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ax_mainJean-Paul takes a break from the party, but can't get away from everyone.
There was definitely such a thing as too much company, and while Jean-Paul was far from sick of the party, he needed a break. Things were getting a little too sloppy for him, anyway. The last time he'd let down his guard at all, he wound up in the gossip pages.
Maybe it wasn't the worst idea just to find a quiet spot to wait things out until Warren tracked him down. Of course, the last time he'd seen Warren, he'd been looking halfway to drunk. It could very well wind up that he had to track Warren down...
Jean-Paul looked up to find himself on the far side of the lake from the party, now definitely a spectator rather than participant. A certain tension went out of his shoulders at the proof of distance, and that immediately settled the question for him.
A break it was.
Heading around the edge of the lake, Tommy caught a flash of short dark hair, slim shape- His first thought was that it was Billy, maybe sneaking off with someone, which presented itself as the perfect opportunity to go give him some grief. It wasn't until he got closer that he realized the figure wasn't his so-called brother at all, but by then he figured he was pretty much visible anyway.
"Yo," Tommy paused before seriously interrupting Jean-Paul's moment of quiet. It was rude just to turn around and vanish. "Taking a breather?"
"Yeah." Jean-Paul nodded once in greeting, then turned back to the view. "It was getting crowded. Did you see Illyana's date? I thought Jeanne-Marie was going to start breathing fire herself."
Tommy tucked his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and leaned back against one of the trees, off to the side. "That I did. Watched Kitty get into it with him, too. So much for keeping anything about Xavier's quiet; his boss is going to know exactly where Xavier's is now, assuming he didn't already." It was different than the way Tommy had been communicating with Fatale -- at least he'd been keeping it personal rather than giving away names and locations.
"That was my thought," Jean-Paul said. "And they have their own teleporter too. Plus a potential headcount. So the situation here just got more fucked up than usual."
Tommy snorted at that, the laugh hard. "Is that even possible? I think the bar on that got raised about six notches the day Xavier picked me up. And it wasn't that low to begin with."
"You're an appropriate level of fucked-up given what you went through, Shepherd, with good reason. Xavier is cultivating it."
He wasn't exactly used to people agreeing with him. So Tommy shrugged, vaguely uncomfortable, the memory of Fatale's scars and Havok's wariness coming to the fore. "Others had it worse. I got out, remember? I'm one of the lucky ones." In a very loose sense of the word, probably, but his brain flung up shields to deflect him away from thinking about it too hard. "What do you mean by 'cultivating'? You think he's not motivated to fix us." Whatever that might look like.
Jean-Paul sighed and leaned against a tree opposite Tommy, unconsciously imitating his pose. "I don't know. I want this place to be on the level, for Jeanne-Marie's sake." A pause. "For mine too, I guess. But well-adjusted kids don't go scouting around abandoned torture facilities without telling their parents, do they?"
"You're asking the wrong person if you want to know what well-adjusted kids might do." But he got the point, and Tommy nodded across the lake toward the glow of the fire and the noise of the party. "They do if they think they can save the world that way. Kitty's as white-picket-fence as they come, and she's already all-in. Same with Drake."
Jean-Paul grinned despite himself. "I'll grant you Pryde, but if you're telling me that Bobby Drake is well-adjusted, you're worse off than I thought."
That got a real laugh out of Tommy, a chuckle that ended with him flashing a sardonic smile across the clearing at JP. "He hangs out with me voluntarily, so you've got me there. But mutant-power-level awful sense of humor aside, you know what I mean -- suburbs and a dog, and the world is made up of good guys and bad guys. It doesn't leave a lot of space in the middle."
"It doesn't." Jean-Paul frowned and thumped one fist lightly against the trunk of his tree. "But I'm more interested in what you think."
Tommy frowned at him. "About Xavier, or middle grounds in general?"
"Pick one. Pick any. Throw Billy into the mix if you want to."
