Puppies!

[x-marrow.livejournal.com]

The fluff log that turned messy. Angelo comes down to visit with Joyita in tow. The newest puppy is a hit. It all goes downhill when he asks Sarah how she's doing. Sarah cries again and Oscar is still cute.



Finding himself at a loose end now that this latest crisis had passed, Angelo decided it was really time he introduced Joyita to Oscar. So, puppy in tow, he made his way to the basement.

Sarah was sitting in pretty much the same place she'd been sitting for the past couple of days. In the boiler room, against the far right hand wall. The only real difference now was that every couple of minutes she'd go chasing after Oscar on her hands and knees, grinning.

Angelo paused as he came in, glad to see her looking at least slightly cheerful, and leaned against the doorway with a grin of his own, wriggling puppy in his arms. "Hey Sarah."

Sarah looked up from the floor, caught slightly off guard, and maybe, just maybe a little bit embarrassed. "Hey," she answered, and ran her fingers through her hair with one hand, barely missing grabbing onto Oscar's collar with the other before the puppy made a run for the new set of feet in the room. "Oscar, puppy, come here." The request was promptly ignored.

Angelo stepped into the room and shut the door hastily before Oscar could escape. He looked down, grinning, as the puppy apparently did everything he could to scramble up Angelo's leg. "He's cute."

"He is. And he has far too much energy." Sarah patted her legs gently and tried calling for him again, with slightly better results. Oscar looked up and made a beeline, tumbling unelegantly into her. Wrapping her arms around him, Sarah returned her attention to the visitor at the door. "Is that Oscar's newest buddy I see?"

Angelo chuckled, moving further into the room and finally giving in to Joyita's clear wish to be put down on the floor to play. "Sure is. Meet Joyita."

Sarah grinned, and held out a hand for the puppy to sniff, one hand wrapped firmly around Oscar just in case. "Hi there pretty..."

Joyita sniffed tentatively at her hand, then gave her an unmistakable seal of approval by licking it eagerly. Angelo laughed. "I guess that means she likes you."

Sarah patted the top of Joyita's head, letting the squirming puppy in her own arms go. "Joyita, this is Oscar." As if on cue, Oscar barked, moving closer to sniff the other puppy.

Joyita swivelled rapidly to face Oscar, yipping inquisitively at him and sniffing him in return. "Play nice, babies," Angelo said lightly, almost sure they would.

It didn't take long for Oscar to be thrilled with his new friend, drafting her for a game of "if we roll around on the floor, who will end up on top the most?" So much for the vicious attack puppy.

Angelo laughed, watching the two little dogs kick up dust bunnies as they rolled, play-wrestling. "Guess that means they're friends for life."

"Something like that," she nodded, watching the puppies with an amused expression. "It'll be good for them. Gives Oscar something else to look at besides me."

"And Shinobi", Angelo reminded her. "But, yeah, Joyita probably should get to know the other pets round here. She already met Bella - not sure if introducin' her to Delphine would be a good idea or not."

"I haven't even attempted the other pets yet. Course, I haven't done much but stay down here lately." She shrugged, pulling a bone from her shoulder and throwing it to the side.

Angelo nodded, chuckling slightly as both the dogs instantly abandoned their game to dive after the bone at the same time, then started a tug of war over it. "How're you doin'?"

"I'm still here. I guess that's a start--that I haven't bolted yet. But I'm still supposed to email Xavier and Blaire, and apologize for being a bad person or something." She didn't mention the nightmares. Or the crying. "And did I mention that there's a guy upstairs that I fought with back in October, y'know, before he got kicked out, and I'd rather not be in the same room with him, let alone the same goddamned fucking house?"

Angelo nodded, expression neutral. "Haroun, yeah. He's been keepin' himself to himself pretty much - he's officially here as an engineer for the jet, I think, with a couple of specialist classes too. Flyin', Arabic, that sort of thing. Maybe mechanical engineerin'. You'll probably hardly even know he's here, unless you take those classes which I'm guessin' you won't. Well, obviously you wouldn't take flyin', but the others."

