Scott and Madelyn, New Year's Eve

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Scott keeps Madelyn company down at the boathouse for a while on New Year's Eve. They talk about his trip to his grandparents, about Betsy, and about how eerily quiet it is around the mansion this week.


"Not quite as much snow as in Alaska," Scott said with a smile, staring out at the lake. Which was doing its very best to freeze over, from the looks of it. He took a sip of his coffee and then glanced sideways at Madelyn, who was giving the lake the same appreciative look he had been.

"I imagine not. How did Alex cope with it all?" Madelyn asked, wrapping her hands more firmly around her mug, glad for her parka. It was cold. Refreshingly so, 'though, after the usual hours spent in the medlab's depths. Cain had fallen asleep, still grumbling about doctors who were too perky for their own good.

"Are you kidding? He was calling Deborah 'Grandma' and following her around like a little puppy-dog in about two hours flat." Scott grinned, sipping at his coffee again. "She kept feeding him. Tried to do the same to me - apparently we're both too thin."

"It's part of the Grandma Charter," Madelyn told him solemnly, amusement dancing in her eyes. "Although I'd call it 'wiry' rather than 'thin." She snickered at the brief reddening of Scott's ears, and leaned back on the railing, taking a long sip of coffee. "And how about you? Was it as terrifying as you'd thought it would be?"

Scott didn't answer for a moment. "Not at all, really," he admitted finally. "Oh, getting off the plane, seeing them... I'll confess to a certain amount of nervousness. Felt a bit awkward at dinner that night, too." His smile was a little more wistful this time. "But Phillip took me out to the airfield the next day and we went flying. Before I knew it, over the next few days I was telling him about everything--well, just about everything. Really talking, if you know what I mean. And he was an awfully good listener." He chuckled softly. "Had some good advice, too."

"That's good to hear," Madelyn said, glad for him. If someone needed a good listener, it was Scott. She smiled to herself - that was actually all it took, really, for him to open up - someone to listen and ask the right questions. And ply him with truth-telling cookies. "It sounds like you and your grandfather are cut from the same cloth - you were saying they run a charter service up there?"

Scott nodded. "Fairly decent-sized one, too. They've got five pilots besides Phillip. Do everything from large cargo runs to tourist excursions." He had been a bit startled to find out just how well-off Phillip and Deborah were. "Phillip's getting on in years, of course, but he still does a good portion of the flying. He really loves it." Scott gave her a crooked grin. "I might have bragged about the Blackbird just a little."

She couldn't help giggling a little. "Really? You? Talk about the Blackbird in glowing terms? Never." With just the slightest hint of a pout, she added: "You and Haroun were giving me flight-envy, you know, with that test flight. It's very unfair."

"We'll have to take you up sometime," Scott said. "You ought to be more familiar with the Blackbird than you are, just in case you ever deploy with the team again." He snickered, turning his attention back to the lake. "Nice, logical official excuses. Don't you just love them."

"There's always an official excuse, if you look hard enough. And I'd love to - I'm something of an adrenaline junkie from way back, if the fondness for martial arts films wasn't a giveaway. It's been a long time since I've had time to indulge in anything less vicarious, though..." She gave him a considering look. "The time off seems to have done you good - you look better. Still brooding, a little, but I don't think you can be you without a little bit of that."

"It did," Scott said candidly. "Lack of sunlight or not." He paused for a moment, then looked back at her. "I can't say I threw myself into the long-lost grandson routine as eagerly as Alex did, even by the end of the week, but they're good people," he said more quietly. "I'll be going back happily, when I get the chance. They had..." He paused again, a startled smile tugging at his lips. "Pictures. All kinds of pictures. Tweaked a few things, too. Memories that were kind of half-there all along..."

"Oh, that reminds me - I was serious, about that study, if you don't mind being my guinea pig..." Pushing aside the lure of a shiny new research project, she took another sip of coffee and looked at him over the mug. "Alex is still very much a kid at heart, and he flings himself into everything. A little hesitation on your part is understandable, given the circumstances. But that's the thing about family - they'll be there when you're ready."

"Anything for the cause of science," Scott said easily, with a smile and a nod to acknowledge Madelyn's last words. Phillip and Deborah had both very obviously refrained from pushing, but they'd made it abundantly clear that he was welcome whenever he wanted to come. Alex, of course, had already been making plans for the next visit... "Things are so quiet around here this week," he said, staring back out at the lake. "It seems kind of unnatural."

"It always does when there's hardly anyone here. And the people who are here are the ones keeping to themselves. Half the time I'm not sure if they're here or not - I know Betsy has been doing her best Ghost of Christmas Past impression." The words had no sooner left her mouth when she clapped her hand over it. "Shit, that was insensitive of me, Scott. I'm sorry."

Scott shook his head a little. "No need for apologies." His gaze returned to the lake, but he wasn't really seeing it this time. "We... well, I brought it up, but she agreed. That it wasn't going to work. She removed the link the weekend before Alex and I left."

"I'm so sorry, Scott." Balancing her mug on the railing, she moved a little closer and touched his arm gently. "I know you loved her - are you going to be all right?"

Scott looked back at her, smiling very faintly. "I will be," he said as firmly as he could. "It's for the best, really. How much time has she had to process any of what's happened to her this past year?" He sighed, sipping at his coffee. "She doesn't need the complication, and I can certainly understand why she would want her mind to herself. That's something she hasn't had much of lately."

