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xp_logsFollowing the X-Men mission in Alabama and death of Prism, Nica reports to Scott with a life-changing decision.
Nica stood in front of the door to Scott's suite, trembling slightly. Not from fear, but from the tumult of emotions that had finally led her here and to a decision she thought she'd never make and which every part of her wanted to deny. One hand curled into a first by her side, the other raised to knock, she paused a moment more before setting her teeth and forcing herself to move. The ensuing knock was overly loud, driven by sudden movement and an inability to control anything right now.
There was something relaxing about the stars, about watching those little pinpricks of light wheeling across the velvet background of the heavens, it was how he liked to relax at night, dimming the lights in his apartment and just watch the sky, a warm drink in his hand and a tablet resting in his lap. It was a moment of peace, of silence to recuperate. It had been a rough few weeks, or longer, a bad few months, it was hard to remember. Dark eyes closed for a moment, head leaning back against the back of the sofa as an abrupt knocking interrupted his meditation. "Come on in, it's open."
Nica opened the door, pausing for a moment at the dimmed lights. "Oh, this can wait, if you're busy," she said lamely, hoping that he'd say otherwise because she didn't know if she could get the courage up to do this again.
"Just star-gazing," Scott's eyes glanced over to the door for a moment, gesturing for Nica to come in before he turned back to the window. "When I was younger I thought about flying up there, into the depths of space, applying to be an astronaut before well everything. I still like to remember that kid sometimes." His voice trailed off as dark eyes shifted back to the girl for a moment, brow furrowing in concern. "Pull up a couch, what's wrong?"
Nica shook her head at the offer of a seat. "I... I came here because..." She gulped and tried again. "I k-killed someone. I didn't mean to, but I did. X-Men don't kill. So I came to give you these." She thrust out the hand that had been curled in a fist, opening her hand to reveal her X-Men tags. "Please. Take them. I'm sorry."
There were a host of reason's Scott had thought Nica might have stopped by to visit but this certainly wasn't one of them, for a moment he thought that she was joking, but the distraught look on her face killed any quip that might have come to life on his lips. Slowly the man leaned forward, hands coming together to lay his drink and tablet on a table as he gestured her in. "What happened?"
She came in, but only because she didn't want to do this in the hall. It was hard enough, without witnesses. "The m-mission in A-alabama. The Marauders came. Prism, he... I was only trying to stop him! Nothing was working, so I... i thought I could drain enough of his bio-electricity to make him pass out. But he... he..." The words stuck in her throat and she tried again. "He exploded. I killed him."
"And you think you need to quit the team because of that?" There was no judgement in Scott's voice, not even a hint of curiosity...just compassion. "You weren't trying to kill him you know, you weren't even trying to hurt him, just stop him from hurting other people."
"X-Men don't kill." She said it like a mantra. "It doesn't matter what I was trying to do, I took a life."
"X-men don't kill?"
Scott's voice didn't rise, didn't change as he tilted his head to the side to watch her carefully, his fingers tapping his leg for a moment before stilling.
"I see..."
Scott's voice didn't change as he stood, nodding towards the door, "Meet me in the lobby in 10 minutes, if you still want to hand those in when we're done I won't stop you."
***
Ten minutes later and Nica was in the lobby, her confusion relieving some of the anxiety she'd felt. When Scott appeared, she looked questioningly at him. "Cycl... Scott, I don't understand?"
"You will."
A hand held the front door open, the man's head gesturing towards the car waiting at the bottom of the steps.
"I thought we'd go for a little drive, I've got something to show you."
She nodded and headed towards the car, letting herself into the passenger side. If anything, at least she'd get to ride in Scott's beloved car, which was the envy of many mansion residents.
Dark eyes watched the girl settle into the car before Scott settled himself into his seat, pulling the car down the drive, trying to display a calmness he didn't quite feel. Nica wasn't the first person to struggle with this, to have to deal with this particular demon. He'd seen it riding the shoulder of plenty of students before, a struggle everyone had to face at some point. Everyone came to their own understanding with it, their own path through life. For some that meant embracing the demon, for others running from it, there was no right answer but...but this time it was a little different.
