Guided Tour: Laurie, Yvette and Logan - Monday

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

Laurie takes Yvette on a tour of the X-Men areas of the mansion and they find Logan on comms. Talk steers into interesting places.



Laurie entered the locker room dressed in a set of grey Xavier workout gear, the slight perspiration on her forehead giving voice to the workout she must have just come from.

"Yvette, sorry I'm late," Laurie said, noticing her former roommate sitting on one of the locker room benches. "Have you been waiting long?"

"Not so long," Yvette replied politely with a shake of her head. "I was not so sure where to wait, so I thought I would meet you here. I hope that is all right?" Becoming the latest trainee was a little like beginning in a new school - she was nervous and a little unsure of where she stood, falling back onto good manners as a way to manage.

"No, that's fine," Laurie noted, walking over to her locker to grap out a towel to wipe herself down with. "Think I've got time to grab a shower, or do you want to look around straight away?"

"If you are not taking the hour like you did when we were roommates, you do?" Yvette replied with a small grin. Laurie's shower habits had been an ongoing joke between them during their time sharing a bathroom.

"I promise to be super quick this time," Laurie noted with a wink before heading off to the showers.

***

"Right! Now that I don't smell like something at the bottom of a neglected sock drawer," Laurie noted, exiting the showers and placing her used towel in the dirty clothes basket at the corner of the locker room. "How about we get you all orientated. Any particular spot you'd like to see first, or should I just go as we go?"

"Well, I now there is the hangar for the Blackbird," Yvette began. "And I have used the Danger Room. Perhaps to start with the Situation Room? I am reading about it on the team records and it is sounding like the place I should know how to get to."

"Situation room it is," Laurie said, walking to the exit and then holding the door open for Yvette to pass through. "It's where you'll be doing a lot of your communications stints as well. Those can be boring, but it's better then the alternative."

"I do not mind the boring so much. There is always something to learn, and I can be keeping up with the homework, yes?" Yvette replied, following Laurie down the hall and preceeding her through the door. It was hard not to stop and stare - the corridors looked like something out of Star Trek, all metal and tile.

"Yep, it's what I tend to do on the night shifts," Laurie said, looking back at her friend, and then smiled, she could see that Yvette was fascinated with her surroundings. "It looks like something from the future, doesn't it?"

"I only have seen it the once, when I was first being here and escaping from the medlab," Yvette explained. "It must have cost the lot of money to make all this, and the school also."

"I think it did, although the Professor had Mr Lehnsherr's help in those days," Laurie noted, heading over to the table that held pride of place in the center of the room. She entered some parameters into a computer, and watched as the table came to life, showing a topographical map of the mansion and it's surrounds. "They designed most of everything you see together."

Yvette watched, wide-eyed as a green holographic version of the mansion shimmered to life above the table. Curiously, she poked at it with a gloved finger, the image shimmering briefly. "So this is where the planning is happening?" she asked, glancing back at Laurie. "When the team is hearing about something?"

"Exactly," Laurie replied, typing in a few more commands so that the map narrowed down to a map of the facility they were currently in. "From here we can bring up satellite images of almost anywhere on the planet, and if we've got enough information, we can input it into this map to give us a real time overview of any place we need to go. The more we know, the less chance there is of someone getting hurt. This is also where most debriefings are held after missions, and where you can go over your training tapes if you don't want to shunt them to your personal laptop."

"Do you go through the training tapes often?" Yvette asked. Self-evaluation was something new for her and she wasn't entirely sure she would know what to look for. "How do you know what you are looking for?"

"We're encouraged to," Laurie said, turning off the screen and pointing to a door that sat at the back of the room, not the one they'd come in by. "But most of the time you'll be reviewing them with one of the senior X-men, who'll point out places you need to improve. They won't expect you to self-review until you're well into the training process. Now we get to see the communications room, there's a roster for it but people are pretty good about swapping around if you need a distraction, or can't make a particular shift."

Laurie knocked on the door, waited to hear an affirmative to enter and then opened it, gesturing for Yvette to proceed her.

Yvette's eyes lit up at the sight of the man sitting before the myriad screens. "Hello, Mr Logan!" she chirped, practically bouncing in. "Laurie is giving me the X-Man tour!"

"I noticed." said Logan with a grin around one of his cigars. "Steppin' up to the big times, huh kid?" he said to Yvette, steadfastly ignoring Laurie's presence. Wouldn't want to upset the girl, what with his smoking, drinking, chasing tail, and very existance. Not to mention being a feral and all. He did, however, make sure to drop his most recent empty into a trash can.

