Nathan and Jubilee: Before the fall

[x-jubilee.livejournal.com]

Who: Nathan, Jubilee
When: Wednesday 8th December 2004 Time: 2:00am
What Happens: Nathan catches Jubilee on the phone, gloating to Illyana about how she got something faster then Amanda. They have a talk about this.




Jubilee crouched against the wall, her back pressed firmly into it as she listened to Illyana's voice on the other end of the line. She leaned down, painting another toenail with neon blue nail polish, she'd put some silver sparkles over it later on to finish off.

"Yeah, ya totally should have seen Amanda's face. It was so totally classic. I totally thought the bitch was gonna blow a fuse or somethin'. She's always had this total mad on for doin' stuff better then me."

Jubilee looked up as she heard a creak in one of the floor boards. She'd chosen to phone Illyana late at night in order to avoid anyone listening in.

"Dude, I totally gotta go. I'll call ya later, okay?"

She quickly called off, pushing the cellphone back into her pocket and then walking quietly in the opposite direction of the noise. If she was lucky, she'd be able to do a circuit and surprise whoever it was lurking in the living room by coming in the other entrance. She didn't like people listening in on her.

Surprising a telepath was, however, a tricky proposition under normal circumstances. And unlike the Excelsior and its damned psi-suppressant gear, Nathan reflected coolly as he waited for Jubilee to come back through the other entrance to the living room, the safehouse classed as normal circumstances. Waiting there in absolute silence, hidden in the shadows, he waited until she had actually stepped into the room again before announcing his presence.

"Boo," he said dispassionately, and she yelped softly, jumping.

"Dude, that was so totally uncalled for. What the hell you doin' lurkin' around here at 2am, anyway? Thought everyone would be all tucked up in bed like good little girls and boys by now."

Her tone was somewhat harsher then she usually allowed it to get. But it was late, and she was tired. She didn't have the patience to think nice right now. Besides, he'd given her a hell of a fright.

"I could ask you the same thing," Nathan said curtly. "You do realize you need to be up in another two hours, yes?" He paused for a moment, but went on before she could answer. "And were you having a good time discussing the details of your training with Illyana?" he asked, a touch of acid in the words.

"Well, if talking to my cousin, Illyana about wiping the floor with a snotty little brat I like to call Mandy on this truly wondrous school trip could be called 'discussing details of my training'. Dude, you really think I'm gonna actually come right out and be clear about anythin' while I'm here?"

She was angry, he'd actually thought she was discussing mission critical details over a telephone line, even if said line was supposed to be securely scrambled. How stupid did he think she was? It wasn't bad enough that he'd been riding her back the entire time they'd been here. She was getting plenty sick of seeing Saint Amanda getting praise to the high heavens while all she got was an 'that was adequate'. It was just sour grapes. He was pissy that she'd been brought on this mission after he'd made it clear she'd never get near something like this without proving herself 'worthy' first. So now he'd decided to be a bastard about it. Well, she didn't have to take it, and she wasn't going to.

To her credit, she kept her voice relatively low. Her thoughts, of course, were anything but. Each was crystal-clear and about the volume they would have been had she actually put a bullhorn up to his ear and shouted. Nathan gave her one of those bright, hard smiles he usually reserved for dealing with people whose intellect he questioned.

"You were crowing, Jubilee," he said, his voice quiet, almost pleasant. "Gloating. Pouncing on something you see as an advantage as if you smelled blood in the water. You are possibly the worst team player it has ever been my privilege to encounter, and trust me, you had some ways to go to beat Dom in her early years."

"Uhhuh. Ya know, Nate. Comparin' me to one of your precious protégés would work a whole lot better if I actually gave a damn. I'm sure Dom was fuckin' Houdini incarnate in her early years but it don't much matter to me. An I'm allowed a little gloatin', considerin' how much Saint fuckin' Sefton just loves to shove the fact she's better at Askani in my face. She's so fuckin' smug about them it makes my teeth ache." Jubilee replied, her tone soft as she tried to keep her voice down.

She didn't particularly feel the need to wake any of the other inhabitants of the house at this point in time.

