Log: Rachel and Scott (Backdated like woah)

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott and Rachel spend some time in the Danger Room and then go out for dinner to relax and chat.

It wasn't usual for someone to post a request for one of the senior X-men to let them into the Danger Room. In fact most people did their best to stay away from the Danger Room, at least they did when they found out Scott was going to run their training session. It couldn't be him could it? Scott smiled to himself, it was good to see his reputation was still intact. “Hey Rachel, you ready to get going?" he called as he came around the corner spotting the redhead waiting by the door to the danger room.

Rachel glanced up from the dagger she was dragging lightly over her fingertips and suddenly became very still. She stared at Scott, verdant orbs dragging over his form. One would have thought that she would have gotten used to seeing all these strangers in painfully familiar forms. But seeing this man… it struck chords in her that she rather did not exist.

“I was in your brain when you died.”

Biting down on her tongue, Rachel winced and resisted the urge to slam her head against the wall. That was not what she had intended to say.

"I..ah...what?" The girl's statement caught Scott of guard, it hadn't even figured on the list of possible answers he'd expected. The X-man pulled up short of the door and just stared at Rachel, it took him a moment to realize that she was talking about the other world she'd come from. "That's not really the greeting I was expecting," he continued hesitantly. "To tell the truth I never thought much about the other world or my other self there. But I'm dead? How did it happen?" Scott asked nervously.

“Bad people killed you,” she said, pushing off from the wall she had been leaning on, the dagger disappearing into the belt at her waist. Her eyes were shuttered as traces of pain were wiped from her expression, body language distant as she approached the door. “I’m sorry. It was just a thought. M’ready.”

Well he had hoped that he would die in his sleep after a long life but from Rachel's reaction Scott could see that his death had affected the young woman. Scott reached out to the keypad opening the door to the unlit Danger Room, he had hoped Rachel was going to open up a little more about the events of her timeline, but it seemed the wounds were still too fresh. "So what did you want to do? Powers training? Physical training?" he enquired. Hopefully the girl would open up to him about some of the stuff that was apparently still playing on her mind, but Scott didn't want to push her too much.

“Both?” Rachel quirked a brow at Scott. “I don’t really know how this works.” She was much more familiar with real live combat training than mechanical simulations, truth be told.

"We can do that," Scott replied walking over to the keypad inset in the wall. "It's pretty simple to run actually, we have a bunch of programs stored on the system. You just choose the one you want and hey presto." Scott waved his hand across the room proudly as the walls and floor started to shimmer, he loved the Danger Room almost as much as he loved the Blackbird.

After all the horror stories she had heard floating around the mansion about this particular room and this particular mutant, Rachel found it in herself to dredge up a thread of amusement at his apparent enthusiasm.

“You can throw whatever you want at me.”

"Oh, I love it when they say that," Scott confided with a grin. "It's like people are asking for trouble, makes my day." The X-man took a moment to think, "It's your first time in here, so let's just go with something fun for today. How do you feel about target practice?"

“I feel like it might make my day too,” she replied dryly, stretching her arms and cracking the kinks out of her back. Anything qualified as ‘fun’ if it meant she could blow things up into smithereens and stop thinking about how she wanted to blast apart certain people. Or herself. Or the burning memory of the Scott that was not Scott telling her how much more she had to live for, and how she had to hang on to hope because all was not lost. Something tightened inside her chest, and Rachel averted her gaze to survey the room. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Scott keyed a code into the wall panel before walking over to stand next to Rachel as the walls of the Danger Room shimmered and fell back as the floor rose up to an urban combat course. "Nice simple and realistic," Scott commented, "take down the bad guys save the civilians and try to post the best time. You can use anything you see as a weapon.

“Cool,” Rachel replied, feet already lifting off the ground as she levitated herself and summoned a telekinetic shield bubble. “These bad guys – do they have powers?”

"Just basic shocks," Scott replied as he stepped back, "nothing that'll incapacitate you or anything you'll just get a feeling like you got shocked by static electricity if they manage to hit you." Having to focus on both attack and defence would both be better practice for Rachel and allow Scott to gauge her abilities more accurately.

Rachel hummed in acknowledgement and shot forward, having no seeming regard for her safety, implicitly trusting that her shield would keep her ensconced in safety. She took out the first chap she came across with a short telekinetic blast, and when his holographic comrades started towards her, she blasted apart a rock with great satisfaction and hurled the debris at them like lethal darts.

Coiling a second layer of energy tight around her, she waited until she was surrounded by her faceless attackers before pushing outward with a grunt, throwing them back with great force. With adrenaline coursing through her veins, the redhead flew circles around a hostage-taker and knocked him out with blunt force, retrieving the civilian and depositing him at a relatively safe distance.