"So, this is what you call the comms duty, yes?" she asked, leaning on the arm of his chair with a lack of restraint few people saw in her. "Laurie was saying it was boring."

"Been pretty quiet." he admitted. "Couple of things got flagged, but it doesn't look serious." he said. "Lots of boredom with periods of not being bored." he said with a grin. "They got you getting the tour from ... Laurie here?" he said, having to dig the girl's name out of his unreliable memory for a moment. He dug another chunk of wood out of his bag and also grabbed his carving knife. "Feel free to stick around if you want."

"Yes. Laurie is drawing the short straw, yes?" Yvette replied with an answering grin. "I am learning many things."

"Well, not so much drawn but volunteered for the short straw," Laurie said, leaning against the doorframe as she glanced at the various screens behind Logan. "What would you say was the most important lesson for a new X-man, Mr Logan?"

"It's just Logan." he said grumpily. "Most important lesson?" he said thoughtfully. "Trust." he said, looking directly at Laurie. "Can't compel it, can't force it, and it's real easy to piss away. But without it, you're dead." he said.

Laurie inclined her head slightly, acknowledging the point. She'd known when she came back she'd have a long road to build back the trust she'd squandered with her actions before she'd left. "It's two way though, you've got to allow someone mistakes when they're still learning, otherwise you throw away good people."

"Do we?" he commented, then returned his attentions to the Apple Ninja. "Proud of you, kid, for steppin' up. Thought you might." he told her. "It's dangerous and likely to completely fuck your life, but that's the price you pay. You prepared to pay it?" he asked Yvette carefully.

Yvette nodded, expression solemn. "When I was in the hospital," she replied softly. "I could have died then. And I realised that there was so much more I wanted to do, to try to make things better for people. Not just mutants, everyone. I could have died then without doing those things. I would rather be trying to make the difference and taking the risk, then to be sitting around. Is that making sense?"

"Your call to make, darlin'." he said with a smile. "It's just a big sacrifice - family, kids, any semblance of a really normal life. And for who? People who spit on you, who hate you for existing, for people who will never know anything about what you've given in service." he said. "There's no glory in this, kiddo. But I think it's work that needs doing. And now, so do you." he said.

Laurie wanted to protest what he was saying, it wasn't certain that what they did would mean sacrificing family, friends or kids. Nathan certainly hadn't, and she and her mother were still as close as they'd always been. Friendships had suffered at first, but she was finally learning a balance to that, a way to keep things from falling apart. Life, such as it was for her, was as normal as she could possibly make it. Even if Eamon and she rarely talked, and even when they did it seemed like it was only a few minutes before one or both of them had to go.

"Not everyone spits on us, or hates us, Logan," she replied simply, choosing from a number of responses, discarding each of the others as sounding too accusatory.

Logan just shot her a look but didn't respond verbally right away like he was itching to do. Maybe it was her personality, maybe it was her power, maybe it was a combination of the two, but this girl just got right up his nose. "Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid." he told her.

"I could say the same for you, old man." Laurie noted, the light of bitterness briefly flaring in her eyes. No matter what she did, it just wasn't good enough for these people. "Yvette, we've got a lot more to see, it's probably best we get back to it."

"Yes, that sounds like the good idea." Yvette had been watching the exchange, taking in the clash of personalities. The X-Men might be a team, but they were a team of individuals, it seemed. "I will come back later, to keep you company and to talk some more, yes?" she promised Logan. She had some questions for him.

"Sure thing, kid. Come back later or stick around, I'm good either way." he said, taking knife to wood. And, just to piss Laurie off, he reached down and cracked a fresh beer. "It's good to see you steppin' up, kid." he added a moment later.

Laurie raised an eyebrow at the beer, but didn't say anything. Logan had vastly superior operational experience to her, if he thought he could handle a beer while on the job, far be it from her to berate him. Her own personal feelings on the matter didn't really come into it, something she'd learned the hard way more then once. Still, the disapproving glance she turned his way left little to guess as to what her opinion really was.

He might be perfectly fine drinking on the job, but there were people who would try to copy him who didn't have his feral metabolism.

"Thank you for your time, Logan." she said stiffly, and then held the door open for Yvette. "It's the hanger next, time to see where the magic happens, according to Forge, anyhow."

Yvette waved goodbye to Logan, an odd flickering of her eyeglow suggesting that perhaps she might have rolled her eyes a little where Laurie couldn't see. "I shall come back later," she promised again, before heading out of the comms room. For a little while she walked in silence as Laurie led them to the hanger, obviously mulling over things. Then:

"What is the hardest thing for you, to be the X-Man?" she asked.

