Alison & Scott

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Tuesday Morning ~ Alison goes to talk to Scott and to face the music for organizing a mutiny. Whee!

That's all? You don't have anything more to say to me?

So she'd slept and her mind was clear. This was, actually, not such a good thing. Going in with a fuzzy brain and not enough will power to think up all the ways Scott might consider killing her was a good thing. Going in only too aware of what she'd done - not so good. But even if the execution had been bad, Alison still felt it had needed doing. She hoped, even as she raised a hand to rap the usual pattern on the door, that she'd walk out of there with the same sentiment.

"Come in," Scott called from behind his desk. He was marking, for lack of anything else to do, even though he hadn't planned to hand these quizzes back until Friday. Ah, well. He'd be ahead of the curve in that sense, at least. He looked up to see Alison come in, closing the door quietly behind her, and couldn't help a grimace. "I was wondering when you'd come knocking on my door," he said, without either edge or expression to his voice. "What?"

She stiffened at that, but forced herself to walk to his desk and sit down on the chair facing it. She'd walked in and it was too late to just run back to the medlab and ask Madelyn to put her under for another day. As tempting as it was to do just that. "Meant to talk to you yesterday but I," she paused, unfortunately unable to find the humor in that at that particular moment, "was otherwise detained." Alison took a shallow breath, suddenly lost as to how to go on. "I… spoke the Professor yesterday. Gave him your files." There, that was done at least.

"I know. Charles and I spoke yesterday, while you were asleep. He gave me back the files. And a lecture." Whoops, hadn't intended to say that. He leaned back in his chair a little, eyeing her. "What do you want?" he asked wearily. "Me to say you were right? Fine, you were right. I needed the sleep, and I needed all my responsibilities taken away so that I'd stop hoarding them and driving myself crazy in the process. Your timing perhaps sucked, but that's hardly your fault."

She stared at him for a moment, mind utterly blank. No, that wasn't quite what she'd wanted him to say - but if it meant he was slowing down whether he liked it or not, she'd have to take it and be happy with it. There were, in fact, a fair number of things she would have liked to say, but they didn't seem important or right anymore. "Okay." Everything had been taken care of by Charles while she was asleep apparently. Nothing more left to do.

"That's all?" Scott asked for a moment, a bit restlessly. "You don't have anything more to say to me? No 'You obsessive freak, Summers'? I know you read those files..." He trailed off, looking away, his expression going blank as he wrestled himself back under control. "Never mind," he said dully. "Apparently they're better out in the open anyway."

She badly wanted to tell him that no one but her had seen them at the beginning. That she'd only gone to Haroun because she was loosing herself in the matter and wanted a sounding board, for which he'd been ideally suited sine he was reviewing training logs already. Of course, that was as a result of her hauling off and declaring a mutiny. But she didn't particularly want to talk about the files. "No. I'm sorry I did things that way." She was, she realized this even as she said the words - although not with the end result. The way she'd mishandled things, yes, but not that he wasn't dealing with this alone anymore. "I should probably go now," she offered, far more calmly than she really felt.

"Ali," Scott said, pained, as she turned towards the door. "I'm sorry. I'm not... well, I am angry at you, but not in the 'holding a grudge' sort of way. I'm more angry at myself." He smiled humorlessly, spreading his hands wide as she looked back towards him. "So desperate to keep it all together, to do everything right, and now look at me. I screwed up badly enough to need extreme measures to get me out of a position of responsibility before I killed someone."

Not with the making her feel better - then again, it wasn't at all what she'd been there for and it would have been ridiculous to expect that of Scott in the first place with things as they were. "It's okay." She smiled a bit, the façade surprisingly easy to find. "You can't always just be angry at yourself." Of course, he was going to blame himself for this all over again. She could practically see him thinking out all the reasons why.

"Don't worry about me," Scott said, unconsciously tapping his pencil restlessly on the desk. "You all did what you felt you had to do. I'm fine with it."

Alison could have just screamed. Or hid under a rock, either really. You've done enough. You can't do it all. No one can. Her lips quirked into a tiny smile, just for a second. Can't fix it all, can't change everything all at once. Leave it alone for now.

"Okay. I'll see you training later." There, taking it at face value. Not pushing.

Oh, thank God, she was letting it go. Scott managed to smile back. "Do I get instructions as to where and when?" he asked a bit wryly. "Or should I just ask Ororo?" Now, there was a conversation he wasn't looking forward to having...

"Ororo set a session up for us this afternoon I think. You know... She threatened to fry me if I didn't get sleep." The response was bland, Alison apparently still a bit stunned with that one. "Did the whole flicking fingers at me with little miniature thunderbolts dancing on them and the sweet smile and - Scott? She's scary when she does that." Oh god she was rambling but the smile had been real enough. "Did she ever do that to you too?"

"She did. When Jean and I were wandering around being oblivious, years ago..." Scott stopped, not sure why that had just come out of his mouth. "I--this afternoon's good," he went on awkwardly. "Not doing anything. Nothing to do, other than this marking."

For a moment, Alison just wanted to cry. Talk about foot in mouth-ness, chronic at that. Just leaving things alone and making sure he showed up at training and giving him that to concentrate on instead of anything else - that she could do safely. Maybe. "Okay." She nodded, trying to smile a bit at him as she opened the door to leave. "I'll see you this afternoon."