"You had to go there," Tommy groaned. He chewed at the inside of his cheek for a moment -- long enough for he and JP to feel it like that, anyway -- and gave in. "All right, I'll bite. I don't trust Xavier, but I don't have any better options lined up.
"Life is too damned complicated to break down into white hats and black hats, but Gar keeps trying to convince me that there's no such thing as bad people, only people who keep making bad choices. The kid's determined, but I don't buy that sunshine line, either. And as for whatever the hell Billy is to me..."
Tommy stared off across the water, then broke, shook his head, and looked down at his feet. "Reincarnation's based on karma, right? Isn't that the deal? Be good and come back as something better?" Shen could explain it, but Shen wasn't there. "So if we're some woman's dead kids, what the hell did I do - or will I do, or will I might have done in a life that isn't mine anymore - to deserve the house that joy forgot?"
"Seems like a good case for karma being bullshit." Jean-Paul's voice had gone taut. "There's nothing you could have done to deserve being treated worse than a lab rat, Tommy. And if we do get a hold of the bastards that'd do something like that to a kid, say the word and I'll help you hide the bodies."
He blinked once, then breathed out slowly, easing back into himself. "And... yeah, Xavier." He paced to the edge of the water, his back to Tommy. "I've got better options. Jeanne-Marie doesn't. So we're staying here, and that's that."
Tommy hadn't been thinking about the Right's facility there, but he didn't bother to correct JP's assumptions. And if one of them had had to get the Shepherds, part of him was glad that Billy had ended up a Kaplan. The kid was way too soft and squishy inside to have survived. Either thing.
"She's lucky to have you," he said instead, seizing the chance to turn the conversation away from things he shouldn't have stirred up anyway. "There's no reason you two would have to stay if shit does hit the fan."
"Aside from Jeanne-Marie going back to foster care. And that's reason enough."
"Got it," Tommy nodded. "I didn't end up there; missed that by the skin of my teeth a few times. But I've heard enough stories." He glanced over at Jean-Paul again. "You're not worried about it yourself?" He and JM were twins - it's not like he could have aged out of the system before her.
Jean-Paul sighed. "It's complicated. But no, I'm not really worried about me. I've got someplace I can land if this goes south. If not for Jeanne-Marie, I probably would have told Xavier to shove it, honestly."
Tommy made a faint noise of agreement. Then, because sitting in silence was really not his thing, he broke it before it could become oppressive. "Does that mean dialing back on the magazine covers?" he asked, grinning and half-prepared for whatever little moment of truth they were having here to go flying apart. "You've got what, two years to go here? Your fanbase will be losing their minds."
Jean-Paul snorted. "It's harder to think of why I should now. I don't want to sit out the season."
"Now - why? Because of Pyro and his little buddies potentially blowing the school's cover?" Tommy felt a pang of something vaguely approaching guilt.
"Yeah. Despite what people think, I worked my ass off to get where I am, and I've gotten a lot of shit for it. And I knew I might lose it coming here, but whatever, right? I figured I'd be careful and see what happened." He shrugged. "But if this shit is going to happen anyway, why kneecap myself? I've been doing some training in the Danger Room, so I probably wouldn't make a complete fool of myself if I went back on the slopes this year."
"I saw some of your runs last year. Even if you went in cold you'd still make the rest of the field look like first graders on the bunny hills." Tommy wasn't a fanboy by nature, not in the slightest, but there was a huge difference between painting team colors on your face and screaming like an idiot, and appreciating skill. Even if some of that skill was enhanced - and really, who would know? "You're probably better off going in hard now rather than wait until they start demanding DNA tests from everyone along with the piss samples."
"Right? Tabernac..." Jean-Paul aimed a kick at a clump of grass. "It's fucking ridiculous anyway. I've never doped. I had to learn how to land without breaking my ankles, just like every other fucker on a board. And I'd still be labeled a cheat."
"And get stripped of your old wins retroactively, because no-one understands a damn thing," Tommy realized aloud. "Damn."
"And potentially sued, depending on the contracts attached to my endorsements," Jean-Paul pointed out. "So yeah. All kinds of fun options, no matter what. But I hate the idea of just walking away."
