Scott and Manuel, Monday afternoon

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Manuel is being productively devious, and talks Scott into a driving lesson. They wind up at the usual coffee place, and Manuel plays sounding board, not to mention very gently providing an object lesson that helps Scott come to a rather important realization about one of the things that's been bothering him about how he reacted to Jean's 'death'.


Manny, fresh from his admittedly dubious success with Paige, was feeling good and on a roll. Mutant Radio was set to kick off in a week or so, Amanda was no longer quite so tormented, and he enjoyed a very pleasant evening out with Amanda, Marie-Ange, and Doug for wine and talk the night before. So next on his emotionally-stressed hit parade was one Scott Summers. The ball of agony, pain, confusion, and loss that had come to represent him since that smokingly hot little red-haired number had supposedly returned from the dead and to the Mansion just Had To Go.

Scott, head resting in his hand, scrolled down the list of this week's training scenarios, trying to decide which ones needed tweaking. It helped to focus on the work, let him push everything else back to a bit of a distance, at least for a little while. Didn't mean it wasn't still all there, but at least he could breathe.

Manuel knocked on the doorframe to Scott's office, poking his head inside the doorway at the same time. Clearly, living in America had eroded his manners considerably. "Hola. Would you happen to have a moment, senhor?" he asked with a pleasant smile on his face. His expression was warm and his clothes neutral, to help avoid providing any sort of antagonism towards Scott.

"Uhhh... sure, Manuel," Scott said, somewhat bewildered that Manuel would have chosen to come knocking at his door. He saved the scenarios file and straightened in his chair, reaching out for his cup of coffee and realizing, as soon as he took a sip, that it was ice-cold. "Come in and sit down," he said, automatically.

Manuel nodded, and proceeded to do Just That. Once he was comfortable, he smiled again at Scott. "I was wondering if you might happen to be free for some driving lessons. I've been neglecting that side of my education, and constantly having to - how does the phrase go - scam rides from people is growing quite tedious. And unless I have gone vastly headblind lately you could really use the escape."

"I..." Scott closed his mouth, reminding himself that he actually hadn't been doing very well lately at taking Manuel out for driving practice. And really, he needed to stop immuring himself in the office or the Situation Room, if only to stop giving people ammunition for telling him that he was reacting wrongly to Jean's reappearance. "I suppose I could do that," he said slowly, getting up.

"Good. It will do you some good, to get out for a time. The emotional atmosphere in here is just toxic, and I think you know it. If I weren't virluently disinclined towards Earl Grey tea, I'd consider discussing it with the Headmaster." he said with a grin. "I did, with Katherine's help, manage to acquire a learner's permit. But it expires in a month or so, and I would like to get some legal paper that's 100% legit under my own name and through my own offices. Relying on the largesse of others, I have found, is a slowly inevitable recipie for disaster. Now, shall we go now, or would another time fit your schedule better?"

"I don't have anything I absolutely have to be doing until later," Scott said, mustering his best facsimile of a smile. "We might as well go now." As they headed out of the office, he gave Manuel a sideways look, wondering. "It's... got to be difficult for you," he said a bit awkwardly. "In the middle of all of this, with your powers. I'm sorry."

"Don't you dare apologize." he said pleasantly as they walk. "This is no more your fault than it is mine." he explained. "And no, it's not her fault either, to answer your next thought." He hrmmed as they headed down for the Garage. "I understand that Ms Braddock will no longer be among us for the foreseeable future. Curious timing, that." he mused. "Care to speculate as to why that is?"

Scott stiffened, but forced himself to answer. "She needs some time to sort things out," he said finally. "A lot's happened to her in the last few years, and time and space to process is at a bit of a premium here, as I'm sure you've noticed."

