xp_logs | Log: Jennie & Maya

Backdated to after the journal fight with Tandy, can't remember the date.

Jennie decides to offer Maya some guidance in her own unique way. It actually works.

Maya stalked into the gym, still furious at Tandy and the world for being so completely and utterly unfair and unreasonable. It had been a simple statement, and given how completely Tandy had refused to see how wrong she was, Maya was well on her way to just wanting to punch a fist through a wall.

She glared at Jennie from across the room, not particularly feeling socialable enough to want to humour whatever weird ass act of contrition the woman was going to be expecting of her. Why the adults in this place seemed to pick on her, when all she was doing was living her life was beyond her.

“I saw your note, so what the hell do you want?” Maya asked, tone belligerent. If Wade didn’t scare her, Jennie certainly didn’t stand a chance. She crossed her arms and stopped just short of arm’s length from Jennie, chin held upwards in defiance. “I don’t have time to apologise right now for things dumb ass white people should know, so make it quick.”

In response the older woman quirked a dark eyebrow. "All right then," she smiled a smile that held many thoughts but spoke none of them, and laced her hands behind her back. "Hit me."

“No,” Maya replied, glaring at Jennie as her body instinctively changed her stance to a more solid one, better capable of defending against an attack. “Just how crazy, stupid do you think I am? I hit you, you go crying to Wade and I get in trouble. Tell Tandy if she can’t fight her own battles, she can go choke on a bag of dicks.”

"Look at you, all bark and no bite. Seething with rage. Life has fucked you over, again and again, and you are howling against it. You are dying to just punch someone in the face. I can see it in your eyes. So here I am, offering you a free ride. Go ahead, punch me. What happens in here stays between us. There are no cameras. There is no one watching. There is just you, and me, and that rage of yours. So hit me," Jennie put her hands behind her back once again. "I won't fight you. I won't hurt you, I'll have my arms behind my back the whole time. The only rule I ask or is that I get to dodge. That's it. You hit me, I dodge. No one knows."

“What’s in it for you?” Maya asked, fists clenching at her sides. She hadn’t heard any derision in Jennie’s voice but she was so used to people just writing her off by now that any trust she had was few and far between. If Jennie was honest and serious, she’d have a chance to work off some of this extra anger, if she was merely setting Maya up for a fall, there was no way in hell anyone would believe her over this adult. “How do I know you’re not setting me up?”

"Nothing, other than a little bit of a workout," said Jennie. Her stance was relaxed, balanced, and she gave off nothing but calm. "As for the rest, well, there's nothing I can give you other than my word. But my word is worth something, you're just going to have to trust that."

“If you get me in trouble, I’ll do more than just punch you,” Maya threatened as she stepped forward into Jennie’s space, aiming an almost half-hearted punch at her stomach. It was a measuring shot, not really intended to hit and more to see just how serious Jennie was about this. “And don’t think I can’t make good on that, because I can.”

Jennie dodged with a dancer's grace. Then she placed her hands behind her back once more. "Shall we begin?" she said.

Maya didn’t answer, following her first punch with another as she moved after Jennie, her own feet’s movement a mixture of a dancer’s lithe grace and some of the training North had been showing her for knife fighting, although that was a much more brutal, close quarters game of stick the person with the lethal weapon before they stick you.

And yet, Maya couldn't touch her. Jennie always remained frustratingly, maddeningly out of reach. She wasn't even using her powers to dodge, just her years of training and her calm balancing off the girl's own incandescent rage. What was worse, her hands remained firmly clasped behind her back.

“Nobody does anything for nothing,” Maya stated, her breathing only slightly strained from her exertion, daily dance practice had at least given her the ability to keep going despite a myriad of discomforts, indeed it was actually expected. She launched herself at Jennie, hoping to catch the woman off guard with a tackle rather than a punch. If she could get her on the ground, she would see just how quickly the façade of calm cracked.

And Maya only caught air as Jennie flipped out of the way, landing solidly. She put her hands behind her back once more. "Again, Maya. Hit me. Are you even trying?"

Maya’s body twisted, almost as if she were another person entirely now, the sheer purity of her anger wiping away conscious thought and dropping her into a place of possibilities. It was in this place that her mutant power took over, pulling fighting styles from distant memory of half-seen training, both her father’s and those that she’d seen at the mansion since she’d arrived. Her legs and arms moved sinuously, but without her control, all bent upon the single goal of scoring a hit upon the woman before her.

curious thought Jennie, recalling what she had read about the girl's powers. But the girl's anger had completely taken over, and Jennie continued her dance, dodging and weaving, keeping her hands clasped behind her back where she could. Never being the aggressor, never once threatening the girl. Also carefully monitoring how the girl exerted herself, in case of injury.

"Come on, Maya, stop trying to hit me and hit me." There was no taunt in Jennie's voice, it was calm and matter of fact.

Too much, it was too much, what had begun as a niggle at the back of her head as she switched between fighting styles rapidly, became a full blown spike of agony as she begun combining fighting styles and movements into new moves and patterns, her mind a prism of intent that turned a multitude of emotions and observations into a single motivating thought.

