xp_logs | Log: Marie-Ange & Maya

Maya flees to Wade's suite after the issue with Xavin but then when he leaves, she decides to snoop. Marie-Ange takes a dim view of Maya's behaviour.

Wade had left a few minutes ago, leaving Maya at a bit of a loose end. She took the opportunity for a bit of snooping - she wanted to know a little more about this person that her father had trusted enough to leave her with, and yet hadn't mentioned at all otherwise. Not that he made a habit of mentioning his mercenary buddies to her, but why let logic spoil a perfectly good reason to be annoyed.

It wasn't long before she came across what looked like an extensive knife collection and a tub of off grey playdough. She'd known the man was weird, but what grown adult collected grey playdough?

"That." The voice in the doorway was lightly accented, soft, and overwhelming unamused. "Is C-4 and unless your father is far more irresponsible then I have been given to believe, you have no idea what to do with it." Marie-Ange strode into the room and plucked the tub of C-4 off the dresser. "Out." She said, pointing to the doorway. "If you leave the room quietly, I will give you the abridged version of the "what in the hell do you think you are doing in here" lecture."

Maya didn't usually turn her implants on unless there were hearing people around, so to say Marie-Ange startled her would have been an understatement. She felt a moment of blankness - almost as if her brain was changing track and she was being shoved aside.

The Maya that responded seemed to know a hell of a lot more about knives because she grabbed one and went for the woman's throat.

The knife thudded wetly into a shield made of vines and flowers and then fell to the ground, covered in goo as the shield dissolved - replaced with a staff as long as Marie-Ange was tall and thick as her wrist. "I am certain you did not mean to try to kill me." She said, coldly.

Maya burst into tears, stumbling backwards till the bed hit her behind the knees and made her sit down abruptly. Whatever had driven her minutes before was gone, leaving only a sense of fear at the angry woman in front of her and a need for her Dad.

"I want my Dad," she hiccupped, trying to stop the tears that didn't seem entirely in her control. "I don't like this place and I want to go home."

"You do not know this place, and any warm welcome you would have gotten has been ..." Marie-Ange waved in the air, annoyed and dissolved the imaged staff. "delayed at best by your attitude." Then she flipped on the rest of the lights, and sat down in one of Wade's chairs, and handed Maya a t-shirt from the basket of laundry Wade hadn't folded yet. "The chip, on your upper arm, is not helping. I know it is hard. To be strange in a new place. But. You assume the worst of everyone, and it makes a future that writes itself." Her sign was good, fluid - but mixed with odd grammar and words, more a direct transliteration of english than true ASL. "Stop going through other people's rooms. I know your father taught you not to do that."

Maya wiped at her eyes with the t-shirt Marie-Ange handed her before twisting it around her hands, clamping down on the instinctual anger that seemed to be half of what she felt at all times these days - followed up with fear and a sense of panic that never quite left. It was grating being around people when all she wanted to do was escape.

A blush that didn't show made her cheeks hot and she continued to wipe at the tears that wouldn't stop leaking. Her Dad, heck her Grandparents had taught her better then how she'd been behaving.

"I'm scared," Maya finally signed, dropping the now damp shirt into her lap. "I just wanted to know more about him."

Marie-Ange rolled her eyes. "You can speak, and you can sign, and I know you have met Artie, so you have access to translation services if your implants are acting up. You could have asked, instead of tripping alarms and getting yourself in trouble. Wade left you a key in case of an emergency, not so you could go through his things."

"People lie all the time," Maya verbalised, reaching up to attach the outward attachments to her cochlear implants. "It's the first thing Dad ever taught me."

Marie-Ange coughed, and made the sign for 'bullshit'. "Make up your mind, Maya. Either you do not trust your father to find a safe good place for you, and so you hate everyone here and are content with many people disliking you because you are foul mouthed and temperamental to people who only want to help, or you love him and trust him and are going to stop acting like a pampered infant and make the best of this. "

"I am not pampered!" Maya signed, dropping back to her preferred communication technique as her anger spiked. "And I'm fourteen!"

"You are acting like you are five." Marie-Ange's signing remained the same fluid calm signs as before, even if she was grinding her teeth. "Homesick, that is fine. Missing your father, understandable. Lashing out at people who tried to welcome you here, before you knew any of them? What did you expect? And worse, to go through the personal things of the man who did your father a favor -just so-, without asking for anything in return?"

