Scott and Madelyn, Monday afternoon

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Madelyn is Unhappy with some of the goings-on in her medlab. Scott brings Madelyn waffles and encourages her to vent. They agree that they occasionally feel like kindergarten teachers.



Contrary to popular belief, Madelyn did sleep in the bed in her suite. Just not as often as she'd prefer lately. However, this time she'd managed a nap of a few hours after all night on duty, in her own bed even, and was now in the process of picking up the trail of clothes she'd left behind when she'd stumbled in. Judging from the grumbling under her breath and the way she flung her shoes into the closet by the door, the nap hadn't improved her temper.

Scott shifted the tray he was carrying to his other arm and rapped lightly on the door. "Maddie?" he called, and then jokingly switched to his best bad French accent. "You ordered room service?"

"Room serv...?" Madelyn opened the door, a heap of dirty clothes in one arm and her hair damp and threatening to frizz, looking decidedly disgruntled. Her expression changed as she saw the tray, however. "You brought me breakfast?" she asked, wonderingly.

"Well," Scott said with a smile, "you have been missing out on your usual waffle deliveries this week, yes?" She stepped aside to let him into the room, and he gave her a sideways assessing look. "Long night," he surmised gently, setting the tray down on the table.

"I could kiss you," she declared, tossing the clothes into her bedroom and closing the door after. "Oh, to hell with it, I will any way." And she stretched up to give him a peck on the cheek. "And you have no idea how crappy my night's been."

"Sit down, eat your waffles, and tell your long-suffering Captain all about it," Scott suggested, then grinned a bit sheepishly. "I actually brought enough for two," he said, waving a hand at the tray. "Haven't eaten yet today myself."

"I was going to insist you stay even if you hadn't." She took the tray from him, nodding at the easy chair. "Sit, please. I'm dying to talk to someone who isn't injured or another medlab staff member. If it wasn't for Kurt coming down to keep an eye on me, I'd be running around loose with the tranq gun, cackling maniacally." She grinned at him. "I've even been practicing the maniacal cackle, so be warned. I can 'bwahahaha' with the best of them." She set the tray down on the coffee table and lifted off the cover. "Waffles!" she exclaimed gleefully. "Wonderful chocolatey goodness!" Beaming at him, she added: "I love my Captain."

Scott snorted softly. "You so need more sleep," he told her, sitting down and passing her one of the plates he'd brought up. He'd brought fruit as well as waffles, going on the idea that while chocolate was good so were more healthy ways of satisfying your sweet tooth. "What pushed you to the verge of snapping this time? Or do I even need to ask?"

"Let's see... We have a student without a body, Haroun stomping around being a total ass about the whole thing, Nathan guilting himself to death and going the whole martyr trip by not letting Amanda heal him - which she didn't take well at all, judging from the fact she hasn't been down to the lab since - Haroun yelling at Nathan, Nathan interpreting my words a bit on the free and easy side and checking himself out... I think that's it. Oh, and the fact I assumed Jamie's problem was just stress and sent him out to have a nice collapse on his girlfriend." Madelyn stabbed her waffle with perhaps a little more force than intended. "Grr."

Scott snagged himself a waffle and some fruit and leaned back in his chair, preparing to address her points one at a time. "Firstly," he said firmly, "given how esoteric Jamie's problem was and how much stress he and the rest of us have indeed been under, you shouldn't spend too much time kicking yourself in the ass for that one. Especially since you and Moira did pin down the problem, and Charles solved it."

"I should have run the MRI straight away," she insisted, but not too strongly - she'd already had this argument with Moira. "I just hate feeling incompetant," she admitted. "I was so damn tired I decided further tests weren't needed, and it could have resulted in something a lot worse."

"But it didn't," Scott said. "I won't berate you about that, because fuck knows I shouldn't be telling anyone else to stop being so hard on themselves." He grinned briefly at her, then sobered. "As for Jono... well, hell, I don't know what to say there. At least he seems to be stable in this new form."

"And communicating. I'm leaving that one to the experts - they didn't exactly cover psionic entities in medschool." Madelyn reached for the coffee - of course there was coffee, there was _always_ coffee - and took a sip, trying to calm her thoughts. "If there's anything to be done, he's got the best people working on it."

"Charles is down there with him right now, I think," Scott said, then sighed. "I had really hoped these lessons with Nathan would work," he said unhappily, thinking about Angelo and Paige's faces as they'd met him outside the boiler room.

"So did Nathan." Madelyn nudged a waffle towards him. "Eat. Chocolate doesn't make everything better, but it makes it easier to deal with. And that's not to say Nathan and Askani still _can't_ help him. It just might be a different form of help."

