Log: Matt & Molly

[x-daredevil.livejournal.com]

Molly goes to surprise Matt with food. They end up having a rather serious conversation. And food.



Molly stepped back and forward a few times in front of Matt's bedroom door, lifting her hand toward it, then putting it down, then putting it up, then down. Making a face, she spun around to turn to leave before doing 180 to face the door again. In one hand she held a PBJ sandwich and some chips propped up on top of a glass of milk she had to keep very careful to hold cause she needed the other hand to knock.

The common area of Matt's suite wasn't soundproofed, but his room was and usually, he spent more time in his room than in the suite since watching TV wasn't really a priority and he liked the quiet his room offered. This afternoon though, against his usual routine, Matt was doing homework in the common room since neither Artie nor Korvus was around. Hearing the shuffling outside his room, he paused, waiting for it to go away or resolve itself or something. When it didn't after a moment, he got up and opened the door, "Sup Shortstuff?" he asked, realizing it was Molly as soon as he had the door open. Thanks to Wade he was dressed in better fitting jeans and a red t-shirt today.


Molly blinked up at Matt, then quickly held out the sandwich and the milk. "Food?" she said, her wide eyes from being 'caught' still there but a big grin taking the place of the open mouth that had once resided there.

"Er....I brought you some. It's peanut butter and jelly. Strawberry instead of grape. Not that grape isn't good..."

Matt could smell it, but he didn't mention that, "I like strawberry," he assured her. "You wanna come in or were you just thinking that since you didn't finish your lunch you'd feed it to the growing teenage boys?" After all, it could have been meant for Artie, though he doubted it. Their suite wasn't as messy or gross as most boys suites might be, partially because Matt disliked tripping over things on the floor and also because he disliked anything he deemed an 'icky smell.'

"Oh...no...I um....made it for you cause...stuff," Molly said, shrugging. She let 'stuff' be a word that meant many things. Cause it did.

She peered down, and then remembered he asked if she wanted to come in and blinked. "Oh! Yeah um...I can come in," she said, nodding quickly as she wandered in, glancing around.

"Wow...it's nice."

Cleaner than her room even.

"Um, thanks," was it? Matt was pretty sure it was just standard issue furniture and he certainly hadn't decorated. Maybe Artie had? He didn't think so, but maybe. Wandering back to the couch, Matt took a seat again and closed his math book. Homework sucked, but he was trying to get back on track with his schooling, which meant trying to cover two years worth of learning in one, which was hard, but he was at least going to try even if he didn't quite manage it. It would put him that much closer to being on track for graduation. Holding his hand out for the plate, he waited for Molly to give it to him, "So what's new with you?"


Being more than happy and having to be thinking about stuff and feeling awkward had Molly in a bit of a tizzy. It wasn't awkward before. Why was it awkward now?

She stared at Matt for a few moments before quickly looking down, chewing on her lip. Uh oh...what was new? Ummm...

"Pirates! Kurt and I are gonna do like pirate things and swashbuckle and stuff maybe and it'll be awesome cause I thought Wademan got me a sword but he didn't and then I remembered Kurt did pirate stuff so I still need to ask him about it. And stuff."

The explanation used up exactly one deep breath so when she was done she took in another one to catch up, and added.

"Um...you?"

"Pirates are cool," Matt agreed, eating the sandwich. It only took a few bites. "What sort of pirate are you going to be? Like...a Capt. Jack Sparrow sort or some other?" Molly's enthusiasm was cute and contagious. "Not much. Just homework. I'm so behind in school it's sort of ridiculous, so I'm still trying to catch up. Don't do what I did, okay?" Summer school had helped, but not enough.

Molly squinted as she thought about it. "Nah, I think he's drunk. Maybe like Elizabeth Swann!" she said. She was a girl AND a pirate.

"Wow...that's a big grade. I'll be uh...9th in May! Oooh, and I'll be a Freshwoman!" All this 'man' stuff like X-Man and Freshman didn't sound right cause there were girls who were those things too.

"Why are you behind? Oh....cause....things."

She murmured the last bit, glancing away.

"Yeah, things," Matt laughed at that, "In my defense, not all were my fault though. I mean the drugs...okay, yeah that wasn't my best move but...Molly, do you understand what happened?" he asked softly, realizing that she was older now than when he had become addicted. That was a sobering thought."I mean...I wasn't on meth or crack or anything. I was addicted to prescription drugs because I had migraines that were caused by my powers and no one knew I was a mutant. I was...I was self-medicating to ease the pain. It doesn't make me less of an addict, the results were the same, but I wasn't....I knew drugs were bad. I wasn't rebelling or trying to have fun at a party or look cool or whatever it was. I knew drugs were bad and I didn't do illegal drugs, just like I was taught as a kid."