Normally Scott was willing to let the students work through their struggle alone, there for guidance or to talk to but not willing to take more of a hand in their fate than that, he knew that his life had been adjusted and he didn't want to push anyone else down a path that they might not have chosen. So he held himself back, not opening up to them but understanding. The miles flashed by as he pulled away from the freeway, a country road winding down to a cemetery just outside of New York. He didn't want to push Nica but she;...had potential. He could understand Charles maybe a little better but he'd take a different path from his mentor. Not pushing her but rather opening himself up, offering her a look into the past and future.
For her own part, Nica had held her own silence, wondering and curious but willing to let Scott show her what he wanted without pushing. Besides... and here she had to squelch a small ray of hope. No, nothing Scott could show her would change what she had done. Her head drooped so that she didn't really see where they were until Scott stopped the car.
There was a kind of eerie silence that seemed to sweep in around them as the car's engine shut off, the light of the stars and moon casting dancing shadows over the graveyard, the gravestones seeming to dance and flicker in the dark. Scott's fingers thrummed against the wheel for a moment before he nodded at the door.
"This way."
Their destination was a corner of the graveyard, a small huddle of gravestones clumped together, their surface free of the weeds and moss that decorated their fellows. The X-Man knelt, fingers brushing across the stone to brush away those vines that did try to intrude, kneeling a moment longer before he stood, glancing down at the graves.
Nica had followed him without saying a word, her confusion mounting. At last, watching Scott tend to the stone, she broke the stillness with a quiet question. "Did you... did you know them?"
"No, I'd never met them before."
Scott's voice was quiet as he squatted in front of a tombstone, one hand reaching out to brush over the rough stone fingers travelling a familiar path across the rough abraded surface. It was a path that his fingers could walk without him looking, one that he'd spent countless hours tracing out on every visit.
The silence hung in the air for a moment before Scott began talking again.
"It was a while ago, more than 15 years but we were on a mission in the city, dealing with a horseman again but things...things weren't going too well for the team. We had a few minutes, maybe less to stop a bomb and a crowd of innocents, just under someone's control trying to stop us. What could I do? There was a truck and the crowd and I used it as a battering ram, sent it flying into them. Most of the crowd made it out, went running in fear but some of them...they did what they could for the families but a truck's heavy and my optic blasts carry a lot of force."
A hand rested on the top of the gravestone as Scott pushed himself to his feet, not looking at Nica, his voice slightly hoarser, more gravelly than before.
"I understand more than you know, and there's not a day I don't remember what happened, I can't say it'll go away, that you'll stop thinking about it, wondering about it. But if I hadn't done what I did, if you didn't do what you did then more of your friends would have suffered, more innocents would have. Taking a life isn't an easy thing but, it can drive you to make sure no-one else ever has to suffer like that...if you want it to."
He'd made that vow years ago but, sometimes the wheel of fate was inexorable.
Nica walked slowly from one stone to the other, noting the date of death - October 28, 2008 - the same on each one. Each carefully tended and kept clear of weeds and dead flowers. Each a symbol of the cost of doing what they did, but worse, since at least the Marauder's actions had been voluntary. Each a life cut short, a father, a daughter, a partner. When she looked back at Scott, there were tears on her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"Not many people do, I'm not exactly the most...open when it comes to things like this, too much history and too much responsibility."
A soft sad smile touched the edge of Scott's lips reflecting the sadness in his eyes, the rare revelation of the hurt and agony which were his constant companions.
"When you're in charge, when you're the leader you don't get to show emotion where other people can see, can't fall apart when everyone else is, no matter how much you want to. They need to believe in you, believe you know what you're doing and that you can handle anything that gets thrown your way, get them out of trouble. There aren't many people I can talk to about it, Charles is about it, Jim knows a little I think."
The man stood, finally looking across at Nica, his hand still resting on the gravestone, as if he could draw strength from the stone.
"I'm telling you this cause you have a choice, you can give up your badge, no-one could blame you or you can keep it. We can never escape our ghosts but we can make peace with them, you can let it drive you on to become better as part of the team. Or you could let it carry you to the front of the team, take on that burden so no-one else needs to worry about it."
A choice, unlike the one he'd been offered, he owed her that much.
