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xp_logs2004-10-31 03:02 pm
x-foliate.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2004-10-31 03:02 pm
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Scott and Paige: Does this look familiar?
We were all waiting for it; Paige finally snaps. There's a car ride, some screaming, Paige almost breaks a window, kicks herself off the team, Scott tells her she's still on the team, and there's even an interesting sollution made. Every single issue comes out, at least once, have fun spotting them all. Really freaking long and I don't think I have a strong enough icon for this, in short.
The dance studio had seemed like the perfect place to her. It was early Saturday morning, so very few people would be showing up here. The ones that would show up would leave her alone, or at least, had been up too late last night to be showing up. And she was Paige, so it wasn’t like anyone would be looking for her here. Under regular circumstances, there were a lot of things, a lot of bad or embarrassing things, which she would do willingly before setting foot in this place. But these weren’t exactly normal circumstances.
Paige wouldn’t say she was hiding. No. Of course, she might also be lying. She’d brought her books and her blanket and had made herself a little nest of comfort in the corner. A travel mug sat by her knee, but it had already gone cold.
Scott stopped in the doorway, spotting her over in the corner. He shook his head slowly, a faint smile tugging at his lips. "All right, Guthrie," he said briskly, coming over. "Bike or car? Your choice."
“Pardon me?” Paige asked, after a long moment of staring at her Captain. She’d forgotten her reading glasses upstairs, so she had to shake her head slightly to bring him into focus. “Glad to see you up and around, sir. You were missed.”
"Thank you," Scott said very gravely. "It's good to be up and around and in full possession of my faculties. Now, I repeat: bike or car?" He folded his arms across his chest, smiling down at her. "The car has the benefit of allowing us to actually carry on a conversation while I'm driving. The bike, on the other hand, is... well, cooler."
His words were merely met with another long pause as Paige tried to figure out how exactly she would handle this. “I’m kind of busy at the moment, Scott. Tests next week, you know. And, studying? I’m sorry, maybe later?” she finally replied, somewhat haltingly.
"Paige." He kept smiling affectionately, even as he went on. "I don't give a rat's ass about your tests, or your as-ever-burning need to study. You're coming out with me, or I'm going to have to carry you out of here. And that, while entertaining for the audience, would probably be very undignified for both of us."
“But...” she tried helplessly, hand making a fist in her blanket. “Not failing? Is important? What audience? And I’m hardly dressed for... I need to not fail?”
Scott bent down, gently detaching her from the blanket and taking the book that was open on her lap, setting it aside before he took her hands and pulled her to her feet. "You appear to be decently covered to me," he said brightly, and then very carefully enfolded her in a hug. "And you're coming out with me," he said more softly. "The studying can wait."
Paige found herself holding her breath so hard and clenching her teeth so tight that her throat and lungs pulled in on themselves, making the hollow in her neck deepen until it was more a hole. She didn’t move into the hug, or wrap her arms around his waist, but she didn’t move away either, and found his shoulder was a very easy place to be. Letting herself slowly release the breath, minding herself in case she lost control, she replied quietly, “Where are we going?”
Oh, this was a very interesting role-reversal. Maybe it was still the lingering effects of the drug, but he found a lot of irony in that. "Wherever you'd like," Scott said, taking a step back but leaving his hands on her shoulders. "Or nowhere in particular. We could just start driving and see where we end up."
“Kay,” was all she answered, looking away and down to her things. They were in the corner, not too much in the way, were they? She would come back for them. Her textbooks for her test that didn’t exist were here after all. And her blanket. Paige just hoped no one moved them. To foreign countries.
Scott left his arm around her shoulder as he led her out of the dance hall and down to the garage, not bothering with much in the way of small talk as he did so. Once she was comfortable ensconced in the passenger seat of his car, he hit the control for the garage door, then sped out onto the driveway at what was perhaps a slightly reckless speed. Had to compensate for not taking the bike, after all.
"I read the reports on Wednesday's mission while I was lounging around," he said, once they were out on the road. "Pete and Nathan both had high compliments for how you handled yourself."
Paige had curled herself up, tucking her feet under herself, and was angled towards the window. If anything, she could just stare at the telephone poles rushing past, but Scott seemed to want to talk. Maybe she ought to have opted for the motorcycle. “I just punched some guy in the nose,” she answered with a shrug. “Everything is easy when you’re bullet proof.”
"I don't think anything about that mission could have been easy," Scott said, keeping his eyes on the road. "Not when you got into that safehouse and found out what was waiting for you."
Tightening her grip on the handhold, Paige cleared her throat. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen poles... “It was very sad. Poor kids. Nathan was pretty upset about it.”
"Understandably so," Scott said. Yes, definitely some role reversal going on here. "After all, he was one of those kids, all those years ago... Paige?" he asked, abruptly tiring of dancing around the subject. "You realize you're sitting in a car with someone who bottles up things just as well as you do? And who has his head considerably less stuck up his own ass this weekend..."
“Hm?” Paige said, turning her head to him. She gave him a little smile, almost amused at how he was so worried. “I know. We’re very much alike. I think I mentioned this before and you told me I shouldn’t be like you or something. I forget.”
"Well, the point still stands. Look at where being too much like me got me." He glanced aside from the road for a moment, quite shamelessly giving her the same grin he'd used on Madelyn. "I wouldn't recommend the cure, though."
“If the cure is getting amnesia and wandering around a strange city for a little while, I wouldn’t recommend it either,” she answered bluntly. The smile was seen, but she flicked her eyes back onto the road. For him of course, what about rampaging bunny rabbits?