Tommy didn't have a whole lot to say about contracts and endorsements, but finding the wiggle room around rules was a hobby he indulged on a regular basis. "There's always your friendly half-truth," he suggested. "Keep your season, and if Xavier's gets exposed, stick to your original story about being here for JM. Or bust out the light powers and just those, and challenge them to prove that being a human nightlight has anything to do with snowboarding."
"Trust me, I've considered a lot of ways to cover my ass." Jean-Paul laughed softly and looked over to Tommy. "But I guess what that really means is I've already figured out what I'm going to do. I just have to have the balls to commit."
Tommy raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't sound like something you're used to saying. You're no coward." He wasn't as impulsive as Tommy, probably better at the long game, but something about seeing him uncertain didn't feel right.
"Yeah, but I have a lot of experience being a self-centered son of a bitch and looking out for number one. Maybe this is just another side of it." Jean-Paul stretched and seemed to shake himself out of it. "Fuck. I'm getting whiny. Come on, let's get back to the party before I completely kill the mood."
"When you do make up your mind, let me know," Tommy replied, watching JP. "There's got to be at least one bookie in Jersey taking odds on winter sports, and I could use the cash."
Jean-Paul laughed. "If you find one, let me know. Maybe I get Warren to place some bets on my behalf. That might be the best way to rat some money away."
Tommy kicked himself up off the tree he'd been leaning on, hands shoved in the pockets of his hoodie. "My old man used to know some guys. It could be - what's the word? - cathartic to run a game on them for once. I wonder if illegal gambling would actually get me grounded, since a riot didn't."
"It would be a good test of whether or not Xavier is actually reading our minds, wouldn't it?" Jean-Paul waited up for Tommy, walking back toward the party in step with him.
"If he is, then he really doesn't give a shit what his child soldiers do other than not-die." Tommy caught up, fitting his stride to Jean-Paul's. "Considering some of the things that've already gone down around here. I'm not sure which answer I like better."
There was definitely such a thing as too much company, and while Jean-Paul was far from sick of the party, he needed a break. Things were getting a little too sloppy for him, anyway. The last time he'd let down his guard at all, he wound up in the gossip pages.
Maybe it wasn't the worst idea just to find a quiet spot to wait things out until Warren tracked him down. Of course, the last time he'd seen Warren, he'd been looking halfway to drunk. It could very well wind up that he had to track Warren down...
Jean-Paul looked up to find himself on the far side of the lake from the party, now definitely a spectator rather than participant. A certain tension went out of his shoulders at the proof of distance, and that immediately settled the question for him.
A break it was.
Heading around the edge of the lake, Tommy caught a flash of short dark hair, slim shape- His first thought was that it was Billy, maybe sneaking off with someone, which presented itself as the perfect opportunity to go give him some grief. It wasn't until he got closer that he realized the figure wasn't his so-called brother at all, but by then he figured he was pretty much visible anyway.
"Yo," Tommy paused before seriously interrupting Jean-Paul's moment of quiet. It was rude just to turn around and vanish. "Taking a breather?"
"Yeah." Jean-Paul nodded once in greeting, then turned back to the view. "It was getting crowded. Did you see Illyana's date? I thought Jeanne-Marie was going to start breathing fire herself."
Tommy tucked his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and leaned back against one of the trees, off to the side. "That I did. Watched Kitty get into it with him, too. So much for keeping anything about Xavier's quiet; his boss is going to know exactly where Xavier's is now, assuming he didn't already." It was different than the way Tommy had been communicating with Fatale -- at least he'd been keeping it personal rather than giving away names and locations.
"That was my thought," Jean-Paul said. "And they have their own teleporter too. Plus a potential headcount. So the situation here just got more fucked up than usual."
Tommy snorted at that, the laugh hard. "Is that even possible? I think the bar on that got raised about six notches the day Xavier picked me up. And it wasn't that low to begin with."
