ax_main | Tommy and Gar - Backdated to August 9

Gar finds Tommy and they talk about the riot in the park. They have mostly different philosophies about the whole thing.

Gar had been going back and forth about talking to Tommy. On the one hand, he didn't want to be confrontational. On the other hand, something needed to be said. He was upset and all up in knots about the newscast. Everyone was, he could tell. Maybe they didn't know it, yet, but it was bad, and Gar felt partially responsible. He waited until after lunch, thinking about what he was going to say. That was what he'd read you should do. Think about what you plan on saying. Don't do anything rash. Rashness made... mistakes. Rashness was the reason they'd been on the news.

So after lunch, he fluttered, in the form of a green woodpecker, onto Tommy's windowsill, and used his beak to give a rapid-fire rap against the glass to get his attention.

Tommy had taken advantage of Inu-Yasha’s absence from the room to turn up the sound on the ‘teach yourself guitar’ YouTube video playlist he’d assembled, so the tapping didn’t register at first. He spun his chair around after the sound didn’t stop, guitar in his lap. A bird – no, a green bird. And he was pretty sure woodpeckers didn’t normally come that colour. He set the guitar aside and crossed the room to open the window.

“Feeling too good for stairs these days?” he asked the bird. And man, he was going to feel like an idiot if that wasn’t Gar after all.

Gar fluttered in but quickly shifted back into his human form. He wasn't wearing his usual smile; he looked pensive instead, and tucked his hands into his pockets. "I was outside already," Gar said, as if it was an explanation. "I figured it was faster." Besides, flight was always a good way to let some steam off. "I wanted to talk to you. About ... y'know."

Tommy made a face and flopped back in his chair, sprawling there. "Or we could not," he suggested. "I don't see what the big deal is. Xavier let us off scot-free."

Which was a mistake, Gar thought. They deserved to be told that they'd done something wrong, because they had, as far as Gar was concerned. "Yeah, he did," Gar said, nodding. "But that doesn't mean that I don't have my own opinions about how things should have been handled."

Tommy's brow furrowed. "Like how? You saw those nutcases out there. They'd have torn Tam limb from limb if they'd gotten their hands on her. Or any of us."

"Yeah, I know, I know, just..." Except he didn't think that. "They're scared," he blurted, figuring it was just best to say it. "They don't hate us. Not really, at least. At least... I don't think they do. They just ... they don't understand us. And so they're scared. But being scared sucks, and so they get angry, instead." He took a moment to compose himself, because he felt himself getting just a touch vehement. "They need reasons to like us. They don't need reasons to be scared of us. They've made plenty of those up already. Piling up a ton of their signs and lighting them on fire isn't ... isn't going to make them like us any more."

Tommy came close to rolling his eyes, but Gar was just so... so... earnest about the whole thing, like he really believed the whole world could be fixed by sitting down over pizza. “It’s a nice thought,” he admitted, “but no-one in the history of ever has been convinced not to hurt someone by that someone being nice about it.

“Civil Rights? Riots. Stonewall? Riots. Hell, go back more and the Holocaust? War. Slavery? War.” Where was Gar from? Africa? There’d been a thing there too. He didn’t have a strong handle on the history of that one though, so he left apartheid out of it. “Offering a bully your lunch money is just going to get your face punched in, along with your money stolen anyway.”

"So what, we just run out and make more people scared of us?" Gar asked. "That isn't going to accomplish anything," he said. "It's... it'll make things worse." He dropped his chin, and fidgeted with the collar of his purple polo shirt, briefly.

"I." He began, and then he nodded, starting over. "There was a man who I lived with. My adoptive father, after my parents died," he said. "He hated me. At least, I thought he did. He used to hit me, or throw things at me if I interrupted his work. He'd shout at me to leave him alone. I had to fend for myself," he explained. "Food, clothes... everything I needed done, I had to do for myself. I got sick of it. So one day, I wanted to teach him a lesson. And I did. He got to learn about polar bear dentition. Up close," Gar said, looking down. He was clearly ashamed.

"I've never seen a person that scared before," he said. "Even when...." His breath caught a bit when he remembered his parents drowning in the flood. "I've seen scared people. But not like that." Gar sighed. "And when I changed back, he locked me upstairs. Sure. There was a kitchen, and all. But he told me if he saw me on the first floor, he'd shoot me." He shook his head. "It wasn't until the Professor came knocking that things changed. He... Galtry... needed me alive for my inheritance. He was embezzling it." Gar shrugged. "He's in jail now. But he's still scared of me. But it didn't do me any good to make him scared. It cost me my freedom. He could've starved me, if I wasn't good at getting out of top floors of buildings. He could've shot me. And sure, I could've turned into a polar bear again. His revolver probably couldn't have killed me like that. And maybe I could've hurt him and run away. But how's that for a headline? 'Mutant Teen mauls his adoptive father.'" Gar shook his head. "Doesn't matter if I was right. Doesn't matter. People will remember that headline. We need to give them good headlines they'll remember. Like.... I dunno. 'Mutant Saves Lives.'"