She poked a finger in Maya's direction. "And do not even try to suggest Wade might be untrustworthy, or you are implying your father has poor judgement, and from your tears earlier, I think you cannot make that lie stay."

Maya paused, glaring at Marie-Ange but unable to refute her logic. She hadn't exactly been what could be called 'nice' and her Grandmother especially would have boxed her ears if she saw her right now.

"I guess," Maya allowed grudgingly.

"So, it is you are angry, and missing home, and scared, yes? Not..." Marie-Ange paused in her signing. "Bugger, what is the sign for "naturally?" She fingerspelled out the word. This was so much easier with Artie, he -could- hear, so the sign language was just practice. Good practice, but practice. "Angry, scared, homesick... defensive because you assume people will treat you badly. Why is this?" She paused again. "All of it, not just the last question."

"I turned them on, I can hear you if you speak," Maya signed, realising she hadn't actually told Marie-Ange what she'd been doing in her hair. "I don't know?"

"So?" Marie-Ange signed. "Sign is your preferred language, is that correct?" She stretched one hand out, letting loose some tension in her fingers. "I speak English to people who prefer it too. So, you are angry but you do not know why, and you are lashing out at everyone around you, this is correct?"

"It is," Maya signed in reply, her smile shy and somewhat hesitant but it felt like the first time she'd smiled since she got here. "I guess that's right."

It wasn't completely everyone - but mostly that was through effort of will more then any lack of anger or a desire to snap at people. If Maya was honest with herself the anger had been there since the car bomb almost killed her father and herself.

Marie-Ange frowned. "I am a very bad therapist. So you are going to go to Professor Xavier, and tell him I said you had to ask for therapy." She gestured at the room. "He is going to give you tea. Drink it. Do not be rude about it. Put sugar in it if you have to. He is very nice, and very old, and has taken you into his family home without thinking twice about it." Really it was usually very good tea. "I strongly suggest at least pretending to be nice, even if half the people here are terrible. Nice gets you more than throwing knives."

"The knife was," Maya paused in her signing, trying to figure out how to say 'the other' without sounding like a crazy person. How did you explain being shunted sideways by your own brain as it dumped a load of adrenaline in your system and then proceeded to do things you had no idea how to do? "Weird."

"Mutant powers are strange. Frustrating. Useful" None of the signs really had the right feel to them, but together they worked well enough, Marie-Ange decided. "You are, as you said, fourteen. Keep out of rooms where people keep knives all over." She and Wade were going to have the conversation about his paranoid knife stashing habit again. "and you will have less weird knife problems."

"Is it sweet tea?" Maya asked hopefully - she had a preference for peach flavoured but she could deal with the normal stuff in a pinch. She wasn't entirely sure about going to see the rich old guy who's house this was, but she supposed the alternative was to keep going how she was and that wasn't very palatable given everything that had happened.

The man she'd met when she first got here had seemed kind enough but he'd mostly talked to Wade and then offered her a place to stay while there were tests done. It wasn't like she thought he'd kick her out if she wasn't a mutant but there hadn't been much discussion about what would happen if she wasn't. Since the test had come back positive, she supposed it was one less thing to worry about.

"I do not know." Marie-Ange signed. "He usually just knows what people like. You are changing the subject." She rubbed at her face. This was not, really really not her forte. "I should not have to tell you things like do not mock people's names, or not to snoop, or get upset when people react to your hostility with their own."

"Fine, I'll go see the rich old guy who's house this is and get 'therapy'," Maya signed with resignation, trying not to fidget. She really wanted to leave before Wade got back, she imagined having both of them in the room would be twice as bad. "It's not my fault when people act like idiots. Why shouldn't I tell them they're idiots?"

"Because you are a fourteen year old girl who has no idea who is and is not an idiot, and acting like you do will make people look to cut down your arrogance." Marie-Ange signed, with jerky motions. "Why do you think it is good to make fun of someone's name? Does having a name you have never heard of make someone an idiot? You especially owe Namor, who I know you have never met, an apology. You know better." She had never wished so hard in her life for Forge or Dani to be here right now.