"You're an appropriate level of fucked-up given what you went through, Shepherd, with good reason. Xavier is cultivating it."
He wasn't exactly used to people agreeing with him. So Tommy shrugged, vaguely uncomfortable, the memory of Fatale's scars and Havok's wariness coming to the fore. "Others had it worse. I got out, remember? I'm one of the lucky ones." In a very loose sense of the word, probably, but his brain flung up shields to deflect him away from thinking about it too hard. "What do you mean by 'cultivating'? You think he's not motivated to fix us." Whatever that might look like.
Jean-Paul sighed and leaned against a tree opposite Tommy, unconsciously imitating his pose. "I don't know. I want this place to be on the level, for Jeanne-Marie's sake." A pause. "For mine too, I guess. But well-adjusted kids don't go scouting around abandoned torture facilities without telling their parents, do they?"
"You're asking the wrong person if you want to know what well-adjusted kids might do." But he got the point, and Tommy nodded across the lake toward the glow of the fire and the noise of the party. "They do if they think they can save the world that way. Kitty's as white-picket-fence as they come, and she's already all-in. Same with Drake."
Jean-Paul grinned despite himself. "I'll grant you Pryde, but if you're telling me that Bobby Drake is well-adjusted, you're worse off than I thought."
That got a real laugh out of Tommy, a chuckle that ended with him flashing a sardonic smile across the clearing at JP. "He hangs out with me voluntarily, so you've got me there. But mutant-power-level awful sense of humor aside, you know what I mean -- suburbs and a dog, and the world is made up of good guys and bad guys. It doesn't leave a lot of space in the middle."
"It doesn't." Jean-Paul frowned and thumped one fist lightly against the trunk of his tree. "But I'm more interested in what you think."
Tommy frowned at him. "About Xavier, or middle grounds in general?"
"Pick one. Pick any. Throw Billy into the mix if you want to."
"You had to go there," Tommy groaned. He chewed at the inside of his cheek for a moment -- long enough for he and JP to feel it like that, anyway -- and gave in. "All right, I'll bite. I don't trust Xavier, but I don't have any better options lined up.
"Life is too damned complicated to break down into white hats and black hats, but Gar keeps trying to convince me that there's no such thing as bad people, only people who keep making bad choices. The kid's determined, but I don't buy that sunshine line, either. And as for whatever the hell Billy is to me..."
Tommy stared off across the water, then broke, shook his head, and looked down at his feet. "Reincarnation's based on karma, right? Isn't that the deal? Be good and come back as something better?" Shen could explain it, but Shen wasn't there. "So if we're some woman's dead kids, what the hell did I do - or will I do, or will I might have done in a life that isn't mine anymore - to deserve the house that joy forgot?"
"Seems like a good case for karma being bullshit." Jean-Paul's voice had gone taut. "There's nothing you could have done to deserve being treated worse than a lab rat, Tommy. And if we do get a hold of the bastards that'd do something like that to a kid, say the word and I'll help you hide the bodies."
He blinked once, then breathed out slowly, easing back into himself. "And... yeah, Xavier." He paced to the edge of the water, his back to Tommy. "I've got better options. Jeanne-Marie doesn't. So we're staying here, and that's that."
Tommy hadn't been thinking about the Right's facility there, but he didn't bother to correct JP's assumptions. And if one of them had had to get the Shepherds, part of him was glad that Billy had ended up a Kaplan. The kid was way too soft and squishy inside to have survived. Either thing.
"She's lucky to have you," he said instead, seizing the chance to turn the conversation away from things he shouldn't have stirred up anyway. "There's no reason you two would have to stay if shit does hit the fan."
"Aside from Jeanne-Marie going back to foster care. And that's reason enough."
"Got it," Tommy nodded. "I didn't end up there; missed that by the skin of my teeth a few times. But I've heard enough stories." He glanced over at Jean-Paul again. "You're not worried about it yourself?" He and JM were twins - it's not like he could have aged out of the system before her.