Madelyn nodded. "All very logical, sensible reasons... but just because a decision is for the best doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. I won't push, but if you need to talk, well, you know where I am." She gave him a slight smile. "Or if you don't want to talk, there's always distraction - pool and a couple of beers at Harry's sometime?"

"I'd like that," Scott said, smiling back. "And as for the rest... well, it does hurt." His gaze shifted away again, out to the falling snow. "Mostly because I can't seem to convince myself that I didn't fail her."

Madelyn silently watched the snow fall, trying to construct the words - they couldn't be trite platitudes, she wouldn't insult his intelligence with that. "I don't think you did," she said at last. "Sometimes there are things we can't fix, can't solve. And sometimes we have to know when to stop trying, stop battering ourselves bloody against that. It's hard, but sometimes you have to pull back, before you're dragged under, like they teach you in lifesaving class. It doesn't mean you failed, or you don't care. It just means that when she is ready to reach out and take that helping hand, you'll be strong enough to support her, if that's what you want to do." She let her hand slip from his arm, pausing to squeeze his hand briefly. "You couldn't keep going the way you were, Scott - it was killing both of you."

"It's just..." He bit his lip, but told himself that it would probably help to say it aloud, to someone. Not that he was expecting reassurance. Was he? "She stuck by me earlier this fall, when I was... having trouble. I feel like I didn't do the same for her. But it was..." He stopped again, swallowing his frustration and sadness. "She didn't want me to stick by her. She wanted her space. Fighting wouldn't have helped... or so I'm trying to tell myself. I'm not sure I buy it."

"Think of it this way - would she have taken the support if you'd insisted? Betsy's many things, and stubborn isn't the least of them." Madelyn sighed, feeling a certain degree of failure herself - she'd tried so hard to help Betsy, and every attempt had been rebuffed coolly. It would have been easier if Betsy had been outright rude about it, but as it was the veneer of politeness had been impossible to crack. "It's difficult to see someone you care about in trouble, but you can't make her accept your help. Not if she doesn't want it."

"It's... not really this latest thing. Or not just that, at least." He shook his head, trying to shake it off, to push the flicker of bleakness away. "I could go back over the last year and a bit and list all the things I missed, or didn't do..."

"And I could do the same thing for every medical emergency we've had in the past six months," she pointed out, retrieving her coffee before it got too cold. "You know where that road leads, Scott - just because it's someone close to you doesn't make it any different. Could have, should have... there's always going to be something that could have been done differently, but until time travel is a viable mutation, there's nothing to be done to change them."

"I just..." He shook his head again, sighing, then smiled ruefully at her. "Going to take a while to process it, I guess. I suppose it would be really telling to say that I miss the link, too..."

"From what Moira tells me about links, I'm not surprised..." Madelyn's look with sympathetic. "Time, Scott. You're both going to need time to sort yourselves out. And there's no weakness in needing that."

Scott took another sip of his coffee. "I suppose I could use some time to sort myself out," he admitted. "I told her she needed time to find herself. I wasn't thinking about how true that was for me, too. Part of my whole problem the last few months has been self-definition."

Eek, coffee was getting cold. Catching up with a couple of mouthfuls, Madelyn nodded. "You've learnt to see yourself a certain way," she said, carefully avoiding adding 'as part of a couple'. "But perhaps that's not as valid as it used to be. Time to yourself, where you're not running yourself ragged looking after someone else... I think it'll help." She smiled suddenly. "Maybe your grandparents surfacing now is part of that."

"I'll tell you a secret," Scott said, a small, rueful smile tugging at his lips. "The increased time to myself the last couple of months has been... nice. Just to sit around and relax a little, read the books Shan keeps pushing at me..."

"The Captain's learnt to relax? Shock, horror!" Madelyn's tone was teasing. "Don't worry, I'll carry this terrible secret to my grave."

"You've only heard half the secret so far," Scott said. "It's nice, but there's always part of me that knows it's this thin veneer over top of all of the dozens of crises waiting to spring out of the woodwork around here." He shrugged, the smile turning a bit defensive. "Even sitting down on Boiler Beach, it was like I was clinging to the thoroughly unnatural bubbliness to hold off my awareness of the inevitable."

Now it was her turn to look past him out at the lake. "See, this would be the part where I say 'no, there's no need for that, you're just being paranoid'..." she said at last, all traces of humour gone from her voice. "But you know, I'm thinking pretty much the same thing. The contingency plans we've got in place for medlab in case something goes wrong during the holidays, the fact we've arranged for one of us to be here when there's only a handful of students on campus... Le Beau pointed out the local hospital could deal with Cain easily enough, and I found an excuse to be here any way." Her grin was just as rueful as his had been. "I half-expect to hear tales of some titanic battle against a super-powered foe on Muir, you realise."

Scott rapped his knuckles against the wood of the railing, half-whimsically, half-seriously. "It's only to be expected, I suppose," he said. "After the last few months, everything that's happened..." He shrugged. "I'm not going to say it's got to get better, because that's like inviting it to get worse. But we're learning from our crises, I think. We're never going to be like your average private school, but I think, possibly, we can learn to manage the insanity."

"'Learn to manage the insanity' - sounds like one of those twelve-step programs..." Madelyn said with another brief grin. "But you're right, we're getting better at this. Have to be, with all the practice. Still, one can but hope for a few less disasters." She held up her mug. "A less disaster-filled year? Sounds like a good thing to drink to."