Tommy was uncharacteristically quiet through Gar’s story, and the frown lingered on his face afterward as well. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said, and he meant it. “My old man was fast with his fists, especially when he was tying one on. But being good never made it better. Made it worse, sometimes, because then he needed to work to find an excuse.

“And that’s the thing – no matter how ‘good’ we try to be, there’ll always be another excuse. The headlines will read ‘mutant kid attacks local teens’ instead of ‘attempted rape stopped by heroic mutant.’ People who want to hate are going to find a reason for it no matter what we do.” And he was pretty sure that he wasn’t really talking about mutant rights anymore, but the small scale and the large scale shit all blended together.

"But ... the scarier we are, the more people are going to think that we're bad... we don't have to change every mind," Gar said. "We just have to change enough that ... that the people who don't like us are a minority." He didn't like that he was losing this, as far as he could see. He'd imagined Tommy coming around easily, seeing his point of view. The older boy's words were hitting home, though, and Gar felt sick to his stomach. "I don't wanna have to be a bad person to make people stop being bad to us."

This wasn’t going right. Tommy knew how he felt, was sure the facts would back him up, but the look on Gar’s face was making his throat close tight and something inside his chest ache. He didn’t want to win, not if it meant stealing the light out of Gar’s eyes that way. They might be pretty close to the same age, and the kid had obviously been through some heavy shit, but... he was a kid still, in a way Tommy wasn’t entirely sure he ever had been.

“Then don’t,” Tommy said, and there was a roughness in his voice even he could hear. He cleared his throat, got rid of the weird frog feeling in there. “Don’t be a different you, Gar. Sooner or later someone’s gonna listen. In the meantime, leave the tough shit to assholes like me who are already halfway darkside.”

"You're not," Gar said. "You didn't want to hurt anyone. I don't believe you want to hurt anyone. All you did was take their signs. You could've done worse. But you didn't. Because you're a good person. I know you are." He had to be. "You're not halfway darkside. You're not even quarter way there. You just... nobody's given you a chance to be the good person you really are."

When Gar said it like that, Tommy could almost let himself want to believe it. (And the moment he tried, a thundering wave of 'disruptive and incorrigible' 'bad influence' 'how can you be such a dummy' 'send him away' 'no kid of mine' rolled over him and drowned him in the voices of his past.)

"Tell that to my old parole officer," he joked-not-joking, one corner of his mouth twisted up in a grimace that was also a smile. "You're a good person, Gar, and you see the good in people - maybe that's the difference between us."

"There's a difference between bad choices and bad people," Gar said. "Plenty of good people have made bad choices. It doesn't change that they're good people. And maybe that is a difference between us," he said. He squared his shoulders, and managed to look Tommy in the eye. "And as long as I keep being like that, I'm going to keep trying to show you that you're a good person."

Feelings weren't exactly Tommy's strong suit. So he held Gar's gaze until the discomfort became way too much, and he kicked back in his chair instead. "Don't go spreading that around any," he warned, but a smile tried to tug up at one corner of his mouth nevertheless. "You'll ruin my rep. Girls like the bad boys."

"Maybe," Gar said. "But if I can at least prove it to you, maybe it'll be worth it," he said, breaking his gaze and smiling just a little.

"You've got a thing for hopeless causes, don't you?" But Tommy couldn't find it in himself to bring the snark like he should have.

"It's only hopeless when all hope's gone," Gar said, remembering what he used to tell himself in his darkest hours.

"That kind of goes without saying, doesn't it?" Tommy flashed a grin. "By definition."

"Sure. But sometimes the obvious bears stating," Gar said, grinning back just a little. "It's easy to forget, sometimes."

Tommy actually smiled that time, laughed a little. "Sounds like the beginning to an R.E.M. B-side. You should think about going into songwriting, you'd make a fortune with that stuff," he teased, the guitar sitting against his desk a reminder of what he'd been doing before Gar had shown up.

"Yeah, I don't really think that's my strong suit," Gar said, shaking his head. "Anyway, you've... given me some stuff to think about," Gar said, more seriously. "I'll catch you later, okay?"

Tommy nodded. "Save me a seat at dinner. If you feel like it."

"Will do," Gar said, heading for the window. "If it's all the same to you, I'll go out the way I came in," he said, grinning just a bit.

"Suit yourself," Tommy waved at the open window. "Watch out for the updrafts on your way out."

"Don't have to tell me. I'm a pro at flying," he said. He gave Tommy a little wave, and then his form melted into the shape of a green red-tailed hawk, which took off out the window.

Tommy watched him go, at least as much as he could without moving from the chair. He bounced his foot against his knee, drummed his fingers against the desk, tried to sort through the conversation that had just taken place. Maybe he wasn't as much of a hopeless case as he thought he was, but he was pretty sure he wasn't anywhere near the kind of person Gar wanted him to be.

"What the hell does the kid know, anyway?" Pushing off, he spun the wheeled chair across the room bouncing out of it when it bumped into the side of his bed and tipped over. Tommy shoved his feet into his shoes, and headed out the door.