Quentin & Maya, Friday evening

[xp-erverse.livejournal.com]

Maya tries to show Quentin where she comes from and why she is as she is, and he could not be more dismissive if he tried.


Maya had been spending a quiet afternoon browsing, the admittedly, excellent Science Fiction section of the school library when she found herself about to launch a book at one Quentin Quire’s head, all without even turning around. It was through force of will alone that she didn’t allow herself to let go of said book, but instead stood locked on the spot, her peripheral vision driving her nerves mad with tension.

It was so weird, to have her body react without her conscious decision or approval. It wasn’t even like he was all that scary, the only thing that he’d ever done was…oh.

“Quentin, get lost,” Maya hissed quietly, unwilling to make a huge scene in Topaz’s domain, someone she actually respected. “Before I do something really nasty to you.”

The telepath had come to the library to research a case in quiet. Fuckwad had seemingly decided to chirp the entire Robyn discography so staying in his room was not an option. He had just set down his laptop when the little ball of fury that was Maya flared in his head, and he instinctively ducked and covered his face with his hands to avoid the book that never came. He was flush with embarrassment when he stood back up.

"Whatever," he said dismissively, though he still eyed her warily as he took his seat. "Go to hell."

“Remind me to just let you get hit by a book next time,” Maya replied with a disgusted sigh, finally able to get her body to move without immediately doing something aggressive. She walked to the opposite side of the desk he was sitting at and slumped into a chair. “Why are you even here?”

He eyed her suspiciously as she moved, readying himself to fling a barrage of wild psychic bolts at her if she chose to escalate things (or, he couldn't help but consider, decided to get back at him for assaulting her in the first place). His posture remained wary and ready when she sat, and he made no attempt to hide his hostility. Not that he ever really did.

"Why are you here?" he countered. "You're not really good at this whole people thing if you're sitting down with the person you just tried to hit and then ordered to go away. And I'm working. I have a job. Just like every other good cog in the capitalist-industrialist machine. Trading my labor for survival and letting the property owners get fat off me."

Maya caught his gaze and held it in what could only be described as an intense look for several seconds, as if trying to decide something, before she broke off and fiddled with the book she’d picked out.

“Did you make them pay?” she asked.

Quentin returned the look, taking several seconds to understand what exactly she meant. When the meaning of her question finally dawned on him, he looked away. "Not enough. Maybe too much. I don't know."

“Good, that’s…good,” Maya noted, her eyes on the book rather than him. She felt uncomfortable here, like her skin wanted to get up and walk away while she just sat. “Can you read people?”

"Not as easily as Hot Doctor Jean or Chuckles can, but yes. My telepathy is more projective than receptive. Why?"

“Because you showed me something that can’t have been easy, even if you were angry,” Maya noted, still uncomfortable, still twitchy as hell. She didn’t let people here in, she didn’t share things with them, and she didn’t expect to stay here anymore than was needed but it had been more difficult to keep to that the longer she was here. The people here had a way of working their way in, no matter how harsh you were. “I wanted to show you who I really am but I don’t know how it works, if I just think at you?”

He would say no, that’s what she expected, probably with some kind of stupid dig at how disgusting he found her but she had to offer, it was only right.

His gaze returned to her, his expression unreadable. "Again. Why?"

“Because you feel like I do,” Maya replied, hating just how vulnerable this was making her, cursing her need for connection with the people here. No matter how angry she was, the need was there and it sucked. “Not about the same things, not for the same reasons, but I want you to really see I’m not like those people you showed me.”

"Look, I get it, you're a mutant woman of color with a disability more severe than having been dropped on your head too many times as a baby. You're traveling all those intersections alone and you see everyone else around you going straight. It blows. But you should stop giving a damn what people think about you, too. We're all alone. Deal with it."

“You still care, you can’t tell me you don’t,” Maya noted, raised eyebrow calling him out on that bullshit. “You talk a really good game but I see you caring.”

Quentin rolled his eyes and opened his laptop, but didn't open any work. "Don't mistake morbid curiosity for concern."

“Your pants are on fire,” Maya replied, folding her arms and giving him an exasperated look. “You wouldn’t be telling me to stop caring if you were only morbidly curious, and you haven’t walked away yet. You care. Same as I care. It’s why it hurt so bad.”

"No, fists to my face and the boots to my gut are what hurt." Maybe chinchilla serenading wouldn't be so bad after all, he considered. He might accomplish more. "Fine, if it'll shut you up and you leave. Just . . . concentrate on whatever. Remember every detail you can."

Choosing what to show him was the question now, she wanted to show him who she’d been and who she was now and why it was so difficult to just be okay with everything. So she decided to show him her Grandmother and the first time she’d danced at a PowWow, the pride she’d felt at wearing dancers regalia for the first time and the look in her family’s eyes when she’d come running after it finished, excited that she hadn’t missed any of the steps.

Most memories are fragmented on way or another. Blurry or absent details, limited focus on key components, the memory of the emotions stronger than the event itself. But even Quentin's gentle, defensive connection with Maya was like stepping into a live-action reenactment. He watched the little girl mimicking the movements of an older woman, engaging in centuries-old tradition that bonded them as family and a people.

But Quentin didn't take this scene as heartwarming. He had no family with which to share his culture. He had no concept of his culture at all. "Wonderful," he said through gritted teeth, "Is that it?"

"Not even close," Maya replied, keeping her eyes closed as she thought over what to show next. "You need to see who I was before I can show you who I am."

She concentrated on her Grandfather next, watching him work on an old truck, showing her how to change the oil and then patiently teaching her what each tool was called and what it was used for.