The psion scanned her surroundings, breathing evenly as she sought more of the bad guys out by sight“Is that it?” She called out to Scott, tossing a metal park bench at a duo of black-clothed figures that were wielding crowbars. Someone fired an unexpected shot at her back, and she whirled around even as her shield incinerated the bullet. The drones could not be telepathically tracked, apparently. And Rachel scowled as she ripped the gun from her attacker’s hand and blasted him into oblivion.

"You want me to up the difficulty?" Scott queried as he reached over to the panel. At the press of a few buttons the drones stopped charging Rachel in an attempt to overwhelm her and instead fell back to the cover provided by the buildings. Shock blasts started to rain in against her shield each opponent popping his head out to take a shot or two before scurrying back to the relative safety the buildings provided.

“Ooh,” Rachel mocked under her breath. “Hide and seek.” Verdant eyes hardened as she strengthened her shield and crashed a car into a pair of hiding attackers, diving behind a bus, simultaneously pulling another group of attackers toward her and folding them backwards with a brutal swipe of her hands. She dropped the ‘bodies’ at her feet and flew low towards a hidden attacker. The moment he popped his head out to take a strike, she took him out with another wave of telekinetic power.

Without projectiles, she needed proximity. But what was it that Scott had said? You can use anything you see as a weapon.

Rachel struck a shielded hand through a car window, gathering the glass shards and systematically tossed the psionic-powered fragments at her shadowy attackers as they appeared.

"Remind me to never get on your bad side," Scott commented as he paused the scenario and looked around. Rachel was definitely clearing out her enemies but..."Perhaps you could try to leave the city somewhat habitable after you get done? We're not just here to take down the bad guys, we're also supposed to be ambassadors for mutants everywhere." The X-man gestured around, "Leaving them with a burning and broken city might not be the best way to generate good will with the general population."

“You didn’t say anything about that,” she protested with a frown, before shrugging and rising from her hiding spot. It was not like she ever had to think all that much about structural damage. Much. The psion rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck, stopping her thoughts from going any further than that. It had felt good to do that – to just kick back and release pent up frustrations without fear of causing anyone else harm with her powers. But it was not quite enough just yet.

Rachel flew over to Scott, landed, and gave him an overt glance over. “Are you planning on just standing there and watching me play?”

Scott grinned at the challenge implicit in the red-head's question and pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against taking up a position next to Rachel. "Computer, reset the scenario for two people." He grinned as his eye started glowing red, "I'm not sure, think I can still keep up with you?"

Still? “Only one way to find out, Scotty-me-lad.”

"Scotty-me-lad?" Scott spluttered torn between amusement and outrage. He'd been called a lot of names in his time, but nobody had called him that before. First Layla and now Rachel, Scott was starting to think that something was wrong with teenage girls these days. "Seems that way doesn't it," he answered taking up a ready position. "Computer, begin scenario."

The redhead merely smirked, and with a forceful twist of her hand, raised a telekinetic shield around herself. She watched with great fascination as the computer-generated environment form around them. “I’d shield you too, but I don’t think you wanna get hit by your own optic blast.”

"That's probably not the best idea," Scott agreed as his optic blast split the first opponent, I've heard that being hit by an optical blast can really smart."

“I now feel like you should have a taste of your own medicine,” she commented with another impish smirk. But she obligingly pushed out her shield to neutralise a group of attacking figures, wincing as it took out a chunk of the side of a building along with it. “I suppose I should work on that.”

"It might not be quite the in thing to collapse a building if we're on a mission,” he noted with a glance at the rubble, "People tend to get a little snippy about things like that." As Scott spoke he rebounded an optical blast off the rubble ricocheting it off the back of one of their opponent’s heads before catching it in his hand, "You mean a taste of my own medicine like that?" he asked with a smirk holding up the unmarked hand to Rachel.

“Show off,” she grumbled, without any heat. She had not known Cyclops could do that. Manipulating her shield such that she wore it like an armour instead, the redhead tilted her head at the older mutant. “Let’s play a lil’ game. Person to off more of these drone thingies wins. Loser pays for dinner.”

Scott gave the girl a level look, "Sure," he agreed with a smile, "If you're willing to throw money away like that then I can't say no to a free meal." Scott turned back to face the scenario before looking at Rachel curiously, "It had to be real and good food right?"

She smiled brightly, a hint of edge behind those pearly whites. “Within our respective budgets, of course.”

With that, the psion took off at a run, conveniently incapacitating three drones as she passed them by shoving them into the ground. “That’s three, Scotty!”

Scott grinned at the challenge banking a pair of shots off the ground where Rachel had just been standing, the energy bouncing of the walls in a spinning pattern before they hit the ground ricocheting up to clip two enemies before they bounced away. Not speaking Scott held up a hand, 4 fingers raised as he watched the energy blast bury themselves in the chests of two more of their opponents knocking them out of the fight as he flashed a grin at Rachel.

