Log: Matt & Amanda

[x-daredevil.livejournal.com]

Backdated to the summer, after one of Matt's aerial practices he decides to crash with Amanda. Power revelations, the philosophical differences between X-Men and X-Force, and Chinese food.



Knocking on the door to the brownstone, Matt was exhausted. Practice for the aerial arts classes had run long and the thought of taking the train back to Westchester was just too much. Therefore, he was stealing the couch. Shifting with his duffel slung across his shoulder, Matt adjusted his hold on his cane, folding it up and securing it with the strap.

There was a pause and then the harsh electric buzz of the automatic lock giving him access. The voice - and heartbeat - that greeted him in the foyer was a familiar one - this particular security guard had seen him before. "I'll let Miss Sefton know you're here," he said, picking up the internal phone.

Before he could call, however, there was a stirring in the floor and Amanda's head appeared, followed by the rest of the witch, two large paper bags of Chinese takeout cradled in the crook of her elbow. "Hey Matt," she said, shaking her head to dispel the residual murmur of New York in her ears. "I just popped out to Golden China for dinner. Hope you're hungry, there's a tonne of food here. I ordered before Angie called me to let me know she's eating with Wade tonight."

"No problem," Matt automatically took one of the bags from the witch to help her out, "You get egg rolls?" He liked egg rolls. "Smells delicious. How you doing?"

"Plenty," she reassured him, surrendering the bag and leading the way towards the stairs. She preferred using those to the elevator, especially when her job meant sudden need for speedy running away sometimes and fitness counted. And it was only a couple of flights. "And that chicken dish with the veggies you like. Madame Chang made it special for you when I mentioned I was feeding you." She chuckled. "How was training?"

"Ooh, without the hot sauce stuff? You speak my language," Matt half purred. "Think you can wait on the food long enough for me to use your hot water? I smell myself," which he did not care for. Even with aerial practice, Matt could handle a few flights of stairs, no big deal. His old apartment with his dad had been a walk up, too.

"And the low-salt soy, just a splash. She remembers stuff like that." As did Amanda, after living at the school and feeding Meggan, who wasn't a super taster but who had had some digestive issues as a small fuzzy monster girl. "And food can definitely wait until you de-stink; I was being nice and not mentioning the reek." She was teasing with the dig, although there was a definite scent of Teenage Boy in the air.

"Hey, you try climbing ropes and flying around doing flips," Matt retorted, not at all offended. He was sweaty and he knew it. "Oh wait, you're allergic to wearing leather. You like trenchcoats."

"They're roomy and have pockets," Amanda replied sagely as they reached her door. She fished in said pockets for her keys, switching the bag she carried from one arm to the other. "And leather has its place. Like at nightclubs."

"Uh huh..." Matt wasn't overly familiar with nightclubs, he had just turned 18 a couple months earlier, plus he tried to avoid places that would bother him in terms of his powers and with his recovery. Nightclubs were potential problems with both. "Whatever you say," he would humour her for now."I'm gonna go shower really fast," he said once they were inside and he had deposited the food on the table. He was curious now why she hadn't joined the X-Men.

"Shoo. I'll try not to eat all of the food before you're done," she teased, waving him in the direction of the bathroom. "Spare towel's hanging on the doorknob for you."

The shower was amazing and Matt emerged in a clean t-shirt and shorts to find dinner on plates and he sat down to stuff his face happily. "So then," he paused to swallow some beef with snow peas, "why didn't you join the X-Men?"

Amanda paused, a spring roll half-way to her mouth. "It never even occurred to me," she admitted at last. "I mean, even before I got expelled, I was old enough to be a trainee, but I never thought of it." She shrugged. "I guess I didn't see myself as a hero type back then. I'd see Nate go off with the team, time and again, and come back hurt almost every time. It... didn't seem worth the stress sometimes. And I don't think I could've done that to the people who cared about me then. Poor Moira was a wreck with some of the missions Nate went on, and there was nothing she could say, you know? 'Cause he'd been doing hero stuff."

Amanda shook her head. "Nah. This is a job, not heroics. Doing what needs to be done." She paused, and then added, a bit more quietly. "Heroes don't do what we do."

