Angel and Vance | On the Roof

[x-firestar.livejournal.com]

Vance finds Angel on the roof, and the two end up having a strangely serious conversation.

Angel was sitting on the roof with her camera, every now and then snapping a random picture of a cloud or the grounds far, far below her. She was taking a break before she had to go back down and deal with the heavy atmosphere around the mansion. And anyways she needed to finish off this roll - there were some pictures at the beginning that she wanted to get developed.

"Heads up!! Incoming!!" came the exclamation from above Angel. And since she was up on the roof, that meant it could be only headed from one direction-- up above her from the sky. Perhaps it's revenge-- or maybe something slipped on accident, and is headed right for Angel.

However, when she scrambled out of the way and turned around to look up for the source of the voice, Vance grinned widely down at Angel, arms folded over his chest as he looked down at her. And he was glowing with the pink nimbus of his telekinesis.

"Gotcha," he practically crowed from his vantage point about fifteen feet up, and let himself slowly down to the roof of the mansion, his feet touching down on the shingles.

"I am going to kill you if you wrecked my camera," Angel said with a grin as she bent down to pick up her camera, which had fallen from her lap in her hurry to get away. "Seriously, this is one of my favorites, if it is in any way hurt, you're responsible for buying me a new one." Just to test, Angel held the camera up, snapping a picture of Vance as he landed. "Hmn...nope, still seems to be in working order. It's you're lucky day, Pinky. Guess I won't be barbecuing you after all."

Vance just held his smirk and arched an eyebrow as Angel snapped a picture of him, noting the mechanical sounds of winding film. "Old school camera, huh?" he said, and tilted his head to look at the camera in Angel's hands. "It's been a long time since I've seen a camera that still uses film."

Angel bit down her response - What, have you been living under a rock? - when she remembered what Vance had told her while they'd washed the Blackbird. "Old school's the way to go," she said instead, grinning still. "And this one is my baby. So what's up? And if you say 'we are' because we're on the roof and everything, I will push you off. I don't care if you can fly."

"We--" Vance started in teasing manner, a slight grin playing on the edges of his lips, though he never completed the thought. Instead, he shrugged his shoulders slightly, glancing out at the woods surrounding the mansion. "Just getting out of the mansion for some fresh air. And I saw I wasn't the only one. And with the opportunity ripe for revenge--"

Vance let the statement trail with another slight grin, the implication clear that it was still coming. Despite the joking manner, there were a few rough edges around Vance's teasing, perhaps a little less laughter and fire in his eyes than there would have been just a few weeks ago.

"Oh you are just hilarious," Angel said with a snort as she settled back down on the edge of the roof. "Pull up some shingles, it's a beautiful day." She tilted her head a bit, still smiling. "How are you?" This had become a dangerous question as of late. But Angel could tell something was wrong (not much of a stretch), and she wasn't the kind of person to just let something go.

Vance stepped over and lowered himself to the edge of the roof next to Angel, feet dangling over the edge because when you can fly-- there's really no point in being afraid of heights. He settled his hands on his legs and glanced sideways at the redhead with the camera, quiet for a moment as he considered the question.

"I'm okay, all things considered," Vance said carefully, still watching her as his own eyes reflected some of the concern she was showing him. "How about you? You knew more of--" He stopped himself before he said any more, but turned his head a little more towards the redhead.

Angel's smile stayed strong even as she considered Vance's question and the sentence he didn't finish. "I'm glad everyone is safe," she said easily. "I was...pretty worried when they disappeared." She paused for a minute before adding, in a rather sheepish tone, "Yvette and Sooraya - they were taken from the rally - I sat outside their door for like an hour one day after they disappeared. Kinda just waiting for them to come back, even though I knew they wouldn't...but I could dream, right?" She paused before adding, "If you ever tell anyone about that, I'll barbecue you, pretty pink shield or no pretty pink shield. All and all, I can't really complain. I got off easy compared to some people."

"What, if I tell people you were sitting around like a lost puppy?" Vance responded when Angel made the threat, the joke quiet and off the cuff. Yet the gesture that follows was at odd with possible insensitivity of his words, and he reached out to rest a hand gently over the back of one of Angel's, squeezing gently in reassurance. "Don't worry. Your secret will die with me."

He removed his hand from hers and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his thighs, looking out at the grounds, "I got off pretty light too, all things considered. I guess I'm still in too much shock from everything that happened to really process it all. It's almost as if it was some sort of nightmare that I couldn't wake up from."

His jaw tightened slightly, and Vance's face suddenly turned rather resolute. "But if I ever had any doubts about whether this is the place for me or not, they're gone now. There's too much injustice in the world for me to sit by and just watch it happen. And after these past few weeks? It shows me, even more, that the world needs people like us."

