been easier. You know what really pisses me off, Laurie? That I might not have figured it out."

With the glare of the television, Garrison's face had become a contrasting mask; his skin white against his now black looking hair and beard. "I might have gone further with training that you didn't understand and aren't ready for. Assuming that you were lucky enough not to get your skinny neck broken by accident then, you might have cleared to go out with the team, and found yourself up against someone who your power doesn't work on. So I take it a little personally when someone doesn't care enough to think that other people are the ones who will end up taking responsibility for your choices. You tried to deceive me because you didn't want to do the work, and you honestly hoped I'd be fooled enough to let you get away with it."

Laurie could feel tears pricking at the back of her eyes, and fought them down. She'd deal with this, she wouldn't back down just because it was hard, and he was angry.

"That wasn't the reason I did it." she started, not really wanting to look at him, but forcing herself to. She was the one who'd started this conversation after all. "I thought...Everyone else seems to find this easy. When you said what you said, I got angry because it felt like you were telling me, I don't know what I thought. I just wanted to be as good as everyone else."

"Lazy, selfish and stupid. You know, you're convincing me that you're ready to go further." Kane said. He wasn't entirely sure why he was so hard on Laurie, except for the fact that despite all the evidence of what the X-Men risked around her, she seemed to almost willfully not get it. As if she was doing it on purpose.

"Training is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to weed out the people who just can't hack it, and figure out how fast the rest can go until they all get to the same level. The point is that when you walk out with a partner, or a group, you can trust them to be able to do the job to a bare minimum. You can trust your own life with them, because you know they went through the same drills, learned the same lessons you did. I'd had to attend funerals of fellow RCMP. The X-Men are lucky that they haven't had to go through that yet, but I have seen men and women in the same uniform as mine get put into the ground. And the only thing that I can know for sure was that they didn't die because they weren't prepared for the job."

"I'm not ready." Laurie said after a pause, wincing as she straightened her hands from where they'd curled into fists. "I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I just want you to stop being angry at me. I've been doing stuff off campus, you know. I joined a martial arts class. It's been teaching me a lot, although I kinda realised after awhile that it wasn't going to teach me what I needed in a fight, the actual useful fightey bit, anyway. But it's good, I'm learning a lot. I'm trying, Garrison. "

"What do you want? A medal? A pat on the head?" Kane shook his head. "Laurie, I don't trust you, and you've done nothing to prove to me you should be trusted. Which really doesn't matter in the end, since I'm not the one who makes the decisions. When Scott and Ororo test you to move up to the team, they'll put you through the meat grinder, and I've already told them about our little adventure in self-defense, so they'll make sure there's no way you'll get a chance to dupe their tests. Other than losing out on my self defense class, there's nothing you're missing at the school if I think you're an idiot."

Laurie didn't respond immediately, just watched him for a time, before shaking her head as if shaking off an unpleasant thought. "I want you to trust me again." she said finally, her eyes never leaving his face. "I just, I don't know how to do that. I don't know what you want to see."

"Yeah, really, I don't really think that's going to happen any time soon, Laurie. I'm not your teacher, I'm not your boss, and I'm not your friend. My guess is that you hate the idea that someone doesn't think you're worth trusting more than really understanding what I've tried to tell you." Kane looked at his watch, and then back up at Laurie. "Time's up."

Laurie winced almost visibly, but turned to her show rather then look at him for another moment. "I wouldn't want to keep you from important drinking." she said, pressing the volume up on the remote.

Comments

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

I'd had to attend funerals of fellow RCMP. The X-Men are lucky that they haven't had to go through that yet, but I have seen men and women in the same uniform as mine get put into the ground.

May 18 - Jean's memorial service. (http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=May_2003)

-sadface-

[x-juggernaut.livejournal.com]

It don't count if you weren't really dead!

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

That makes baby Jesus cry...

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

Technically, Jean's death counts as a leave of absence.

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

In retrospect, yes, but at the time her memorial took place everyone believed they were burying (or, well, honoring, since there was nothing to bury) a teammate.

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

Alright, then he's wrong.

[xp_daytripper]

Actually, given she came back, I'd suggest that the X-Men have an even more unrealistic view of death in the field - people expect the fallen to come back in some miraculous fashion.

[x-pressive.livejournal.com]

You rang?

[x-roulette.livejournal.com]

*hands over internets* You win.