Sarah shrugged again. "I didn't do anything involving him then either. Didn't stop us from trying to kill each other."

"Sounds like he's pretty determined it won't happen again, though", Angelo ventured, his attention apparently on the dogs. "So he'll be all for keepin' out of your way now."

"Yeah, but will he leave my friends alone?" She said simply, more of a rhetorical question than anything. She sighed, and leaned back against the wall. The resulting scrape was enough to catch Oscar's attention, and the puppy, ever the helpful one when Sarah's in a mood, took a leap into her lap, licking at her face as she sputtered.

Angelo couldn't help laughing, managing to restrain Joyita from joining in the assault on Sarah. She whined plaintively, then decided his hands were just as good to lick.

Sarah shifted, and managed to get Oscar to sit, albeit wiggling, in her lap. "Crazy dog," she muttered, scratching his head gently. She looked back up at Angelo. "I suppose that means I need to stop being a grouch. Puppy's orders."

Angelo nodded, mock-seriously. "An' who can refuse puppy's orders?" Careful to keep his grip on Joyita, he wandered over to sit beside Sarah, back against the wall, and set Joyita down in his lap, holding on to her lightly.

"Certainly not me." Sarah sighed again, fingers running down Oscar's back. "I'm beginning to this this dog was an evil ploy by certain people here. 'Vicious attack minion' my ass."

Angelo chuckled. "Well, he's only little yet. Probably not too late to train him."

"Probably one of the rules if I'm gonna be a 'good person'. No training the puppy to maim people. Cause nobody in this house has ever killed people before, you know."

Angelo shrugged a little helplessly. "I know as well as you do that's not true. For what it's worth, I'm with you to an extent - they deserved what they got, 'specially since there's no way the law'd ever've done anythin' about it, even if the X-Men left them tied up on a police station doorstep with signed confessions of what they did. But Sarah, what you gotta get is, however much it's deserved, killin' does... does take you down in the end. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, 'specially if you've done it before, if only t'protect the ones who haven't." He sighed. "But I think that's exactly what they're worried about. Artie an' Miles haven't. An' they don't ever have to."

"Because I'm doing it for them." She insisted. "And that makes me too dangerous to be around them by myself."

"No one thinks you'll hurt them," Angelo said quietly, scratching Joyita's ears absently, knowing Sarah would have heard this before but figuring one more repetition couldn't hurt. "No one ever thought that, Sarah. Not like that."

"Then what is it like?" Oscar yelped, startled by her outburst. "What the hell gives them the right to tell me I can't see them alone? What the fuck do they think I'm going to do?"

"They've got the legal right", Angelo pointed out helplessly. "They are the boys' guardians. Legally, if they wanted to, they could stop you seein' them altogether. I'm sure as I can be they're not gonna do that, though, or they would've done already", he added hastily. "Far as I can make out, they think... well, it's like you said in that post. Bad influence. Or that you could be, anyway."

"But I'm family!" she insisted. Oscar took to licking her hand for comfort. "I don't care what they think they are."

Joyita chose that moment to crawl off Angelo's lap and into Sarah's, nudging Oscar out of the way a little to make room. Angelo let her go, knowing she wanted to do the puppy-comfort thing too. "Yeah, but Sarah, you're the only one that really remembers that. The boys, they love you, but that's only because you love them. If they'd never seen you again, they wouldn't've known the difference. An' things are better this way, of course they are, for all of you, but... there was a point to this when I started."

Sarah did a fine job of ignoring the two puppies in her lap, seething with anger. "You're right, I'm the last one who remembers it. I'm the last one who remembers them and what happened. I'm the last one who remembers Leech's mom, or Tommy, or Callisto. Nobody else remembers the ceremony or the fights, or what it's like to wake up with Mother Inferior's rats nibbling at your fucking toes. And if this place gets its fucking way, that'll never change!" She fought back the tears that threatened to show up again, refusing to cry now. She added, voice low, "And I'll have failed them."