It couldn’t last, not at such a level and Maya stumbled, almost falling as she dropped back to herself, falling out of the purity of rhythm with no consciousness, and back into the reality of pain.

“Enough,” Maya replied, hand reaching upward to stem the small amount of blood gathered at her nose. “I’m done.”

A hand bearing a white handkerchief appeared, and Jennie gently pressed it to Maya's nose. "Sit," she commanded. "Tilt your head forward and pinch your nose shut," a bottle of water appeared at Maya's knee. "Take a minute. But I need you to understand something. You have a lot of anger. A lot of anger," she held up a hand to stave off the girl's protests. "This is not necessarily a bad thing. Your anger protected you. It kept you safe. It helped save you and keep you sane when you were in a bad situation. It was like a fire that kept you warm on a very cold day. However, you're no longer in that situation, and all that anger is not going to keep you safe anymore. In fact, it's going to start getting in your way. You couldn't lay a finger on me today, and I didn't use my hands or my powers, but I dodged you with ease. Can you guess why?"

“Anger,” Maya replied with an eye roll, but she sat as Jennie bid her and took the handkerchief to stem the flow of blood from her nose, following the older woman’s instructions. “You’re going to tell me some Kung Fu, David Carradine level Grasshopper crud and I’ll nod my head and we’ll sit down for tea and crumpets and I’ll have learnt a very important lesson, right?”

"No, I was expecting more angry sass, to be honest," Jennie said dryly. "You have the ability to kick my ass, Maya. You should have hit me several times over, but you couldn't." Jennie knelt so she was eye level with the girl. "Think about that, what if someone attacked you and didn't have their hands behind their back? What use is your anger to you then? I'm speaking to you on behalf of another very, very angry young woman, whose anger couldn't protect her when something horrible happened to her."

“I’m not a verbaliser,” Maya noted, waving toward her ears and switching to sign for a moment. “And while I am a talker, I can’t use my hands when I’m fighting. Do you know sign?”

It wasn’t signed with much hope, to be honest Maya had used her implants and physical voice almost exclusively since she got to the mansion. Other than Artie, and people like Wade and Marie-Ange who made it a habit to speak to her in her language, most people didn’t think to ask what she preferred. It was just one more thing to be angry about.

In response Jennie sat down. "I'm not as fluent as I would like," she signed. "You will have to forgive me if I make mistakes," she added. "I cannot understand fully what has happened to you, what your life is like, where you come from, but I do understand what it is like to be so full of anger, to feel like no one understands you, to feel left out, left behind, looked down on, even though you are in a place you should belong."

“Most people aren’t,” Maya signed with a smile, the first one she’d felt like cracking all day. She pulled the handkerchief away and noted that the blood had stopped. She should probably be worried that her body kept doing that, but considering all the other freaky stuff going on around her, it didn’t seem like that big a deal. “Trying counts for a lot. You were like me?”

"In a way," Jennie signed, and shook her head ruefully. "The teachers called me 'Vegas Trailer Trash.'" She painstakingly spelled that out. "I loved to push buttons. Get drunk. Break rules. Get in trouble. I felt like no one cared about me, so why should I care?"

Jennie rubbed her fingertips together, trying to think. She'd learned sign as part of a cover for a mission, and kept up with it, but as always trying to communicate in a language that wasn't your own could be difficult. She could appreciate some of Maya's frustration.

"But then I started to really get in trouble. Big trouble. The kind I couldn't get myself out of on my own. And... I got hurt. Badly. Bad enough to the point where I swore no one was ever going to hurt me like that again. Or hurt anyone else for that matter."

“I don’t want to cause trouble,” Maya signed, some of her frustration showing in her hands. “People are just so ignorant here sometimes, and they act like I’m the one in the wrong when I’m just trying to open their eyes a little.”

Maya sighed, feeling like she had so many things to say and so little time to say them in, she wanted Jennie to know she heard her, understand what she was telling her but how did you explain to someone about feeling like you wanted to leave while staying exactly where you were, a need to distance but cling as well. Contradiction seemed to be watchwords for her these days and her own frustration with herself made it even harder to be there for anybody else.

"I understand," signed Jennie. "I really do. And it's that anger of yours that's getting in the way people understanding you clearly. All that people hear is your anger, not the words behind it. Not the legitimate things you are saying. And so they react in the same. That's what I mean. If we could go through that rage of yours, allow you to release some of it, then it would be easier for you to do a lot of things. Communicate. Fight properly. Live without feeling like you want to explode. Does that sound like a good thing to you?" Jennie raised her eyebrows with the question.

“Yeah,” Maya signed back, taking a moment to work out Jennie’s words before she responded. It wasn’t like the effortless conversations with Artie, who used sign as much as she did, but it was still a lot easier for her then having to remember to actually verbalise constantly. She deliberately made an effort to slow her own sign in order to make it easier for the older woman. “I mean, I’m working with Haller on the flashbacks and the mental stuff but I think I’m probably frustrating the hell out of him lately.”