"I think you and I have different definitions of hero," Matt said finally. With his hearing, he heard what she said without a problem. "A hero is someone who does what needs doing, what's required, no matter how scared or what the sacrifice, because it's the right thing to do. Doesn't mean it's flashy or pretty. "

"...Not exactly what I meant." Amanda laid the uneaten spring roll down. "Heroes don't assassinate people, for starters."

"But isn't a hero a villian from another perspective?" Matt asked. "I don't think most people are intentionally evil. They just disagree on how to do the most good," he gestured vaguely to his backpack, "I've been reading X-Men casefiles and I don't think most of the people they've fought are truly malicious. They're just as hurt and broken as everyone else, with different priorities. And they don't like people meddling and stopping them from accomplishing what they need to do just as much as we don't like it either."

Amanda tried not to wince. "Then that makes what we do - what I do - even worse," she said. "Because the X-Men go in with that thought, that everyone deserves a chance. The Trenchcoats don't. We see a situation, we go in, and sometimes to make sure it doesn't happen, we'll kill the people involved." It was blunt and possibly not something she should be telling an impressionable teen, but perhaps she'd heard Remy talk about this once too often. "I've killed, Matt. And not just in self-defense."

"But...what if they had a family?" Matt asked weakly, feeling incredibly stupid right now. Maybe he shouldn't have felt that way, but he couldn't help but think of his own father and how things might have been different. "I guess that's why I'll never work for Snow Valley," he finally added. He couldn't do that. He couldn't. And he didn't want to.

"The people they hurt or killed had families too. Sometimes it's a matter of adding things up and working out what results in the least amount of harm. The big picture." She looked a little sadly at Matt, regretting that she had been so honest with him now. She'd taken a piece of his innocence. "But yeah, you'd never work with us Trenchcoats. You aren't the type. And that's the reason I'm not an X-Man. If me doing this means there's someone else who isn't, that's worth it for me."

Matt would have claimed up and down that he wasn't innocent, that he'd seen the harsher side of life, and to an extent he had. There were whole aspects that he never thought about though and was barely aware of, like this. "Then I guess it's good that we know that and we play to our strengths," he replied, no longer hungry. Then again, he had also eaten everything on his plate. He just didn't go for seconds. "I'm gonna go read, I think. Got lots of homework stuffs to do."

Amanda nodded, letting him go set himself up with his book as she cleared up the remains of the meal - there'd be leftovers, but that just meant breakfast in the morning. Then she got out some work of her own and sat at the kitchen table to do it. Then, after a while, she looked over at Matt, realising something.

"That's not one of your giant Braille books?"

"No," Matt replied, "It's one of the mission report logs," he had started printing the case files out in braille, but that took up so much paper it was ridiculous. He had discovered that if he concentrated enough, he could reads the minutely raised letters on a regular piece of paper. Glossy papers from magazines and such didn't work, but regular paper did. "Trying to reprint them all into braille was....kinda insane."

"So you can 'read' print with your fingertips? That's pretty bloody cool."

"Kinda," Matt agreed with a smile, "It's harder to do, I have to work at it more, but I'm getting better at it. I kinda had to remember the alphabet again. I mean, the seeing one," he had been so embarrassed to realize he had forgotten what some of the letters were supposed to look like, but then he hadn't used it in years either.

"Using only one kind of language for a long time and not using the other does that," Amanda agreed. "So, when you're ready for the next of those George Martin books, do you want it in normal print?" She grinned, knowing how thick those particular books were.

"I want those in braille," Matt replied immediately. He was not going to kill himself on pleasure reading! Nope! "Yeah, it's been about 5 years since I've read the seeing alphabet. It's amazing what you forget in that time," if 'you don't use it, you lose it' was very true. "Between this stuff and college starting soon, I'm not sure I'll have time to read for fun!" Which sucked.

"Try and make time. Stress breaks are important," Amanda replied with a wry grin. Pot, meet kettle. Besides, once you're a full X-Man, there's those long trips in the big black plane. You'll need something to entertain yourself."

Matt made a face, "I'm not a fan of flying," he said, "I'm not scared of it, but the sound and vibration," mostly the vibration, "bothers me." Damn powers.

"Unless you're planning to walk to missions, you'd better learn to ignore it," was the cheerful reply. "Being a hero means sacrifice, after all."

Matt didn't reply verbally, he just raised his hand and very clearly shot her the bird. She had a point though.