"C'mon Scotty," Rachel taunted with a laugh as she cartwheeled through the air, and started tossing the robots to the ground from high places. "Faster, faster!"

As Rachel cartwheeled a series of reflected optical blasts bounced past her colliding with the robots she was tossing and sending them careening down into the mass or robots gathering beneath them, each impact acting like a bomb knocking swathes or robots off their feet. "Fast enough for you?" Scott asked with a grin as he deftly tripped a robot which had closed on him finishing it with his rising knee.

The redhead shot him two thumbs up, a grin stretched across her face. The girl barrelled through an open window and pulled a group of three snipers towards her, shoving their heads back so that their necks snapped before hopping out of the window and letting gravity pull her – and five other faceless figures -- back to the ground.

Laughing Scott banked a quick flurry of shots off the ground beneath the falling girl letting them fly off in all directions and bouncing back off debris to fly back at one another colliding and bouncing off in new directions as they worked their way up higher and higher racing past Rachel trapping her temporarily in a cage of ruby energy as the beam traveled ever higher. Scott stood watching the beams his eye glowing in anticipation as he stood waiting for a second, then two seconds; just as the beams cleared the edge of the buildings the X-man released a beam straight up into the air, turning to flash Rachel a grin as the beam raced above his previously launched shots deflecting them back down towards the ground.

Scott let a smile settle on his lips as the energy beams came crashing down into the remaining concentrations of robots kicking up a dust cloud which quickly swamped the area. Coughing Scott waved the dust away his eye quickly checked the impact sites, his eye marking the piles of wrecked bodies lying by the craters. "Well that worked out pretty well don't you think?" He asked turning to a dust covered Rachel.

She was laughing as approached, clapping excitedly as she bounced over and grinned brightly at Scott. “Cool lightshow!” Then she dropped the shield – and the dust coating it – and shook her hair out with a smirk, looking as pristine as ever. “Absolutely worth a meal.”

"Nice trick," Scott commented answering Rachel's smirk with a smile of his own, "So then Miss Kinross-Dayspring, where are you taking me then? The kitchen upstairs doesn't count by the way."

“Aww, damn,” Rachel wrinkled her nose, but her bright eyes were twinkling. “Busted. I don’t know, Scotty. Haven’t you heard? I’m new in town. You tell me where we’re going.”

"Well I've always been partial to a nice lobster myself, maybe a nice Japanese place in town," Scott teased knowing just how expensive that could be. "Well Harry's does a decent burger, it isn’t too expensive or too far away. And it's a good place to talk over lunch."

“Burgers, of course,” the girl sighed, spinning on a booted heel and heading for the door. Her smirk reflected off the glass as the wrecked scene faded away. “Americans. So typical. But of course I will oblige, Scotty. Dinner’s on daddy, though. Ain’t got a job. Yet.”

"Well if your dad's paying then I did hear about this place that does a $1000 ice-cream sundae," Scott replied with a smirk of his own. "Or I'm sure we can find something that would appeal to your more refined palate." he teased.

---XXX---

While it wasn’t an upmarket luxury, the Japanese dining place they eventually settled on was more than decent. The sashimi was fresh and tasty, nicely complementing the cold green tea soba noodles that Rachel was happy to slurp up while they traded stories about their teammates’ hijinks.

Scott leaned back in his chair a cup of green tea clasped in his hands, "And then someone, naming no names of course," he gave Rachel a grin, "decided to replace his shampoo with a bottle of dye," he finished his story with a laugh, "you should heard him screaming blue murder...quite literally."

The redhead returned his grin with a bright one of her own. “See? I told you X-Men shenanigans are universal. Or, you know, multi-versal. Something.”

"Well we do seem to attract a certain type of character," Scott agreed, "I guess that's true no matter what. Although you know, I could do with a few less shenanigans. I kinda like my hair the way it is right now."

“That’s what you say. But if the day comes when you no longer have your teammates around you, you’d probably miss it more than you think you would.” The wistfulness in her voice was slight, and she half-disguised it by slurping up another mouthful of noodles.

"That's what gives me nightmares sometimes," Scott admitted, "you know you're not alone right? We may not be the team you grew up with, but we're all here for you if you want us."

“Thanks, but,” Rachel shrugged and made a face at him. “S’not the same and you know it. I mean, everyone’s been nice, or civil at the very least. But they're not my team. Well, not in the I-own-this team sense, but in the I-belong-in-this-team sense. You know, just... It’s not coming out right. It’s like… Well.” She made an abortive gesture. “Let’s just put it this way – I’m not even in your team. So it’s pretty much all moot anyways.”