Scott focused on the road again. "No, it wasn't a whole lot of fun," he said after a moment. "Also not actually a fix, but it did give me some food for thought." He slowed, taking the next turn onto one of the side roads. "You do realize," he went on as the road sloped downhill, "that it took me years to be bottling to the extent that it was actually damaging. That's one thing you don't actually need to be doing faster than I did."
“Good thing I’m not bottling or bottling to a damaging extent then,” Paige replied easily, going back to staring at the window. Out the window wasn’t making vague comments that she could easily duck around. Oh look, a sparrow.
Scott couldn't help a smile. "This is cosmic justice, you know," he commented. "Or should that be karmic?"
“Both.” Paige pulled the sleeves of her shirt down from her elbows, where they’d been pushed up, to the bottoms of her knuckles, where she could hold onto them with her thumb. It was cold. “That way, everyone wins.”
They drove along in silence for a few minutes. "Paige," Scott said finally. "If your recently amnesiac Captain whom you love very much asked you to do something, would you do it? Assuming it's not 'Paige, please jump off a bridge?'"
Paige smiled, just a little. Her Captain. “Of course. Assuming it’s not ‘Paige, please jump off a bridge’. Or anything along that trail of thought.”
"Paige..." Scott paused, then pulled the car over at the side of the road, under a row of brilliantly crimson-colored trees. He leaned back into the seat, then looked sideways at her. "I'd like you to talk to the Professor. Sometime really soon."
“About what, exactly?” she asked cautiously, giving her reflection a puzzled look. “The Professor and I have tea occasionally, in which we talk, so I assume you’re thinking of something specific.”
"Oh, boy." Scott took a deep breath. "Where should I start?" he asked with a sigh. "The dead kids in Vermont? Your brothers acting like a pair of idiots whose heads I'd like to smack together? One of your closest friends running off and leaving you with hardly a word?" He gazed down at her, his expression calm but serious. "Or maybe Jono."
“You forgot the part where I have no friends, I don’t measure up and I may or may not be developing an ulcer,” Paige answered casually, pressing her forehead against the window. She let her eyes fall closed, very tempted to just force herself into a half sort of sleep. When she was little and she refused to sleep her daddy would take her out into the Bronco and just start driving; she’d be asleep by the time they hit the flag marking their neighbors land. “Would ruby quartz deflect a laser by the way?”
"I don't know," Scott said after a moment. "I've never tried." He stared back out at the road and the fiery-colored trees. "I'm sorry," he said very softly. No guilt in his voice, just regret and caring that he wasn't going to hide behind a facade, not right now. "For everything you're carrying right now. I know a little bit about weight."
Paige nodded quietly to herself. One more thing to test out. One more thing to add to her lack of sleep. But one step closer to finishing her files. “You’re sweet,” she commented after a while, finally registering his second set of words. “But all your knowledge, all the knowledge in the world, seems to be doing very little for me right now.”
"We agreed you didn't want to go for the temporary amnesia option," Scott said. "But there needs to be something, Paige. The longer you let it go without taking one of those options, the more likely you are to wind up like me, having the choice made for you whether you like it or not."
“Pardon me? There were options? When were there options?” Paige replied, slowly turning her head to watch Scott drive. Untucking her legs, she braced her feet again the airbag door, noticing for the first time that her left shoelace was untied.
"About some things," he said very quietly. "The studying, the training. If you use that as an escape... well, that's apparently not permissible behavior around here anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if Maddie's been eyeing you and stroking her tranq gun."
“It’s not an escape. It’s a necessity. I study because I have to do well, no, very well, perfectly if I can, and I must. I train because that’s what I was born to do. If that’s not permissible, well. There’s a reason that I have a habit of keeping a metal husk under my skin at all times.”
"I've been wondering," Scott said, deliberately not reacting to her words, "just how much longer Charles would have let me go on as I was. It's an unsettling thought, Paige, but... I still wonder."
Paige stared at him, unimpressed. “Scott. You’ll excuse me if scare tactics aren’t working too well on me at the moment. The Professor knocks me out, he knocks me out. I get back up and start over again.”
"I'm not talking about him knocking you out." Scott gazed back at her steadily. "I'm talking about whether he believes you're under too much stress to handle an active role on the team or not. Why do you think he didn't step in when Alison put together her mutiny? Why do you think Nathan's still a reserve member, despite how useful his telekinesis could be in the field?"
“Of all the hypocritical-“ Paige snapped, her calm, cold reserve breaking in an instant. “You people tell me I’m not good enough! That I have to work harder. That I have to be the best. That I have to prove myself. And when I do get better, when I work hard, when I am the best, when I prove myself you tell me to back down. Take it easy, Paige. Get some rest. Then you top it off with threatening to take everything away from me! The one thing that it keeping me on the edge of sanity! Thanks, Scott. Thanks. And here I was thinking for just a moment that I meant as much to you as you to me.” The back fist hit the leather interior of the car door as she spoke; she raised it to the glass but realized just a hair soon enough of the consequences. Instead, she pushed open the car door, ignoring the beeping noise that mentioned the door was ajar, and slammed it shut behind her, making her way down the road they’d taken. She’d run farther than this before. She could run it now.
Well, that hadn't been all that much of a surprise. Scott leaned over, pulling the door shut, and started the car, pulling out into a u-turn and then driving up alongside her, then pulling sharply in front of her, so that the front of the car was blocking her route forward. She immediately started to walk around, but he got out this time.
