Scott & Marie, Monday morning

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Finding Scott before classes wasn't hard. Still warm and a little achey from training, Marie ducked into the cool hall that led to the garage. Before she opened the door all the way, she could hear the clink of metal on metal and she smiled a little. -Obsessive much?- she thought affectionately.

"Scott?"

He was bent over his 'baby', tinkering about inside, visible only from the waist down.

"Marie?" His voice was muffled. "I'll be done in a second."

Marie sat down on the running board of the Jeep next to him and leaned her head on the cool metal of the car's door. "No problem. I need to talk to you, it won't take long."

"What is it?" Scott straightened and turned around, slipping something into his pocket as he did so. His hair was uncharacteristically unruly, his cheeks flushed from leaning over, and there was a smudge on his nose. He looked more like a student than a teacher in the moment, and not at all like the field leader of the X-Men and that made Marie inexplicably sad.

"You've got…" Marie rubbed at her own nose and Scott mirrored the motion, cleaning the smudge from his skin. "There. Better. I just need to talk to you about… things." She waved her hand in the air. "Vague much, I know. It's just. Yesterday. Last week. It's too much, Scott. It can't happen like this. It has to stop."

Scott's expression tightened and he leaned back on his car, crossing his arms over his chest. "We're doing what we can under the circumstances, Marie."

"I know you're doing your best, everyone is, but this isn't working," she pressed on. "There's too many mistakes happening."

Scott picked up a rag and started working some of the dirt off of his hands. "It's been a rocky couple weeks, yes, and I understand why you're worried." The look he gave her invited her to keep talking.

"I'm worried about you," Marie admitted. "I'm worried about Charles. No one is talking. No team meetings, nothing. People missed the fact that Piotr and Shiro have serious mob connections. Both of them are probably in some big trouble." She bit her lower lip, a typical anxious gesture of hers. "Damage control isn't enough. We're not all children here. I'm not. Don't tell me to go teach classes and socialize and be eighteen, because it doesn't work like that."

"I'm not going to tell you that," Scott said in a reassuring tone, watching her out of the corner of his eye as he started putting his tools away. "I know this isn't easy."

"Nothing's been right since Jean died and it needs fixing," Marie burst out. "We can't get her back. Storm's not okay, she can't help right now. Nothing's /right/. Pete's such a wreck he /forgot/ he basically gave people the key to this place…" Her hands were knotted tightly in her lap and the way she looked at him was a plea for reassurance.

The reference to Jean made Scott wince and he hoped he'd stifled it well enough. Marie didn't need to feel guilty for bringing up something she had every right to talk about. "Charles can't just scan the minds of everyone who walks in the door," he told her. "He can't go invading people's minds like that just to make people feel better."

"That's not what I want!" Marie was pale and distressed. "That's not what any of us want. It's not the point."

"Okay, obviously I'm missing something vital, something important," Scott said gently, trying to defuse her mood without seeming like he was patronizing her. "What is the point here? What do you think do we need to do?"

"I don't know." Marie tried to rein in her frustration and fear. It wasn't Scott's fault, or at least she kept trying to tell herself that. "Can't you see that you have a dozen or so extremely edgy, frightened, potentially dangerous kids here who don't trust anyone on principle? They tried to trust the adults here and look what happened. The kids here are learning to kill to take care of themselves and are going to end up feeling that that's their only option if they don't get some reassurance."

"How can we make them trust us?" Scott locked the tool chest and put the key in his pocket.

"Don't pretend things are normal," Marie said flatly. "Why do you think they're suddenly interested in Logan's classes? Because he doesn't pretend things are okay. He'll say "yeah, we're kinda screwed, here's how to kill someone real fast and get away". They can trust that."

"When have I pretended things were okay?" Scott looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "Because I didn't say that they weren't?"

"Because no one tells us anything." Marie's voice rose a little and she stopped, taking a deep breath, and spoke again in a more normal tone. "We're all supposed to go back to classes and stay looking over our shoulders? And ... for fuck's sake, having Pete - our damn guidance counsellor - admit that he's got mental trauma to the point that he /forgot/ that he told people the inner workings of this place... that did not help anyone's confidence! Who else is cracking or cracked and what other secrets are out there, what else is waiting to break?"

Scott rubbed at the back of his neck where the muscles were moving from merely knotted to outright petrified and closed his eyes. "Betsy's cracking," he admitted in a low voice. "Or has cracked."

"And she's still teaching classes and..." Marie forced herself back to composure yet again. "… for the love of God, Scott, yes people have a right to their privacy but our lives are in your hands, the hands of the teachers, and you hardly know who each other are. No one of us died in that little fiasco of Pete's, but they could have and the kids saw and did things they never should have had to do, not here. /You/ tell us we're supposed to be safe here and we're not and we're supposed to clean up and patch bullet holes and go back to classes and we /can't/."

"I'll put a post on the journal system, then," Scott offered. "Anyone can ask me any question, and I'll answer it as honestly as I can. If I can't, then I'll say so, and maybe tell them why I can't."

"It's a start but this, this is too much, Scott," Marie said in a low voice. She was looking up at him intensely, her entire body taut. "Anything more and people are going to bolt or break or both. Stryker, Mystique, Pete's bad-hats, it's too much. I'm a wreck, leaning well towards crazy, and you know what? I wouldn't change a thing because it lets me do what I have to do. But there's children up there," she pointed up and back toward the dormitories, "looking for a place to be safe, and if you can't give it to them, they need to know, so they can go somewhere else. Yana shouldn't have had a gun to her head yesterday. Artie and Miles shouldn't have been looking down a gun two weeks ago. None of it should have happened. Someone's going to make sure it doesn't happen again. I just wondered who that was going to be."

Scott met her anger and frustration calmly, honestly. "No place is safe, Marie. We /try/, but we can't guarantee it. No one can. If they do, it's a lie, or it's a compromise. It's time we said it. Safer. Not safe."

"If you think I don't know that by now, then you haven't been paying attention," Marie snapped. She stood up, glaring up at him, her green eyes relentless. "We need help. We need something. Use me for what you can, I won't forgive you if you don't, but I know I'm not anything like enough. People are not okay. You aren't. Charles isn't. I don't care who you call, but call someone." She started to walk away from him, then turned back. "I'm saying this because you're my family and I love you and I'm not going to sit down and shut up while this crumbles."

"You're my family and I love you too. I don't want you to sit down. Or shut up. Tell me who the /we/ is. Everyone? The ones who don't trust me...us? Tell me how you want me to use you, and I will." He moved over toward her, brow furrowed, still obviously confused as to what she wanted from him. /Maybe she doesn't know, which of course makes this even worse./

"I don't know." Marie backed away from him, hugging herself tightly. "Just give me something to do. Point me somewhere. Let me help make this place safer." She was pained and agitated, shaking her head in frustration. "I just… I don't know. I'm sorry. I've been in a bad mood since yesterday." She laughed, sharp and bitter. "That'll teach me to kill killers that way, won't it? I should go. I have to get ready to train with Piotr."

"Hey," he reached for her shoulder. "It's okay. Go beat it out on Piotr. If it's not enough, see me, and we'll do some Danger Room time. Or maybe you and Logan can ..." he coughed, half-smiling ... "work it out together. I'll find something. A direction. Safer. You got it." He dropped the hand from her shoulder and whapped her on the ass. "Now scoot!"

"Going." Marie didn't quite manage to smile at him. "I'll manage. I always do. Just… take care of you, and everyone else, and tell me if I can help." She turned then and left, closing the door behind her without her usual little smile and wave.