Jean-Paul sighed. "It's complicated. But no, I'm not really worried about me. I've got someplace I can land if this goes south. If not for Jeanne-Marie, I probably would have told Xavier to shove it, honestly."
Tommy made a faint noise of agreement. Then, because sitting in silence was really not his thing, he broke it before it could become oppressive. "Does that mean dialing back on the magazine covers?" he asked, grinning and half-prepared for whatever little moment of truth they were having here to go flying apart. "You've got what, two years to go here? Your fanbase will be losing their minds."
Jean-Paul snorted. "It's harder to think of why I should now. I don't want to sit out the season."
"Now - why? Because of Pyro and his little buddies potentially blowing the school's cover?" Tommy felt a pang of something vaguely approaching guilt.
"Yeah. Despite what people think, I worked my ass off to get where I am, and I've gotten a lot of shit for it. And I knew I might lose it coming here, but whatever, right? I figured I'd be careful and see what happened." He shrugged. "But if this shit is going to happen anyway, why kneecap myself? I've been doing some training in the Danger Room, so I probably wouldn't make a complete fool of myself if I went back on the slopes this year."
"I saw some of your runs last year. Even if you went in cold you'd still make the rest of the field look like first graders on the bunny hills." Tommy wasn't a fanboy by nature, not in the slightest, but there was a huge difference between painting team colors on your face and screaming like an idiot, and appreciating skill. Even if some of that skill was enhanced - and really, who would know? "You're probably better off going in hard now rather than wait until they start demanding DNA tests from everyone along with the piss samples."
"Right? Tabernac..." Jean-Paul aimed a kick at a clump of grass. "It's fucking ridiculous anyway. I've never doped. I had to learn how to land without breaking my ankles, just like every other fucker on a board. And I'd still be labeled a cheat."
"And get stripped of your old wins retroactively, because no-one understands a damn thing," Tommy realized aloud. "Damn."
"And potentially sued, depending on the contracts attached to my endorsements," Jean-Paul pointed out. "So yeah. All kinds of fun options, no matter what. But I hate the idea of just walking away."
Tommy didn't have a whole lot to say about contracts and endorsements, but finding the wiggle room around rules was a hobby he indulged on a regular basis. "There's always your friendly half-truth," he suggested. "Keep your season, and if Xavier's gets exposed, stick to your original story about being here for JM. Or bust out the light powers and just those, and challenge them to prove that being a human nightlight has anything to do with snowboarding."
"Trust me, I've considered a lot of ways to cover my ass." Jean-Paul laughed softly and looked over to Tommy. "But I guess what that really means is I've already figured out what I'm going to do. I just have to have the balls to commit."
Tommy raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't sound like something you're used to saying. You're no coward." He wasn't as impulsive as Tommy, probably better at the long game, but something about seeing him uncertain didn't feel right.
"Yeah, but I have a lot of experience being a self-centered son of a bitch and looking out for number one. Maybe this is just another side of it." Jean-Paul stretched and seemed to shake himself out of it. "Fuck. I'm getting whiny. Come on, let's get back to the party before I completely kill the mood."
"When you do make up your mind, let me know," Tommy replied, watching JP. "There's got to be at least one bookie in Jersey taking odds on winter sports, and I could use the cash."
Jean-Paul laughed. "If you find one, let me know. Maybe I get Warren to place some bets on my behalf. That might be the best way to rat some money away."
Tommy kicked himself up off the tree he'd been leaning on, hands shoved in the pockets of his hoodie. "My old man used to know some guys. It could be - what's the word? - cathartic to run a game on them for once. I wonder if illegal gambling would actually get me grounded, since a riot didn't."
"It would be a good test of whether or not Xavier is actually reading our minds, wouldn't it?" Jean-Paul waited up for Tommy, walking back toward the party in step with him.
"If he is, then he really doesn't give a shit what his child soldiers do other than not-die." Tommy caught up, fitting his stride to Jean-Paul's. "Considering some of the things that've already gone down around here. I'm not sure which answer I like better."