"I've seen what you've done, what you can do but...you need to go into it knowing there's a cost. You deserve to be here, to be one of us. If you want it the wings are there, if you want to keep them, if you want more, that's up to you."
Again silence, as Nica looked back out over the cemetery. Then she spoke, softly: "When I was a kid, I told my Mom one day that I wanted to be a soldier, like her and Dad, that I wanted to serve my country. I don't know if I even knew what that meant, but I'd heard it a lot from living on barracks. Momma shook her head and told me, 'I hope you do more than that, honey. I hope you do better than serve.' Not long after that she was killed." She inhaled sharply through her nose to push the tears away before she continued. "I've always tried to do my best since then, to do things better. When I got my powers, I was scared to death, but I hoped that maybe I could use them to help people. And then I came here, and found out that there was something I could do. A way to do better. Be better."
There was a small gust of wind that swirled among the tombstones, rustling grass and dead leaves. Nica didn't feel the cold, but she shivered a little anyway at the memories she was replaying. "I want to keep being an X-Man. I know it's a way I can do better. It's just hard to see that right now." Another deep breath, and she swallowed down the lump rising in her throat. "If you think I deserve to stay... you trust me to keep doing better... I don't want to let you all down."
Scott shook his head as he stood, shoulders rolling as he pulled off his jacket to pass it over to the girl as he glanced back down at the graves before them, the memorial to those that he'd let down. "It's not about what I want, what I think. You can try to live for us, to do better and stay because you think that you'd be letting us down or we see something in you but that will only take you so far. I'm a weapon, Charles made me that way because that's what he needed, and I did everything to make him proud, to try to live up to his vision and the ideal he'd created for me. And I failed. Time and again. You can't live up to a vision, to an idealised image that lives in someone's head, or your own. But, doing better? Doing it for yourself? That's a pretty good reason to stay at it. It took me a lot longer than I'd like to admit to realise that. I wouldn't have shown you this if I didn't think you deserved it but...do you?"
She took the jacket, pulling it around her shoulders, her gaze inward. Could she do this for just herself? Was that enough? Finally, she looked up and met Scott's eyes, squarely. "I do," she said, softly and firmly. "I want this. For me. I want to make things better."
Nica stood in front of the door to Scott's suite, trembling slightly. Not from fear, but from the tumult of emotions that had finally led her here and to a decision she thought she'd never make and which every part of her wanted to deny. One hand curled into a first by her side, the other raised to knock, she paused a moment more before setting her teeth and forcing herself to move. The ensuing knock was overly loud, driven by sudden movement and an inability to control anything right now.
There was something relaxing about the stars, about watching those little pinpricks of light wheeling across the velvet background of the heavens, it was how he liked to relax at night, dimming the lights in his apartment and just watch the sky, a warm drink in his hand and a tablet resting in his lap. It was a moment of peace, of silence to recuperate. It had been a rough few weeks, or longer, a bad few months, it was hard to remember. Dark eyes closed for a moment, head leaning back against the back of the sofa as an abrupt knocking interrupted his meditation. "Come on in, it's open."
Nica opened the door, pausing for a moment at the dimmed lights. "Oh, this can wait, if you're busy," she said lamely, hoping that he'd say otherwise because she didn't know if she could get the courage up to do this again.
"Just star-gazing," Scott's eyes glanced over to the door for a moment, gesturing for Nica to come in before he turned back to the window. "When I was younger I thought about flying up there, into the depths of space, applying to be an astronaut before well everything. I still like to remember that kid sometimes." His voice trailed off as dark eyes shifted back to the girl for a moment, brow furrowing in concern. "Pull up a couch, what's wrong?"
Nica shook her head at the offer of a seat. "I... I came here because..." She gulped and tried again. "I k-killed someone. I didn't mean to, but I did. X-Men don't kill. So I came to give you these." She thrust out the hand that had been curled in a fist, opening her hand to reveal her X-Men tags. "Please. Take them. I'm sorry."
There were a host of reason's Scott had thought Nica might have stopped by to visit but this certainly wasn't one of them, for a moment he thought that she was joking, but the distraught look on her face killed any quip that might have come to life on his lips. Slowly the man leaned forward, hands coming together to lay his drink and tablet on a table as he gestured her in. "What happened?"
