Scott and Adrienne log - Wednesday evening

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Scott and Adri run into each other in the gym and make each other feel bad, then sort of better.

Blowing out an impatient breath over the fact that someone was using the punching bag she had been intending to use, Adrienne sauntered across the gym with her mouth open to cajole or bribe the other person into leaving. When she saw that it was Scott, however, she found herself smiling instead. "Need to work on your right cross because you're planning on going up against another crazed mob of people in the near future?" she smirked, feigning her own jab at the bag,
causing the medallion Garrison had given her to glint under the gym fluorescents.

Scott actually blanched and stepped back from the bag. "I - well, afternoon to you too, Adrienne," he said, recovering his composure.

Delighted by the fact that Scott was flustered, Adrienne's smile grew. "Hi Summers," she greeted, simpering, hoping it would fluster him more. "How are you doing?"

His eyes narrowed, and the look he gave her was not particularly kind. "I'm fine," he said brusquely. He could take a lot of things in stride; someone deliberately trying to have a little fun with him by poking at the sore points didn't make that list.

"You definitely sound fine," Adrienne said with a sage nod, mocking. "You weren't a fan of the crazed mob, then?" she grinned, taking another punch at the bag. "I would've switched jobs with you, you know. You could've defused the bomb. Or could you?" Grinning like the cheshire cat now, she was extremely proud of herself. "I don't think you would have liked my job." Scott turned away from the bag, pulling the gloves off his hands. "You and Suzanne did a good job with the bomb," he said, the Cyclops-voice coming quite naturally. "Let's just leave it at that, okay?"

Mouth opening, Adrienne frowned. She didn't want to leave it at that. She wanted praise! "Why do you have to be such a Deputy Downer all the time, Summers?" she whined, jabbing at the bag, dancing around on the balls of her feet.

"It's part of the job description," Scott said dryly, looking around for where he'd left his water bottle. "There's a certain quotient of grim I have to achieve to get paid every month..."

"You get paid? Hell, I should join the X Men," she said with an eyebrow raised in contemplation, clearly teasing. "So why wouldn't I have liked your job?" she asked curiously, not quite willing to give up on the subject. "You don't think I would have enjoyed talking sense into a crazed mob and holding them off until Kyle and that scary steriod-creature defeated the big bad guy?"

"How do you think I helped hold off the crazed mob?" Scott asked levelly, picking up the water bottle off the bench. "They weren't up for the reasoned approach."

"Which is why I suggested that your punching the bag was to train up for another round with the mob," Adrienne reminded him, wondering how much longer he was going to remain level before he started yelling. "Are you being a Deputy Downer because you have workplace-related guilt?" He was one of only three men whose buttons she felt comfortable pushing this much, but all three were men she'd seen in life-or-death situations, whether with her own eyes or through her psychometry, and they were all men she knew would never strike her for teasing them. She might not trust them, but Adrienne felt she
understood how their minds worked- their ethics, morality, code of honour, whatever it could be called- well enough to be certain of this.

She was a very odd woman. Scott mentally shrugged, however. She wanted to push? Fine, he'd be forthright. "You may or may not have heard about this whole concept that X-Men don't kill," he said briefly, sitting down on the bench and watching her push at the bag.

This comment made her stop and stare at Scott. "But... you don't kill," she pointed out, confused now. "Are you saying you actually killed people in that crowd?" Her thoughts went immediately to her employees.

"I'm saying that when the mob was about to overrun us, kill all of us, and result in the bomb going off and killing everyone, I fired directly into the crowd, yes." Scott didn't break eye contact. "As to whether or not I killed anyone, I'd think it was pretty likely." A mental flash, of unmoving bodies lying on broken pavement. "We didn't have much chance to stop and check, if you remember."

"I... but... what? Shit." Adrienne sat down on the bench, hard. She supposed she'd taken the X-Men's no-kill policy too literally, assumed that all the dead from Apocalypse's attack had been the fault of the villians, not the heroes. "I... I suppose since it was them or us, I should be thanking you." Her tone indicated that she'd like to do something other than thank him, however. Like cuff him upside the head.

Scott didn't respond for a long moment. "You know," he finally said, staring somewhere in the vicinity of the opposite wall of the gym, "you didn't know me back when I still had the visor. I had a head injury, as a kid - meant I couldn't control my optic blasts. The only thing that saved me from having to go around with my eyes permanently covered was the Professor discovering that ruby quartz blocked the blasts." He took another sip from his water bottle. "I wore glasses or the visor until I lost my eye in Seattle, at which point I gained an off-switch. But it was... fourteen, fifteen years? All that time, I knew that if I opened my eyes at the wrong time, if I wasn't careful, all the time, I could kill someone."

"So if you're so used to being cautious, why couldn't you have been more careful this time?" she spat before thinking.

