xp_logs | Amanda, Paige - Sunday afternoon

Paige comes across Amanda in the stables, and they talk. Well, they start of talking. Things quickly derail from there. This is why bottling things up is a bad thing, kiddies.

There wasn't any actual work to be done in the stables since she'd already done it all, but Amanda lingered any way, perched on the wooden gate of Gorgeous' stall, feeding him bits of apple. In the next stall, Paige's horse snorted, poking his nose inquiringly at Amanda's pockets, although he couldn't quite reach.

"All right, greedy guts," she told him with a small chuckle. "You'll get yer turn in a bit." She scratched Gorgeous behind his ear, considering why it was she preferred the company of horses to people these days. Less complicated, she supposed. Feeding a horse pieces of apple generally didn't get you targeted by a wealthy megalomaniac type intent on destroying your life just because you dated his son.

Paige had decided to take advantage of her moment of free time to go out and see her horse again. She'd already seen him this morning for their scheduled ride, but she knew she'd be neglecting him somewhat. Really, she'd been neglecting him since he got here; Nem was a show horse, he deserved to be in shows. Paige just didn't have the time any more. Well worn boots treading on the floor boards and the gentle whickers of horses finding in her a familiar smell masked the sound of Amanda's voice, but it still didn't have the power to render Paige blind.

"So you're the one who's been spoiling my horse," Paige said, announcing her presence. Funny, how when you're trying to get away you always seem to bump into the one you're getting away from.

Amanda jumped slightly, nearly falling off the gate, and there was a brief flare of magic as she used a spell to stop herself taking a header into Gorgeous' stall. "Hey," she said, perhaps a little awkwardly. She hadn't been expecting to see anyone. "Not spoilin' exactly, just keepin' him company, like."

There was the lowest of rumbles from the base of Paige's throat; inaudible except to perhaps the horses whose ears flicked over in her direction, eyes rolling in alarm. Paige was a regular here; they knew her better than probably anyone inside the mansion, and she was not pleased. "You're lucky. He has a habit of breaking ribs," she replied, her voice insinuating the follow-up of 'other than me, of course'.

Amanda shrugged. "Not me, he doesn't. We had a bit of a chat, sorted things out, didn't we, Nem?" She followed that up with a couple of words in Romany, which Paige didn't know, and the horse nodded his head and stamped his hoof briefly, as if agreeing. "He's all right, as long as you introduce yerself properly."

More foreign languages. Super. More secret conversations that she was not privy to. Paige was well acquainted with at least seven languages that she could think of off the top of her head and yet somehow, she was still being made an intruder in a private conversation with her own horse. Oh, she was eternally grateful that the pitchforks were way off in the corner there. "Well. Thank you for mucking out his stall. It was... sweet of you," Paige finally managed, unwilling to speak about the grooming or the tack polishing or whatever else Amanda had done that she had yet to notice yet.

Amanda blinked at her. Okay, she'd been horribly self-absorbed lately, but it was impossible to miss the undertones. Paige was pissed off, well and truly. And Amanda for the life of her couldn't think why. "Um, sure, not a problem." There _was_ a problem, 'though. "Ah, are you shirty at me in particular, or is this like that door slammin' thing?" she asked, not exactly sympathetically. She didn't have time for the passive-aggressive shite. If Paige had a problem with her, she should just say.

"You..." irritate me beyond all reason, give me the desire to tear out my own hair, make me more jealous than anyone I have ever met, are a selfish little brat who can't see what she has right in front of he- "Have your own problems to deal with. That much is apparent by the state of these stables. In the future, you might want to leave me my own horse to vent my own frustrations on, though. Please." Paige swore to God, if she brought up the P hyphen A word that was swimming around in her eyes, she would break her nose and not even bother to feel bad about it.

Amanda's eyes narrowed slightly. She wasn't a mind-reader, but the hostility swimming around in Paige's aura right then was a bit hard to miss. Especially when it was aimed at her. "Sorry," she said stiffly. "I wasn't exactly thinkin' at the time, what with Pete off an' leavin' an' all. Bein' here helps me sort stuff out, but I'll leave Nem out of it if it pisses you off that much."

Paige should have said she was sorry, should have shook her head and told Amanda that she was just having a bad day, but she couldn't. "You have the entire stables at your command. Nem is one of the few folks I still have. Just have the manners to ask first, please," Paige replied, feeding off Amanda's terseness to give herself a sort of dangerous calm.

