Shiro, Madelyn - last Monday afternoon

[x-madelyn.livejournal.com]

In repsonse to this email from Madelyn Shiro and the nosy doctor have a chat. It's less than productive.



Shiro had had this e-mail in his inbox for a few days now. He wasn't too fond of Dr. Bartlet sticking her nose in his business, but he knew that he'd never hear the end of it if he didn't speak with her, especially since she'd also informed Xavier and Samson. "Note to self: don't tell anyone anything anymore," he muttered as he slipped on a pair of flip-flops and went down to the medlab. Fortunately, today was one of those few and far between days when the infirmary was empty, so it wasn't hard to find her. He knocked on her door and waited for an answer.

"Come in," came her reply, sounding slightly distracted. She looked surprised as Shiro opened the door, blinking at him through her reading glasses. "Shiro, hi."

"Hi." Shiro stood in the doorway, not sure if he wanted to enter the room or not. He knew he probably looked funny, wearing a white shirt and jeans when his skin was still black. God how he wanted that gone. "You wanted to talk," he said.

"I did?" Madelyn blinked, then remembered the email of last week. She hadn't expected Shiro to actually take her up on that, thinking he would either avoid talking altogether, or perhaps talk to Leonard. "Yes, I did. Why don't you come in and sit down? You're going to give me a crick in the neck if I have to keep looking up at you."

Shiro hesitated. Entering and sitting down meant that he'd actually have to do this. It wasn't too late to abort, right? Not that it really mattered, because if he didn't speak with her, then Samson would drill him in his special way, and that would probably be ten times worse. Sighing, Shiro walked in and closed the door before taking a seat. "So."

"So indeed." Madelyn slipped off her glasses so she wasn't peering over the top of them at him, and leaned back. Boy really didn't want to be here. "I suppose you think I'm a meddling old bag with nothing better to do than stick my nose into your business, hmm?"

"You ought to tell Professor Xavier that you've developed telepathy," Shiro said, none too bitterly. "I could sit here and rant about how I cannot stand not having any privacy here and how people, myself included, need to learn to keep their mouths shut especially on the journals, but we can skip that. Instead I would like to know why you think you can presume to know what is going on in my mind? Unless you really are a telepath." He said this all calmly, carefully withholding any superior or mocking tone.

"No, no telepathy," said Madelyn, her tone light but a slight flicker of... something in her eyes. "Look, Shiro, I'm sorry if I overstepped the line, but I'm a doctor. First and foremost, we react to people who aren't healthy. And what you said, about needing someone to call you on what you did... well, it didn't seem very healthy to me. Maybe I got it wrong. You want to explain what you meant, in case I did?"

Shiro shrugged. "I thought it was clear. I did something that nearly cost me my life as well as someone else's because I was unhappy. I had plenty of alternatives to take, but I chose the most destructive one, and I should not be given a pat on the head and told that everything is okay. I mean, what if I had killed Mr. Beaubier? Or Mr. Summers or Mr. Dayspring?"

"Have you considered why it was you didn't take the alternatives, Shiro? You're a logical sort of person, not the type to go off half-cocked, as it were. So why the sudden lapse in judgement?" Madelyn was careful to keep any challenge out of her tone, to avoid antagonising him. "To me, that would indicate a significant conflict of some sort, that would make you react in such a fashion. Am I wrong?" The pat on the head part she'd get to in a minute.

"At the time, my decision seemed to be the easiest," Shiro admitted. "Either nip the problem in the bud, as they say, or inconvenience others, possibly even put them in danger, by depending myself on them." He was doing his part to remain calm-sounding. He wasn't in the mood to be entirely candid with this woman, but that was no reason to be rude.

"Even though you're in a school with the most powerful telepath in the world? Not to mention a number of other psis? You didn't think someone would be sent out after you?" Madelyn asked.