"Is that all that's holding you back?" Scott asked, "Cause we can clear that part up here and now. We may not be the team you grew up with Rachel, but we're a team that's here and that could be yours. You're like family, and we feel you belong," he gave her a sad look, "but like you said, you don't." Scott sat back in his chair and took a long sip of his green tea before continuing, "What's holding you back?"

She took a long while to answer, and was grateful that he let her take that time to think about it. There were so many factors, so many reasons. It couldn’t boil down to any one thing. So she shrugged.

“I trusted my team with my life and they trusted me with theirs. We’d have done anything for each other, notwithstanding the higher causes in the war. If there’s one good thing that comes out of a global war, it’s the trust and camaraderie of your comrades on the field. I mean, I’m probably romanticising it a bit, but it’s not that big of an exaggeration to say that they’re the reason I kept waking up every day and going back in to fight. It's the people that kept each other going. Moreso than even ‘saving humanity’ because while that’s obviously a huge driving force, it’s not as… personal.

“I knew those people. And those people knew me. I don’t know the people here. And I also don’t know what or who they see when they look at me. I want to be able to slot myself in and feel right and home like I belong naturally. I guess I may be scared,” she admitted with a grimace. “Scared that I could join any team and just not be able to measure up. And not let anybody measure up.”

She drank some tea to wet her throat which had become increasingly dry. Rachel hadn’t meant to unload on Scott. But now that she’d started, it seemed like the brakes were faulty. “And I’ve tried. I am trying. I could have stayed hidden on Muir with my ‘rents. Gone somewhere else where no one knows I’m more of a freak of nature than the average mutant. Or, even, let myself disintegrate into the cosmos at one point in time. But I didn’t. And I don’t know why. Because it’s bloody difficult and I’m a coward, deep down inside. Still trying to fake it until I make it. So I guess it all boils down to fear, really.”

Scott didn't answer right away, Rachel had opened up and she deserved more than an off the cuff quick answer, so the X-man took a sip of his tea and thought about everything she'd said. "I don't think it's fear, not really," the X-man said quietly as he swirled his tea in his hands, "You can't go through what you've been and not come out changed." Scott looked up at Rachel, "What do you do when the thing you fought for, that you'd die for simply disappears on you?" he asked her rhetorically. "I've spent years fighting for Charles' dream, all my adult life. And every time we seem to make a step forward something new comes out of the woodwork and knocks us 2 steps back. We deal with 1 problem, and then 2 more crop up in it's place, I'm not sure the dream is still alive. So why have I been fighting and watching my friends this whole time?.

Scott sighed and raked his fingers through his hair, "I can't tell you why you're still here and why you can't let go. Sometimes I can't even answer that question for myself. But I think...I think it's cause we want something more. You could just walk out of here, take a bus and disappear into the population," he told her gesturing to the door, "God knows we couldn't find you if you didn't want to be found, and we owe you to let you do that if you want. But I don't think you can, I know that I can't. It's not the fear, it's the memory, you've been part of something special, something bigger than you or me. It's why we're drawn to the mansion like moths to a flame. You want that back, and that's not a bad thing, it'll never be a bad thing. That memory is what keeps you going. It's not everyone that can say that they saved the world, or saved someone's life. It's not everyone who can say they made the world a better place or just made people's lives better. But we can. It's a sense of purpose that binds us all together," he drew Rachel's gaze down to where he'd drawn an X with the condensation from his tea mug before scouring it out.

"But you know this already. We're not your old team. We're never going to be your old team, the ties that bind us, the blood sweat tears and triumphs. You don't have them. Try as we can to sugar coat it and make you welcome, they're just not there. You see me and you remember someone else, someone that I'm not and can never be. But I'm me, and tomorrow I'll wake up, I'll walk into the Danger Room and I'll do the best job that I can. If you want to be there, the door is always open. But that's not the only door that's open to you," he noted nodding at the door to the restaurant, "that one is too, it's never going to go away and it's always going to be open. Or there are other doors, X-Corp, Muir with your parents. I can't, and I won't pick or ask you to pick one a specific one. You choose. If you need me I'm here. The X-men will always be here if that's what you want, but choosing which door to walk through, that has to be your decision and no-one elses."

She quirked a mirthless smile at him and shrugged. He made sense. But she was also tired of fighting. Exhausted. Screw those higher goals. Higher goals had never made her happy or content. Mostly the name of the game had been survival in its most literal sense.

But she had bared enough (too much) of her thoughts to Scott and the topic weighed too heavily on the both of them. So she nodded, slurped up another mouthful of soba and promised: "I'll think about it."

"That's all I ask," as he nodded his head at a nearby waiter, "And now for serious business, what do you feel like for desert?"