Scott and Shiro, backdated to Thursday night

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Backdated to Thursday night, after this log. Scott finds Shiro in the infirmary after the incident in the Danger Room. He is not pleased.


For all the times that Shiro had required stays in the infirmary, he had only once before been relegated to the reinforced isolation room, and that was when Scott, Logan, and Marie had brought him back from a drug-fueled raid of a mob boss' lair. Then he had Kick to blame for his loss of control, but today he had no such excuse. Jay's surprise attack, poison-infused or not, should not have ignited the ticking timebomb he'd long ago accepted existed within him. And even though the bomb had already detonated once, there was no insurance that he wouldn't go off again. Keeping on his uniform helped, but until he could quell the burning torment, he couldn't be trusted outside.

If he'd had any energy, he'd have kicked at the wall in frustration and despair.

The door to the isolation room abruptly opened, and Scott strode in, as if safety issues were the last thing on his mind. Speaking of heat, the look he gave Shiro could have melted through steel, and that was with only one eye.

Speaking of rarities, it wasn't often that Shiro had seen Scott in such a rage. He wanted to die right then and there. Anything would more preferable than facing Scott like this. He hung is head in shame, his long hair falling over his face and offering him a brief respite from Scott's glare. "How is Jay?" he asked finally.

"Alive. Healing." Scott bit off the end of each word almost savagely. His voice wasn't over-loud, but the anger in it seethed. "You going to tell me what the fuck you two morons thought you were doing?"

"I was running my own training scenario," Shiro said, forcing himself to raise his head. It was like trying to lift a truck. "Jay was searching for something and offered to run a scenario that Dominion had programmed for him."

"And you let him in there with you why?" The growl would have been a roar, with a little more volume. "Jay Guthrie? The post-traumatic Guthrie with the complete lack of training?"

Shiro almost wanted to point out that whatever modifications Jay had suffered must have given him some training, judging by how easily he dispatched Apocalypse. But he figured that pointing that out wouldn't be too helpful for his case. "Aren't they all post-traumatic?" he quipped, and then instantly mentally smacked himself. Not a much better response. "He has been training with Dominion, more intensely than any of the New Mutants have . . ."

Scott's eyes went wide. "Are you actually trying to excuse yourself?" There was the volume.

"You asked for an explanation," Shiro snapped back, surprised by his own tone. "I am giving it to you. What do you want?"

"I want a reason - a good reason why you were using the Danger Room for a potentially-lethal fight with a non-X-Man!" And there was the roar, mostly because he was just so goddamned incredulous that this could have happened, and he wanted to throttle both of them. "I want to know how you could have lost your fucking mind for long enough to think that it was at all appropriate!"

"He is not some little sissy child who needs his hand held all the time! He turned into something else completely. A blue-skinned killer." The power indicator on Shiro's glove began to glow more brightly and the bandaged injury on his arm twinged.

Scott's eyes flickered to the power indicator, and his voice was lower when he continued - but icy. "He," he said, very clearly and precisely, "is not an X-Man. He uses the Danger Room for therapeutic purposes-" Which he was seriously beginning to wonder about, given what had just happened. "-and should not have been in it without Kane in the control booth. You should have known that. He should not have been allowed to walk through that door, let alone take part in any program with you."

"Had we gotten into the fight anywhere else, this still would have happened." If Shiro had egged on Jay as much outside of the Danger Room. It wasn't until their melee that Jay was replaced with that beast. "That it happened in a controlled space is fortuitous."

"'It's not as bad as it could have been' is not an argument that's going to win you many points right now."

"I hardly think that I am in any place right now to win points with you at all."

"The ironic thing is, as bad what happened may be, I'm more angry that you got yourself into the situation in the first place," Scott snapped, some of the fury ebbing at Shiro's admission. "The lack of judgement it shows is appalling. Your lack of control is worse. How many times have I talked about how important it is for us to discipline ourselves? I thought you of all people understood that."

"I do understand that. You of all people know how I struggle for control. Few of our teammates share the volatility that I do. I am a living nuclear weapon, Cyclops." Shiro's voice lowered, echoing Scott's earlier tone. "My very nature walks a fine line between control and disorder."

"And you decided to get in touch with your disordered side today, is that it?"

The power indicator began to glow even more brightly. "I did not decide anything! Do you think that I would have hurt him if I had had the choice?"

"I'm not talking about what happened at the end of the program," Scott said coldly. "I'm talking about what happened when you decided to let him inside the room."

Shiro took several deep breaths to steady himself before responding. "What do you want me to do? How do I atone for this?"

"This isn't about atonement!" Scott snapped. "It's about a... lapse in judgement with no apparent extenuating circumstances. God knows there have been X-Men who've done stupider things, including myself, but suffice to say you're going to need to figure out why you did it, so that you can make sure it never happens again. Before you put those leathers back on. And this time, Shiro, when I tell you to take some time off training I mean you are not allowed in the Danger Room."

"Fine. I accept your judgment." Shiro hopped up onto the bed and crossed his legs into the familiar lotus position. Even such a simple move brought relief to him. "I will not fail again," he added quietly.

"This doesn't have anything to do with failure, Shiro," Scott said curtly. "You take that perspective, you're going to make things harder on yourself. Take it from someone who knows."

"There is no way this is not a failure. I failed to think, I failed to act, I failed to be what I am supposed to be." I failed you. "I cannot brush aside those facts."

"Hold yourself to a higher standard than what you displayed today, by all means," Scott said, but turned for the door. He'd taken this as far as he dared. Too much more pushing and Shiro would retreat into a mindset that was self-destructive. "But don't hang yourself on those standards."