xp_logs | Log: Maya and Angelo

Angelo takes Maya out and about to do some volunteer work with at risk kids

“You done anything like this before?" Angelo asked as the bus pulled away. "It's cool if not, it isn't like it's hard to learn."

“Not really,” Maya responded, fiddling with her seat belt as if trying to find a comfortable spot for the cross over. She had her implants in and turned on, given that she’d be dealing with a lot of people who didn’t know her, and she wasn’t comfortable keeping her eyes only on Angelo while they were travelling, so couldn’t exactly sign or read his lips. She might be okay riding in a bus but that didn’t mean she was comfortable with them, they just didn’t make her black out panic like cars did. “I mean, not like this, all formal like.”

Angelo nodded.

"Well, you'll pick it up in no time. Mostly it's signing people in - with real names or not, they have to give some sort of a name - and getting everybody fed."

“Why we taking their names?” Maya asked, gaze narrowing in suspicion as she looked over at him. “What does it matter who they are, especially if you don’t care that they’re giving us a false one.”

He shrugged.

"It's good to have something to call people, as you get to know them. And then if they stop showing up, it makes it easier to ask around and try to make sure they're safe."

“I guess,” Maya said, glancing at the people riding the bus with them, it was the usual mix of people on the weekend, and they all seemed to be making a concerted effort not to look at each other. Public transport was weird that way, like everyone agreed to a certain lack of space as long as nobody acknowledged anybody else within it. “What happens if you find out they aren’t safe?”

"I do as much as I can about it", he said simply. "Bringing in as much help as I need to get them out of trouble. Or if I can't do that, to stop other people landing in the same trouble."

“Does that work? Stopping other people from getting into the same trouble, I mean?” Maya asked, curious. In her, admittedly, limited knowledge, people were very good at doing stupid things no matter what you tried to do to stop them. “Don’t they just find other things to get into instead?”

"Usually", he agreed with a wry grin. "But you've gotta do what you can. And sometimes it's not the kind of trouble they'd choose to get into, even if they walk on the dangerous side."

“So, what do you do when you’re not out saving the world, or herding dumbasses away from trouble?”

Maya swung her legs slightly, still short enough that her legs only just touched the ground on the bus. She’d been glancing at Angelo as she talked, but now she turned to look out the window instead, watching the suburbs wiz by around them. As long as she could hear him - and he knew she could, today - he could go with that.

"I'm a public defence lawyer. So pretty much more of the same."

“You’re a lawyer?” Maya asked incredulously, head turning quickly back to him. “You don’t look like the type to eat little old ladies for breakfast.”

He chuckled. "We're not all bad, I promise. And I know what it's like to be a kid getting deeper and deeper into trouble."

“I’m not that kind of teenager,” Maya responded, turning her head away again, watching a man walk his dog in the distance. She wondered what his story was, but then she wondered that about everybody she saw. “You ever defend someone you knew was guilty?”

"Yeah", he said frankly. "It comes with the job - but it isn't always about getting them off scot free. If I know they're guilty, the important thing is why they did whatever it was, and then getting them the best deal I can. Not everybody who's guilty of something deserves to go to jail."

“What if they do deserve jail,” Maya asked pointedly, still watching the man and his dog. She could make out the breed now, a corgi, it’s stubby little legs moving it along at a rate of speed she hadn’t known small, corgi like dogs could reach. “Can you ever refuse to defend someone?”

"I could probably persuade my boss to take me off a case, every once in a while. But I wouldn't get away with that too often, and everybody's entitled to a lawyer. The cases I get, they can't afford to pay top dollar - and you're right, some of them do deserve jail and there's usually not a whole lot I could do to keep them out of it, if the evidence is against them. But I always want to understand why they did what they did, regardless."

“Must be hard doing that, you ever had to defend someone who hurt a mutant?” she asked, curling her legs up under her in the seat, small enough to still do so. “I mean, I can’t imagine that sort of thing would be easy to understand.”

He paused.

"That depends on the person. I've never had to defend a case like that myself, but I can imagine circumstances that would make it understandable. Not right, especially if they went after a random mutant, but maybe understandable."

