xp_logs | Nathan and Jubilee, Wednesday morning

Nathan and Jubilee head back to the mansion together after their morning jog and Tai Chi session, respectively. The conversation that results in the kitchen is an awkward one, as that discussion about atonement and its consequences gets brought up again.

Jubilee opened her eyes, breathing out softly as she completed the last form of her Tai Chi workout for the morning. The sunrise had been spectacular this morning, and she supposed it was one of the reasons she continued to do Tai Chi at dawn. This, despite her regular desire to simply skip the practice and sleep in. The other explanation that held equal weight with her at times was that she was insane, and Samson would soon realise this and give her a nice long holiday at the local nut hatch.

Stretching out, she noticed Nathan walking back toward the mansion from the woods. He was wearing standard joggers gear, so she supposed he'd been taking advantage of the quiet of the early morning as well.

"Yo, Nathan!" she called.

Nathan smiled, shifting direction a little so that he headed for her instead of the mansion. "Morning," he said cheerfully. "Still at the Tai Chi regularly?"

Jubilee nodded, folding up her mat and placing it to one side. "Yeah, keeps me flexible. Especially since gymnastics has been a bit hard lately with all the damage I seem to be doin' to myself. I think Kurt's been thinking about wrapping me in cotton wool to make sure I don't miss any more class time."

"You're talking to the king of damage, remember?" Nathan asked wryly. "I can't have four functioning limbs for more than a month at a time." He shook his head. "You'll be healed up again before you know it," he said quietly. "Especially with all the healing spells Amanda's been doing for you. I speak from personal experience as to how effective they are - I probably would have been laid up for weeks longer without them."

Jubilee nodded, grinning. "Wasn't there mention of a bubble for you somewhere? Amanda's been doing a pretty good job of patching me up, although the side effects are somewhat disconcerting."

She smiled wryly, thinking about the dream. 'And the winner for the Queen of understatement award goes to!' Jubilee thought.

"Hey, I'm working on a month, here. Give me some credit." He couldn't help but wonder about what she meant by side effects, but he didn't feel like going digging for it. "You headed back in?" he asked, turning back towards the mansion.

Jubilee picked up her mat and stretched her back, noting the pops. "Gah, totally gettin' old, Dude. Yeah, I was headin' back in. Thought I'd see what Lorna left in the fridge snack wise. Wanna come with? Promise I won't make you drink any more Bubble tea."

"I told you, I didn't mind the bubble tea," he protested, following her back inside. "I just didn't like the bubbles. Lethal little things, I swear."

"Well, I promise I won't make you eat the bubbles then." she said, wandering into the kitchen and noting no one else was around.

She supposed that anyone else up at the moment was probably hovering in the main dining room, waiting for Breakfast. Breakfast at Xavier's was one of the few 'all school' affairs, and thus the smaller of the shared kitchens tended to be neglected this early.

Opening the refrigerator, she peered inside. "Hmm." she muttered, picking up a bottle of juice and holding it out over the fridge door.

"So, I saw your journal entry on the whole atonement thingie."

"Mm," he replied dourly, sitting down at the table and levitating an apple out of the fruit basket and over to his hand. "Should've kept my mouth shut. None of you really needed to hear my opinion."

Jubilee shrugged. "Teach, everyone's got a right to an opinion. I may not agree with what you and Rahne were sayin' but I'd be a damned fool if I thought you had no right ta say it. I'm a Buddhist, means we got all that Karma and reincarnation stuff goin'. When I'm bein' particularly bullish, I tend ta think of Western religion as pretty wacked but the truth is, everyone's got their own way of lookin' at things. What's right for me, ain't always right for someone else. Still, what was said hurt some people that were only beginnin' to find a way to try and make 'emselves better people. Not that I think anyone really meant to do that to them. Guess everythin' has its two edges, hey?"

Nathan's expression went chilly. "You're being pretty presumptuous," he said curtly, rubbing at the apple. "Unless you're one of the people? In which case, feel free to be upfront about it."

Jubilee's return look was steady. "I saw Manny after all that went down, he wasn't doin' too well after all that was said. I had a pretty recent lesson in just how bad my own judgement was, so I ain't about to go givin' people shit for their own. But I know I saw a friend hurtin' bad cause of things people said. You expect me ta just say 'Good job', or somethin'?"