Scott gave the wall a tiny, ghost-like smile. "You're sort of missing my point. I didn't do it carelessly. Or accidentally. And that's something I'm going to have to live with - that I looked at the situation, and made that choice. Especially given that at least part of the reason I made that choice was that an eighteen year-old girl was about to do it instead."

He wasn't making sense to Adrienne. "So what's with the Deputy Downer act then if you've justified your actions? Why the guilt?"

"Because I still made the choice. And when it comes right down to it," Scott said, more tiredly than anything else, "I really don't want to hurt anyone. Seem to keep finding myself in positions where I do, though." A flash of the kid in Central Park, crumpling. "And all for the almighty greater good."

"So you feel bad even though you know you know you did what you had to do to save the world and you'd do the same thing again if you had to?" she asked, stilll a little confused. "I just don't understand you hero types. You're supposed to feel guilty when you do something wrong, not when you do something right. Lots of regular people don't even feel guilty when they do something wrong. And speaking of doing something wrong," she smirked with a roll of her eyes, getting to her feet, "you owe me a flask."

"What you should be asking yourself," Scott said, the slight, pained
smile at Adrienne's confusion there and gone again instantly, "is why I threw it in the water anyway. Given that as soon as I took it from you, I knew it was coffee." He flexed his hand. "Not that it was particularly warm, still, after our swim, but I could feel it."

"Sorry, it's not something that was really occupying a lot of space in my thoughts at the time, or since," Adrienne retorted, frowning. "But why did you take it? Because it was wrong? Because you enjoy being Deputy Downer?"

"Because it was a fairly harmless way to make a moderately important point." There was a little life back in Scott's real eye at this point, the faintest gleam of what might have been humor. "Don't get me wrong, Adrienne. There are a lot of people who owe you a great deal for what you helped do in that city, and I know you've made other significant contributions on some of the other 'trips' you've taken. But that was the first time you were under my orders."

Adrienne bristled, but she wasn't particularly angry; more amused than anything. "I do not take orders from men. I will listen to them when they're being sensible, but that's all. Taking coffee from someone who's just been dumped in a river is just cruel."

"Yes, but I'll note a distinct lack of witty repartee and independent behavior from you after I tossed your coffee in the river," Scott said. The gleam was definitely there. "Mission accomplished." He shrugged, then, and the gesture was almost relaxed, in comparison to his demeanor through most of the conversation. "I know that some of the X-Men think that chatter eases the tension. I must be a grouch, because it just makes me want to stuff a sock in their mouths."

Because she knew he was teasing about her losing her independent behaviour, Adrienne was able to roll her eyes at him rather than feeling like she needed to remind him, and herself, that she would never have her independence taken by a man, or anyone, ever again. "I think if you go around gagging your team you may get demoted," she pointed out, "unless Charles is into that sort of thing in his team leaders."

"Honestly, I've never been precisely sure what Charles is into, when it comes to his team leaders. Beyond 'hopelessly persistent'." Scott gazed at Adrienne for a moment, then decided yes, he was going to broach it. "I have a question to ask you." He didn't wait for her to nod (or comment) before he went on. "You keep getting involved in these situations. I get the very strong impression that you don't really have any desire to put on the leathers-" And if she said otherwise, he was going to do a double-take and no amount of self-control in the world was going to stop him. "-but I have to wonder if you might not like a little more training. Just to equip you better, if you keep getting pulled into these things."

"I'd love to be an X-Man some day, Summers," Adrienne said with a nod. She lasted maybe four seconds before bursting out laughing. "No, you're right. I don't have the slightest urge to face death every day, thanks very much." But despite the fact that she didn't want to make a career out of it, Adrienne was never above being prepared for any situation. And she did seem to be getting herself wrapped up in 'these situations' as Scott called them. How could extra training hurt? "More training might be beneficial, however," she smiled. "I'll even agree to take orders from you, Summers, though I'm not promising I won't give up my... what was it? Witty repartee? And I want a new flask."

"I'll ask someone a bit more tolerant of the witty repartee to work with you," Scott said wryly. "Just to, you know, ease you in." And in terms of ease, he was feeling better about her obvious willingness to get some additional training. He wasn't above calling on someone if their powers were useful, even if they weren't X-Men, but it didn't mean he felt terribly comfortable about taking them into crisis situations.

Adrienne nodded. "The only members of the team I know are Garrison, Suzanne, Espinosa, Gibney, Munroe, Terry, Nathan, and you," she pointed out. "I don't know how many more of you there are, but I'm sure you'll pick someone appropriate." Which basically meant 'anyone except a man I don't know.' "And I want a new flask, Summers," she reminded him again.

"Well, Christmas is coming," Scott said with a perfectly straight face. "Although I keep asking for a pony, too, and Charles doesn't deliver... you'd think he'd owe me a pony, after all of this."