She'd lost her hearing at a young age but through work on lip reading and sign language, she'd managed to not lose connection to her family or what they could teach her.

The sudden silence was jarring to Quentin. Being alone in a quiet room was one thing. But this silence had weight to it and it pressed down on him. When his astral form hovering above the girl and her grandfather opened his mouth to speak, the sound shocked him back into silence.

"Congratulations on having grandparents, I guess," he said with pointed tone when he could finally speak again.

“They raised me when my Dad couldn’t be there,” Maya noted, concentrating on her father as the last link in the chain. She hadn’t known her mother, who had died giving birth to her. She’d never made any effort to find out about that side of her family, and they had certainly never made any effort to find her. “He’s a mercenary, like Wade. He was gone a lot to make sure we had enough money to live on but he tried to take care of me when he was home.”

An image of a man, much younger than the Grandfather from before now surfaced, showing a younger Maya how to track something through the woods. Something else was there this time, a presence much like Quentin’s astral form, only different, older and inhuman and vast like the ocean. The young Maya accepted it’s presence as simply what was right, allowing it to twine through her emotions and experience the world as she saw it.

Unsure of what it was and what threat it posed, Quentin began to pull back. He could cut the cord at a moment's notice if he needed to.

"Is that why you act so shitty, because you're the spawn of a hired killer?" Still, though, Quentin had never met a line he didn't want to cross, regardless of the consequences.

“Actually, he’s why I’m not a complete asshole, but also why I’m here rather than with them,” Maya replied with a touch of amusement and raised eyebrows. “We never had a lot of money but he did what he could to make sure we had enough to live on. Least, that’s what my Grandmother always told me. You ready for what’s next?”

"I'm ready for a JO and a nap," he quipped, but waved his hand to signify she could proceed.

This had been the part Maya hadn’t been looking forward to, reliving the car accident that had triggered her mutation and her fear of cars was not exactly what she’d have called fun, let alone the fact that it tended to set off her flight or fight reaction, which mostly meant a powers incident and someone looking at her like she was a crazy bitch. She clamped down hard on her power like she’d been shown, knowing this would be rough and turned her memory back to that day.

They’d been going for a normal drive, nothing in any way exciting or unusual about it. She’d been joking with her Dad about some school situation, some guy she liked and he’d been teasing her about it. She remembered the look on his face when he went to down-shift, the sudden blankness to his face as he reached over and undid her seat-belt, than made her open the door while they were still driving.

It had happened so fast, she hadn’t had time enough to be scared, not really scared until he was pushing her out of a moving car and her life was flashing before her eyes as the car she’d been in blew up.

She’d landed, she wasn’t sure exactly how but she could remember the sting of the gravel against her hands and she tucked and rolled, and the abject fear that her Dad had been in that explosion.

She’d curled into a ball, dirt covering her face except where the tear tracks made her face muddy. It wasn’t until a hand was pulling her, until her Dad was looking her over that she realised he was alive, even if nothing would ever be okay, at least he was alive.

Maya came back to herself with a gasp, waiting to make sure Quentin was okay, before she dove into the next memory, this one was a few days after the accident and her reaction to waking from a nightmare only to try to kill her own grandmother as her power manifested again, trying to protect her from a threat that didn’t exist. It had been after that, that her father had called Wade, and hadn’t that meeting gone well.

"No, enough." Viewing such a memory normally would have been bad enough. But with Maya's perfect recall, Quentin felt like he was there, too, lying in a crumpled heap on the road just an instant the violent explosion ripped through the car. He landed in the hospital, too, and his burned, bandaged hands were around the throat of some old lady who was only there to care for him . . .

The part of Quentin not drawn into the maelstrom of Maya's mind broke contact, sending him reeling back to the real world. His eyes snapped open and he all but jumped up from his seat.

"The fuck was that."

“I warned you,” Maya noted, somewhat mildly given how locked down her body was, knuckles white against the wood of her chair. “You want to see the moment I tried to kill Wade when I first met him, or how I almost ended up doing the same with Xavin? When I said they and I should never have been roommates, I wasn’t being a bitch. We were the worst possible combination with both our issues, but it was even worse given how little either of us really felt like compromising. After you said what you did, and I told you about the real world, this is what I meant. I don’t get to not see things, most of the time I can barely stand it but I never meant to actually hurt you like I did, I didn’t think I could even do that.”

"That's not the real world," Quentin spat back, as he packed up his belongings. He wasn't going to get any work done here now. He was probably going to spend the next hour sitting next to the toilet until this nausea went away. "That's what happens when your criminal of a father crosses the wrong person without thinking about what that means for his family."

“Not everyone gets to choose their life, Quentin, you know that,” Maya replied, fighting the urge to simply snap. Anger was not the answer right now, no matter how much she wanted to hit him. That was her Dad he was talking about. “Mercenary doesn’t equal criminal, Dad sent me here so he could keep me safe. He’s never done anything but protect his family however he could.”

"And now you're here. Great job." Belongings packed, bag over shoulder, Quentin turned to leave. "Oh, and by the way?" he started, looking back at her over his shoulder. "Get your head examined. There's something weird in there and if you're not lucky, it'll kill you." Not that he knew for sure, but it seemed like a thing to say.

“You talk a lot about things you have no understanding of,” Maya noted, giving him a look before she turned away and opened the book she’d grabbed. She’d tried, that was all anybody could ask of her. She wasn’t dumb enough to keep going when someone obviously wasn’t going to get it. “I’ll leave you alone from now on.”