Jubilee sighed, pulling a box of instant macaroni and cheese out of the freezer and slamming it down on the counter. She shrugged, wishing she had brought it up. She didn't particular want to start another fight. "Still, Manny wouldn't thank me for bringin' this up and I'm gonna just shut my mouth. Guess it's about time I started listening' to Kitty when she tells me I need to think before I say things."

"More than a little presumptuous," he said icily, restraining his anger with some difficulty, but thankfully not too much. If they'd been having this conversation last week, when he hadn't slept for four days, it might have been chancy. Especially given that she'd brought up Manuel. "It's a funny thing about downward spirals, too. In a lot of cases, including this one, you have to let yourself be pushed."

Jubilee ripped the package open, the tearing sound soothing as she bit back the first thing that came to mind. "Would you rather I lied to you? Told you that it didn't matter to me that Manny was this close to giving up cause he thought no one would give him a chance?"

He was angry at her, she could tell that. She'd be blind not to see it. Did she really want to continue with this? But it had mattered that Manny was hurt. If she was truly honest with herself, it had also mattered because she had done things that she had to believe could be forgiven.

"You think you got a bead on things, know all about it cause you been there? Maybe it just means you can't see the forest for the trees."

"Jubilee," Nathan said after a moment, "you're crossing the line here." He set the apple down on the table and regarded her steadily. "I probably know Manuel better than you do, after this summer, at least in terms of how his mind works. If he took 'No one's going to give me a chance' from what I said, or Rahne said, or anyone said, he wasn't paying attention to what we were saying." His eyes narrowed a little. "To be honest? I am sorry I said anything. I didn't realize it was a rhetorical question, and I regret the consequences of that particular discussion. But in the end, Manuel's responsible for his own interpretation. And I am not putting up with anyone attacking me on his behalf."

Jubilee eyed the box in her hands for a second, before meeting Nathan's gaze. "Didn't mean to start somethin', Dude. Least, not a fight, anyhow."

She walked over to the microwave and placed the tray inside, listening to the beeps as she programmed it.

"Mostly brought it up cause I honestly can't understand the logic behind it. Guess I was curious. Like I said, need to do that whole thinkin' before sayin' thing."

If she wanted to back off, he was perfectly happy to let her. Really. He traced one of the Askani meditative patterns in his mind, feeling the seething anger drain away, at least for now. She was a kid, and a fairly mixed-up one at that. He needed to cut her some slack for letting her emotions run ahead of her logic, especially given her involvement with Manuel, which made that sort of thing somewhat inevitable.

"Well, join the club, because I don't see how atonement makes any kind of sense at all," he said, much more calmly. "Who do you looking for forgiveness from? God? If that's the case, fine - I don't believe, but I know how pointless it is to argue with people about that subject." He picked up the apple again. "If it's the people you hurt, there are better things to do that dwell on the things you've done to hurt them. Treat them better in future. What's past is past, and you can't change it."

Jubilee smiled. "Buddhist here, remember? So I ain't about the whole forgiveness from God thing. More of a believer in Karma, everything you send out comes back kinda thing. Thing is about the people you hurt? It's well and good ta say don't dwell on the stuff you did to them. What if they won't let you treat them better though? I don't see where tryin' to square things with the wrong you did is dwelling, ya know? I think that's the main thing I couldn't understand. If you know you did wrong, then shouldn't there be some kinda consequences to that?"

"How do you 'square things'?" he asked evenly. "You can't ever undo what you've done to someone you've hurt. No matter what it is, it's there, irrevocable. The only thing you can do is do better. If they don't want to let you, then that's their choice. If they don't to forgive you, you can't force it on them. Maybe that's the consequences you're looking for."

Jubilee thought about that, mulling it over in her head. "If they don't want to forgive you. Well, I guess you do what you said. Just keep treatin' them better then you did and hope they can let things go someday. I guess trying to square things for me is more about takin' responsibility though. Admitting that you did something painful to someone else and askin' them to accept that from you. I ain't some great wordsmith. Guess that's why I started takin' Speech class. I don't know, I suppose for the person you're apologising to, that effort gives 'em a chance to let go of the hurt, to move on themselves. What I didn't understand when I read what people were sayin'. It seemed like people were sayin' you can't make things right so you shouldn't even try. Like, sayin' sorry didn't mean anythin', so why say it at all? Only, they forgot that it's as much about lettin' the other person move on as you tryin' to make up for things."