"No. " Maya signed, wrinkling her nose and sighing.

She didn't want to apologise to anyone, even if she knew Marie-Ange was right and her family would be horrified at her behaviour among these people. It was easier to just stay angry, it meant she didn't have to really think about everything that was happening, or be afraid.

"Do I have to apologise?" she asked after a moment.

"No." Marie-Ange signed, and shrugged to emphasise the point. "If you do not, people may continue to think you are a spoiled, horrible, immature child." It was -very- clear what Marie-Ange thought about Maya's actions. "You choose your actions, you do not choose the consequences. You also did not answer the question. Why pick on someone's name?"

"Because he's some stupid arrogant white guy," Maya signed, her gestures sharp as her embarrassment turned to anger. "Like that Benedict Cumberbatch guy, they all think they're so awesome and their names mean absolutely nothing except their parents thought they sounded cool."
Marie-Ange flipped her phone out towards Maya, showing her a picture of an Asian-appearing man in swim briefs, sitting poolside. "This. Is Namor. Maya. Now do you see why I think you are an immature arse?"

"Oh," Maya signed, anger gone, changed to mortification in an instant.

Marie-Ange ground her teeth. "Yes. "oh."" She made very sarcastic air quotes in the air. "You assumed, because you are being an angry sullen brat, that everyone here was rich, white and odd, because Wade is rich, white and odd."

Maya fought the urge to look down, embarrassment surging to the fore again from the ashes of the anger she'd felt only a moment ago - she had made assumptions based on Wade and on the Angel guy who threw money around like it was water and just didn't seemed to care how it got used. That sort of wealth, the type that made people not care what they spent it on, or whether people owed them anything, it made her want to hate them just for being alive, even if she knew they didn't even realise.

"I should apologise," Maya signed, shoulders deflating slightly. "And I'm not a brat."

"No? Just a silly girl with a big chip on her shoulder then? Eat your humble pie, Maya and be lucky most people here are going to forgive you." Marie-Ange hadn't, not quite yet.

"I'm not silly," Maya signed with a frown and a glare. She might accept that she had a chip on her shoulder, and that she had made mistakes but she wouldn't be treated like a small thing, not by anybody. "I'll apologise, and if people forgive me then fine, but I'm not stupid, and it's not up to you to treat me like I don't matter."

"You made silly decisions, you are acting like a brat, and you only matter because I like Wade and he likes your father." Marie-Ange signed - angrily. "Shut your mouth, open your eyes and learn very quickly that most of the world thinks nothing of you, and you have to make people think well of you and you do not do that by throwing words like rocks and snooping through people's rooms."

Maya blinked at her, sensing that she'd pushed a little too far, and perhaps needed to do a bit of damage control if she didn't want this woman making her life a living hell while she was here. She was his partner, after all, even if Maya didn't exactly understand what was going on in that regard, and so did not want to know.

"I matter for myself," Maya signed, but it was subdued and she looked somewhat more contrite then she had at other times. "I don't care what the rest of the world thinks, or whether you only care because of Wade, because whether I never even met any of you, I still matter and this place cares that I'm here, even if you don't."

She'd felt the welcome here, a faint brush of spirit fingers against her face when she'd stepped through the front gate. It hadn't been anything understandable beyond a feeling of safety and the ancient drowsiness of a land that had seen many of her kind in the past and welcomed her back again.

"You clearly do not matter to yourself or you would not be acting like an arrogant child who thinks no one here could possibly ever understand you, or your situation." Marie-Ange's sign was painstakingly slow, despite her anger. Because of her anger. "I did not say no one cares. I said the world does not care. You walk outside this place, and act like you do, you will get slapped, or shot, or any number of things." She rubbed sore fingers and leaned against the doorway. "You do not care about anything I say, that is clear." So she pulled out her phone. "You have as long as it takes for Wade to text me your father's phone number to convince me not to call him."

"You." Maya looked surprised, and then alarmed as she paused in her signing and thought furiously of anything she could say that would stop this lady from calling her Dad. "I'm sorry?"

Marie-Ange's phone beeped, and she looked up, shook her head at Maya and then tapped out the number Wade had texted her. "Now you have until he answers to convince me to go easy on you."