xp_logs | Angelo and Jubilee (Reply)

Set *before* the Angie-Jubilee log that just went up. Angelo goes to visit Jubilee in the medlab, sets her straight on a few things, and inadvertently (and without knowing it) puts the idea in her head to leave.

Jubilee was feeling somewhat ill, more then ill really but there wasn't anything that could be done about it so she tried to concentrate on something else. They hadn't been able to give her pain killers due to the slight concussion she'd suffered. Madelyn had said that possibly tomorrow that would change but for tonight she'd be under observation in the Medlab to make sure she didn't go to sleep. Considering all she wanted to do was sink into unconsciousness, her normal reaction to trauma of all sorts, it sucked that she couldn't. Another thing to blame Amanda for, along with the broken arm and slightly damaged pride.

She looked up as she heard movement by the door and blinked at seeing Angelo standing there. "Hey."

Angelo nodded a greeting and moved further into the room, unsmiling. "Hey. We need to talk."

She sighed, she'd had several people come to visit her with the exact same look and words. Looks like it was time for yet another lecture. Bracing herself, she gestured for Angelo to have a seat on the bed, if he was going to curse her out he might as well be comfortable doing it. "Sure, what about?"

Angelo sat down on the bed, as careful as possible not to jar her arm or head. "I think you know." He sighed. "You wanna tell me what all this was about?"

Jubilee sat up slowly, using the button on the remote control with her good hand to raise the bed into a sitting position and looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "Depends on who you ask, I guess. Me, it was about getting attacked for no damn good reason by Amanda and defending myself."

Angelo raised a challenging eyebrow at her. "For no good reason. She just walked up to you out of nowhere an' hit you?"

She looked away, wriggling to get more comfortable in the bed. "Yeah well, there were some words, I guess. But they weren't any worse then any we'd said to each other before. I mean, I say one little thing and she hauls back and breaks my nose. What's up with that?"

Angelo went very still for a moment, fearing what he'd done had contributed more than he was willing to admit to pushing Amanda close to the edge. If he thought about that too hard, he'd end up backtracking, and that would do her no good in the long run. "She's havin' a pretty rough time at the moment, but that's her business. What exactly did you say to her, right before she hit you?"

Jubilee sighed, wincing as she remembered just how badly she'd behaved before Amanda had hit her. She should have known better then to rise to the bait. "I could have made fun of the fact that she didn't fit in Manny's world, and told her she was scared of me cause I could. But it wasn't like she wasn't sayin' stuff to me as well, goin' on about how Manny couldn't possibly have enjoyed...stuff."

She blushed, not wanting to go into that particular incident with Angelo, or anyone else for that matter.

Angelo raised an eyebrow at her, but let her get away with not explaining her last comment - but there was no way she was getting away with the rest. "Christ. Jubilee, do you not realize that's the worst thing you could possibly have said to her? Especially now... Look. When we were in Asgard, you remember the Enchantress? She had Amanda under a mind control spell, an' the way she got at her was to show her... you. You, takin' away everyone Amanda cares about. It's somethin' she's always been afraid of, since she met you."

Jubilee blinked, looking at Angelo in disbelief. "She's...what? Why the hell would she be afraid of that?" She shifted on the bed, thinking about what Angelo had just said. "What kind of monster does she think I am? Heck, how weak does she think her friends are that they'd up and leave her? Jesus, Dude."

Angelo shook his head, seeing that she'd misunderstood. "I didn't mean you doin' it on purpose, necessarily. An' it's nothin' to do with what she thinks, it's what she feels. Which is that - why wouldn't we take you over her?" He sighed. "I didn't tell you this. But she pretty much thinks you're her but better. Without the issues. Whatever. Now do you see why she thinks we could choose you over her?"

"Angelo, that's still whacked. I ain't her without issues. Fuck, I got my own issues, not like I'm poster child for normal teenager. But, more than that. I don't see why she thinks anyone needs to choose. Dude, if I for one second even thought any of you would stop being her friend just cause I was yours, I'd smack you so hard, it'd be a week before you could see straight. I don't play favourites, and I don't play those fuckin' games. Let me guess, you all had to reassure her that she was more your friend than I was, right? Why the hell would she be so afraid of me doin' that anyway? If I'm so much like her without issues, what does that mean? What fuckin' issues don't I have that she does? Besides being an evil bitch set on ruining my life."

Angelo paused, trying to answer without giving away too much. "Amanda's... not really too used to havin' people who care about her. An' the scars are a big issue - remember how upset she got when Manuel told everyone about them?" He hesitated, frowning, before tackling the last thing Jubilee had said. "An' you'd better be exaggeratin' when you say you think she's evil."

Jubilee shook her head. "Funny you should mention those scars and I wasn't exaggerating. I have it on very good authority that she's evil, anyone who'd do that to their body for power isn't exactly into flowers and puppies, ya know?"

Angelo stared at her in disbelief and rising fury, and took a moment before he answered, forcing his voice to evenness. However, try as he might, a certain amount of cold anger was still in his tone when he spoke. "What the hell... who have you been talkin' to, Jubilee? Who told you she did that to herself?"

Jubilee shrugged, ignoring the anger. Angelo was Amanda's friend, she knew he'd have some trouble believing her at first but Amanda was evil, and she could prove it. "When I first saw the scars she had, she threatened me. So, I went lookin' to find out why she'd do that over body art. Got put in contact with a guy, never gave me his real name, only an alias. Patches. But, spending that time with Jarrod, I guess I know why now. You have someone's name, you can do some pretty nasty stuff to 'em. Anyway, he gave me information on the tattoos, said that it was an augmentation spell. Considerin' the fact that she threatened me over them, it seemed likely that what the guy was tellin' me was the truth. People who ain't guilty of somethin', don't go around gettin' violent for no good reason."