"And is it any easier for the person you've hurt or offended to move on if you're hanging around determined to make them accept your apology, or the amends you're trying to make?" Nathan asked. "Your idea of taking responsibility seems... well, it seems to be about you, Jubilee, and I'm talking in the general sense here, not the specific. Asking someone you've hurt to accept that you've hurt them isn't going to help them. They know that."

"That's not what I meant, Dude. Guess I'm worse at this whole language thing then I realised. Look, I didn't say anything about houndin' people. The way I saw what you were all saying, it seemed like there shouldn't even be an attempt to apologise. Like, cause you couldn't make up for something bad you'd done, then there wasn't even any point in trying to make amends. You know, if someone ain't gonna forgive you, that's cool. You tend to figure out pretty quickly that they're not. But, there's gotta be some effort to apologise, right? Hate is a pretty hard emotion, Teach. I wouldn't wish it on anyone if there was a way to defuse it."

Jubilee pulled her food out of the microwave, closed it and walked over to one of the cutlery drawers, pausing there. "You're not the first person to accuse me of bein' selfish."

Was she even listening to him? "I said I was speaking of the general you, not the specific you," Nathan said sharply. "I said nothing about being selfish. I merely said that placing the importance on recognizing your own transgressions rather than on the consequences of those transgressions is making the situation about you, rather than the person that you hurt." He frowned at the apple. "And I certainly didn't say that there was no point in making amends. But the only thing you can do, either way, is to try and treat the person you hurt better in future. Whether you're doing that because you feel bad about what you did, or because you're focusing on treating them well is immaterial, except that there's a lot less angst with the second set of motivations."

Jubilee nodded. "Okay, I think I can get what you're sayin' now. And sorry, I been told I'm selfish and a coward and disrespectful so much lately. I kinda started expecting that everyone just automatically thought that about me. Of course, sayin' that, I'd probably be accused of some kind of persecution complex. Anyway, I think I can get where you're comin' from now."

She grabbed a fork out of the drawer and pulled herself up onto the bench. "Sometimes I think if I just stuck to speaking in Mandarin, I'd do a lot better."

"~Given that even telepaths don't manage to avoid misunderstandings, I don't think the language one chooses to speak in makes much difference one way or the other,~" Nathan said in Mandarin, then switched smoothly back to English. "It's all about interpretation, Jubilee. A lot of times, we hear what we want to hear."

She smiled wryly. "And what we choose to hear is sometimes coloured by where we come from and what we're feelin' and sometimes whether we want to be _right_ about what we're talkin' about. I've seen some of the worst arguments over things that seem so small just cause neither person wanted to be wrong. It's hard to know what to say. I took Speech cause I thought maybe it'd teach me but it's a lot harder then I thought it'd be. I mean, you open your mouth and you talk, right? Seems like the easiest thing in the world. And here I am almost an adult and I should know this stuff."

"Sometimes colored? Always. Whether you're an adult or not. There's no such thing as objectivity." He really didn't want the apple now, but he supposed that he'd pawed it and all, so putting it back in the fruit basket wasn't a viable option. Maybe he'd go feed it to Bella. He looked at Jubilee, trying to assess how she'd react to him getting up and going. She would probably figure he was angry with her. Which he was, but there was no point in letting that on.

Jubilee toyed with the Mac & cheese. "Dude, it's been nice and all. But I kinda need to go take a shower. Can't go to my first class all stinky and stuff." She looked at him and smiled. "Thanks for not yelling at me. What with my secondary mutation being the ability to be a massive pain in the ass, I kinda expected some yelling. I'll see ya in Mandarin class, Teach."

She jumped down from the bench and walked out the door. She supposed she was running away again but she thought that if she stayed any longer she might end up putting her foot in her mouth so far that she'd never get it out again. Time for a strategic retreat.

Well, that was what one called 'beating a hasty retreat'. Nathan shook his head, rising from his own chair. "Not feeling guilty," he muttered, some of the anger flooding back. She'd stepped over the line, and he wasn't going to feel guilty about calling her on it. Really, he wasn't.

Damn it. He needed to go kill the punching bag again.