She came in, but only because she didn't want to do this in the hall. It was hard enough, without witnesses. "The m-mission in A-alabama. The Marauders came. Prism, he... I was only trying to stop him! Nothing was working, so I... i thought I could drain enough of his bio-electricity to make him pass out. But he... he..." The words stuck in her throat and she tried again. "He exploded. I killed him."
"And you think you need to quit the team because of that?" There was no judgement in Scott's voice, not even a hint of curiosity...just compassion. "You weren't trying to kill him you know, you weren't even trying to hurt him, just stop him from hurting other people."
"X-Men don't kill." She said it like a mantra. "It doesn't matter what I was trying to do, I took a life."
"X-men don't kill?"
Scott's voice didn't rise, didn't change as he tilted his head to the side to watch her carefully, his fingers tapping his leg for a moment before stilling.
"I see..."
Scott's voice didn't change as he stood, nodding towards the door, "Meet me in the lobby in 10 minutes, if you still want to hand those in when we're done I won't stop you."
***
Ten minutes later and Nica was in the lobby, her confusion relieving some of the anxiety she'd felt. When Scott appeared, she looked questioningly at him. "Cycl... Scott, I don't understand?"
"You will."
A hand held the front door open, the man's head gesturing towards the car waiting at the bottom of the steps.
"I thought we'd go for a little drive, I've got something to show you."
She nodded and headed towards the car, letting herself into the passenger side. If anything, at least she'd get to ride in Scott's beloved car, which was the envy of many mansion residents.
Dark eyes watched the girl settle into the car before Scott settled himself into his seat, pulling the car down the drive, trying to display a calmness he didn't quite feel. Nica wasn't the first person to struggle with this, to have to deal with this particular demon. He'd seen it riding the shoulder of plenty of students before, a struggle everyone had to face at some point. Everyone came to their own understanding with it, their own path through life. For some that meant embracing the demon, for others running from it, there was no right answer but...but this time it was a little different.
Normally Scott was willing to let the students work through their struggle alone, there for guidance or to talk to but not willing to take more of a hand in their fate than that, he knew that his life had been adjusted and he didn't want to push anyone else down a path that they might not have chosen. So he held himself back, not opening up to them but understanding. The miles flashed by as he pulled away from the freeway, a country road winding down to a cemetery just outside of New York. He didn't want to push Nica but she;...had potential. He could understand Charles maybe a little better but he'd take a different path from his mentor. Not pushing her but rather opening himself up, offering her a look into the past and future.
For her own part, Nica had held her own silence, wondering and curious but willing to let Scott show her what he wanted without pushing. Besides... and here she had to squelch a small ray of hope. No, nothing Scott could show her would change what she had done. Her head drooped so that she didn't really see where they were until Scott stopped the car.
There was a kind of eerie silence that seemed to sweep in around them as the car's engine shut off, the light of the stars and moon casting dancing shadows over the graveyard, the gravestones seeming to dance and flicker in the dark. Scott's fingers thrummed against the wheel for a moment before he nodded at the door.
"This way."
Their destination was a corner of the graveyard, a small huddle of gravestones clumped together, their surface free of the weeds and moss that decorated their fellows. The X-Man knelt, fingers brushing across the stone to brush away those vines that did try to intrude, kneeling a moment longer before he stood, glancing down at the graves.
Nica had followed him without saying a word, her confusion mounting. At last, watching Scott tend to the stone, she broke the stillness with a quiet question. "Did you... did you know them?"
"No, I'd never met them before."
Scott's voice was quiet as he squatted in front of a tombstone, one hand reaching out to brush over the rough stone fingers travelling a familiar path across the rough abraded surface. It was a path that his fingers could walk without him looking, one that he'd spent countless hours tracing out on every visit.
The silence hung in the air for a moment before Scott began talking again.
"It was a while ago, more than 15 years but we were on a mission in the city, dealing with a horseman again but things...things weren't going too well for the team. We had a few minutes, maybe less to stop a bomb and a crowd of innocents, just under someone's control trying to stop us. What could I do? There was a truck and the crowd and I used it as a battering ram, sent it flying into them. Most of the crowd made it out, went running in fear but some of them...they did what they could for the families but a truck's heavy and my optic blasts carry a lot of force."