"No one's askin' you to forget, Sarah. No one's even askin' you not to tell the boys stuff about what it was like. An' if it's private stuff, then while you're not allowed to be alone with them, I'll pass on letters any time you like. Word of honor I won't open them. But whatever you tell them, you're still gonna be the only one who remembers. They can know what it was like, but they still won't remember. There is a difference."

Sarah shook her head. "Artie can remember-- all he needs is time." He's got to.

"An' what if he doesn't?" Angelo asked, not unsympathetically but giving it to her straight. "He's just a kid, Sarah, an' he can't've been more'n a toddler when he got taken from the tunnels. Lot of water under the bridge between now an' then. Maybe he will remember bits of it. Maybe he won't. What if he doesn't?"

"He will," she insisted, "even little parts work. He's got to remember something."

Angelo nodded, conceding the point. "Somethin', sure. But not as much as you, which was my point. You're always gonna be the one keepin' most of the memory goin'. Maybe all, but probably just most."

"Everybody needs a hobby," she replied dryly, arms crossed across her chest . "Mine just happens to be fighting a goddamned uphill battle."

Angelo nodded, thinking out his next words carefully. "Sarah... don't take this the wrong way. I'm not sayin' you have to change to fit anyone else's image of what you should be, or anythin' like that. But I do think you need to adapt." He held up a hand to forestall what she was about to say. "There's nothin' in the tunnels now but corpses. Whatever the place was once, it's not a place to have a life anymore. An' if you keep tryin' to live accordin' to the way you think you should, you're either gonna go under an' "drown", or get yourself killed. An' then who's gonna keep the memory goin'?"

"My family is down in those tunnels," she growled, shifting and sending the puppies scrambling to stay on her lap. "I don't tell you how to deal with your past, and I'd ask you to do the same fucking thing for me."

"It was advice", Angelo countered calmly. "Not me tellin' you to do anythin'. An' whatever the current rules are on you seein' them, your only livin' family is here, Sarah. Who's gonna teach the boys if you go an' drive yourself to snappin', or pick the wrong fight one day an' finish up permanently dead?"

Sarah's calm had expired a long time ago. "I can't teach them! Haven't you noticed? I can't be in the same room with them without somebody watching my every fucking move, making sure I don't say anything they don't agree with!"

Angelo waited a moment before answering, watching her carefully. "I already told you I'll give them sealed letters if you want. So you can tell them the stories they should know. An' yeah, Alison or whoever might - probably will - end up readin' them too, but right now, it's the best you're gonna get."

"She isn't a Morlock. She doesn't get to hear those stories. They aren't her's to see." Sarah pushed the puppies gently off her lap, and pulled her knees up to her chest. "It's not good enough."

Angelo shrugged, holding out his hands to the puppies. "Best I can offer. Best anyone's gonna give you, right now. But you knew that."

"Yeah." she snapped, "I've heard it all before."

"I think you know what you gotta do, so they'll let you see the boys again. Not change, not the way you think it means. Adapt, Sarah. I don't know how much things ever changed in the tunnels, but they have for you now, or could, if you'd let them. Only people that don't adapt when the world changes around them are the ones that are already dead." He sighed. "Look. Change, if you do, for yourself. For your survival in the new situation, an' so you can have your family back. Not because they think you should."

"Yeah. I'd be better off if I could just stop being a Morlock anyway, right? I mean, look at the boys. Aren't they better off?" She bit back a sob, and tucked her face back behind her legs again. "Just get the hell out of here," she waved her hand in a rather violent version of a shooing motion. "I'm done with this."

Angelo, knowing when there was nothing more he could say that she'd listen to, bent to pick up Joyita. "Fair enough. I'll come by again sometime. Done with the serious talkin' though."

But there was no response from Sarah, the only sound in the room coming from Oscar as he attempted to get back on her lap by burrowing himself under her arm.