"You're allowed a little gloating," Nathan mocked softly. "It doesn't matter to me. I think at long last I'm starting to see your problem. Everything goes in one ear and out the other, and has absolutely no effect on your thought processes on the way through." He paused, his expression hardening. "This is not a competition, you self-absorbed child. And you are doing exactly what I thought you weren't going to do anymore - shifting the blame for your own behavior onto someone else."

"You...I...I'm not shifting anything."

She glared at him, suddenly at a loss. She wasn't a child, she wasn't.

"Amazing," Nathan said, his voice still little more than a murmur.
"Your thinking has stalled, yet the mouth has stopped moving. Maybe you are making a little progress after all. Then again," he went on, that mocking edge to the words growing stronger, "you've a big advocate of 'one step forward, two steps back', so I probably shouldn't get too excited."

"Don't push me too far, Nate." she replied, clenching her hands into fists at her sides. She could feel the cold anger seething quietly below the surface thoughts in her mind, urging her forward, urging her to hit out. "You don't get to mock me, no one does."

She'd given Samson a promise but she hadn't known she'd need to use it with Nate. She should be walking away, ending this conversation before it went places she couldn't bring it back from. Sighing, she turned and walked away.

Nathan let her take a full three steps before he froze her in her tracks telekinetically. "Actually, you're wrong," he said, his voice still low, but cooler, harder. "I do get to mock you. I get to mock you," he went on, walking up to her and then around to stand in front of her, "I get to call it as I see it, I get to be as harsh with you as I like." He glared down at her, his expression like iron. "You bragging to Illyana as if this was some sort of infantile competition means very little to me in and of itself. The mindset behind it, on the other hand, is foolish, dangerous, and is liable to get you and a number of the rest of us killed if you don't rein yourself in right now."

She'd have hit him then, if she could move. But she couldn't. That didn't mean she was helpless. She started forming images in her head, the worst she could think of. The worst she could picture happening if this job went badly. They were graphic, violent and ugly and she held them clearly in her mind, elaborating when she considered a new way things might fail. She was no telepath but if she was as loud as they said she was, then he should receive what she was thinking loud and clear.

"If you think for a second, that I don't know what we're facing. You'd be underestimating me, Nate."

"Then why, precisely, are you fucking around like this, Jubilation?" he asked in a low, ugly snarl. "Explain to me how it matters who picked up the rappelling first? How it helps to run around gloating about it, and possibly distracting someone who is, if you'll forgive me being painfully blunt, a little more important in the grand scheme of the job than you are?" He took a step closer to her and deliberately released his telekinetic grip. If she wanted to hit him, let her. "To me it looks like you're taking the first steps down the road to sabotaging a teammate's concentration. Which makes you not just stupid but dangerous."

"Glad to know my contribution is so valuable to you all. Please, stop, no more with the praise, it'll all go to my head and then where will we be?" Jubilee said dryly, still a seething ball of anger but tightly controlled for now. "Why is it, that no matter what catty fucking remarks her or her friends make about me, I'm always the one in the wrong? Why is that, Nate?"

She folded her arms across her chest, an unintentional defensive gesture. "Because I'm beginning to wonder just what it is I'm doing here. Just why the hell am I trying so fucking hard when every time I turn around there's somethin' else that puts me behind the curve? And what it comes right down to. Is that I only think I care. How fucked up is that? I only think I care but I'm told I don't really. Oh but there's the catch, I can still feel all those lovely little horrible emotions, just nothing of any use. Nothin' that would make any of this easier. And then, just because I love a good joke as much as the next person. Then, you come in here, an tell me that she's more important then I am. So tell me, Nate. Tell me why I'm doin' what I'm doin'? Tell me what it is I should be feelin' right now. Because I honestly don't fucking know."

Nathan shook his head. "You have totally forgotten who you're talking to, haven't you?" he asked, his voice more level. "Jubilee, from the time I was fourteen up until four months ago, my emotions were artificially compartmentalized thanks to my conditioning. You think you're the only one in the world who can't feel what she should when she should?" He took a step closer to her, his jaw clenching. "Try not being able to tolerate a friendly touch without automatically lashing out, to the point where your wife had to telepathically adjust you every time she wanted to touch you. Try having your mind rewritten so that you can't access any of the good emotions without feeling guilt, or panic. So that you're an obedient thing, not a person. So that the only thing that feels right is feeling nothing." He shook his head, his expression tight. "I'm straying from the subject," he said, his voice roughening with some indecipherable emotion. "You're a teenager. You're supposed to think you have it worse than everyone else."