Shiro didn't respond right away. He knew what Madelyn was trying to get him to admit, or so he thought, so he had to choose his words properly. "I was hoping to get far away before anyone could catch up with me. All I wanted was to accomplish my goal without interruption. I didn't really care about how destructive it was."

"And that doesn't strike you as out of character for you? Achieving a goal without regard for the consequences? Shiro, you'd just suffered a fairly major upheaval in your life. It altered your circumstances, the very way you see yourself... don't you think that would have impaired your thinking somewhat?" asked Madelyn, her tone compassionate. "There's no blame here, Shiro."


"You obviously do not know me very well. Thinking things through has never been a strongpoint of mine." Shiro grinned self-derisively. "'Major upheaval' or not, I should have known better. It's not as if I lack a support system here. Ignoring the friends I've made in Alex, Clarice, and even Mr. Beaubier, I have a sister who is ready to kick my ass at all times of the day. To think how I could have hurt her..." He bit his lip and looked down, feeling suddenly ashamed. He always did when he thought about what he'd put Leyu through.

"The thing about crises is that we don't tend to think our way through them very well. And having someone kick us in the ass for it doesn't help - it usually tends to reinforce the belief we're complete morons." Seeing that tack wasn't getting her anywhere, Madelyn changed focus a little. "What Alex lost control of his powers and hurt Lorna, and then ran away, would you say he needed to be called on his actions?"

Ouch, that was a low tactic to take. "It's not the same, Doctor." He almost sneered at the title. "Alex did not endanger anyone when he ran away. Well, except for himself, but that is arguable. Listen, I'm not a masochist begging for punishment, nor am I trying to play the martyr. I just do not think that it's, I don't know, appropriate..." Shiro paused. "No. Aside from what my own conscience tells me, I don't feel as if I did anything wrong."

"Then why call us to task for 'failing' to punish you? In a public forum, where it was going to be read by anyone passing by?" Madelyn shook her head. "I think what we have here is a difference of perspective. I see what you did in medical terms - you were experiencing distress, and acted out of that distress, the same way someone with a concussion will sometimes take to wandering the halls and lash out at any attempt to put them back to bed," she explained, with a brief smile at the memory of the example she was using. Mr Cartwright had been a handful and a half. "It's good that you feel badly about having put people in danger, but I really can't understand why it is you would ask to be called to account for it. Probably because of the way I'm looking at it." She sighed. "Look, I'm sorry to drag you through all this - a lot of the things that have happened this last year have happened because we missed the warning signs and it's made me particularly over-sensitive. And I'm including you in that."

"I mean that other people aren't making me feel as if I did something wrong," Shiro clarified. "It's like, 'So what if you nearly killed three people, not including yourself? Here, have a cookie.' That's not fair to myself, Mr. Summers, Mr. Dayspring, and especially to Mr. Beaubier. It wasn't anybody's fault but my own that I went out and did what I did. Nobody should be blaming anybody but me. How would you have known what I was feeling and thinking? This is one of the few times I've ever even spoken with you. And this is certainly our longest conversation to date."

"Why should there be any blame at all?" asked Madelyn, aware she had well and truly stuck her foot in things, but determined to make her point. "That's what I can't understand, this need for blame. The situation arose, out of a certain stressful set of circumstances. Why should anyone be blamed?"

"Why should I get a figurative 'get out of jail free card'? Shiro contested. "Why should I not be held accountable for my own decision? This is like arguing whether I committed a crime voluntarily or if I could plead insanity. I'm not crazy, Doctor. Misguided maybe, or just plain dumb, but in control. You know all that shit about forgiveness and atonement people were writing about a few days ago? Well, I believe in repentance, and I cannot achieve that if my misdeed is not acknowledged as a wrongdoing."

She could point out any number of people who had done something just as 'dumb', but there wasn't really any point. They weren't going to agree on this, and as much as she hated giving up, discretion was the better part of not working yourself into a migraine arguing the ethics of being held responsible for decisions made when your brain wasn't working properly. Still, there was one last thing she wanted to ask. "When you came up with this plan," she said slowly, thinking out the best way to say it. "To get rid of your powers.... How did you think you were going to survive the fall to earth?"