"Yeah, well join the bloody club." Amanda pushed herself off the gate, landing with a thump and a small cloud of hay dust. "Sorry for stompin' over yer territory. You sure you don't want t' include Ange in that as well? Since he's one of yer folks?" Her tone had turned ugly, resentful. Bad enough that she was losing people left and right, but now people were giving her grief about her coping mechanisms?

"Join the club for what exactly?" Paige asked, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and bracing her feet. It was a relaxed posture, but it allowed her more than enough options if things got ugly. Besides, there was no way she was sitting now. She didn't bother to reply to Amanda's demands, giving her a pair of raised eyebrows that spoke volumes. Something along the lines of, 'are you serious?' but not quite as nice.

"Losin' people," Amanda replied, crossing her arms over her chest. Body language be damned. "Tho' if yer so fuckin' worried 'bout losin' folks you consider yers, maybe you should actually connect with 'em some time. Instead of doin' that whole 'la la la nothin's wrong' bullshit. People don't like people lyin' to 'em, an' that's exactly what you're doin' with that whole act."

That struck a chord, but Paige didn't allow herself to wince. She wouldn't give that to her. "How long did you room with me? You obviously learned nothing. You know nothing about me and you know about as much about losing people," she stated calmly, shifting her weight to one hip. Unless closely inspection, she almost looked, well, bored. "You have a whole fleet of people who would kiss your feet, die for you and then come back for the dead just clean your shoes. So don't you dare talk to me about 'losing people'."

Amanda's retort about just how well she knew Paige died as the rest sank in. "Even if that were bleeding true, which it isn't, I never asked for it. An' all it bloody well gets people is trouble, so maybe it'd be better if they didn't in the first fuckin' place!"

"Yes. Clearly your childhood was not painful and filled with tales of woe enough, no. Little do you know, but you have a curse upon you. A horrible curse so that whoever decides that they love you, and it's a fleet, a feet kissing, death charging, shoe cleaning fleet and don't you dare try and make it less than that, will suddenly, without warning, decide to put themselves in deathly situations," Paige retorted, blinking slowly. There was a pause as Paige put a hand to her ear, silencing Amanda when she tried to continue. "Shh! Do you hear that? It's the sound of my sarcasm detector exploding into a thousand little pieces. Would you prefer to live alone? Or better yet, would you prefer to have people claim to love you and then leave at the first sight of something better, or worse in some cases? Don't give me this martyr nonsense about how you're a black hole of death. You are so blessed, and you don't even see it."

"You have no fuckin' idea why it was that Pete left..." It was on the tip of her tongue to tell her exactly why, the danger that faced the whole school from the Hellfire Club. Then she looked at Paige more closely. "You're serious? You're... what, jealous? Of me?" She laughed hollowly. "Un-fuckin'-believeable. You. Jealous. Of me. You who has everythin'!"

"No, but I have a good feeling that if you look closely enough, and aren't so very convinced that everything has to do with you, you'll find the truth that in the long run, you had nothing to do with it." Paige gave Amanda a wry sort of grin, shaking her head. Poor little girl; so loved and so very oblivious. Maybe she was just content to live in misery. "I can have everything, but without love, acceptance, respect - the sort of thing that just flocks to you I might I add - I still have nothing."

"You don't have love? You have Angelo an' Jono tearin' 'emselves apart over you, plus Forge eatin' his heart out over the fact you're not single, an' you an' Kitty with yer secret outin's an' looks. Not t' mention a family that actually misses you an' wants you around. Acceptance? You've got the docs callin' on you t' help 'em when they need it, an' not just 'cause you can wave yer hands around an' say a couple of words an' make people not hurt, an' you're a fuckin' junior X-Man. Respect? Whenever somethin' happens, the kids automatically turn t' you t' tell 'em what t' do, just like at Halloween!" Amanda shook her head. "Maybe I ain't seein' things straight, blamin' meself for Pete leavin', but you're just as bad." The look she gave Paige was a mixture of pity and scorn. "Well, don't worry. I won't be stealin' none of yer people, or gettin' in yer face with me 'fleets' of admirers. Stable's yers." Her expression stony, she made to stalk past the other girl.

