Log: Madelyn and Jubilee

[x-jubilee.livejournal.com]

*drags out the wayback machine and gives it a good kick*

Who: Madelyn, Jubilee.

When: Wednesday 9th February 2005.

Time: 3:45pm

What Happens: Jubilee drops by Madelyn's suite in order to appoligise and hopefully make up for the complete arse she made of herself. They talk about why Madelyn did what she did, and Jubilee promises to try and think more before she yells next time.

Lyrics from: 'Hey little girl' by Icehouse




Jubilee knocked on Madelyn's door. "Mads, I'm here." she called out.

Madelyn roused herself from the half-sleep she'd drifted into on the couch,
and her back protested. She'd been thrown around by the final explosion a
little harder than she'd thought - snow might look nice and fluffy, but
hard-packed? It was like being thrown on the floor. Still, at least they
were down to just the kids and Morgan, Nathan and Haroun in the medlab.
Hopefully the email she'd sent Fred Duncan about the kids would bear fruit
as far as getting them home; she'd sat with them for a couple of hours this
morning, getting personal details and history to help track down their
families.

"Come in, firecracker," she called back, not bothering to get up just yet.
The note left on her door had been promising - maybe Jubilee was prepared
to
actually listen for a change, instead of merely hear.

Jubilee opened the door and slipped into the room, closing it firmly behind
her. She looked at Madelyn in concern. "Everything okay, Mads?"

"Just getting old, firecracker," Madelyn said, stirring herself to at least
sit up. "The bones are a bit creaky this afternoon - twelve hours on your
feet dealing with patients will do that." She smiled reassuringly, not
wanting to start another screaming match. "I'm fine, kiddo, really. Not a
scratch on me."

"Want me to try Grandmother Lee's patented massage cure? Guaranteed to cure
at least some of what ails ya, considerin' I'm not Grandmother Lee."
Jubilee replied, dropping down on the chair across from her.

"It depends what Grandmother Lee's patented massage cure involves, but
never let it be said I'd turn down any kind of massage. You may regret
letting me know you can do it - I'll be hassling you after every long
nightshift," Madelyn teased. She wanted to talk about what had happened,
wanted Jubilee to understand why she'd done what she'd done, but there was
time for small talk and putting her at ease. Better that than jumping
straight into the yelling.

Jubilee cracked her knuckles and placed a hand on a suddenly jiggling knee
before she looked at Madelyn. Her gaze was clear and direct, meeting
Madelyn's rather then the often, corner of the eye gaze that the teenager
had perfected over the years. "It kinda works along the same lines as
acupuncture in some parts, only there's no needles involved. Pressure
points, some massage strokes and some shaking and pulling techniques. Gran
once described it as 'Medical gymnastics'. Like I said, I can't do some of
the stuff Gran can, but I'm good at the basic pressure point stuff."

It was good to see Jubilee looking her in the eye, instead of the nervous,
almost shifty-looking glances. "I trust you not to hurt me," she said
seriously now, before breaking into a wry grin. "And my back would very
much appreciate it. Hiking through snow with a full medkit on my back
wasn't exactly fun. And that's not counting the dragging large injured
people around."

Jubilee sat down behind Madelyn and gently brushed her mass of hair forward
over her shoulders to have better access to her neck. She slowly began
pushing against several pressure points, trying to draw out the soreness
from the muscles. "Must have been hard." Jubilee said, tone neutral for the
moment.

Madelyn tensed at the first touch on her sore shoulders, but gradually
began to relax. "It was scary," she admitted frankly. Jubilee had to know
that she didn't do this sort of thing for kicks, that she wasn't going to
throw herself into combat at the least provocation. "Knowing what we were
up against, knowing we were limited as to what kind of force we could
use... But it was more important we get the kids out, considering what they
were facing if they were taken back." She wasn't sure what Scott had told
Jubilee, but she had a feeling he'd have told her some of it, at least.
"The same thing you saw in that dream with Nathan. Only not all of them
would have survived. The conditioning... it kills five out of every six
kids they do it on."

Jubilee hands tightened on Madelyn's shoulders for a moment, her expression
tense and closed before she visibly made an effort to relax. She unclenched
her hands and went back to the light massage, as if nothing at all were the
matter. "I reacted badly." she said finally. "I didn't have any right to
question your decisions."