A hand rested on the top of the gravestone as Scott pushed himself to his feet, not looking at Nica, his voice slightly hoarser, more gravelly than before.
"I understand more than you know, and there's not a day I don't remember what happened, I can't say it'll go away, that you'll stop thinking about it, wondering about it. But if I hadn't done what I did, if you didn't do what you did then more of your friends would have suffered, more innocents would have. Taking a life isn't an easy thing but, it can drive you to make sure no-one else ever has to suffer like that...if you want it to."
He'd made that vow years ago but, sometimes the wheel of fate was inexorable.
Nica walked slowly from one stone to the other, noting the date of death - October 28, 2008 - the same on each one. Each carefully tended and kept clear of weeds and dead flowers. Each a symbol of the cost of doing what they did, but worse, since at least the Marauder's actions had been voluntary. Each a life cut short, a father, a daughter, a partner. When she looked back at Scott, there were tears on her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"Not many people do, I'm not exactly the most...open when it comes to things like this, too much history and too much responsibility."
A soft sad smile touched the edge of Scott's lips reflecting the sadness in his eyes, the rare revelation of the hurt and agony which were his constant companions.
"When you're in charge, when you're the leader you don't get to show emotion where other people can see, can't fall apart when everyone else is, no matter how much you want to. They need to believe in you, believe you know what you're doing and that you can handle anything that gets thrown your way, get them out of trouble. There aren't many people I can talk to about it, Charles is about it, Jim knows a little I think."
The man stood, finally looking across at Nica, his hand still resting on the gravestone, as if he could draw strength from the stone.
"I'm telling you this cause you have a choice, you can give up your badge, no-one could blame you or you can keep it. We can never escape our ghosts but we can make peace with them, you can let it drive you on to become better as part of the team. Or you could let it carry you to the front of the team, take on that burden so no-one else needs to worry about it."
A choice, unlike the one he'd been offered, he owed her that much.
"I've seen what you've done, what you can do but...you need to go into it knowing there's a cost. You deserve to be here, to be one of us. If you want it the wings are there, if you want to keep them, if you want more, that's up to you."
Again silence, as Nica looked back out over the cemetery. Then she spoke, softly: "When I was a kid, I told my Mom one day that I wanted to be a soldier, like her and Dad, that I wanted to serve my country. I don't know if I even knew what that meant, but I'd heard it a lot from living on barracks. Momma shook her head and told me, 'I hope you do more than that, honey. I hope you do better than serve.' Not long after that she was killed." She inhaled sharply through her nose to push the tears away before she continued. "I've always tried to do my best since then, to do things better. When I got my powers, I was scared to death, but I hoped that maybe I could use them to help people. And then I came here, and found out that there was something I could do. A way to do better. Be better."
There was a small gust of wind that swirled among the tombstones, rustling grass and dead leaves. Nica didn't feel the cold, but she shivered a little anyway at the memories she was replaying. "I want to keep being an X-Man. I know it's a way I can do better. It's just hard to see that right now." Another deep breath, and she swallowed down the lump rising in her throat. "If you think I deserve to stay... you trust me to keep doing better... I don't want to let you all down."
Scott shook his head as he stood, shoulders rolling as he pulled off his jacket to pass it over to the girl as he glanced back down at the graves before them, the memorial to those that he'd let down. "It's not about what I want, what I think. You can try to live for us, to do better and stay because you think that you'd be letting us down or we see something in you but that will only take you so far. I'm a weapon, Charles made me that way because that's what he needed, and I did everything to make him proud, to try to live up to his vision and the ideal he'd created for me. And I failed. Time and again. You can't live up to a vision, to an idealised image that lives in someone's head, or your own. But, doing better? Doing it for yourself? That's a pretty good reason to stay at it. It took me a lot longer than I'd like to admit to realise that. I wouldn't have shown you this if I didn't think you deserved it but...do you?"
She took the jacket, pulling it around her shoulders, her gaze inward. Could she do this for just herself? Was that enough? Finally, she looked up and met Scott's eyes, squarely. "I do," she said, softly and firmly. "I want this. For me. I want to make things better."
