Megan and Wade: A Meeting (Backdated to 5/14)

[x-welshpixie.livejournal.com]

Megan and Wade meet in the mansion's garage, work is done, feet are drawn.


Megan stepped into the mansion's garage, prepared for a sudden increase in air temperature. She was pleasantly surprised by the cool atmosphere.

"Hello?"

The place was larger and contained even more cars than she remembered from her few previous visits. It was practically an automobile museum in her experience. She hoped it would make for some interesting sketches.

Wade pulled himself out from under the Bentley 3.0's hood and grabbed a grease towel to wipe his hand. The girl walking toward his little setup was familiar but very, very different from the way he remembered her. "Hey," he said, propping his hip on the car and facing her. "Need any help?"

"Oh, hi! Wade? It's just me, Megan," she greeted as she approached. She was clutching a large sketch pad in both hands. Over top it, her dimpled smile appeared. "I thought this would be a good place to sketch some mechanical objects. Would it be OK if I hang out in here for a bit?"

Yep, that was Pinkie. Only definitely not pink anymore. "Sure, no problem," Wade said, nodding to a stool near the work bench. His space heater was set up beneath it because while he could grow something back if it fell off because of frostbite, he didn't really want to have to. Plus, Cece would yell at him. Probably. "Any particular reason you want to sketch car parts?"

"I need to work on drawing perspective. I thought of cars, because they have such beautiful, precise lines and curves." Her gaze traced the pretty red and silver car Wade appeared to be working on. "And also, I kind of put this assignment off until the last minute. But classic cars beat buildings any day."

Wade quirked a smile despite himself. "There are some people out there who might disagree with you," he said, casting his eyes back over the car he was working on. "I'm not one of them, though. So you're welcome to stay as long as you like." He wasn't really sure what else to say. This meeting people all over again thing was... weird. Complicated. "How's everything else going?"

"Thanks." Megan fussed with the sketch pad for a bit, and a little square of cardboard that she used as a viewfinder, before finally finding a comfortable position where she also had a good angle to draw from. "It's going, like clouds," she answered after a moment's thought. "Always moving from one moment to the next, but I can never see where it's going to. I've decided to try the school thing again - art school. It's going OK and I'm settling in at the mansion again. How's it going with you?"

"Pretty well," Wade answered. "Took a bit of a vacation, saw some sights, chilled. Came back. Everything's a little different though. Kind of weird. Not bad," he clarified. "Just... different." Reaching for his tools, he laid himself back on his creeper seat so he could roll himself under the car. "Glad to hear the art school thing's working out, though."

"Oh yeah, where did you go? I also traveled and I found that it gave me new things to think about." She sketched out the basic geometric shapes of the Bentley - it helped that it was an unusual shape, as she tried to capture what was actually sitting there in 3D space, rather than try to force her drawing to match her memory of what a car should look like.

The look on Wade's face when she asked - he couldn't tell her about Africa. Though, really, Arthur had posted about it on the journals, so if she really wanted to know, he supposed she could find out pretty easily. "Africa, a few different parts. What about you? Where'd you venture off to?"

"There's one part of Africa I never want to go back to," she said, suddenly thinking of Genosha and the time she'd first teamed up with Wade. "But I'd like to see some other regions someday. In my travels, I went to France and Italy. I saw cave drawings, pop art, Renaissance works and lot of stuff in between. It helped me feel part of a continuum of people - stretching back to our earliest days - who felt the need to create."

So this Pixie evidently had the same memories as the other Pixie where Genosha was concerned. Maybe. That was probably the part of Africa she was talking about. Wade made a mental note to go through and read all the team reports from that time to see if everything else lined up and, if it didn't, where it differed. "So you did the whole classic tour of art places?" He asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Sounds like it was a good experience. Are you designing clothes and stuff or just working at McFrosty's shop?"

"Aye, it was brilliant. I wonder if mutants might have painted their hands on the walls of caves, too? Me, I haven't been doing a lot of designing lately besides these school assignments. College is so much work!" Megan looked up from her drawing and pushed her hair out of the way. "But, it turns out boss lady's boss or whatever, co-owner, is Mr. Worthington! He commissioned me to make a wing-friendly garment for him. It's like, way more challenging and fun than anything else right now. Well, getting to work on your own projects is like that." She looked at Wade, half-hidden by the car.

McFrosty had a boss? Wade wondered how that'd gone over with her. Or maybe Worthington wasn't a literal boss, just... something else. Whichever it was, he was more interested in the underside of the car than he was sorting through it. "Sounds like you know what you want to do, maybe, though?" He asked, thumping a piece of metal that he wanted to detach. The thing about restoring old cars was that the rust was sometimes worse than any damage that might've been done by regular wear and tear picked up on the road. Just leaving a car to sit for decades... shaking his head, he finally pried the piece off and tossed it toward a pile he intended to put in the scrap bucket. "So that's a step ahead of other people."

"I have dreams, aspirations - I guess that counts? I haven't really done much yet." Megan considered herself to be very much unaccomplished compared to the adults she knew. Other adults - she wasn't used to thinking of herself as one. Being in school again made her feel kind of small and stupid, not like an adult at all. She looked up again at the sound of metal clanging on the floor.

"I want to be free to make whatever art inspires me. I can't think of anything worse than having powers, but also being trapped in some mundane work forever because, money and stuff." Besides being kidnapped by a demon and being forced to enact their will, that is. The latter was an actual prison, the former was more like a self-imposed mental prison.

"Well, you're in a good place to get everything figured out, at least," Wade said, sliding out from under the car so he could look at Megan properly. "I mean, you're young, you've got plenty of time and a lot more options than some people here had at your age. So don't worry so much about getting trapped in one thing or another, at least not a lot. You've got the support group here to make sure you're able to at least get your foot in the door wherever you decide you want to go, whatever you decide you want to do."

"This place is very special," Megan agreed. She flipped around her drawing so Wade could see it. The perspective wasn't perfect and the proportions were a little exaggerated, but she was happy with it. You could even see Wade's feet. OK, it was a weird drawing, but it was very Pixie.

Grinning, Wade said, "I like it. Feel free to draw my feet any time you like, Pinkie."