"I wouldn't say you don't have any right," Madelyn said gently,
feeling that moment of tension. "You have the same right as anyone who
cares about me has to dislike me being placed at risk - but to be fair,
Jubilee, it was supposed to be a relatively simple evacuation. We had no
idea there was any kind of pursuit until we were in the air, and it wasn't
like they could drop me off in a nice, safe bunker somewhere until they
were done. You know what my first thought was when Nathan told me we had
trouble? I thought I was going to be a liability, since they had to take me
with them into a powered fight. If there had been any alternative, I would
have taken it - not because I was afraid of getting hurt, even though I
was. I didn't want to slow the team down and perhaps cause them to fail."
There it was, total honesty - she owed Jubilee that, had to make her see
that she wasn't going to throw her life away stupidly. "As it turned out,
it was a good thing I was there - Hank got intercepted by some operatives
and couldn't get clear for a while. And people needed urgent medical
attention."

"It wasn't really about you bein' a human, least not in the way someone
might think, considerin' how I was goin' on. I'm not - least I hope I'm not
the kinda person that thinks that just cause you can't fire lightning bolts
or kill someone with your brain that you're a liability." she replied, her
hands moving lower along Madelyn's spine and pressing along it with her
fingers. "I don't exactly go in for that whole 'verbally tellin' people how
I feel' sorta thing. But you're more then important to me. I know you
needed to go, logically. But the whole emotional thing, just findin' out
without any warnin'. It was easier to yell then deal with how scared I
was."

"And you probably didn't get me at the best time either... I was exhausted
and stressed and about five minutes away from a nervous breakdown when you
caught me," Madelyn said with a small, wry chuckle. "I'm sorry I didn't
tell you earlier, kiddo, but there really wasn't any time. And I have to be
honest here - there's a chance something like that might happen again. If
Hank's unavailable, or hurt, then the job of field medic falls to me.
Especially now Moira's pregnant. But I promise you, I don't take
unnecessary risks, and the team doesn't let me do that either. If anything,
they fall over backwards to make sure I don't get put into danger." This
conversation was reminding her of one she'd had with Carlie, back after her
first active assignment with the Bureau. "I've had this talk with Carlie,
you know. With a bit more screaming and accusations of not caring."

Jubilee snickered, leaning over to work the ball of her elbow into a
particularly hard to relax spot on Madelyn's back. "Well, least I didn't
blow anythin' up this time. You could say I'm gettin' all mature and stuff.
I even managed to help fix Cain's door a few days back and we've been
havin' civil conversations. I keep expecting the world to end, or for Cain
to turn out to be an alien masquerading in a Cain suit."

"My office is very glad for that." Madelyn relaxed further, now the hard
part of the conversation seemed to be over. "And that feels wonderful - I
think I might just have to keep you as my personal massage person."

"Remind me ta take you with me next time I visit my Grandparents. Like I
said, I am the mere apprentice to the Master that is my Grandmother.
Although, she was different then I expected. She didn't pinch my cheeks or
call me sweetie. She was fierce but not in the mean way, more in the
courage kinda way. I liked her a lot." Jubilee replied, moving slightly
sideways so she could pull Madelyn's arms back for a stretch. "She made
sure I didn't lose any ground in the self defence classes while I was in
China. I swear, you've never seen a seventy year old move so damn fast.
Although, my Great Grandfather was faster, and he totally loved yankin' my
chain. Think maybe he was tryin' to get me ta deal with the anger, now I
look back at it, interfering old bastard that he is."

"Strange how family does that," Madelyn said with a smile. "Interferes,
that is. Whether or not we want them to, and it's always for our own good."
She didn't mention her mother's frequent lectures on how to look after
herself, or Carlie's match-making attempts. The silence after her sister's
visit was a little unnerving - she was either busy with classes or planning
something.

Jubilee pushed Madelyn's hair over her shoulder, bringing her hands up to
grip along her neck. "Don't ever tell anyone but sometimes it's nice to be
fussed over. Lots of people go on about how great it is to be independent
and make yer own decisions and all that 'lone wolf' crap. Seems to me, I
never did much standing around in the rain lookin' windswept an interestin'
when I was on my own. Too busy scroungin' for food or lookin' for the next
way to get a little money so I wouldn't have to scrounge for food. It's
easier to act like some tragic loner when ya know there's always gonna be
someone ta come lookin' for ya. Lucky, most of the kids round here seem ta
know that. Think I'd have ended up killin' someone if I had to deal with
normal teenagers."