"Stop," he said simply. "Right now, Paige."
Instinctively, Paige raised a hand to her hair, eyes narrowing down. “Leave me alone, Captain,” Paige replied, putting a bitter twist to the words. “I failed you. I’m off the team. There’s probably a bunch of things in there I’m missing but I’m too tired to recite them all. I get it. Just let me go home.”
Scott shook his head. "I don't want you off the team," he said patiently.
“Well, you sure have a fantastic way of showing off that one!” Paige shrieked, gesturing wildly. She was past snapping and getting very close to hysterical all of a sudden. “I don’t have any more long speeches in me, sir, if that’s what you’re waiting for. I’m not good with words. Just tell me what you want so I can do something totally irrational and storm off.”
"You're not getting it," Scott said, a very faint, sad smile tugging at his lips. "I want you on the team. Very, very badly. And if I had to, yes, I would send you into a situation where you might get killed, because what we do is worth the risk. Worth our lives." He shook his head, never breaking eye contact. "But it's not worth our self-destruction," he went on, more quietly. "It's not worth not living our lives."
Tears stained her cheeks and she pushed them back with a hand, hiccupping under her sobs. “You silly son of a bitch. This is my life. Not because I was forced into it, because I want it to be it. I want to be an X-Man. I want to earn a Doctorate and teach Chemistry here. I want to have horseback riding lessons when one day I injure myself beyond my own healing abilities,” she answered, leaning across the car to him. “You think Angelo hasn’t asked me if one day we’d want to get married? You think that I turned him down for kicks? Yes, it has everything to do with Jono, but if, when he dies I am still going to be saying no, Scott. I will never, ever tie myself down so that I pause for a split second, worrying about them, and get myself killed. I will never let them mourn me as their wife. I will not leave children behind me motherless. I’m not losing out on living my life. I’ve lived more in the year I’ve been here than I had the seventeen previous.” She laughed, slumping against the hood of the car, her hair a halo of white against the silver blue paint. “One more speech in me it seems. I’m on a roll. It’s your cue to call me inhuman and crazy and go away now.”
"Not going to indulge you on that, I'm afraid," Scott said, quietly but forcefully. "And I'm not going to give you reason to decide that I've taken away everything that means anything to you, or that I don't respect you for the choices that you've made. What I will tell you is that you are going to make yourself as unfit for the team as I made myself for a leadership position if you keep on like this." He took one step closer, but didn't move to try and touch her.
“You have no answers. Only demands,” Paige said quietly into the hood; she’d run herself hoarse and was just so tired now. Of all of this. “How can you demand something you can’t answer yourself?”
"Because I am something of a hypocrite," Scott said, admitting it freely enough. "Because I care about you--you, Paige, not Husk, and you're just as myopic as I am." He shook his head, leaning back against the car. "Do you know what started to come back to me first, while I was wandering around New York? Not the job. Not even the Dream. I looked at a girl with purple hair kissing her boyfriend and yearned for what I didn't know was my link with Betsy. I looked at kids playing outside a school and felt this... protective love, this joy in just watching them. I remembered Charles sitting across a chessboard from me, smiling and asking me how many moves ahead I could think."
Paige closed her eyes tight against his words, but let herself listen anyway. He was making no sense. No, that wasn’t true. He was making sense, but not to her, not in the way she needed. She needed a structure, an answer, something she could hold on to. All he’d managed to do was pull everything away from her, hold it above her head and tell her to get it back. So she remained silent and fell to the road, looking out in the opposite direction as Scott with her back against a tire.
He could see that she'd tuned him out. His words weren't reaching her - but then, why should they? Just because he'd had something of an amnesia-induced epiphany didn't mean that he could or even should share it. "So what do we do here, Paige?" Scott asked, still leaning against the car. "I see two options, for me. I either do what Scott would do, or I do what Cyclops would do. Scott knows what taking you off the team would do to you - you just told him, and he cares too much about you to do that. Cyclops would do it anyway, because a team member who's convinced that we're simultaneously telling her to drive herself into the ground yet disrespecting her and dismissing her efforts, a team member who comes right out and says that the team is the only thing that's keeping her sane, who honestly seems to believe it's all she has... is someone who is going to snap under the pressure, possibly getting herself and other people killed. Which option do I choose, Paige?"
Paige wanted to turn around and tell him he was wrong. That he was twisting her words. That the team kept her sane because in the midst of all this chaos, of all these people at each others throats, it gave her a glimmer of hope that maybe she could do something to help. But he’d made himself clear, so instead she told the squirrel that had come out to investigate, with only her eyes. “Take me off. It’s what I’d do,” she replied duly.
"Ah, but see, I don't want to do that," Scott told her. "Part of where I've been going wrong is treating Scott and Cyclops like two different people. Or trying to, rather. There has to be some kind of middle ground, some balance I can strike between acting for the good of the team and acting for the good of my team members as individuals. We are not a military unit, Paige. Outwardly, in what we do, we may seem like one. But there's a personal side to all of this, one that goes beyond the usual bonds you might find in a situation like that. And I have to respect that as well, or the whole thing suffers." He finally straightened, moving away from the car. "So maybe there is a third option. Now, are you going to listen to me? I mean really listen, Paige... as if I do have something you want to hear."
Rubbing at her eyes, Paige nodded, instinctively curling up, knees to her chest as he neared her. She swallowed hard, past whatever was in her throat, and drew a breath. “I’m listening.”
