Madelyn, Jubilee - Tuesday night.

[x-madelyn.livejournal.com]

After this confession, Jubilee asks Madelyn for something to help her sleep, and drops by the doctor's suite to do just that. Crime and punishment are discussed.



Jubilee knocked on the door, shifting the sling on her other arm to place it in a more comfortable position. Madelyn and the others had said they'd check the stitches in a week to see how the wounds were healing. She wasn't sure what Madelyn was going to say, so she put her defensive instincts aside for once and just waited to see what would happen. Maybe it was time to start thinking a little, as well as feeling. She didn't have to give up trusting her instincts entirely, just needed to add a little logic into the mix. If there was one thing she'd learnt from all this, it was that.

"Come in!" Madelyn called, and when Jubilee turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, she found the doctor sitting on the couch, poring over a bunch of x-rays and medical reports spread over the coffee table. One or two thick, imposing-looking medical textbooks were added into the mix, a pen sticking out of one as a bookmark. She looked up as Jubilee hovered in the doorway, peering at her through the reading glasses before sliding them off and laying them on the paperwork in front of her. "Hey, kiddo. Here for the sleepy drugs?"

Madelyn was obviously dressed for downtime, in a pair of Xavier's sweats and a soft flannel shirt that was a couple of sizes too big and obviously had belonged to a man at some stage, and her hair pulled back into a rough braid, wisps escaping at the sides. Much different from the usual labcoat or scrubs.

Jubilee nodded, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. She hovered in front of it, not sure if she should ask if she could sit down, or just stand here and wait.

"Um, you studyin'?" she asked finally, wincing at the lame sounding question.

"Manuel's results - I'm trying to chart how much Amanda's magic is increasing his healing rates. It's a headache." She waved Jubilee at an easy chair. "You want some hot chocolate? I've got a batch made on the stove - contrary to popular belief I don't live off coffee." Her tone was friendly, but there was a certain amount of seriousness in it - she didn't want to scare Jubilee off by coming down the heavy on her, but the girl had to understand the full consequences of her actions. And Madelyn wasn't sure she did, having read that post of hers. All teenaged melodrama and big gestures.

"Hot chocolate would be cool." she said before moving to sit in the chair.

She pulled her legs up, eyeing the notes scattered in front of Madelyn. She knew Manny had been badly hurt and that this too had been a result of her bad choices. She wasn't sure where to start, Amanda obviously wasn't going to talk to her again. So, making amends there was completely out. Clarice seemed to be willing to think about things before condemning her outright, so maybe she could try improving things there. It was hard to think of what to do next. It had been easier to just react, to let herself be carried on by her emotions. This thinking things through stuff was new to her. But she remembered Remy's words and thought that perhaps the fact that it wasn't easy made it the right choice.

Madelyn came back from the kitchenette, carrying a mug of hot chocolate which she handed to Jubilee before sitting back down again. She caught Jubilee's eyeing of the notes and scooped up the more confidential ones, collecting them in a stack and setting it down upside-down. "Actually, I wanted to show you something," she said, pulling out an x-ray. It was of Manuel's chest, and she pointed out the white lines of several broken ribs. "See here? Those are where his ribs are broken. And these shadows on his lungs? Internal bleeding." She lay the x-ray down and gave Jubilee a long look. "Even with Amanda's healing spells, it'll be a couple of weeks before he's able to move without some degree of pain."

Jubilee shifted uncomfortably, she hadn't been down to see Manuel since the night the demon attacked. Seeing his injuries in front of her like this was just another reminder of how badly she'd gotten her friends hurt.

"Why ya showin' me this, Mads?" she asked.

She didn't think crying would be appreciated, not when this was her fault. So she pushed her shoulder back into the chair, closing her eyes at the jolt of pain. It probably wasn't a healthy way of dealing with things but at least the shock had brought her into focus again.

"Stop that." Madelyn had caught that deliberate move, and reached over to pull Jubilee back upright and off the shoulder. "I'm not going to let you damage yourself again just so you can punish yourself." As Jubilee blinked at her, she went on. "I'm not showing this to make you feel bad or to punish you. I'm showing this to you as a reminder. So the next time you decide to go off half-cocked, you've got something concrete to remind you that everything you do has consequences." She paused, and gave Jubilee a slight smile. "It's all very well to talk about karma and paying the piper and all, kiddo, but those are just words. Sometimes facts help us remember. So the next time you're about to leap in without thinking, I want you to remember these x-rays. Okay?"

Jubilee took a sip of her hot chocolate, using the time to think about what Madelyn had said. She knew how useless words could be, even if she had meant every damn word.

"Okay." she said finally, resting her cup on the chair.

She looked up at Madelyn, feeling lost and not sure what to say, or what to do. Nathan's reaction had surprised her, scared her even. She'd expected people to be angry at her, to want to hurt her. She'd wanted to be punished, at least then she'd feel like she'd paid for her mistake. You did something stupid, you got beaten and then everything was okay again. Having no one willing to do so left her at a loss of what to do next.

"Why won't anyone act like they're supposed to? I deserve it, I wouldn't stop them. Why won't they do what they're supposed to?" she asked softly.

"Because that's not how we do things here, kiddo. I know it's not what you've grown up with, but you know what? Beatings don't work. They don't change anything, they don't make the mistake go away. They don't even work very well at stopping someone doing the same thing again - all they remember is the pain after a while, not the reason. Learning takes thought, and you don't think when you're hurt and scared." Madelyn got up and crouched down in front of Jubilee's chair. "You made a mistake, Jubilee, but Nathan's right, it took a lot of courage to own up to it. Especially when you didn't have to - none of us would have been any the wiser if you hadn't emailed Pete. What you need to do now is to show you're willing to learn from that mistake. Not ask people to punish you, or even do it yourself."

Jubilee nodded, feeling the dampness on her cheeks as she finally allowed herself to cry. She hadn't wanted anyone hurt, not even Amanda. But she'd done stupid things, now she had to learn from that and start to think again. It had been a very long time since she'd used anything but instincts to get by. Logic hadn't worked with her foster father, who seemed to have no reason for the beatings he dealt out daily. She'd tried reason at first, tried to do better, tried to give him no reason to hit her. But there'd always been some reason, some look that she supposedly gave him, or a tone in her voice he didn't like. So, she'd abandoned reason for instinct and never looked back. Now, she had Amanda's memories as well, so like her own in some places but so much harsher. She couldn't deal with it anymore, had felt herself breaking from the moment she'd posted the entry to her journal.

Looking down at Madelyn, she paused for a second, before sliding out of the chair and landing on her knees in front of the other woman. She wanted to reach out, to ask for help. Instead, she knelt, lost and finally broken, tears trailing silently down her cheeks.

She didn't need to ask - Madelyn wrapped her arms around the girl immediately, careful of the shoulder but not stinting on the hug. "Let it out, kiddo," she murmured, knowing the crying was important, that Jubileeneeded to cry, to get it out of her system so it would stop festering. "It's going to be hard, but you've got people here for you, and no matter how much you screw up, we'll be here for you. Because you are not you screwups, all right?" She continued in this vein, after a while not really saying anything coherent, just making comforting noises as she rocked Jubilee slightly, rubbing her back soothingly.