"I read Nathan's original summary of the different options, the one he drew up for the records," Scott said with a nod and took a bite of the waffle. "This wasn't entirely unexpected, apparently, that Jono's original body might not have been salvageable. No one was anticipating an explosion like this, though."

"That's the thing about explosions - they tend to be surprise events. Thank God no-one else was hurt. Regardless of Haroun's dramatics, the boiler room was probably one of the safest indoor places to be in. That or the Danger Room, and I'm not positive it's built to cope with that sort of thing."

Scott smiled a bit faintly. "You know, I've been keeping abreast of their progress - Nathan's been making regular reports, both to the Professor and written versions for Jono's file. They've worked in a number of places, apparently, looking for the best spot. They even tried the Box, but apparently Jono couldn't focus properly in there."

"See, I _knew_ someone was keeping track of things. In your face, Haroun," Madelyn muttered, perhaps a little childishly. "It's so frustrating, having people assume we have no clue what we're doing."

"The impression I got is that no one wanted a repeat of that mess with Manuel," Scott said. "So Nathan and Askani and Charles conferred regularly." He sighed. "I suppose Haroun had a point, though. Jono has been prone to these explosions in the past, this is true."

"And he's prone to setting himself on fire. Besides, I seem to remember an incident where a certain X-Man nearly drowned himself in the pool, testing his powers. With only Ali to spot him - it's a good thing she was able to get him out." Madelyn's tone was a tad waspish, and she soothed herself with another bite of waffle. Haroun was her friend. A good friend. A stupid moron of a friend, but he was stressed beyond belief. And horribly allergic to cats, as his condition had attested to when she'd given him the anti-histamine shot.

"Actually," Scott said with a chuckle, "that was Nathan who set him on fire, wasn't it?" He shook his head. "Speaking of Nathan, if it makes you feel better, he sent me an email and asked me to take him out of the training rotation indefinitely. Promised me that I didn't need to take away his Danger Room access codes this time, too."

"Well, it's good to see he retains _some_ sense." Madelyn sounded slightly mollfied. "He pushes himself stupidly, and then wonders why he ends up in the medlab so often or why people start making jokes about brain sprains and plastic bubbles." She had another sip of coffee, shaking her head. "And then he makes it ten times worse by flagellating himself about it. I swear, he could teach a Catholic how to feel guilty."

"I gather he had a little help last night," Scott said wryly. "And to be fair, Madelyn, from what Charles has told me this was just a perfectly normal psi-lesson that went wrong. Neither Nathan nor Jono are at fault for their respective concussion and disembodiment this time."

"Oh, I'm not saying that at all. But refusing treatment when it's available? _That_ I'm blaming him for. Not to mention staggering around the halls like a zombie because he's decided to misinterpret instructions and check himself out _and_ not wait for someone to go with him." Madelyn's voice rose, and she caught herself. Her temper was on a hair-trigger these days - too much stress, not enough sleep - and Scott didn't need to be on the receiving end. "Gah. Man's going to give me grey hairs. And I can't yell at him since it would be like yelling at an injured puppy."

"I'd say just stick him in restraints whenever he has to be in the medlab, but I don't think that would go over well." Scott sighed. "This is one of those messy situations where there were just too many compounding factors, I think. Jono, Nathan, Haroun, Sarah leaving, Alison's condition..."

"I say we scratch this week and start over," Madelyn suggested. "I know Mondays are supposed to suck, but this is ridiculous."

"Tell me about it," Scott said wryly. "Look, we do what we can. I'm going to keep a close eye on Haroun - I was a bit pissy with him last night, given the stress he's been under, which I kind of regret now, but anyway. I'll do my best to head off any further outbursts at the pass, there. I'm assuming you've got Nathan coming down for the occasional check-up, given that his powers complicate a simple concussion to no end, and I know damned well Charles is planning to have a nice long talk with him as soon as he gets the chance."

Madelyn nodded. "Oh, I'm just venting. Nathan's in hand, I got a horribly apologetic email. And I'll be checking on Haroun as well - I know damned well he wasn't eating properly when Ali was in iso, so his metabolism's bound to be all over the place. I just need to pin him down long enough to do an exam."

"Do you ever feel vaguely like a kindergarten teacher?" Scott asked whimsically. "And yes, I mean when you deal with the staff..." He took another bite of his waffle and grinned at her. "It'll be okay, you know," he said firmly. "We'll get it all sorted out."

"Or make their lives miserable trying," Madelyn said with a distinctly evil grin.