Scott and Laurie, Tuesday evening

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Laurie finally shows up to talk to Scott about what happened with Kyle and her email.


Laurie stood just outside the door to Scott's office, waiting for him to return. It was within office hours, but she suspected he'd had something to take care of elsewhere. She didn't mind the wait, considering it gave her some extra time to steady herself.

She'd taken her mother's words to heart, harsh as she felt they'd been. She wished she could make her mother understand just how much her father had changed though. He didn't seem to her the man who'd hurt anyone these days, at least, not anything who didn't deserve it.

Scott came around the corner - and stopped, staring hard at the young woman standing in front of his office door. "I suppose I need to give you some credit for coming to see me," he said, his voice clipped. "I was beginning to wonder if I needed to hunt you down."

"I thought it best to give us both time to calm ourselves." Laurie replied, her words slightly stilted as she spoke, almost as if she'd rehearsed this conversation.

Which, of course, she had. At least, the first parts of it anyhow, what she might say, and what he might say had left an uneasy feeling in her gut. The idea of failure, of any kind of failure still left her feeling panicked and sick.

"Oh. I see." There was a definite bite in Scott's tone. He unlocked the door and stepped in, not bothering to even gesture at Laurie to follow him. "Because, of course, I needed to calm down, after I lashed out at you so unjustly?"

"I didn't say that." Laurie noted, but it was a quiet reply, without heat despite the flare of anger she felt. She just wanted to get this over with, if he was going to kick her off the team, then he should just do it. She knew she was feeling terribly sorry for herself, and it irritated her but she just couldn't seem to stop. "I just thought it would be better that we weren't angry when we talked. No one ever gets anything done that way."

"See, that's based on the assumption that I can't control myself when I'm angry," Scott said, sitting down behind his desk quite deliberately. He didn't motion Laurie to a chair. "Which is something that I've had to learn. Not to act on impulse."

"People say things in the heat of an argument they'd never say else wise all the time. It's not an incorrect assumption that had I been hostile toward you, you'd have responded with the same, is it?" Laurie noted, giving Scott a look. "You think I was acting impulsively when I said what I did to Kyle?"

Scott just stared at her for a long moment, not quite incredulously. "Laurie... do you ever, ever think before you open your mouth? The fact that you know what a hole you've dug for yourself and can still manage to be patronizing is... pretty incredible, actually."

Laurie blushed red with embarrassment and couldn't think of what to say for several minutes. She hadn't meant to sound patronizing in the least. She'd just, she'd wanted to be calm and mature, to not break down and be all, whatever it was, not pathetic and needy. This meant too much, made her too vulnerable to rejection, and she hated it.

"I didn't mean it like that." she said finally, after gaining some semblance of control over her emotions. "What do you need from me, Scott? I don't want to be kicked off the team."

There, she'd said it, the thing that scared her most.

Scott's answer wasn't all that reassuring. "I don't know, Laurie," he said flatly. "I'm not ready to yank you off trainee status right this second, but I'm deeply troubled. Not just by the choices you made during the incident - that can be somewhat excused, given your lack of experience and the effects of the attack."

"Then what is troubling you?" Laurie asked, and then wrinkled her nose. She sounded like a dime store psychologist.

Scott found himself just staring. Again. "You accused a teammate," he said slowly, "of trying to kill someone. In public. On the journals. And then you made that-" Scott's jaw clenched, hard, as he fought back a surge of near-incandescent rage at the memory, so strong that his eye actually started to itch. "You told Kyle that his feral senses made him uncontrollable. Also in public. Not that you would have deserved to get your ass kicked into next Christmas any less if you'd done it in private."

Laurie thought of several things she could say to that, but wisely decided to keep her mouth shut. Her mother had told her to listen to them, and while she might disagree with the fairness of this dressing down, she had gone quite a bit over the line with Kyle.

"I don't know why you don't see what a betrayal of trust that was. You know, I don't care that you had concerns about the level of force Kyle used." Scott's jaw tightened again, but for reasons that had nothing to do with the conversation at hand. He pushed the memory of Central Park out of his mind and went on. "Raising that, with me or with Ororo, or even with Kyle, would have been one thing. It was a perfectly legitimate question."

"He didn't seem to think so." Laurie noted finally, keeping her eyes locked on Scott's desk rather then raising her head. The conversation was hard enough without having to look the leader of the X-men in the eye.

Scott gave a harsh laugh that had no humor in it whatsoever. "Well, it's not a comfortable question." Especially not for Kyle. "But if you'd done it in a temperate, respectful fashion... maybe with some concern for him, rather than your own uncompromising moral code..."