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I think it makes sense - neither he nor Laurie were there, either for the memorial service or for her return. It's in the team files and the journal back posts, but it's just data to them, and doesn't have the real impact that something they'd lived through would.

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

I dunno, maybe for the X-Men who came to the mansion (either as x-men or students) enough after her death to have missed most of the deep trauma people were recovering but before her return, so they got the resulting jubilation. I would think that, if for people like Garrison and Laurie the events don't have any real depth, conversely for Scott and Ororo and Terry and the like, who were in the plane and saw her washed away by a thousand tons of rushing water, it would have a more visceral, lingering effect.

Kind of like how Mark's death and return were less traumatic and impactful to the mansion residents than the brownstoners - a difference between knowing an event happened and living it.

Which is way more thought than I expected people to put into a random line in a log and a throwaway '-sadface-' comment. One would think that a joke like "that makes baby Jesus cry" would exempt one from Serious Discussion, but one would be wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

(I may still be wound up from the concert I was at tonight and much too tired to be faking seriousness. -snicker-)

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Heee! Jean should very belatedly induct Mark into the 'survived a post-death experience' club that she and Jamie started way back when.

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

To be honest, Jean's being washed away by water, and seeing four Mountie lying in state after being gunned down investigating a grow-up are still two different things. The X-Men have never ever faced actual tangible evidence of death yet, where as Kane served in BC, which sadly has become the place RCMP officers go to get killed.

It wasn't meant as an attempt to demean Jean's death. Kane was trying to convey losing people in a way that lacks any kind of hope that they could be wrong. Obviously, I didn't articulate that well enough to explain the difference, and I apologize for any slight that might have been considered to the impact of the events of X2 and Jean's subsequent characterization.

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

The thing is that there wasn't any hope of being wrong about Jean's death when it happened - hell, if there had been that would be what weakened the impact of her return, but even putting aside the issue of her death, given it is certainly open to interpretation, I can't agree in the slightest that the X-Men have never faced tangible evidence of death. Hell, I think that if Kane ever expressed that opinion around any of the X-Men who were at Youra he'd get punched in the face. Just because they weren't wearing the same uniform didn't mean the ex-Mistra operatives weren't teammates. Thermopylae was some of the best writing the game has produced to date and I can't even imagine thinking the people who were there weren't affected by things like Kostanskis' sacrifice and Foley's death in Alison's arms.

[xp_daytripper]

Perhaps this would be a more productive conversation via email? Instead of cluttering up the log?

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

Just because they weren't wearing the same uniform didn't mean the ex-Mistra operatives weren't teammates.

Actually that exactly what it means. Different training, different backgrounds, different idealogies, different team culture. I never suggested that individual X-Men haven't suffered loss, but Kane is talking about the X-Men as a group. The X-Men as an instituition and a team have only faced Jean's, and that was disappearing under a wall of water and blinking out of Charles mind. No body, no remains. If Jean's death had been done as a plot now, half the mansion would be openly saying she can't be dead and they won't believe it until they see the body. They haven't had to scrape someone up in a bodybag wearing an X-Man uniform yet. Especially not because of something they fucked up or weren't ready for.

Anyhow, I've already apologized, and I'm tired of arguing about this even more. It was trying to hammer home into Laurie's head that this is not a game. I'm sorry you take so much offense to it.

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think also that it could be argued that the new generation of X-men haven't suffered that, at least in the trainees case. So what Kane said wasn't wrong. People like Laurie and Monet and the kids that come after wouldn't have yet had to bury one of their own. It does make a difference.

Yes, the X-men of Jean's generation or the X-men who were around for Youra would be a different case but we're not talking about those X-men, or at least I was thinking of it as the new generation when we wrote this.

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

I've been getting these responses and been interested in the conversation. So if there's any e-mail that goes on, cc me in?

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Ayup - Laurie and Kane are both part of the new generation of X-Men who don't have that history, so it does totally make sense.

But, like Rossi says, our discussion's cluttering the log and, while I rather miss the days of occ/fake!ic comments on logs which were open to readers as well as players, I know other people didn't like them. So, apologies for having a discussion on your log, Seraph and Dex, and to any readers who were bothered by it. I really did just mean it as a throwaway comment for fun and then the conversation got interesting; I never meant to upset anybody.

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

I didn't mind it. :) But then I never mind comments on my logs. *grins*