Molly blinked at him for a few moments. They were big, deep, important things that she didn't really have a lot of experience with and she found herself staring without speaking as she tried to put it together. She knew what her parents told her, what she saw on TV, and read about.

So she wound up just nodding repeatedly, kinda like a bobble head. This was big, deep, important things and she wasn't sure how to handle it.

"You took too much and it made you feel better so you wanted too much and it was bad?"

At least, that was what she got out of it. Sometimes these things made her head hurt.

"Basically," Matt agreed. "I thought I was doing the right thing...but I really wasn't," he left off that he had been trying to get some harder, more illegal drugs when he had been busted. He couldn't see Molly's head nod, but he assumed she had been listening from her response. "I've also been to juvie. Juvenile Hall, you're familiar with what that is? That was my fault though, I did bad stuff to a bad man who deserved it, but it wasn't my place to do that. I should have gotten an adult or something," Matt still disagreed with that to an extent, but he was trying to keep things simple for Molly. "There's a lot of reasons I was held back."

Molly played with the tassels on her hat, pausing a few moments before she spoke.

"What...did the bad man do?"

Even though they were big, deep important things she did understand them, she just didn't know how to react to them since normally she saw them like on TV or on the outside, not right in front of her.

"There was another girl at the house, another foster kid. He was...doing things he shouldn't with her," Matt answered. He figured that Molly could figure it out. "I could hear him...and I stopped him. But, apparently using a baseball bat wasn't the proper way to do that."

Blinking rapidly, Molly fell silent again. Her wheels were turning. She grimaced, biting her lip.

"Did...did he go to jail?" He deserved something like a punishment. Like a visit to the cops.

"Yeah," Matt nodded. "And he and his wife can't be foster parents anymore," that was good, but well, Matt had ended up in juvie too. "I was mostly in solitary there, because they didn't want me getting hurt with other kids around and stuff there," he wasn't sure why he had added that.

"In jail?" Molly said."Oh...you mean in juvie? So they'd try to beat you up?"

"They didn't try," Matt assured her, "They never had a chance to. But some of the people in juvie are pretty bad, you know? They don't want someone like me to get hurt there because then it would be their fault for not protecting me and whatnot. So I was mostly alone, except when I went to class. Because just because you're in juvie, you still have to go to school."

Molly frowned, her nose curling up at the idea of it. "That sucks," she said, then paused. Never had a chance to....

"Oh! You beat them up?" She remembered when he kicked Artie's butt. Monet said that was bad sometimes but sometimes they deserved it if you were protecting yourself, right?

"What?" Matt laughed, "No! I was a model inmate," he assured her, "The guards made sure they never had the opportunity to try to beat me up. I was alone for meals and all that. No roommate either."

"You were a model?" Molly said, blinking with confusion, then scrunched her nose as she figured it out a moment later.

"Er....nevermind..."

He was kinda cute but that wasn't what he meant.

"Why would they wanna beat you up anyway?"

"That means I behaved, Molly," Matt explained. She was cute. Clueless sometimes though. "And because they could? I'm blind, you know. It's not all that hard. And kids like to pick on kids who're different from them a lot of the time. It's not really much challenge, beating up the blind kid, but they don't tend to think like that."

Molly let out a grunt, frowning. "Dude. Mean people suck," she said. She lowered her head, her voice turning quieter.

"People picked on me at school sometimes. Cause I didn't...cause of a lot of things, really."

"Like...what?" Matt asked softly. He liked Molly, she was a good kid. Good kids shouldn't get picked on and bullied. "We can compare stories maybe?"

Molly stared down at her shoes for a few moments, shrugging, before she remembered he couldn't see that. She bit her lip.

"Cause...I don't learn as quick as other kids. Cause I have trouble remembering stuff and I act weird. So that means I'm different and...so they like to bully. Like in person and like on the computer."

"You know why they do that, right?" Matt asked, "Because they don't understand and they're scared of what they don't understand. I got made fun of too because I do stuff differently from other people because I can't see. And my eyes look funny. And I have scars too, from when I went blind. People fear what they don't understand. That means mutants too."

"Yep. Fear makes people do dumb things," Molly said, nodding a little.

"And sometimes they just do it cause they think they're better. But we're better cause we're nicer. And we want people to be equal. So
we win."

The grin was evident in her voice.

Matt couldn't agree more. "Exactly."