Silence descended again, lasting so long it was almost as if Laurie had completely ignored what Yvette had asked, until with a breath that was almost a sigh, she answered.

"There's not really a hardest," Laurie admitted, punching a code into a keypad and following Yvette through one of the many airlock doors. "Just different levels of hard. You may have noticed from Logan's attitude that I'm not exactly flavour of the month. That's...difficult, at times, especially when you have to behave as one unit. I guess it's lucky that I'm a trainee and they don't yet have to rely on me in the field."

Yvette snorted softly. "I think you were both like the children, in the comms room. Mr. Logan was making of the bait and you were reacting to it."

"If I was childish, it's only because they continually push me without ever telling me what it is they actually want from me," Laurie said stiffly, shoulders back and her stride lengthening subconsciously, as if heading for a battle. "Apart that is, from them continually treating me like some stuck up bitch who just won't get the stick out of her ass, and then penalising me when I don't apparently possess the ability to read their minds, or gain insight from their completely obtuse speeches."

Yvette sighed softly. Her hair was stiffening out into long spikes, instead of the more-usual loose curls, her facial expression hardening not from anger, but from her powers. And Laurie's. "Laurie," she said, voice still soft and patient. "What are Mr. Logan's powers?"

"Huh? Um, he's got those metal claws, and he's got the healing factor..." Laurie noted, not sure what Yvette was getting at. "Oh, and he's a feral like Kyle, sort of. Only I think their atavistic traits are from different bases. Kyle's always sort of been more fox like, and I'm not entirely sure..."

Laurie paused for a moment, and then blushed deeply as she recognised the changes in Yvette now that she was looking.

"He is a feral," Yvette repeated. "A feral who has the control problems, who spends every day trying to be the man, not the animal. He was being experimented on, made into the weapon, until he was nothing more than the animal. " She let that sink in and then continued. "Mr. Logan, the team is important to him. It is the chance for him to be proving that he is more than the animal, the weapon. So, when he has the team mate saying the ferals cannot control themselves, that they are animals, do you not think he is being angry?" Laurie opened her mouth to respond, but Yvette went on. "It took a very long time to make things right with Kyle and myself, and you were trying hard because we are your friends. Mr. Logan is not your friend and he does not have so much the reason to be forgiving you. You are seeing?"

Laurie nodded, seeing what Yvette meant, and she realised suddenly that there were many on the team who had not known her well before she'd joined, and who had not been her friend. They had no particular reason to want to forgive her, even had she been trying, which admittedly she had not been, at least not with them.

"Would do you think I should do?" Laurie asked, opening another air lock door and walking through.

If Yvette had been expecting more of an argument, it didn't show in her expression, although given the way their powers were interacting, it would have been had to tell. "Mr. Logan is not the easy person to talk to," she acknowledged. "So perhaps it is better to be listening to him. Do not be letting him provoke you. He has the interesting things to say and much to teach." It wouldn't be easy, though, after the display she'd seen - the two had spent so long antagonising each other, neither would be comfortable in each other's company. "Perhaps together we could be asking for the training? To be breaking the ice?"

Laurie paused before a larger set of doors then the rest they'd been through so far. She appeared to be mulling over what Yvette had said as she keyed in a number into the pad beside the doors and then placed her eye close to a retinal scanner.

"You sure you want to do that?" she asked quietly as a computerised voice asked for a voice print scan. "You might get more out of your training if I'm not there. I'm not very good at the whole hand to hand stuff. "

"It is not about the actual hand to hand," Yvette said. "It is about showing trust. Besides," and here she grinned. "I am still on the medical caution, so letting Mr. Logan throw me around is not so much the good idea. He has the other things to teach. Like how to be quiet and sneaky, yes?"

"Sneaky I could do," Laurie admitted with a grin. "If you're sure then, I'd love to do that. And this by the way, is the Hanger where the Blackbird stays. Big, isn't it?"

She pointed to where the plane sat amidst a very large, but not very empty space. It was impressive, and Laurie had been a bit awed the first time she'd gotten a close look at the Blackbird fully rebuilt, no small part of that awe the fact she'd helped rebuild it.

"I think it would be important, for you to at least show Mr. Logan you do not think he is something you stepped in," Yvette replied with a small internal sigh - she was used to Laurie's intermittent attention span. "It is such a pretty plane," she continued, looking up at it. "It is something to think that we helped to be rebuilding it, yes?"

"We did a good job," Laurie admitted, thinking over what Yvette had said and made a vow to herself that she would do a good job there as well. "Maybe we can talk to Logan tomorrow? I don't think he'd be very open to anything right now."

"I think that would be the very wise idea."