"You keep training. You stay on the team. But you do what I asked you to do before you decided to scream at me and storm out of the car," Scott said steadily. "You talk to the Professor. Regularly. Not about the weather, or even about your studies. About Jono. About Vermont. About the team and why you're ready to sacrifice so much." He took another step closer. "And we change your training. I don't want you doing any more solo work in the Danger Room until I say otherwise."
“You think I’ve cracked,” she replied quietly, staring at the pavement. Paige wouldn’t mention how little talking to anyone solved, ever. A waste of her breath; he could get the Cliffnotes version from a multitude of different people if she chose to point him in that direction.
"No," Scott said, "but I think you're walking a very fine line. You haven't slipped yet, mostly because you've got more than your fair share of willpower, but that only gets you so far." He shook his head. "I'm not letting you wind up like me," he said quietly. "I know you probably don't want to talk to the Professor about any of this, because you don't particularly trust telepaths, but that's not negotiable, Paige. As for the training..." Scott smiled very faintly. "I'm not afraid you're going to hurt yourself in the Danger Room or anything, if that's what you're thinking. But you've done the 'brilliant, driven solo operator' for a good long while now, Paige. I think it's time you started focusing on unit-based work."
Paige laughed harshly, finally looking up at him. She’d gone ashen from crying, eyes rimmed in red. “I trust telepaths. I have to. I just don’t trust the power of ‘talking’,” she replied. “As if that’s all it takes to make things better. Don’t tell me I haven’t tried, either. I tried long ago and all it makes up is pats on the back and reminders that someday everything will be fine.” She sniffed, reaching into her jeans for a tissue to only find nothing there. God, she hated sniffling. “If that’s my punishment though, long, bored hours where the Professor tries to decipher where exactly my line went from thick to thin and finally getting to work with someone other than myself, good luck on that one by the way, then so be it. I need a Kleenex. Do we have Kleenex in the car?”
No, he was not going to respond to the punishment comment. "Well, I did offer you the amnesia option..." Scott turned away, opening the door of the car and pulling a package of Kleenex out of the glove box. He crouched down beside her, offering it to her. "I think talking can work," he said quietly. "If we let it. If we don't, people start taking drastic steps when you don't listen to them. My little enforced nap in the medlab and Alison's mutiny being exhibit A, and Paige, I'm still trying to deal with the aftermath of that. Everyone's just thrilled that I seem to be exhibiting less visible angst about my life, but do you think they're convinced I've really gotten my feet back under me? I don't expect the sidelong looks to go away anytime soon, and that's only right, because I earned them."
Running over all the ways she could reply to that, Paige merely took a tissue from him, absently aware of how much her hands were shaking. She dabbed at her nose and crumpled the Kleenex into a ball, stuffing it into her pocket. “May I overstep my boundaries?” she asked quietly, looking up at him with very blue eyes. Paige had come to the conclusion that there was no reply.
"Feel free," Scott said a bit wryly.
“May I... may I have a hug?” she said finally, biting her lip against a new wave of tears. This was too hard; asking for things and being so afraid of what was happening and all of it.
Scott bit his lip, then settled down beside her and enfolded her in a hug a little more fierce than the one he'd given her in the dance hall. "I just want to see you get everything you want, you know," he sighed, feeling her shaking. "I do want to see you in those leathers. Because you belong there, by choice and by nature and I've always thought that. But I want you to be happy, too. In and out of the leathers."
Paige nodded into his shoulder, clinging, almost desperately at him with fingers made into claws. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I know, it’s just... Sometimes I don’t see any other way and I can’t ask, I don’t have anyone anymore and... I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
"You have me. Whenever you need me." Scott shifted a little, but only into a more comfortable position, since Paige didn't seem like she was going to let go anytime soon. "I told Maddie I was turning over a new leaf, and I wanted to share, especially with the people who stopped me from killing myself while I was still on the old leaf. You're right up there on that list, Paige. Give me another chance to be there for you?"
“No, I don’t. There is always going to be a situation where two people need you and you’re going to choose the other person. It’s how it always works,” Paige answered, releasing her hold on him suddenly. Her hands folded into her lap where they promptly went white from her grip.
"So was that a no?" he asked quietly, staring down at her. "Okay. I'll just have to do my best to be--" His own words from that discussion about the mentorship 'program' came back to him. "--obnoxiously persistent and prove to you that I can be trusted."
Paige smiled gently at him, tilting her head. “I can trust people. I do it very easily, in fact. But every time I do they decide I’m not a priority anymore. Guess that does something to a girl’s head. We’ll see, I suppose. Once more can’t hurt me any more.”
"The perils of looking like you have it all together, so much of the time," Scott pointed out wryly, getting to his feet and then offering her a hand. "And yes, again, I'm speaking from experience."
Paige could only give him a weak, tired smile, taking his hand to pull herself up. She wasn’t shaking so hard anymore at least. That was a start. He was gently leading her to the car now, and she paused, looking up at him. “What are you going to tell everyone?”
Scott blinked at her. "Everyone? Nothing. I'll have to tell the Professor you're coming to see him, obviously. The new training stuff, I'll just work into the schedule." He patted her gently on the shoulder.
“Thank you...” she answered, almost inaudibly, and covered his hand with her own, looking up at him with grateful eyes.
He slid an arm around her shoulders, giving her a quick hug. "Oh, pshaw, it was nothing," he said in his best imitation of the Mal-drawl. "Can't have someone as pretty as you are looking down around the mouth."
