Garrison & Jay

[x-icarus.livejournal.com]

Garrison hears what happened and Jay gets a lecture in the medbay.

Jay balled his fist, testing the strength of the bandages and wincing in the process. It felt like it hurt even more than it had when he'd been assaulted with a blast of fire from Shiro. He lifted his hand up, brushing it through whatever was left of his hair, fingering through it and pulling out some random strands in the process. His skin felt hot to the touch and he itched, wishing he could pull off the bandages when a familiar face walked into the medbay.

"Hey," he greeted, giving a mummified hand wave.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Garrison was certainly not sporting the stereotyped candystriper expression of concern. The Canadian looked pissed right off, and he had simply stormed past the attendents into Jay's section of the medlab.

"That program was designed for you and your powers. What the hell are you doing running it with Shiro in the room, and without anyone in the booth to manuel the room safeties?"

"Ah wasn't going in there by myself," he said defensively. "Ah mean, Shiro was there and he was runnin' a program already. Then he just... we were just..." he searched for an excuse, but fell flat. "Ah--" didn't do anything wrong? Didn't mean to? No, he meant to, he just couldn't remember the reason why he had done it.

"He set fire to you while you spiked him up like a insect on a pin. Not exactly in the training program. Also, Shiro doesn't have the same flying profile you do, which means the remotes that you can deflect with your wings, he's got no protection against." Garrison rubbed his eyes tiredly. "Geez, Blue, the point was to help you work out aggression, not to set up cage matches."

"Ah know.. Ah know. Ah'll do better next time," he said, looking to pull off a section of the bandages so he could actually see Garrison properly. "Ah just.. Ah dunno okay? Ah ain't sleepin' at all." He caught a section of the bandages and started to pull them off, thinking they weren't necessary. "Ah just.... Ah havn't slept in ages. Like Ah'm runnin' a mental marathon and--" he pulled at one strip irritably. "Shiro was being an ass. It was just hard to walk away from it."

"Shiro is always an ass, Jay." Kane sat down next to the young man's bed, noting with not a little surprise that his azure colour seemed finally to fit him now. It was simply that he was now blue in his mind. "Stop playing with your bandages. Look, it's obvious that what happened to us changed your own energy levels, made you more aggressive. That's your nature now, which is why I was willing to program those scenarios into the Danger Room in the first place. But they weren't just meant to be an outlet, Jay. There's more to them."


"Yeah, Ah know," Jay replied irritably, more focused on the bandages than he was with Garrison. "They're meant for control, Ah know, Ah get it." But even as he tried to keep up some disagreement, he couldn't, failing due to how relaxed and sedated he felt. It was a feeling he enjoyed and rarely got that enjoyment and it didn't grab him in the least to actually get worked up over something when Shiro seemed fine and he was the one in bandages. "What am Ah suppose to do? It ain't like Ah ain't tryin'. Yanno? Ah go to work, smile all night long, then Ah go to bed, stay up all night n' somewhere inbetweenthat, maybe dip into a little hell, add a program in there - rinse n' repeat. Ah'm just tryin' to hang on okay? We ain't all like you - Godamnit," Jay gave up on his bandages that were now in strips hanging off his arms and face. "Why's she always wrap me up like this? Ah heal. This is bullshit. Ah feel like a zombie."

"No, you really don't get it, Emo Blue. They are partially for control, sure. But what they really are is training. Why do you think you have to evaluate which targets are enemies and which are innocents in program 471? Or that 225 involves protecting the drone from attacks until it reaches the end of the flight zone. I admit that the genital shocks in 300 were simply because I was bored, but other than that, your programs are all modeled on the trainee programs created by Scott and Ororo." Kane leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together. "You do need to vent and you do need to learn better control, but the thing you need most is a direction, Jay. You've been drifting for too long, and because of that, things are slipping away from you."

"Ah ain't emo," he muttered, but even as he said it, he couldn't help but feel like he was and just re-enforce that fact. "Ah dunno what to do. School ain't til next year and that's all on hold - Ah havn't heard anything back from 'em and Ah've called three times already. Maybe they just busy or something but that ain't till January when Ah can go, so... Ah dunno. How come you're so focused, yanno, together n' stuff - must be age or somethin'."

"Because I have something that I work towards, Jay. Not to sound too ridiculous, but it gives me something to believe in." He poured a glass of water and passed it over to the younger man. "Your rage could be turned into a powerful motivating force for yourself, if you had a way to channel it. You might want to talk to Logan about what it took for him to get control. With him, it was loyalty to people. For me, it's about the importance of the law. For you, that's something that you need to find. But I can point you in a direction that might help."

He took the glass and drank it without any objection. It was cool going down his throat and sent an odd sensation through his entire body. It was polished off before he rested it on his lap, on top of the light grey fabric that was issued as standard for those without clothes. "What direction is that?" he asked, though he thought he already knew.

"The trainee program. I'm not saying that your cause in life is to be an X-Men, but I sure as hell know that trying to do this on your own isn't going to work. Get used to working as part of a team, get focused on something else that you can channel all that rage into productively. " Kane said, his suggestion hardly surprising. "You're going to have to live and breathe control over your wings, and believe me, Scott and Ororo will grind you down in every way they can in the process. Until it becomes second nature, as instinctive as breathing. You won't get that anywhere else."

It was obvious Jay wasn't happy with the answer he knew that was coming but then a smile broke over his face and he chuckled bitterly , running a hand through his hair. "Be apart of the team? Wear leather? Become a jerk just like the team?" he asked."The last time Ah talked about bein' apart of the team, Scott couldn't believe it and just about everyone else said Ah don't have what it takes. Now they all gonna be like 'he's too dangerous'. "
"I should point out that your sister and I are on the team, Emo Blue." Garrison shrugged. "And when did you start caring about what other people think? You've effectively barricaded yourself away from most of the people here in any case. Scott doesn't think you can handle it? Prove him wrong. I never said it was an easy solution, but it's a hell of a lot better than this not-life you've been living."

He thought he had been living his life but he guessed not when Garrison put it that way.There was no care to prove to everyone that he could make it, be apart of the team, he knew he could but he had to do it for himself. That there was a different problem entirely. "Ah guess Ah'm gonna go talk to Scott and see what he says. Don't think he'll wanna though, especially not after what just happened with Shiro." It would hit the ears of the older generation, he was sure of that. It was just a question of whether or not he was ready to fight it.

"You're going to have to face it at some point, Jay. Personally, I think you're more dangerous without the training than you would be with it." Garrison got up from his chair, having run out of arguments for the young man. Guthrie would either do it or not; the important thing was that he was the one to choose either way. "Besides, at the very least, it will give you something other to do than mope around in the hallways."