"I'm not arguing with the fussing, believe me. It's more the actual nagging
that bothers me..." Madelyn let out a soft sigh. "If fussing over me
involves this, you can do it as often as you like, really." With an effort,
she wrenched her brain back to Serious Talk. "And you're right, about it
being easier to be a loner in a group of people, knowing you have backup -
but then again, melodramatic statements are the right of the teenager, even
the more unusual sort." She didn't mention Jubilee had been known to make
her own overly dramatic gestures. "People learn, eventually, and in the
meantime, we're here to support them. You. Sorry, my brain's turning into
goo."

"Do they? Well, guess if I can learn then anyone else would have to have a
fair shot at it, wouldn't they?" Jubilee replied, a wry smile on her face.
"I don't know if anything we do matters, sometimes. The stuff with the
coffee shop...Do you think kids learn to hate? Or is it always there, like
a species trait or somethin'. I mean, I know violence is, or at least the
whole fight or flight stuff. But I always wondered if hate wasn't just an
emotion but somethin' in the blood."

"The problem with thinking like that is it leads to absolving people of the
responsibility for what they do. Say hate is genetic, and those kids were
caught and charged with what they did. They could plead not guilty on the
grounds that they couldn't help themselves, that they were compelled to
hate because they were genetically predisposed towards it." Madelyn
straightened a little, since it was easier to think when she wasn't
slumping into goo. "There's always a choice, Jubilee. Even with violence.
That's the difference between us and less complicated animals - we aren't
ruled completely by our instincts, we can sit back and apply rational,
logical thought to a situation, and recognise what we're doing, and the
reasons behind it. If we're so totally ruled by instinct, do you think you
would have listened to Scott and not left? You chose not to go, not to
follow through on your first reaction when further information was given to
you. The same as those thugs chose to go through with burning the cafe,
even when there were dozens of reasons why they shouldn't - they chose to
ignore that. The only way to avoid choice is to not be aware you have one,
or to have it taken away from you, like those poor bastards we were facing
out there. And even then, they found ways around their imperatives, chose
to take certain actions that meant we came back intact, instead of far more
seriously injured."

Jubilee nodded, gaze thoughtful as she pushed her hair back over her
shoulders, a frown settling on her features. "It's what I thought, that
there's always a choice. Just sometimes it's easier to think that maybe
it's not, cause then you don't have to deal with the fact that someone
decided somewhere along the line that it was okay to burn someone to death,
or blow things up. That somewhere, someone decided that 'they' weren't an
'us', and that made it okay to do horrible things to them, an call it
'casualties of war' or some other crap like that." she replied, fists
clenched against her knees, her voice rising from a thoughtful tone to
fierceness as she spoke.

Madelyn shuffled around to face the girl, laying her hands over the
clenched fists. "Choice works both ways," she reminded. "Just as people
choose to hate, there's people who choose to go against that, to do
selfless, courageous things in the name of humanity. And that's the
important thing to remember, I think - yes there's acts of great horror in
the world, but there are also acts of great love. There might be a Magneto,
or the Friends of Humanity, but there's also a Charles Xavier, and groups
like the one Carlie's a part of. And as long as there's that
counterbalance, there's still hope."

Jubilee looked down at their joined hands, a smile making a brief
appearance as she opened her hands to cup Madelyn's. "I can't promise I
won't ever yell at ya again if you put yourself in danger. I'm not exactly
a pool of tranquillity, ya know? An I care about ya. If you get hurt, I'm
probably gonna be angry about it. But I'll try an find out what happened
first next time, before I go off at people."

Madelyn smiled back. "And that's all I ask of you, firecracker. To stop and
think and get the facts before you react. And believe me, I'm not looking
to get myself hurt any time soon - I'm actually a big wuss about pain," she
confided. "Now, I think I need a hot shower to work out the kinks, and you
should have homework to do, hmm?"

She wrinkled her nose at Madelyn before sighing and rolling her eyes. "You
know, too much work and no slacking off makes Jubilee a dull girl. But
yeah, I still got that stuff for you, and some music history homework for
Alison to do."

"Then scoot, kiddo." Madelyn gave Jubilee's shoulder a friendly pat, giving
her a smile. "And thank you, for not going. It wouldn't have been the same
around here without our firecracker."

Jubilee shrugged after a moment, smiling somewhat wryly and moved toward
the door. She turned back as she placed her hand on the door handle to open
it, giving Madelyn a serious look.

"It was probably more a 'dramatic' gesture then anythin' serious. Think I
knew someone would come find me." Jubilee replied. "Not that I meant it
that way at the time but, you know."

Madelyn nodded, remembering her own teenage years, and Carlie's, well. "I
know. But I'm still glad you decided to stay."