Paige giggled shortly, leaning into the embrace. “Love my Captain,” she reiterated.
"Love you too. Even if you are going to give me gray hair."
The dance studio had seemed like the perfect place to her. It was early Saturday morning, so very few people would be showing up here. The ones that would show up would leave her alone, or at least, had been up too late last night to be showing up. And she was Paige, so it wasn’t like anyone would be looking for her here. Under regular circumstances, there were a lot of things, a lot of bad or embarrassing things, which she would do willingly before setting foot in this place. But these weren’t exactly normal circumstances.
Paige wouldn’t say she was hiding. No. Of course, she might also be lying. She’d brought her books and her blanket and had made herself a little nest of comfort in the corner. A travel mug sat by her knee, but it had already gone cold.
Scott stopped in the doorway, spotting her over in the corner. He shook his head slowly, a faint smile tugging at his lips. "All right, Guthrie," he said briskly, coming over. "Bike or car? Your choice."
“Pardon me?” Paige asked, after a long moment of staring at her Captain. She’d forgotten her reading glasses upstairs, so she had to shake her head slightly to bring him into focus. “Glad to see you up and around, sir. You were missed.”
"Thank you," Scott said very gravely. "It's good to be up and around and in full possession of my faculties. Now, I repeat: bike or car?" He folded his arms across his chest, smiling down at her. "The car has the benefit of allowing us to actually carry on a conversation while I'm driving. The bike, on the other hand, is... well, cooler."
His words were merely met with another long pause as Paige tried to figure out how exactly she would handle this. “I’m kind of busy at the moment, Scott. Tests next week, you know. And, studying? I’m sorry, maybe later?” she finally replied, somewhat haltingly.
"Paige." He kept smiling affectionately, even as he went on. "I don't give a rat's ass about your tests, or your as-ever-burning need to study. You're coming out with me, or I'm going to have to carry you out of here. And that, while entertaining for the audience, would probably be very undignified for both of us."
“But...” she tried helplessly, hand making a fist in her blanket. “Not failing? Is important? What audience? And I’m hardly dressed for... I need to not fail?”
Scott bent down, gently detaching her from the blanket and taking the book that was open on her lap, setting it aside before he took her hands and pulled her to her feet. "You appear to be decently covered to me," he said brightly, and then very carefully enfolded her in a hug. "And you're coming out with me," he said more softly. "The studying can wait."
Paige found herself holding her breath so hard and clenching her teeth so tight that her throat and lungs pulled in on themselves, making the hollow in her neck deepen until it was more a hole. She didn’t move into the hug, or wrap her arms around his waist, but she didn’t move away either, and found his shoulder was a very easy place to be. Letting herself slowly release the breath, minding herself in case she lost control, she replied quietly, “Where are we going?”
Oh, this was a very interesting role-reversal. Maybe it was still the lingering effects of the drug, but he found a lot of irony in that. "Wherever you'd like," Scott said, taking a step back but leaving his hands on her shoulders. "Or nowhere in particular. We could just start driving and see where we end up."
“Kay,” was all she answered, looking away and down to her things. They were in the corner, not too much in the way, were they? She would come back for them. Her textbooks for her test that didn’t exist were here after all. And her blanket. Paige just hoped no one moved them. To foreign countries.
Scott left his arm around her shoulder as he led her out of the dance hall and down to the garage, not bothering with much in the way of small talk as he did so. Once she was comfortable ensconced in the passenger seat of his car, he hit the control for the garage door, then sped out onto the driveway at what was perhaps a slightly reckless speed. Had to compensate for not taking the bike, after all.
"I read the reports on Wednesday's mission while I was lounging around," he said, once they were out on the road. "Pete and Nathan both had high compliments for how you handled yourself."
Paige had curled herself up, tucking her feet under herself, and was angled towards the window. If anything, she could just stare at the telephone poles rushing past, but Scott seemed to want to talk. Maybe she ought to have opted for the motorcycle. “I just punched some guy in the nose,” she answered with a shrug. “Everything is easy when you’re bullet proof.”
"I don't think anything about that mission could have been easy," Scott said, keeping his eyes on the road. "Not when you got into that safehouse and found out what was waiting for you."
Tightening her grip on the handhold, Paige cleared her throat. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen poles... “It was very sad. Poor kids. Nathan was pretty upset about it.”
"Understandably so," Scott said. Yes, definitely some role reversal going on here. "After all, he was one of those kids, all those years ago... Paige?" he asked, abruptly tiring of dancing around the subject. "You realize you're sitting in a car with someone who bottles up things just as well as you do? And who has his head considerably less stuck up his own ass this weekend..."
“Hm?” Paige said, turning her head to him. She gave him a little smile, almost amused at how he was so worried. “I know. We’re very much alike. I think I mentioned this before and you told me I shouldn’t be like you or something. I forget.”
"Well, the point still stands. Look at where being too much like me got me." He glanced aside from the road for a moment, quite shamelessly giving her the same grin he'd used on Madelyn. "I wouldn't recommend the cure, though."
“If the cure is getting amnesia and wandering around a strange city for a little while, I wouldn’t recommend it either,” she answered bluntly. The smile was seen, but she flicked her eyes back onto the road. For him of course, what about rampaging bunny rabbits?