Paige threw out her arms, blocking Amanda's exit. If they were going to do this, they were going to do this. None of her 'here, let me prove you wrong and then stalk away in a dramatic exit' nonsense. "Here's a hint. You bring up Jono and Angelo again and you'll lose a limb," Paige said coldly, a familiar numb feeling running over her skin. Having said that, she brought up a hand to begin ticking off answers to Amanda's proclamations. "Forge and I have already talked about the friends thing, he is now fine, I'm sorry to burst your melodramatic bubble. Oh, and I'll also point out that it took you all of five minutes before you rode in on your indignant white horse to proclaim to him that you'd take care of all his woes. Kitty and Forge are my only friends in this entire school. The rest of them left. Are you going to deny me one friend and a lab partner when you have so many?"

"And family? The same goes for my family as goes for Jono and Angelo. Well, you might just get decked in the jaw for that one. Trust me when I say you know very little about my family. However, I do think Moira and Nathan would be heartbroken to hear that supposedly they don't like you. What with your sleeping over there every time you have a bad dream, and talking to Nathan in Askani. Oh, and you took over Alison for your big sister role faster than I could blink. Secret conversations that none of us are privy to because we're not special enough to know some damned language of a couple of dead people in Nathan's head!" Paige shook her head angrily, way past ticking things off on her fingers at this point. Part of her brain wryly announced that hey. At least she wasn't bottling any more. "The doctors only tried to give me some busywork to keep me from hyperventilating. Forge and I just happened to get along well and I took over the bio-chemistry section. That's all. In the end, when pats on the shoulders came out, they were for Forge. Wanda is going to make team well before I am as she is old or something I am unaware of, even though I've been training steadily for over two years now and she just arrived out of the blue with her superior Jeep fixing skills. And the only reason the kids look to me for guidance is that I don't get into an angst frenzy every time something the least bit problematic occurs here. That and I have a very loud voice. But you'll notice you're the one who does all the public speaking for which everyone ponders stealing kitchen forks to make you medals out of." Paige dropped her hands to her sides, allowing Amanda an exit if she so chose. "You have it good, Amanda. You have everything I don't. If you could get off this pitiful 'the world is going to end and it's all my fault, I'll be left alone with no one who loves me' theory, maybe you could see that."

Amanda was silent for a long moment, taking all that Paige had said in, fixing Paige with a cold, distant stare, while around her the sunlight seemed to dim, the shadows thicken. "You know who you sound like?" she asked, her voice flat. "Me. Back when I was havin' those problems with Jubilee. I thought she was takin' away all of my people too, and everyone was quick t' tell me that people can be friends with lots of people, that you shouldn't make 'em choose. I'm loved? Fine, I believe you. There's still stuff you don't know, Miss I'm Always Right, and it's not my place to tell you, but I'll take your word for it." The air shimmered around her, crackling faintly blue. "And since I've learned me lesson about fightin' with classmates, I'm not going to take you up on that whole losin' limbs and gettin' smacked in the jaw, tho' I can't help wonderin' if maybe I had a point there an' it's easier t' threaten me instead of dealin' with it. Then again, you don't deal with anythin', do you? 'Cause it's easier t' believe you're right an' the world's wrong." Shaking her head, Amanda went on. "I'm leavin' now. An' I'll be keepin' me distance. But I tell you now, you threaten me ever again, an' I don't give a fuck about the rules, or the whole X-Men trainin', or what Angelo might think an' all the rest of it. You even joke 'bout hurtin' me, an' you'll find out just how much trouble I can be."

Paige bristled noticeably, the easy numbness turning to a frozen burning sensation. A thin strip of skin curled away from her cheek like bark from a birch, revealing the palest of blues that was diamond. Nemesis let out a terrified whinny, rearing up into the air, but she paid no notice to him. "Just... get away from me," she answered finally, her voice ringing hollow with an ethereal sort of quality. Turning her back to Amanda, Paige let her actions speak louder than words; her clear lack of interest, respect or feeling of being threatened by Amanda's response. Nemesis calmed instantly under her touch and Paige smiled, wrapping her arms around the beast's neck and burrowing her nose into his coat as if Amanda had already long departed.

"I'm gone," Amanda said with a sneer, heading for the door. But in the doorway itself she paused, looking back for a final shot. "Diamond? I would've gone for metal meself, seein' how I can't magic that. Bloody shite tactics there, X-Man." And without waiting for Paige's reply, she left.

Current Mood: bitchy

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x-rahne.livejournal.com

Wow.

I'd be afraid to get close to either of these two in the first place. I can only commit to never increasing emotional or physical distance with so many people.