Manuel hrmmed at that answer. "It may just be a function of me being the screwed-up kid everyone thinks I am, but I thought it was cowardice. I mean, this Doctor Grey woman shows up back from the dead, and with her comes all of your old unresolved emotional baggage from your previous relationship with the good Doctor. And then Ms Braddock, who you had taken up with after the tragic demise of Doctor Grey, promptly decides to depart for greener pastures and is gone inside of a week. Most curious."

"Just a coincidence, the timing," Scott murmured as they reached the garage. He really hoped that the whole school didn't believe that was why Betsy had left. "She'd made plans previously."

"Of course she had." Manuel said pleasantly as they came to the garage. "I believe the nice safe sedan today, don't you agree?" he said, motioning with a hand towards the aforementioned boring car. "Did I mention that she left me a parting gift? I actually found it amusing before I burned the card into ash." he commented.

Scott winced, flinching a little at the thought of what Betsy might have said that would have required card-burning. The image was like a splash of acid on already raw nerves, and as he took the keys to the sedan and handed them to Manuel, his hands were a little unsteady. "Sedan is a good choice," he said, his voice low, and went over to the passenger's side door.

Manuel got into the car and belted himself in without comment. "She made a comment about loves, hates, and promises. Most fitting, really, considering our shared history, but very presumptuous of her. We never did resolve the issue of Kwannon." he said with only a little bitterness. He pulled the car out of the garage smoothly, and headed into Salem Center as if on autopilot. "I am not sure there is a possible resolution."

No speeding. Huh. "Possibly not," Scott said very quietly, keeping his eyes on the road. "Sometimes there isn't, and you just have to live with it."

"Doesn't erase the desire for closure, and it sure as all that is holy doesn't stop the questions. Most of which start with the word Why." he commented as he smoothly and sanely merged into traffic. "Why did I get singled out? Why was I the one being used? Why did I go along with it? Why, why, why? Why is a very toxic word in the wrong emotional environment, I've found."

He didn't have the energy for this... but he'd just have to find it, Scott told himself harshly. His responsibilities sure as hell didn't stop just because his fiancee had come back from the dead and there was still a very large part of him that was was just Not Dealing.

"You haven't managed to answer any of those questions?"

"Some." he confessed. "All of them unsatisfactory from an emotional standpoint, no matter how logical they were at the time. I was vulnerable, I am powerful, and I didn't have the small annoyance of ethics, scruples, or anything remotely resembling a conscience." he said. "Now that I've had those emotions stripped, I can look back and see exactly why I was used."

"Then at the very least it won't happen again." Probably not comforting, but it was the only thing he could think of to say. "Learning from mistakes is sometimes the only resolution you can find."

"Cold comfort on a cold night, though." he said as he changed lanes. "I'm sure things have not been easy for you. You've had quite a shock lately. How are you holding up?"

He opened his mouth to say 'I'm fine', but thankfully his common sense spoke up and said 'Scott? Empath.' and thus saved him from making any more of an idiot of himself. "Still processing," he said as neutrally as he could

"An understatement, but at least you didn't lie to me and tell me you were fine. Five points to Gryffindor." he said with an easy smile. "But you _are_ trying to process it, are you not? You've moved behind the hide-your-head-in-the-sand stage of things?"

Scott gave the question serious thought. "Partially," he said finally. There really wasn't any point in trying to dissemble around Manuel. "I am trying, but at times it's too much."

Manuel nodded. "You have people here who care for you and can help. Ms Blaire, Ms Munroe, Dr McCoy, your little brother, the Professor himself, others. Have you considered talking to them?" he asked. "Alex, in particular, is about ready to climb the walls in sheer worry. As I share something in common with him, I would look out for his best interests, make sure he was not striving in vain."

Scott managed a faint smile. "I've talked to all of them," he said quietly. "And I'll probably be talking to all of them about this many, many more times before we're done..." He trailed off, staring out the window. "Understanding why you feel the way you do doesn't always help," he finally said. "You should know that. When you stack logic up against two years of... against emotion, logic's got a fight on its hands."