Scott focused on the road again. "No, it wasn't a whole lot of fun," he said after a moment. "Also not actually a fix, but it did give me some food for thought." He slowed, taking the next turn onto one of the side roads. "You do realize," he went on as the road sloped downhill, "that it took me years to be bottling to the extent that it was actually damaging. That's one thing you don't actually need to be doing faster than I did."
“Good thing I’m not bottling or bottling to a damaging extent then,” Paige replied easily, going back to staring at the window. Out the window wasn’t making vague comments that she could easily duck around. Oh look, a sparrow.
Scott couldn't help a smile. "This is cosmic justice, you know," he commented. "Or should that be karmic?"
“Both.” Paige pulled the sleeves of her shirt down from her elbows, where they’d been pushed up, to the bottoms of her knuckles, where she could hold onto them with her thumb. It was cold. “That way, everyone wins.”
They drove along in silence for a few minutes. "Paige," Scott said finally. "If your recently amnesiac Captain whom you love very much asked you to do something, would you do it? Assuming it's not 'Paige, please jump off a bridge?'"
Paige smiled, just a little. Her Captain. “Of course. Assuming it’s not ‘Paige, please jump off a bridge’. Or anything along that trail of thought.”
"Paige..." Scott paused, then pulled the car over at the side of the road, under a row of brilliantly crimson-colored trees. He leaned back into the seat, then looked sideways at her. "I'd like you to talk to the Professor. Sometime really soon."
“About what, exactly?” she asked cautiously, giving her reflection a puzzled look. “The Professor and I have tea occasionally, in which we talk, so I assume you’re thinking of something specific.”
"Oh, boy." Scott took a deep breath. "Where should I start?" he asked with a sigh. "The dead kids in Vermont? Your brothers acting like a pair of idiots whose heads I'd like to smack together? One of your closest friends running off and leaving you with hardly a word?" He gazed down at her, his expression calm but serious. "Or maybe Jono."
“You forgot the part where I have no friends, I don’t measure up and I may or may not be developing an ulcer,” Paige answered casually, pressing her forehead against the window. She let her eyes fall closed, very tempted to just force herself into a half sort of sleep. When she was little and she refused to sleep her daddy would take her out into the Bronco and just start driving; she’d be asleep by the time they hit the flag marking their neighbors land. “Would ruby quartz deflect a laser by the way?”
"I don't know," Scott said after a moment. "I've never tried." He stared back out at the road and the fiery-colored trees. "I'm sorry," he said very softly. No guilt in his voice, just regret and caring that he wasn't going to hide behind a facade, not right now. "For everything you're carrying right now. I know a little bit about weight."
Paige nodded quietly to herself. One more thing to test out. One more thing to add to her lack of sleep. But one step closer to finishing her files. “You’re sweet,” she commented after a while, finally registering his second set of words. “But all your knowledge, all the knowledge in the world, seems to be doing very little for me right now.”
"We agreed you didn't want to go for the temporary amnesia option," Scott said. "But there needs to be something, Paige. The longer you let it go without taking one of those options, the more likely you are to wind up like me, having the choice made for you whether you like it or not."
“Pardon me? There were options? When were there options?” Paige replied, slowly turning her head to watch Scott drive. Untucking her legs, she braced her feet again the airbag door, noticing for the first time that her left shoelace was untied.
"About some things," he said very quietly. "The studying, the training. If you use that as an escape... well, that's apparently not permissible behavior around here anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if Maddie's been eyeing you and stroking her tranq gun."
“It’s not an escape. It’s a necessity. I study because I have to do well, no, very well, perfectly if I can, and I must. I train because that’s what I was born to do. If that’s not permissible, well. There’s a reason that I have a habit of keeping a metal husk under my skin at all times.”
"I've been wondering," Scott said, deliberately not reacting to her words, "just how much longer Charles would have let me go on as I was. It's an unsettling thought, Paige, but... I still wonder."
Paige stared at him, unimpressed. “Scott. You’ll excuse me if scare tactics aren’t working too well on me at the moment. The Professor knocks me out, he knocks me out. I get back up and start over again.”
"I'm not talking about him knocking you out." Scott gazed back at her steadily. "I'm talking about whether he believes you're under too much stress to handle an active role on the team or not. Why do you think he didn't step in when Alison put together her mutiny? Why do you think Nathan's still a reserve member, despite how useful his telekinesis could be in the field?"
“Of all the hypocritical-“ Paige snapped, her calm, cold reserve breaking in an instant. “You people tell me I’m not good enough! That I have to work harder. That I have to be the best. That I have to prove myself. And when I do get better, when I work hard, when I am the best, when I prove myself you tell me to back down. Take it easy, Paige. Get some rest. Then you top it off with threatening to take everything away from me! The one thing that it keeping me on the edge of sanity! Thanks, Scott. Thanks. And here I was thinking for just a moment that I meant as much to you as you to me.” The back fist hit the leather interior of the car door as she spoke; she raised it to the glass but realized just a hair soon enough of the consequences. Instead, she pushed open the car door, ignoring the beeping noise that mentioned the door was ajar, and slammed it shut behind her, making her way down the road they’d taken. She’d run farther than this before. She could run it now.
Well, that hadn't been all that much of a surprise. Scott leaned over, pulling the door shut, and started the car, pulling out into a u-turn and then driving up alongside her, then pulling sharply in front of her, so that the front of the car was blocking her route forward. She immediately started to walk around, but he got out this time.
"Stop," he said simply. "Right now, Paige."
