xp_logs | Backdated - Jubilee and Amanda, post Red Horse

After this scene, Amanda drops by Jubilee's suite to make amends.

Jubilee opened the door and gestured for Amanda to follow her into the living room of her small single suite. It was larger than the apartment she’d had at the Brownstone and decorated in a surprisingly tasteful manner given the person who lived there.

The sound of a small swiss cuckoo clock displayed on a wall just to the left of the front door was the only noise that currently graced the residence.

“Glad you're sane again,” Jubilee noted as she flopped into the overstuffed couch she’d picked up on a shopping trip with Emma. “But dude, why are you here? Shouldn't you be getting spoilt by your girlfriend right now?”

"I put her to bed to catch up on some of the sleep she missed watching over me." Amanda replied, coming into the room and taking a seat. She looked almost alarmingly normal, considering she'd been foaming at the mouth with rage the last time Jubilee had seen her. "I'll go back and join her soon enough, but I owe you an apology, after the Jaca thing. And a healing.

“Why?”

Jubilee pulled her legs up into the couch in front of her and hugged her arms around them, subconsciously self-soothing.

"Why, what? Why do I need to apologise? Or the healing?" Without waiting for a reply, Amanda continued. "The apology is because I said some horrible shite while I was under the influence. The healing is because I broke your bloody nose and I want to fix what I broke."

“You don’t have to apologise for telling me a true thing,” Jubilee noted, meeting Amanda’s gaze and not looking away. “I don't need you to heal me, it's a waste of your power.”

She'd thought a lot about what had happened while Amanda had been asleep, about how they'd interacted over the years and what she’d been like with the other woman.

“Can we be honest now, without the anger?”

Amanda raised her eyebrows, puzzled by the question, but nodded. "No rage monster, I promise."

“It like, wasn't about the rage,” Jubilee admitted with a small smile. “You weren't much of a threat when you're so angry you can't cast. But you said some things and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to actually listen.”

The witch squirmed a little uncomfortably. "Ah." It wasn't much of a reply, but it was all she had. It wasn't like she'd lied and made up the things she'd said, but they weren't the huge deal she had a feeling they were about to become. "You really don't need to..." she began, rather lamely.

Jubilee stood and strode toward her small kitchenette, opening a cupboard to pull out a bottle of wine. She didn't bother with the glass as she pulled the cork and took a quick swig.

“I pushed you hard back then, after everything,” Jubilee continued, almost like she was racing to get it all out, what was in her head. “I didn't let you say no to forgiving me, or being around me or calling you Mandy.”

Amanda had been around Marie-Ange long enough to know that was a terrible way to treat wine and wrinkled her nose, but she didn't say anything. There were more important things here.

"You didn 't," she agreed. "But we were kids back then, or close-to. You had your baggage, I had mine and we worked around it. Does it matter now? Not really. Tho' I really wish you wouldn't call me Mandy. I hate it."

“No more Mandy,” Jubilee said with a smile, placing the bottle down on the bench. It was a cheap vintage, more for the occasional need to get blind than to enjoy. “Dude, I suppose I just wanted to say sorry, for when we were kids and for everything I did that hurt you. I was like, super fucking jealous and I never wanted to see all the shit you had going on as well.”

"And I was jealous of you too. You seemed to want everything I had, and you were much less of a problem than I was," Amanda replied frankly. "But it's really not a big deal now. We've moved on."

“Is this that ‘I’ll bitch about someone to a friend when they shit me but it’s not important enough to actually bring it up with them’ kinda thing?” Jubilee asked with a small smile.

It wasn’t that she minded if it was, she knew the value of venting your frustrations in order to save the feelings of someone you otherwise cared for, or at least tolerated. She was just tired lately of being tolerated rather than liked, or loved.

There was only so much of your life you could spend feeling like the team fuckup before you started to wonder if this was worth the effort.

"Only a little bit," Amanda replied in the same vein. "But seriously... most of what I said was just small, petty shite that doesn't really bother me on a normal day. But taking on the city's feelings, it was like suddenly everything, those small annoyances that we all have with anyone, just exploded, yeah?" She paused, chewing on her thumbnail as she thought. "But there was an element of truth, too. Sometimes, the stuff you do, it feels like you don't respect other people's boundaries. Like the fridge thing. You want to know why I have anti-Jubilee wards on our doors? Because having a space I control is really important to me. I never had that when I was a kid - fuck, you saw where I came from with Rack. Not even my own body was mine. So when you're making excuses like you're sleep-burgling or you're practicing your break and enter skills, it didn't give me a lot of confidence that you'd listen, y'know?"

“I'd listen,” Jubilee noted as her fingers worried at the label of the wine she’d left alone since that first gulp. She was careful these days about how much she allowed herself that outlet for stress. “Like, I get it, I never gave you a reason to trust my word for anything, ‘specially when my actions make it hard but I've never entered anywhere more than once that I wasn't welcomed.”

She knew that wasn't exactly what the point was given asking before you committed B&E would have been considered polite but she couldn't take back previous action.

“They were only ever really lame jokes, if people had massive problems with feeding me or me being in their space I guess like, I supposed they'd tell me. I know that's a shitty excuse, but I'm sorry it harmed you like that.”

Amanda nodded. "And I know you didn't mean any harm with it, or the jokes. But sometimes it feels like it's always us having to tell you when something's not on. And it's fucking exhausting, not to mention sort of shitty for me, at least, to have to be the bad guy and remind you of things like 'check with people before you break into their place and steal their food even once'. Especially when you're smart enough to know yourself when you're pushing it, if only you paid attention to how people react. You need to listen more - I know that was rage-monster-me talking, but that's what it really comes to."

“So maybe I like, stop makin’ you guys be my moral compass and you stop hating me for breaking Kurt’s heart?” Jubilee replied, giving her a hopeful look as she finally went looking for a glass. “And maybe we have a proper drink from a bottle I haven’t treated like $2 cooking wine?”

"I don't hate you, Jubes. I was angry at you - and yeah, sometimes I still am - but I never hated you. That's the thing about friends, we can be pissed off at each other, but in the end, we're friends. The fact is, I trust you to show you when I'm angry with you. It's when I get really polite that you need to get worried." Amanda uncurled from the chair. "I'll take you up on that drink later. Right now I have a girlfriend who's passed out after two days of worrying to curl up with."