Manuel smiled thinly. "It would help me a great deal if more people would recognize that." he said drily.

"Doesn't mean you don't fight, though." Overwhelmingly, what he was feeling at the moment was fatigue, thinking about the emotional minefields he was trying to navigate. All the things he'd done and hadn't done over the last two years needed to be reevaluated, if he was going to figure out how to go on from here...

"Of course you fight! But in my case, given who and what I am, I suspect that I feel everything more deeply than most. I have to, it's my mutation. So when I love, it is a grander love than most normals. When I hate, it is all-encompassing. There isn't much middle ground, the extremes are slanted." he elaborated. "That's priviledged information, by the way." he added casually. "In your case, since you feel like most normal people feel, you conceptually have it easier. And you don't need to re-evaluate your behaviors from then, you know. I can feel that much from you." With some additional guesswork, but he didn't think he was all that wrong.

Scott gave him a sharp look. "Am I that transparent?" he asked, finding something closer to his usual focus all of a sudden. "I'm not reevaluating my behavior from then, Manuel. Just what's happened since."

"To me, yes." he said with a grin. "But I am hardly most people." he added, and pulled the car smoothly into the Coffee Joint from their earlier expedition. "Up for some coffee? I'm buying." he said pleasantly. "And what is there to re-evaluate, honestly?"

Scott got out of the car and followed Manuel in, not answering until they were seated, with their coffee. "I thought she was dead," he said very quietly. The Coffee Joint wasn't busy, but this wasn't the sort of conversation you wanted to have at volume anyway. "No... I was positive she was dead. I felt it... but she wasn't. And looking back, maybe I knew that, deep down."

"Ah, the old dragon of hindsight. It's not 20/20, despite what they say." he commented as he sipped his coffee. He and Marie-Ange came to this coffeeshop fairly often, to the point where the jockeys at the counter knew him. His habit of tipping heavily also didn't hurt. "I have learned that many things I swore to be true weren't."

Scott gazed at him for a moment, remembering. "You thought Amanda was dead," he said slowly. "After what happened in Mexico."

"That would be one of them. I thought that being a de la Rocha entitled me to a great many things in my life. I thought that having power would make my life easier. I thought that working with Kwannon would be exciting and fun - which it was, but not in ways I could have anticipated. I thought that the Askani were figments of Nathan's imagination. There are others, I'm sure. A casual glance through my life in the last year or so will bring them to mind." he said.

"No," Scott said distractedly, not really hearing Manuel, "you don't get it, you..." He stopped, blinking at him. "You really thought she was gone. Even though she was there. It's not..." He blinked, looking down at his coffee. "It wasn't just me not... seeing. If the same thing happened with you when your link was broken." Charles had said something about that, yes, and he'd tried to keep it in mind... but Manuel was sitting across from him, living proof...

"It's not just you." Manuel said, now that they had come to the core of things. "I know how you feel, and not just because of my power. I know it because I have lived it." he said softly. "There is nothing wrong with you. The failure is not yours."

"I didn't..." But Scott stopped, shaking his head. "One less thing." Maybe. "Doesn't change anything else, though." Then again, nothing would. Depressing thought.

"Of course it doesn't. But it has to be a relief, knowing that that blindness, that omission, was not of your doing." Manuel pointed out. "Take heart in the good news when you get it."

Scott nodded slowly. "Thank you," he said quietly, then gave Manuel a real, if weary smile. "Have you met her?"

Manuel shook his head. "I have not yet had the pleasure. She's quite the looker - with the exception of Ms Braddock, you have exceptional taste in women. I salute you." he said, doing precisely that with his coffee cup. "Tell me of her, if it does not hurt too badly?"

Scott hesitated, but then took a deep breath, trying to organize his thoughts. Maybe it would help. Remind him again that yes, this was real, and she was back.

"What I did, the first time we met... well," Scott said, with a wry half-smile. "It's a funny story..."