Instinctively, Paige raised a hand to her hair, eyes narrowing down. “Leave me alone, Captain,” Paige replied, putting a bitter twist to the words. “I failed you. I’m off the team. There’s probably a bunch of things in there I’m missing but I’m too tired to recite them all. I get it. Just let me go home.”
Scott shook his head. "I don't want you off the team," he said patiently.
“Well, you sure have a fantastic way of showing off that one!” Paige shrieked, gesturing wildly. She was past snapping and getting very close to hysterical all of a sudden. “I don’t have any more long speeches in me, sir, if that’s what you’re waiting for. I’m not good with words. Just tell me what you want so I can do something totally irrational and storm off.”
"You're not getting it," Scott said, a very faint, sad smile tugging at his lips. "I want you on the team. Very, very badly. And if I had to, yes, I would send you into a situation where you might get killed, because what we do is worth the risk. Worth our lives." He shook his head, never breaking eye contact. "But it's not worth our self-destruction," he went on, more quietly. "It's not worth not living our lives."
Tears stained her cheeks and she pushed them back with a hand, hiccupping under her sobs. “You silly son of a bitch. This is my life. Not because I was forced into it, because I want it to be it. I want to be an X-Man. I want to earn a Doctorate and teach Chemistry here. I want to have horseback riding lessons when one day I injure myself beyond my own healing abilities,” she answered, leaning across the car to him. “You think Angelo hasn’t asked me if one day we’d want to get married? You think that I turned him down for kicks? Yes, it has everything to do with Jono, but if, when he dies I am still going to be saying no, Scott. I will never, ever tie myself down so that I pause for a split second, worrying about them, and get myself killed. I will never let them mourn me as their wife. I will not leave children behind me motherless. I’m not losing out on living my life. I’ve lived more in the year I’ve been here than I had the seventeen previous.” She laughed, slumping against the hood of the car, her hair a halo of white against the silver blue paint. “One more speech in me it seems. I’m on a roll. It’s your cue to call me inhuman and crazy and go away now.”
"Not going to indulge you on that, I'm afraid," Scott said, quietly but forcefully. "And I'm not going to give you reason to decide that I've taken away everything that means anything to you, or that I don't respect you for the choices that you've made. What I will tell you is that you are going to make yourself as unfit for the team as I made myself for a leadership position if you keep on like this." He took one step closer, but didn't move to try and touch her.
“You have no answers. Only demands,” Paige said quietly into the hood; she’d run herself hoarse and was just so tired now. Of all of this. “How can you demand something you can’t answer yourself?”
"Because I am something of a hypocrite," Scott said, admitting it freely enough. "Because I care about you--you, Paige, not Husk, and you're just as myopic as I am." He shook his head, leaning back against the car. "Do you know what started to come back to me first, while I was wandering around New York? Not the job. Not even the Dream. I looked at a girl with purple hair kissing her boyfriend and yearned for what I didn't know was my link with Betsy. I looked at kids playing outside a school and felt this... protective love, this joy in just watching them. I remembered Charles sitting across a chessboard from me, smiling and asking me how many moves ahead I could think."
Paige closed her eyes tight against his words, but let herself listen anyway. He was making no sense. No, that wasn’t true. He was making sense, but not to her, not in the way she needed. She needed a structure, an answer, something she could hold on to. All he’d managed to do was pull everything away from her, hold it above her head and tell her to get it back. So she remained silent and fell to the road, looking out in the opposite direction as Scott with her back against a tire.
He could see that she'd tuned him out. His words weren't reaching her - but then, why should they? Just because he'd had something of an amnesia-induced epiphany didn't mean that he could or even should share it. "So what do we do here, Paige?" Scott asked, still leaning against the car. "I see two options, for me. I either do what Scott would do, or I do what Cyclops would do. Scott knows what taking you off the team would do to you - you just told him, and he cares too much about you to do that. Cyclops would do it anyway, because a team member who's convinced that we're simultaneously telling her to drive herself into the ground yet disrespecting her and dismissing her efforts, a team member who comes right out and says that the team is the only thing that's keeping her sane, who honestly seems to believe it's all she has... is someone who is going to snap under the pressure, possibly getting herself and other people killed. Which option do I choose, Paige?"
Paige wanted to turn around and tell him he was wrong. That he was twisting her words. That the team kept her sane because in the midst of all this chaos, of all these people at each others throats, it gave her a glimmer of hope that maybe she could do something to help. But he’d made himself clear, so instead she told the squirrel that had come out to investigate, with only her eyes. “Take me off. It’s what I’d do,” she replied duly.
"Ah, but see, I don't want to do that," Scott told her. "Part of where I've been going wrong is treating Scott and Cyclops like two different people. Or trying to, rather. There has to be some kind of middle ground, some balance I can strike between acting for the good of the team and acting for the good of my team members as individuals. We are not a military unit, Paige. Outwardly, in what we do, we may seem like one. But there's a personal side to all of this, one that goes beyond the usual bonds you might find in a situation like that. And I have to respect that as well, or the whole thing suffers." He finally straightened, moving away from the car. "So maybe there is a third option. Now, are you going to listen to me? I mean really listen, Paige... as if I do have something you want to hear."
Rubbing at her eyes, Paige nodded, instinctively curling up, knees to her chest as he neared her. She swallowed hard, past whatever was in her throat, and drew a breath. “I’m listening.”
"You keep training. You stay on the team. But you do what I asked you to do before you decided to scream at me and storm out of the car," Scott said steadily. "You talk to the Professor. Regularly. Not about the weather, or even about your studies. About Jono. About Vermont. About the team and why you're ready to sacrifice so much." He took another step closer. "And we change your training. I don't want you doing any more solo work in the Danger Room until I say otherwise."