"Why is it understandable?" Maya asked, turning to him again as she wondered whether she could ever do that sort of job. "I wouldn't think something as wrong as that could ever be in any way understandable."

"Mental health problems", he said simply. "Maybe compounded by something bad happening to them or their family because of a specific mutant. I didn't say always understandable."

“Did you know that ‘mental health problems’ is almost always used as an excuse when some nutjob goes crazy and shoots up a place?” Maya asked, eyebrows raised. “Gives a bad name to people who actually have mental health problems. Also gives a pass to assholes who are just angry at the world that their fear of whatever isn’t being taken seriously enough.”

Maya didn’t say anything about ‘something bad’, because if someone hurt her family, she couldn’t say she wouldn’t do ‘something bad’ in return. Although, not to some random mutant, that kind of all-consuming fear and anger just wasn’t in her, despite how hard it was sometimes to stop herself from verbally attacking people. Words, while harmful in their own way, didn’t leave someone in hospital fighting for life.

"Maya, you've just yourself used the words 'nutjob' and 'goes crazy'", he said calmly. "And yeah, by a long way not all people with mental problems are gonna be violent, and just being angry at the world doesn't qualify. But it doesn't mean none of the violent ones need help."

“You know you’ve lost if you have to start picking at people’s word usage, right?” Maya replied, but there was a lightness in her eyes, a teasing glint. “It’s just that when people use easy answers for something, it’s easy for them to shrug it off as abnormal and nothing to be dealt with. People get complacent with that and before you know it, you have anti-mutant rallies where they go on a lynching spree.”

"Word usage matters." And he thought she probably knew that. "The world isn't a great place for us, believe me, I know. But there are situations where it's not just the easy answer, where somebody really does desperately need help and it takes that happening before they get it. You asked what circumstances would make it understandable, and that's what I was answering."

“Then we need better resources to get them before it ends up in some person who was just minding their own business being hurt,” Maya noted, nose wrinkled. “That Xavier guy has all that money, why isn’t he helping like that?”

"Because he can't be everywhere, and even he doesn't know everything", he said regretfully. "He's helping a lot of people in a lot of ways, but he doesn't read random minds and couldn't read everybody's if he tried. And sometimes you just don't know somebody's a risk before they snap."

“Money buys you a lot of influence,” Maya argued, ignoring the regret. “I don’t care whether he can read people or not, that’s not the only way to help. Why wasn’t he donating to political parties? The Koch brothers certainly spend enough on it.”

"Do you trust either of the political parties that are likely to get anywhere these days?" Angelo asked. "The problem with them is the politicians."

“That’s a nice attitude,” Maya said, an air of passion evident from the way she was leaning forward slightly. “If we don’t try to change things, we get the politicians and the parties we deserve. Saying the system won’t change and you can’t trust it is just another way of saying ‘I’m too lazy to actually do the work’.”

"I've tried." For someone only just thirty, he sounded really tired with those words. "And there are a few times I know I helped do a lot of good, but it's cost me. It's cost us all. I'm sticking to grassroots these days."

“Grass roots is good,” Maya replied, settling back, she didn’t know what he was talking about but she’d seen enough in her short life to know he probably didn’t mean protest marches. “Bernie Sanders showed us what you can do with grass roots, we just need to keep it up, that’s all. We can’t let this scumbag of a president get anything easy.”

"I'm with you there", he said whole-heartedly. "The kids who don't make it to the mansion" - meaning mutant kids, but he didn't know who might be listening or how they'd take it - "have it hard enough already out there."

“Guess that’s why we’re going where we’re going today, right?” Maya replied, noticing that their stop was approaching. “So that we can help the kids who don’t make it to the mansion?”

"That's why", he confirmed, glancing up as he noticed the same thing. "If I can't do anything else for them, at least I can make sure they get a safe place to sleep nights."

“Come on, time to go make a difference,” Maya quipped as she stood and moved into the aisle, headed toward the front of the bus. “Last one to the shelter buys ice-cream for the loser.”

Yes, she was a teenager but that didn’t mean you didn’t take the moments when you could be silly when you saw them, life was too short to be serious all the time.