Log: Angelo/Rachel

[x-eidolon.livejournal.com]

Angelo finds something on Rachel's desk that leads to an uncomfortable conversation between the siblings.



Fifty laps later -- that is, a hundred lengths of the pool -- Rachel lay flopped on her back by the side of the pool, an arm and a leg dangling uselessly in the water as she stared lazily up at the ceiling, unwilling to move. In fact, she contemplated spending the night there. Like some kind of water creature.

A pair of bare feet appeared in her field of vision, then Angelo sat down and dipped them in the water.

"You'll get cold."

"Meh," was her intelligent reply. "Heated pool."

"But you're only half in the pool", he pointed out. "And the tiles don't hold heat."

"I can roll back into the pool and become a heated prune," she waved her un-submerged hand around dismissively. "Whatcha' doin' here anyways. I thought you had somewhere else to be after work?"

"I've always got somewhere else to be. But I found a thing on your desk I thought was worth a detour."

Rachel adjusted her gaze to stare at him, eyebrow climbing to her exposed hairline. "What? Mr Nice Guy snoopin' around my desk?"

"I'm the boss, I can do that if I want." He grinned. "And I'm also your big brother, so when I find an envelope that looks like it just might be your SAT scores..."

The redhead's expression became curiously blank, as her eyes latched onto the envelope Angelo was waving around. "You've been snooping, Jellybean. That was under my laptop."

"It was poking out", he said without shame. "I could see the logo, and why was it hidden under there anyway?"

“Because I didn't want to see it?" The redhead rolled her eyes and then promptly shut them, kicking out with her leg and creating ripples in the pool. "Put it back, big brother."

"No." He stood up, abruptly. "You took them - and you kept that very quiet - and you haven't burnt the letter. Somewhere in there, you want to know how you did."

"Well, I will. Eventually. When I decide that I want to know how I did," she said, sitting up. There was a warning note in her voice, detectable by those who knew her -- Which basically amounted to no one in this world. "Just like I would have told you eventually. You don't get to dictate that."

Angelo looked at her steadily, not giving back the letter - but not making any move to open it, either. "Have you told your mom and dad?"

"No." The teenager rose to her feet and took a step towards him, as though to retrieve the letter. Then changed her mind and headed for her towel on a chair by the side of the pool instead.

"Your shields were always better than mine", he said quietly, staying where he was. "I've never been able to keep anything back from Nate."

She shrugged as she toweled her hair off, studiously ignoring the spike in tension. "You know I am -- was a telepath." And a damned good one at that. "I may not have even half of that power right now, but the control is still there. Besides, I threw a bitch fit the first time my dad tried something like that without my permission."

He laughed dryly. "It doesn't help apparently I project like a wildfire unless I really, really try hard not to."

"Yes, you do," Rachel said, tone mirroring his as she gave her hair one last scrub before discarding the towel in favour of pulling an oversized shirt on. "Or did. I can't tell much now, if that makes you feel better."

She nodded at the letter he was still holding on to. "So are you going to put that back or not?"

"Maybe. What are you going to do if the results are awesome?"

"I don't know if I'd care," she said bluntly. "They're just test results.”

"Why'd you bother taking them, then? Just to say you did?"

"Nothing better to do. It was the natural progression of things. Mum would've asked me to eventually, so why the hell not?" She checked the defensiveness in her tone, and then sighed. "I was considering college."

"'Was'?" Angelo asked gently.

"Still am," she shrugged. "But only because I still have nothing better to do. And I guess my parents want me to. But you know what. Me and studying? Not the best combination."

"You're an action girl", he agreed lightly, and held out the envelope. "Want me to send you to the Third World?"

She took the envelope in damp fingers and fingered a corner of it. "Send me to the Third World?"

"We've got projects. You don't like desk duty, I know that, so maybe you'd like hands-on work better?"

"I don't know," she shrugged, lips twisting into a wry sort of grimace/smile. "I suppose so."

"It'd be something to do, anyway. Let me know."

"I have been doing things," Rachel sighed. "And I really do appreciate the offer. I'm just not sure if it'd help much. I took the tests. I got myself jobs. I've been training and going for therapy... M'not expecting a miraculous epiphany where I suddenly find meaning in my life. But, dude. I checked all the boxes. Every box everyone else said I should check. And yet here we are having this conversation."

"You just haven't found the right thing", he said quietly. "Or the right place to do it in, or something. Nobody's meaning in life is the same as the next person's."

"No," Rachel said firmly. "No. That's what everyone is saying. That's what everyone is saying. Everyone needs to stop saying that."

She fit a finger in and tore open the envelope, "Well then, let's see if Rachel can go to college."

Angelo blinked at her. "OK, then. If you're ready, I wasn't going to make you."

"Of course you weren't, Angelo," Rachel said, eyes focused on the piece of paper she was unfolding. She skipped all the other crap and zeroed in on the numbers "You'd never do something like that. Let's see... Critical reading, 546. Mathematics, 711. Writing, 493. Huh. That's not too bad."