“You think I’ve cracked,” she replied quietly, staring at the pavement. Paige wouldn’t mention how little talking to anyone solved, ever. A waste of her breath; he could get the Cliffnotes version from a multitude of different people if she chose to point him in that direction.
"No," Scott said, "but I think you're walking a very fine line. You haven't slipped yet, mostly because you've got more than your fair share of willpower, but that only gets you so far." He shook his head. "I'm not letting you wind up like me," he said quietly. "I know you probably don't want to talk to the Professor about any of this, because you don't particularly trust telepaths, but that's not negotiable, Paige. As for the training..." Scott smiled very faintly. "I'm not afraid you're going to hurt yourself in the Danger Room or anything, if that's what you're thinking. But you've done the 'brilliant, driven solo operator' for a good long while now, Paige. I think it's time you started focusing on unit-based work."
Paige laughed harshly, finally looking up at him. She’d gone ashen from crying, eyes rimmed in red. “I trust telepaths. I have to. I just don’t trust the power of ‘talking’,” she replied. “As if that’s all it takes to make things better. Don’t tell me I haven’t tried, either. I tried long ago and all it makes up is pats on the back and reminders that someday everything will be fine.” She sniffed, reaching into her jeans for a tissue to only find nothing there. God, she hated sniffling. “If that’s my punishment though, long, bored hours where the Professor tries to decipher where exactly my line went from thick to thin and finally getting to work with someone other than myself, good luck on that one by the way, then so be it. I need a Kleenex. Do we have Kleenex in the car?”
No, he was not going to respond to the punishment comment. "Well, I did offer you the amnesia option..." Scott turned away, opening the door of the car and pulling a package of Kleenex out of the glove box. He crouched down beside her, offering it to her. "I think talking can work," he said quietly. "If we let it. If we don't, people start taking drastic steps when you don't listen to them. My little enforced nap in the medlab and Alison's mutiny being exhibit A, and Paige, I'm still trying to deal with the aftermath of that. Everyone's just thrilled that I seem to be exhibiting less visible angst about my life, but do you think they're convinced I've really gotten my feet back under me? I don't expect the sidelong looks to go away anytime soon, and that's only right, because I earned them."
Running over all the ways she could reply to that, Paige merely took a tissue from him, absently aware of how much her hands were shaking. She dabbed at her nose and crumpled the Kleenex into a ball, stuffing it into her pocket. “May I overstep my boundaries?” she asked quietly, looking up at him with very blue eyes. Paige had come to the conclusion that there was no reply.
"Feel free," Scott said a bit wryly.
“May I... may I have a hug?” she said finally, biting her lip against a new wave of tears. This was too hard; asking for things and being so afraid of what was happening and all of it.
Scott bit his lip, then settled down beside her and enfolded her in a hug a little more fierce than the one he'd given her in the dance hall. "I just want to see you get everything you want, you know," he sighed, feeling her shaking. "I do want to see you in those leathers. Because you belong there, by choice and by nature and I've always thought that. But I want you to be happy, too. In and out of the leathers."
Paige nodded into his shoulder, clinging, almost desperately at him with fingers made into claws. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I know, it’s just... Sometimes I don’t see any other way and I can’t ask, I don’t have anyone anymore and... I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
"You have me. Whenever you need me." Scott shifted a little, but only into a more comfortable position, since Paige didn't seem like she was going to let go anytime soon. "I told Maddie I was turning over a new leaf, and I wanted to share, especially with the people who stopped me from killing myself while I was still on the old leaf. You're right up there on that list, Paige. Give me another chance to be there for you?"
“No, I don’t. There is always going to be a situation where two people need you and you’re going to choose the other person. It’s how it always works,” Paige answered, releasing her hold on him suddenly. Her hands folded into her lap where they promptly went white from her grip.
"So was that a no?" he asked quietly, staring down at her. "Okay. I'll just have to do my best to be--" His own words from that discussion about the mentorship 'program' came back to him. "--obnoxiously persistent and prove to you that I can be trusted."
Paige smiled gently at him, tilting her head. “I can trust people. I do it very easily, in fact. But every time I do they decide I’m not a priority anymore. Guess that does something to a girl’s head. We’ll see, I suppose. Once more can’t hurt me any more.”
"The perils of looking like you have it all together, so much of the time," Scott pointed out wryly, getting to his feet and then offering her a hand. "And yes, again, I'm speaking from experience."
Paige could only give him a weak, tired smile, taking his hand to pull herself up. She wasn’t shaking so hard anymore at least. That was a start. He was gently leading her to the car now, and she paused, looking up at him. “What are you going to tell everyone?”
Scott blinked at her. "Everyone? Nothing. I'll have to tell the Professor you're coming to see him, obviously. The new training stuff, I'll just work into the schedule." He patted her gently on the shoulder.
“Thank you...” she answered, almost inaudibly, and covered his hand with her own, looking up at him with grateful eyes.
He slid an arm around her shoulders, giving her a quick hug. "Oh, pshaw, it was nothing," he said in his best imitation of the Mal-drawl. "Can't have someone as pretty as you are looking down around the mouth."
Paige giggled shortly, leaning into the embrace. “Love my Captain,” she reiterated.
"Love you too. Even if you are going to give me gray hair."
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No more Sarah issues? Whee?
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