Angel smiled a soft smile, curling her legs up to her chest and resting her arms loosely on her knees. "They don't teach you coping when you join the trainees," she said regretfully, remembering a long ago conversation with Scott. "I'd say it gets easier, but if it ever does, that might be the day you want to quit."

The smile faded just a bit as she considered Vance's words. "It's a very crazy world we live in," she said after a moment, her eyes darkening a little as she remembered the mutants she'd seen slaving away at the geothermal plant. She'd gotten a very grim sort of satisfaction from being able to blow that place up. "The world doesn't always appreciate that people like us exist, but we do a good thing. I mean, hey, saving the world on an almost daily basis, not exactly something that can be frowned upon." Because she just couldn't let anything stay serious for too long.

"Sure it can be," Vance said, trying to hide his bitterness and doing a poor job of it, not picking up on Angel's attempt to lighten the mood as he continued to just stare out at the woods surrounding the mansion. "And it is. After all, if us mutants didn't exist, we wouldn't have world-threatening disasters in the first place, right?"

Suddenly aware of the bitterness in his voice as the last words passed his lips, Vance closed his lips tightly for a minute, then chanced a look over at Angel with a frown. "I'm sorry," he said apologetically, "I'm just--" He broke off and looked down at the roof. Spotting a small piece of debris between his legs and Angel's feet, he picked it up and then shot it out over the edge of the roof with the flick of a finger. Take that.

"Don't apologize for how you feel," Angel replied as she watched the debris take flight. "It's been a crazy couple of weeks, I think we've all earned the right to be a little bitter."

She curled her legs up under her body, sitting Indian-style and resting her elbows on her knees. "You know if it wasn't one issue, it'd probably be another," she pointed out after a moment. "I mean, if mutants didn't exist, there'd might be, like, genetically engineered dinosaurs running around trying to eat people. Or something like that. Besides, if mutants didn't exist, none of us would be here right now. Well, we'd probably be here on Earth, but we wouldn't be here, in New York, in the mansion. So chances are none of the people here would even know each other. And our lives would be a lot less interesting."

Vance gave a grunt of what could be classified as agreement, though the pull of his lips held the frown on his face as he pushed back from the edge of the roof and brought his feet up to rest on the roof, leaning forward and resting against his knees as he stared moodily out over the side of the mansion.

It took him a long minute, but Vance finally pulled himself out of his brooding, looking over at Angel, though he couldn't quite shake the downturn of his mouth, his eyes still serious. "I don't want to be bitter. I know now that I made the right choice, coming here. I am where I should be right now-- and if we weren't here to do what we do, things in Genosha could have been, or even might still be, even worse. I guess it's more that I'm..." He paused for a minute, searching through his head and emotions before looking back at Angel, meeting her gaze. "I'm sad, more than anything."

Angel's own slightly sad humor faded as her eyes met Vance's. "I don't think you're bitter," she told him quietly. "I think you're absolutely justified to feel however you feel right now. We were all in Genosha, and even if some of us got it worse than others, in the end we all went through hell in some way, we all witnessed something at one point or another that never should have been seen by any living person. You've earned the right to feel however you feel right now."

She paused for a moment before saying, "I can't say anything that'll make you feel better-" A trend Angel was starting to notice and hate, "-but you know...time heals all wounds. Cliche, but strangely true. And if it makes you feel better, you're not the only one. To be completely honest...I'm angry. I'm angry because very, very good, very innocent people had to suffer - good, innocent people had to die, and for what? For some psycho's twisted vision? I feel sick every time I think about it." Another pause. "You just...you can't do anything about the way you feel. You just have to remember that eventually it's going to get better, because nothing stays bad forever. And knowing you're in the right place is going to go a long way to help with that."

"I'm not sure that anyone could say anything that would make it all better," Vance offered with a soft, wry smile. "But thank you anyway. It helps to talk about it, at least a little." He uncurled his arms from his folded legs and sat back a little bit, glancing down at the camera re-seated in Angel's lap, looking to change the subject before he soured the mood of the rooftop any worse. "So, what were you taking pictures of before I came up here and ruined the peace?"

Angel smirked just a little as she held up the camera, focusing on a close up of Vance's face and snapping a shot. "You know I'm not secretly blonde under all the red, I recognize a bad segue when I see one. But that's fine, you know. I'll let you have your bad segue. And I wasn't really taking pictures of anything, to be honest, it's just...nice, escaping up here for a bit, fiddling with my camera. It makes things seem normal. And normal is good. And by the way you didn't ruin the peace. Peace is boring anyways."

Vance just smirked as Angel called him on his segue to something less emotionally charged. "Fair enough. And speaking of normal, I was thinking of grabbing some lunch from the kitchen before escaping back outside. Want to join me in stealing some food, and we can just come back out here? Can eat in peace, too."

"Food, you say?" Angel clarified happily. "Yes, please. I would be more than happy to join you in the stealing of the food to bring back out here and eat. It's nicer out here anyways, might as well enjoy it. Let's go."