"Wouldn't compromising on a moral code make it a fairly poor moral code in the first place?" Laurie asked, her eyes jerking upwards for a moment in the flash of anger that seized her. Why were they always asking her to change? What was so damn wrong with the person she was. It just made her, it felt like they wanted her to give up everything sometimes. "And he hasn't exactly given me much reason to be temperate or respectful of him these last few months. Or does telling me I need a good screwing count as good team building conduct? I didn't just use my powers to stop him from killing that guy, Scott. I used them because I didn't want him to get hurt either. But that doesn't seem to matter to anyone at all, certainly not him. All he can see is that I didn't trust him, and I don't see why I should have. He's never given me reason to."

Scott looked absolutely disgusted. "He said something insulting - or several somethings, whatever, to you. Fine. His manners are terrible. You accused him of trying to kill someone. You dehumanized him by claiming that he can't control himself because of his mutation - you said that to someone who was once partway down the road to being one of Mistra's newest trained attack dogs."

Laurie was silent again, unsure of what to say, of what she should say. She had honestly thought he might kill someone. Not because of his feral nature, that had been a comment meant to strike at Kyle, to hurt and it had succeeded spectacularly. It hadn't made her feel any better though, in fact it had made her feel somewhat sick, or more then sick thinking back on the fight. The fight had been so vicious, and so fast.

She hadn't wanted anything to happen to him, and whoever the man was, he hadn't seemed like he was backing down. In the small amount of time she'd thought she had to react, she'd just gone with what she knew. Just like she'd reacted to Kyle's comments on his journal, too wrapped up in what seemed like an attack on her abillity to do things right.

"I don't trust you particularly right now," Scott said. "Not to make the right decisions in a crisis, not to interact with your teammates in a way that isn't going to be destructive to morale. Something I have to keep in mind are the interpersonal ripple effects of something like that, Laurie. Everyone saw it." Even the kids, for God's sake. Why had she thought - no, that was the problem, she hadn't thought. "Every X-Man, every trainee, now knows that you're willing not just to question their choices in the field - which, for the last time, is fine! - but to attack them. In public."

"So...what now, then?" Laurie asked, wanting to point out that she would be perfectly fine to wait on talking about her dubiousness on any given decision if she could trust that those decisions wouldn't get them killed. She had a feeling that a reiteration of the fact that she trusted her teammates very little, if at all would not go over well right now.

"I honestly don't know, Laurie. I don't feel like you've listened to me, or that you really understand what you did wrong here," Scott said, and found himself wrestling down more anger. "You've not even acknowledged out loud that you said something that wouldn't have sounded out of place coming from a member of the FoH."

"I...What?" Laurie asked, expression shocked to say the least. "What?"

"What you said to Kyle," Scott said coldly. "About his feral nature? That is repulsive, disgusting bigotry. It is no different than assuming a telepath is going to rape your mind just because they can read it. Or blaming your violent actions on a girl who can control pheremones."

Laurie paled, and her ears buzzed as her nails dug into her palms to stop herself from doing something rash, like simply walking out of his office, this school and never looking back. Had she had a little less control over her powers, she might have even projected some of the rage she was feeling.

"You have no right." she began, tears pricking at her eyes, and she rubbed a hand across them and breathed in and out for a moment to get control. "I would never. I would...You're not being fair."

"Hurts, doesn't it," Scott said harshly. It wasn't a question. "But you know damned well I'm right - that one of our friendly neighborhood bigots could and would say exactly what you said to Kyle. And believe it, as the truth. I suppose the question you need to ask yourself is whether you do, or whether you only said it to score points. I'm not sure either answer is to be preferred."

"I said it to score points." Laurie said, her expression smoothing back into its normal mask of calmness. She'd promised herself she'd be honest, and that she'd listen. If he didn't think she was, then obviously, she needed to try harder. "I said it to hurt him, because he hurt me. I'm not proud of it, but it's done and I can't take it back. That doesn't mean I'm not sorry I said it."

Scott's expression as he regarded her was impassive. "It's all well and good to feel sorry," he said, "but saying that you can't take it back is a cheap way of putting up your hands and backing away from the damage done. Something to think about." He inclined his head towards the door. "You can go. Expect to hear from the Professor as to a meeting or six with him, and from Ororo and I regarding remedial training."

Laurie might have wanted to say more, but she chose the better option of nodding, and walking out the door.