xp_logs | Log: Garrison and Maya

Garrison gives Maya some advice - she may even take it.

Maya stabbed resentfully at her pasta, the deserted main kitchen more then a match for her mood. She'd not heard from her family this week, and while she knew they couldn't contact her often due to the situation - that didn't mean her current situation didn't make her resentful as hell.

"I got to your house this morning, just a little after nine." Kane sung to himself as he wandered into the kitchen. He and Adrienne usually only came down for official meals, keeping the little fridge in their suite stocked up for other meals. But they'd run out of coffee, sending him down to steal some until he could pick more up from Tim Horton's. "In the middle of that riot, couldn't get you off my mind..."

Maya noticed the man from the corner of her eye and flashed a quick hello in sign before reaching up to attach the outer input devices that allowed her cochlear implants to work.

"Do you sign?" She signed.

"Yes." Kane's admittedly very rusty ASL was slow but recognizable.

Maya smiled, an unfamiliar sight lately, and gestured to one of the empty seats beside her. "I'm not the best company but if you don't mind a little grouchiness, I can help you speed up that sign."

"Just give me a second." Kane signed. His reflex chip was already processing her signs, quickly refreshing his own studies. He took a handful of coffee and dumped it into a ziplock bag before pulling out a bottle of water and joining her at the table. "Any reason for the grouchiness?"

"Adults," Maya signed with a shrug, breaking off to stab a little more at her pasta as she looked him over curiously. "You live here?"

He was hot looking, which made her want to be nice but also an adult, which in her opinion was one step above dirt in terms of usefulness. Apart from her family she'd not met many who weren't either more trouble then they were worth or entirely too certain of their own rightness of point of view.

"I do. Most of the time. My girlfriend has a place in the city that we stay at some nights." He signed, feeling more comfortable with it, phrases returning with his speed. "And I work downtown."

"You like the city?" Maya asked, wrinkling her nose slightly in subconscious distaste. "Too much stink, too many people."

She took a bite of her pasta and chewed, eyeing him critically.

"What do you do?"

"I'm an agent with the FBI." He signed. "I work on mutant related cases."

"I've never met anyone who was in the FBI," Maya signed, giving him a closer look now. "I always figured you guys would look more...I don't know, mean?"

"We look like normal people. It's a job, not something you get built in a lab for."

"Sure about that?: Maye signed, but the smile she flashed him was all mischievous scamp rather then arsehole - although there was some of that as well. "How would you know?"

"Detailed video of my birth. Mom forced us to watch it every Mother's Day to understand just how much money she expected us to pony up for gifts to make up for putting her through that. Today, my sister still automatically cries every time she sees a Mother's Day card."

"I like you," Maya informed him after a moment of thoughtful study. She grinned, an event that would have shocked most everyone who had interacted with her to this point. "Don't let it go to your head or anything though."

"The approbation of a teenager? I was planning to announce it in the office newsletter." He said. "So, you're the one who ran away into the woods, eh?"

"I suppose it would be the most interesting news in it," Maya quipped, wrinkling her nose at his question. "I didn't 'run away', I made a strategic retreat rather then punch someone."

"That's not what a strategic retreat is. That's removing yourself from the situation, which normally doesn't involve fleeing into the woods. Once you add that, we move solidly into 'looking for attention'. Any reason why you wanted to rile everyone up?"

"Not everything teenagers do is for attention, and the woods here know me - they like me. I needed that more then I needed here." Maya replied, gripping her fork tightly and taking a bite of her pasta. She didn't really want to go into it, that way lay anger and a fair amount of resentment. Still, she was trying, even if it was just because she hated the idea of putting her family in danger. "I made a fool of myself thinking someone wanted to be a friend when they didn't. I pushed them pretty hard and it weirded them out. So I left, because fuck that noise, and then I came back because I realized it was my fault anyway."

"So why didn't you just leave without saying anything? I mean, a night in the woods might have been a bit cold but you wouldn't have died of exposure. Why did you feel the need to tell everyone that you were storming out?" Kane shrugged, an oddly expressive movement.

"Because at the time I wanted him to know I thought he was an asshole and frankly I was so angry at the whole thing I wanted everyone to know I was angry," Maya replied with a shrug of her own. "People coming after me didn't exactly rate high on my idea of what might happen - mostly I figured people would be happy I was gone."

The combination of anger and self-pity hadn't allowed a truly nuanced response and even if it had she was self-aware enough to realize she probably would have gone with the 'angry teenage girl' response anyhow.

"I was wrong, obviously."

"I think you wanted to be proved wrong. Because that's the way you prove you're not forgotten."

"And if you were right, what does that prove?" Maya asked, gaze curious. "That I'm what? A poor little girl just wanting someone to show her that the world isnt a horrible place?"

"I don't know if I'd go into that much hyperbole. I think, like most people, you want to feel like someone else gives a damn about you."

"I have my family for that," Maya noted, but with less heat then before. "But maybe you're right, maybe I want people to give a damn. Why would they though? I haven't given anyone reason to."

"Yes, the cold reason of a fourteen year old. Right now, people care because you're young and you need protection. That will be good enough for most of the adults for quite a while. If you want your peers or them to care about you for more than that, it's on you to give them reasons. Or not." Kane shrugged. "Really, kid, it's entirely up to you whether you want this to be a place to stay for now or a home."

"Do you think of it as home?" Maya asked, eyebrows raised.

She wasn't sure yet whether she'd take his advice or not. The fact that he wasn't ordering her to do anything...yet; made her more likely to however.

"I do. It's not my only home but it is still a home for me." He said. "It's a place that I can feel like I'm safe and that I belong to something. That's important to me."

"Thanks," Maya replied, picking up her bowl and gesturing to the sink behind them. "I don't really know what this place is going to be yet, but I guess I won't completely write it off just yet."