Jennie and Nate - Sunday Evening

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Jennie finally gets off her butt to visit Nate, and talk turns to the Future. Jennie irritates Grumpy Bear, and he retaliates by scaring the hell out of her.



The coughing coming from inside Nathan's room sounded very pained, to say the least, but as Jennie paused in the doorway, it dwindled to wheezing and Nathan gave her a weak wave. "Supposed to do that regularly still," he rasped. "Amelia and Jean don't want me getting pneumonia."

"You know, again," Jennie said, shaking her head. She pulled out the large stuffed gorilla she was hiding behind her back. "For the invalid," Jennie said with a wry smile.

Nathan bridled at the first comment, just a little - he supposed that was a sign that he was recovering. But he took the gorilla with a crooked smile of thanks, examining it. "Looks too cheery. You couldn't have found a grumpy gorilla?"

"Aw, he's totally grumpy on the inside, he's just hiding it well." Jennie said, waving the gorilla's arm at Nate. "You don't look half bad, Cochise, I have to say."

"Most of the damage is on the inside," Nathan said with a perfectly straight face. "You ought to see my chest x-rays. Ribs aren't meant to be in that many pieces." He set the gorilla on the bedside table, beside the stuffed dog Jeanne-Marie had sent down. "Seriously, though, I am doing better. They're even talking about letting me out of here this week. They just want to be sure my lung's not going to collapse again. Plus I need to be mobile enough to get up and down the stairs in the boathouse."

"I'm not even going to bother with telling you what you should and shouldn't be doing, since you'll just ignore it," Jennie said, rolling her eyes. She plopped into the visitor's chair. "So, going into a training role, huh?" she said, cracking her knuckles and tilting her head at the older man.

"Yeah," Nathan said ruefully. "I don't think I actually had a choice in the matter. Scott was all 'But you'll take on a training role, yes?', except without the question mark. Has he gotten more domineering over the last year or so or is it just me?"

"Fearless leader does have that way about him," Jennie inspected her nails. "He wants me to work with some of the trainees as well," Jennie smile was slightly sadistic.

"Next thing he'll have you leading missions," Nathan murmured, not quite wryly.

Jennie made a face at that. "Yeah, that's the kinda scary part." She shook her head and twisted the ring she had on her thumb. "When you first met me, did you ever think that I could end up as an X-Man? Let alone lead missions?"

"You've come a long way from where you were," Nathan said forthrightly. "Hell, when I first came to the mansion, I don't think anyone would have expected me to have wound up leading as many missions as I did. I may have had all that past experience, but my head was a mess."

"Yeah, I dunno," Jennie looked down. "Before the Feds got a hold of me, I was looking at a one-way street. Odds are I would have ended up dancing, and not the kind that's considered a form of art. If anybody who knew me back then could see me now, they'd fall over dead from shock." Jennie bit a stray cuticle on her thumb, as sure sign of a preoccupied mind. "So, what do you think, Cochise? One day I'll be a team leader?" she smiled teasingly.

"Ask Scott and Ororo about where they were before they came to the mansion," Nathan advised. "And stop worrying about what a stretch this is from where you started. You've made the stretch, that's the important thing. As for whether I think you could lead missions," he said dryly, "well, you've got strengths and weaknesses. I think you could, but I think you've got some work to do."

"I was actually kidding," Jennie said, looking a little paler. "Honestly? I don't think I could be a leader. Who would listen to me? Half the team thinks I'm some idiot kid, and the other half knows that for a fact."

Nathan gave her a one-shouldered shrug. "All of us have our baggage in the eyes of our teammates." He wondered for a moment if he should be using the first-person plural, but then, Scott had been quite fierce about how he was still an X-Man. "I get broken frequently, Jean's been crazy, Scott's had how many nervous breakdowns, Marie's mutation is kind of fundamentally crazy-making... should I go on?"

"True, but who would you rather take orders from, me or someone like Jean?"

"You're losing perspective," Nathan pointed out. "Right now? Jean, every time. Five years from now, when you've had that much more experience, that much more training in tactics and strategy, and developed your leadership skills?" He shrugged again. "I don't see the future anymore, but I can see the potential."

Jennie snorted. "I don't see it, but who am I to judge?" she sighed. "But aren't you glad you don't have to worry about this crap anymore? You can chuck the torch at the rest of us and say, 'sayonara, suckers!'"

"Oh, yes," Nathan said, and managed to keep the sour tone out of his voice. "I am doing a little dance in my mind."

"Cheer up," said Jennie, transitioning smoothly back to a more teasing tone. "Maybe Magneto will take over a space station again and we'll have to put you back in the field."

Nathan gave her a very steady look. "This isn't me opting for a quieter life," he finally said, although his tone was softer than the words might have suggested. "It's me having no choice. I can know I'm making the right decision without liking it."

"Well, considering I prefer you breathing to dead, watch me have very little sympathy," Jennie said. Thought her tone was not unkind. "This letting go stuff, it's part of growing up, ya know?"

"Right." 'Growing up'. He knew she didn't mean that the way it sounded, but it was all part and parcel of the same thing, this idea that he was an overgrown adolescent who was complaining that he couldn't be an adrenaline junkie anymore. And yet explaining what it felt like to know he was going to have to watch the Blackbird take off without him, mission after mission, would just come off sounding exactly like that. Catch-22. Which meant he should keep his mouth shut. He reached over and picked up the stuffed gorilla. "I think I will call him Peaches," he said, as flippantly as he could.

It was a good thing Jennie wasn't a telepath, otherwise Nate would be the recipient of a slap upside the head.

"I think Peaches is a good name, I'm sure Rachel will be happy to make him feel welcome."

"Oh, I see. The gorilla's not for me. It's to butter up our future Benign Overlord. Whose birthday I missed," Nathan said, not quite lightly, "so I think I'm giving her all the stuffed toys."

"More like I'm a realist. Try as you might, but four-year-olds can smell a stuffed animal from miles away. Peaches is yours, but if he goes awol you might want to check your daughter's room."