Score one for Shiro. Taking this as a victory, he settled just a bit more comfortably into his seat. But Madelyn's question brought up a good point, one which made Shiro tense again. "The plan had been to leave me just enough power to float back to Earth," he lied, because he'd really not thought that part through, "and that last expenditure of power would burn it all out."

She noticed the tension, the sudden evasion of her eyes - she'd sat in on more than a few interviews of defendants in her FBI days and knew when someone was being evasive. "And out in the middle of the ocean, with only that island underneath you... would have been hard to hitch back," she continued, almost casually.

"Someone would have found me," Shiro responded slowly, carefully choosing his answer. "I needed to be alone while I burned out, but once I was done, I knew that someone would come for me." He was careful to keep his expression and tone neutral, but his body belied his anxiety.

"But you didn't trust us to be there for you before?" Madelyn took the plunge - she knew Shiro would probably be mortally offended by this, but maybe it was time for a little bluntness. "Shiro, when you went out there... Did you consider at all that you might not come back?"

Taken aback by the second question, Shiro couldn't formulate an answer to the first, much less the second. He stared at Madelyn, his face a complete blank, as the gears in his head worked overtime to come up with a suitable response. One could almost see the steam coming out of his ears. "I - I wasn't thinking much about the consequences at all," he finally admitted. "As long as I lost my powers, I didn't care what would happen to me." He knew she had him now, and waited for the death blow.

There was none. Madelyn sat quietly behind her desk, her expression unreadable, but her eyes compassionate. "If you expect me to find fault, call you a coward or something similar, I'm afraid I'll disappoint you, Shiro. I don't work like that." She leaned forward a little. "But I hope, if you should ever find yourself in that sort of situation again... that you'll talk to someone first? Let us help you?"

Shiro wanted to rebel. He wanted to get to his feet and tell off this woman for being an idiot, for being as blind as he was. "You don't get it," he said instead, his voice tense. "Do you feel the breeze as what I say flies over your head? I. Did. Something. Wrong. You are letting me off scott-free and that's unacceptable. Period."


"And you're not getting me, Shiro. It may make me a bad Catholic, but I refuse to blame someone for being pushed to the brink of harming themselves," Madelyn retorted. "You can say it as many times as you like, Shiro, it won't change my mind. All it indicates to me is a pattern of unhealthy thinking, and _that_ is my problem, because I don't want to have to be the one to patch you up when you decide you haven't been punished enough by us and decide to take the job on yourself!"

Shiro felt some sick sense of pleasure at getting Madelyn to raise her voice ever so slightly, but he didn't show it. "I am not going to start cutting myself or take drugs or anything of the sort, Doctor, so don't worry about that. Self-flagellation on my part will be purely psychological in nature."

"Doesn't make it any less damaging, Shiro." She was going nowhere with this... except perhaps picking up some information Samson would do well to know. She was a regular doctor, not a shrink - she had an easier time dealing with Shiro when he was radioactive. "And when there's a precedent already set for harmful behaviour..." Madelyn let the rest hang.

"You have to be anal retentive in your attention to me," Shiro offered as a conclusion. "Makes sense, I guess." Shrugging, Shiro stood up. "So that's it, yes? We are no closer to understanding one another than we were half an hour ago."

"I have to be concerned, for your welfare," Madelyn corrected, only half-managing to hold in the sigh of frustration. "And yes, that's it. I can't see any point continuing this, and I have a lot of work that needs doing." She picked up her glasses again, then paused. "But thank you, for coming down to talk to me. That can't have been easy. I'm only sorry it wasn't more productive, for either of us."

Shiro shrugged again. "I'm trying to do what needs to be done, and I've been told that talking to those in authority is one of those things. But thank you, too." He turned around and left the room, intent on heading to the gym to punch something. Talking was all well and good, but nothing beat violence.