He took a deep, shaky breath. "She," he said finally, his voice clipped, "is not more important than you. Her role in the job is more extensive. Try to pay attention to what I'm saying, Jubilee, not just what you want to hear. This is not a competition. Keep your mouth shut, focus on what you have to do, and save the juvenile behavior and the pleas for pity for later."

"Guilt, hey? Congratulations, you just described exactly how I feel whenever I mistakenly allow myself to feel anything good at all. But you're right, it ain't a competition, Nate. I'm not asking for your pity, or anyone's."

She didn't want pity, it was the truth. Just understanding, just any kind of hope that things might be better, someday. And they weren't, and she knew it was her fault but there was the petty, vengeful part of her that just didn't care, that wanted to drive herself to the edge and over, just to see if they'd catch her. Just to test them all, because she knew deep inside they wouldn't. She'd fall, and they wouldn't be there.

She laughed then, high pitched, close to hysterical but not, because she recognised the self pity in her thoughts. There was no winning. No fucking winning at all. She didn't know how to stop.

She just didn't know how to stop.

"Oh God. I'm so fucked." she said, leaning back against one of the chairs as she laughed.

"Listen to me." His words were still cool, and they cut through her laughter, silencing it as effectively as if he'd put a hand over her mouth. "On the scale of fucked up, Jubilee, you're about a four. Which is, yes, enough to fuck you up pretty damned good. But you're convincing yourself that you're more damaged than you are, Jubilee. You're wallowing in it. You're throwing yourself back into it every chance you get. Never take the high road when the low one will do." He reached out and took her chin, tilting her face upwards so that she didn't have any option but to meet his eyes.

#You think I don't understand that?# he sent, his mental voice just as cool and crisp as his words aloud had been. #You don't think I know what it's like to choose the wrong way, because it's easier, because it's not going to hurt as much? You have to want to stop, Jubilee. You have to keep that in the forefront of your mind, use it as the standard to judge every decision you make. There'll be times when you succeed, times when you fall short, and times you throw that standard away and tell the right way to go fuck itself. But when feeling lets you down, you have to think.#

She nodded, the laughter and the anger from before gone. She was left feeling hollow, emptiness settling, a hard weight around her heart. "Okay."

It was all she could manage. All she could promise. Not 'I will', not 'I won't do this again'. Just an acknowledgement. She would try again.

He let his hand fall to her shoulder, squeezing gently, his expression softening fractionally. "Good. Don't make me make you meditate, Jubilee. Because I will, you know." It was a joke, if a small one.

Jubilee shuddered dramatically, a brief smile lighting up her eyes to show she was also joking. "Dude, only if you want the Mission: Impossible soundtrack playing through your head as you sleep. I've had old movie tunes stickin' around in my brain for days lately."

Her shoulders relaxed, a softening from someone usually bound so tightly with fear and confusion.

"What?" he murmured dryly. "You didn't think I'd noticed?" His expression grew more serious, but he squeezed her shoulder again, more firmly. "You're going to do fine, you know," he said quietly. "Better than fine. You're going to be able to look back at this week and be proud of what you accomplished. Don't clutter the good memories with peripheral crap."

"I'm afraid of lettin' them down, Nate. I'm so fuckin' scared of screwin' up and gettin' everyone killed. It's easy to put on the attitude. Hides everythin' else, so it don't show. I don't wanna make 'em scared too, just cause I am."

For some reason, these sorts of conversations always seemed to come down to this in the end. Nathan stepped forward and hugged her tightly, a sigh slipping out. "Don't be the attitude," he murmured. "It's smothering a pretty decent person, you know."

To say the hug was unexpected would have been understating Jubilee's surprise. She tensed for a fraction of a second, and then to even more surprise on her part, returned the hug, clinging tightly in her mind to Nate's words as she held onto to him in the real world. She needed that hope, that somewhere there was a decent person within her. That maybe with work she could be that person.

She wouldn't cry though, she promised herself she wouldn't cry.

Oh, who the fuck was she kidding?