Angelo took that in, then suddenly laughed, just once, sharp and bitter. "Patches. That little Irish cabron... I should've known he'd be back. Should've guessed he was behind this, too. Who else could've been?" Looking straight at Jubilee, he became deadly serious. "Listen. Patches is bad news. Don't go anywhere near him again, okay? Promise me. An' while we're on the subject, you shouldn't believe anythin' he told you. He lied."

"How do you know that? And how exactly do you know him?" she asked, surprised.

Angelo grinned humourlessly. "Met him, just once, in LA. Right before me an' Amanda went on our little unscheduled side trip to Mexico. Which was his fault. Bastard sold her out. As for the rest - I know, okay? I'll tell you the details if you really want, but it's not pretty."

Jubilee's expression was distracted but she nodded an affirmative. "I'd like to hear it. To be honest, I think I need to hear it. You haven't lied to me before, Angelo. But that means I've been a whole lot less then nice to someone I thought deserved it at the time, and now you're tellin' me that the reason I thought I had for that, I don't. I'd like to know the full story, if only so I can know why you think that."

Angelo nodded, settling himself more comfortably on the bed. This looked like being a long haul. "Okay, but first - what I'm gonna tell you stays in this room, right? It's not my story an' I wouldn't be tellin' you it at all if Patches hadn't showed up t'tell you a bunch of lies."

Settling back in her pillows, she sighed softly as her head throbbed. Having gotten comfortable, she nodded. "It won't leave this room, I promise."

Angelo sighed and prepared to begin. "Okay. The scars - well, actually, that's probably the only true thing Patches told you. They are magical, an' for all I know there's some augmentation magic in there too, but mostly, they're a mark of ownership. Sealin' the deal, kind of. An' the guy that "owned" Amanda... was the guy that raised her. Rack. She was eleven when he cut those marks into her."

"Damn..." Jubilee whispered, feeling a stab of guilt. "So that's why she was so hostile about the scars. I thought...Angelo, I honestly thought she'd done them herself and that she was a threat. It's why I've been pushin' her so much lately, I thought maybe I could make her slip up, reveal herself. If I'd known..."

Angelo shrugged. "You didn't know", he answered flatly. "There's no way you could, really - 's not your fault you ran up against the exact wrong person to ask. That's what happened that time in LA an' Mexico - Patches sold the info about where she was to Rack, an' he sent a message to say he wanted her back. Threatened to hurt anyone an' everyone she might care about. So we went to Mexico to try an' get her free of him. Went a bit wrong, but it could've been worse. A lot worse." He sighed. "Rack used her for her power, pushed her to take more than she ever should have done so young, most of her childhood, until... someone got her out durin' the ritual when she was eleven. He tried to again in Mexico, but Pete got there in time to stop him, more or less. He won't be a problem again, an' my only regret there is that I didn't get to see to it myself."

Jubilee shook her head. "You might have wanted to but I'm glad you didn't, Angelo. Karma has a way of coming back on people that way. There's a difference between killin' cause you have to, and killin' cause you want to and even then the universe doesn't quibble about why you do things, just the consequences. Bein' a Buddhist can really suck sometimes, cause I know I can't escape the Karma I got comin' to me out of this one." She hesitated for a second, thinking about that. She'd thought she'd been doing good but it had turned out she was merely helping an evil man, the universe wouldn't care about why she'd done what she had, only the result. But she could still make it right, and she now knew how. Patches was going to get a visit from one Jubilation Lee, and she wouldn't be bringing tea and cake. But not now, she'd need to plan that but she couldn't do it at the school, not with Xavier and the other telepaths around.

"Angelo, will you do something for me? Tell her I'm sorry. I don't think it's a great idea for me to go see her right now but you gotta admit when you did somethin' wrong, right?"

Angelo hesitated, then decided it couldn't hurt to promise - at the very least, he could pass the message on through someone else. "I'll tell her. An' I've gotta ask you for somethin' in return - you can't tell even Amanda you know what I've just told you, okay? I don't think she'd be too happy somehow. Just ease up on her."

Jubilee nodded, faking a yawn. She needed to plan and she couldn't do that with Angelo in the room. She'd definitely have to pick up some food and water before she left. The trip to LA wasn't a short one, especially considering she'd have to stay off the main forms of transport. The fact that leaving would also mean she wouldn't have to deal with the fallout from what had happened was something that briefly crossed her mind before she pushed it away. She wasn't running, just leaving, she'd be back when she'd dealt with everything, really.

"Sure, not like I'm really wantin' to discuss all this with anyone right now, anyhow. People been havin' a tendency to start shouting at me, kinda hurts the ears after awhile."

Angelo nodded, satisfied with her answer and noting the yawn. "You want me to go now, let you get some sleep?"

She nodded thankfully. "Not allowed to sleep really, not with the concussion but I could use some time to think about all the stuff you've told me. Thanks for not yellin' at me by the way, was probably what I deserved considerin' but you didn't, appreciate it."

Angelo shook his head, standing and making his way to the door. "Like I said, you didn't know. An' I didn't want t'get kicked out of here before I'd found out what was goin' on, then before I'd set you straight."

"Well, thanks anyway. Oh, if Big Blue asks you to help with anything on your way out, a good answer would be no. He's been goin' on about Twinkies and a new experiment for about an hour or so now."

Angelo blinked, before deciding he really didn't want to know. "Thanks for the warnin'. I'll see you later", he said, raising a hand in farewell and ducking out of the room.