"Only if it was for your own good. Or I thought you'd never have done it yourself", he said with a shrug. "That's pretty good."

She blinked at him. "Yeah, I suppose. I can go to college like a normal 18 year old now. No one can make me but I guess it's for my own good so I'll just go along with it."

"I said if. And I'm not sure going to college actually is your own good, not for the sake of it."

"And I'm saying that you can't make me, even if it was," she sighed, exasperated. "You can't just-- I'm not-- Look. Even if I woke up tomorrow and actually decided to just go and enlist myself without further reference to anyone, you can't stop me."

"...no, we can't", he agreed after a moment. "Are you going to?"

"I don't know," she shrugged, caught slightly off guard by the question. "I've never fought with a human army. Against human enemies."

Which probably also meant that she'd thought about it. She turned and stuffed the letter into her gym bag, shouldering it and not quite caring that she was only wearing a swimsuit, a wet T-shirt and a towel.

Angelo barely seemed to notice, focused - mostly, he wasn't that saintly - on her words rather than her appearance. "You know your dad has feelings about mutants in the military - but if you volunteered, that's different. If you wanted, I could talk to him."

"No, Skin. That's not what I'm--" She stopped, looked away and inhaled sharply. "Jellybean. It's all right. You don't get it. I can't make you get it."

"I'm trying", he said quietly. "What you've lived, it's so far out of my sphere, but... I'm trying."

"I know," she said grimly, hating that she had put that expression on his face. "You came here to give me my SAT scores and I'm getting mad and frustrated at you for no apparent reason.

“I'm sorry. I really am. You don't deserve this. But I'm trying and failing too. Because I'm not the little sister you could have had. I'm not Moira and Nate's little girl. I cannot pretend to pick up my life from what it could have been. Because what I am, even now, is a soldier. A commanding officer. A pilot. A weapon of mass destruction, even."

Rachel took a step closer to Angelo, intense green eyes bearing into his own. She could almost feel the whispers of his mind in her head. Almost. "The people that care the most about me also think they know what's best for me. But how can they when they don't even know who I am?"

He didn't look away, hard as it was with that intensity, but it would have hurt more for both of them if he did.

"I don't know if it's thinking we know what's best for you as... trying to find what's best for you, based on what we know. Just, what we know isn't enough."

"No," she agreed softly, though the intensity in her body language did not ease. "No one knows how fucked up it is. So maybe the next time you find something on my desk, you'll trust me to know what to do with it."

He half-laughed at that. "And maybe you'll hide things better next time. But point taken."

"I didn't think I'd have to," she shrugged, looking away and breaking eye contact. "It was wholly unimportant to me. Not some bloody secret I wanted to bring to my grave."

She sighed, suddenly tired again. "It doesn't matter. Let's go. I need a bath and you have some hot French dude to get to."

"His name's Jean-Phillipe", Angelo said lightly. "Not like I pick up a different hot French dude every night. You okay?"

"Not like I'd judge you even if you did and not like I've ever met the dude," Rachel snorted and turned to lead the way to the door, flipping the power switches on the way out. She ignored his question. "Not that you even told me about him. Ass."

"He works in the same office as you, it's totally not my fault if you haven't talked to him", he retorted. "I think I've told, like, two people about it, not counting Marie-Ange who did her precog thing or Sooraya who got told by somebody else."

“So what, he’s your dirty little secret?” Rachel sneered, then sighed and checked her temper again – she was so on edge right now that a small slip would probably impale her on the figurative blade she was balancing on. But Angelo really didn’t deserve that kind of shit from her, as much as she wanted to smack him for being a concerned busybody. “It doesn’t count if I don’t get introduced to him, Jells. By you. As your significant other or whatever you kids are calling it nowadays.”

"No", Angelo returned calmly. "He's not a secret because I don't care if people know, we just didn't feel like advertising it to the world. You should start coming over again if you want to meet him that way."

"Ah, so exactly how I felt about taking my SATs. Not that your relationship with someone else is any of my business," she shrugged, flashing a quick grin that didn't quite reach her eyes and pulling the doors to the indoor pull shut with a little too much force. She snapped on a telekinetic shield so that she wouldn't drip a trail of water all the way back to her room -- Callie probably wouldn't appreciate that. "Anything that makes you happy." She seemed to want to say something else, but then settled for: "Besides, I see you guys enough at work as it is."

"Okay", he said quietly, not wanting to push things any further in that direction. "You're still welcome, you know."

"I know," she replied, a strange sort of smile on her face -- somehow a mix of sadness and amusement. "It's not you. It's me... And by 'me' I really mean me seeing your boyfriend's naked ass before I even knew he existed." Rachel didn't give him time to reply before she soldiered on, already turning to fly down the corridor towards her suite. "I should probably have listened to you when you told me to use your front door but hey. Life. Won't happen again. I'll see you at work tomorrow!"

"...see you tomorrow", Angelo said, blinking and deciding he was going to have to talk to Jean-Phillipe about this.