Tommy and Illyana | Backdated to 10/5
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ax_mainTommy and Illyana serve detention - and finally talk it out. More or less.
This was all the Professor's fault.
If he hadn't held his stupid "address to the school", Illyana reasoned, she wouldn't have texted Pyro from it when everyone had started acting stupid. If she hadn't texted, she wouldn't have taken off to go see him (okay, she really couldn't find it in herself to regret that part, but still) and wouldn't have been attacked by S'ym.
If they hadn't been attacked by S'ym, she wouldn't have worn herself out casting healing spells and miscalculated the timing on her return 'port, and gotten caught at having sneaked out when grounded. She wouldn't have gotten detention matching library books to the electronic card catalog that had suffered some kind of glitch, making the Professor feel that a complete inventory was in order. And she definitely wouldn't have gotten stuck spending detention with one of the people she had absolutely no desire to be in a room with.
The only consolation she could think of was that at least it wasn't Tamara.
"I need another stack," she said flatly as she pushed the last of the book from her current pile to the side. Honestly, every last book thus far had shown up. She was half believing the Professor had made this whole thing up just to mess with her.
Tommy had started out on the computer side of things until the in...cred...ib...ly...slow system had made him threaten to put the tower and the monitor through the small window all at once. Stacking books and running them back and forth to the shelves was marginally better, and it gave him a break from the deadly silence coming from the other side of the room.
So yeah, he deserved some kind of punishment for inciting Bobby to go screaming off the roof with him at about a million miles an hour -- and he'd fallen on his sword as being the instigator, so hopefully Bobby wouldn't get nailed as well. But this was rude, even for Xavier and his stupid lax standards. Maybe it was supposed to be like making him room with Inu-Yasha. A 'growth experience.'
"Your wish, my command, etc whatever." Tommy delivered the next teetering stack of books to the clear spot on the desk.
"Whatever." Illyana grabbed the first of the books and started typing the title in, then paused to wait for the computer to catch up. Honestly, what was wrong with this thing? It was worse than the one in the lab she'd "fixed" in Limbo.
He was going to die of bored. Literally, physically expire. Become a corpse. This was hell, and it was Xavier's fault. Tommy had the rest of Illyana's books put back and the next stack ready to go within, like, seconds, and now all he had to do was wait until he died. He made a circuit of the room, first one way, then the other, not going near enough to Illyana's chair to knock into it. Then maybe he went a little closer, to see how near he could get before her chair wobbled.
"If you keep that up, I'll type slower," Illyana warned.
Tommy collapsed into his chair again, sent it wheeling across the room and ponged off of the wall before it slowed to a halt somewhere on the rebound. "So what did I do this time?" He'd been staying away, except for this god-forsaken punishment, so he couldn't possibly have managed to piss her off again. Unless staying away had been the problem, in which case he officially really did not understand girls.
"What are you talking about?" Illyana replied, spinning her chair to look at him with exasperation. "How would I know what you did to get detention?"
"Then you missed the world's greatest adventure thrill ride," he pointed out, staring at the ceiling as he slowly spun down to a halt. How she'd managed to ignore the massive ice structure melting across the lawn, he'd never know. "I mean you. I haven't even been near you in weeks, so how did I piss you off this time?"
"Hmmm. Maybe because you haven't been near me in weeks?" Illyana rolled her eyes, then sighed. "Look, I'm not mad anymore, okay? You made it clear I freaked you out, whatever. Don't worry about it."
Now what was she on about? Tommy frowned at her. "You didn't freak me out. You chewed my ass out for taking me to Limbo, then you got pissed at me for not biting when you suggested yes taking people to Limbo. Which you've done since, so I really don't get it, but that was obviously a no-win scenario from the start."
Illyana stared. "Umm...okay, I'm on board with having chewed you out. And I tried to explain why, but you really weren't listening, so maybe you missed the part where I said I was afraid you'd freak? Which...I figure you pretty much did, considering you blew me off for the next week, and then made cracks about not wanting to deal with American Horror Story." She shrugged. "Anyway, I gave up on hiding it all. What's the point? At least this way, I know up front if people are cool with it or not."
"Kid shows up wearing a stranger's face, gets nearly eviscerated by a fanged and clawed asshole calling himself a dog-demon, then gets talked at by a sorceress going on about demon magic?" Tommy raised his eyebrows at her, because if she couldn't see the utter ludicrousness of the entire event, there was no fucking hope. "Horror story. Amazingly," he drawled sarcastically, "some things are not all about you.
"And I had my own shit to deal with right after leaving that goddamned place, and I'm fine, thanks for asking." He really wasn't, though he could probably lay claim to 'coping slightly better' at the moment thanks to all the shiny distractions. At least the nightmares weren't every night. "Kitty checked in, at least, which was nice of her."
"Yeah well, Kitty's a much nicer person than I am. I'm not about to argue that." She shrugged. "I should have checked in, okay. But y'know, Tommy? Not everything is about you, either. And I was just trying to help. Even your brother realized that, and he came and apologized for you having been an ass."
"Billy doesn't speak for me." The sense of betrayal stung on that one too, more so because he'd actually begun totrust tolerate the little dipshit. "He barely knows me. If he apologized, it was for himself."
Whatever. He didn't need either of them to try to understand.
"Maybe he should speak for you," Illyana pointed out. She got to her feet, because honestly, what was the point of even talking about this? "Because y'know what? He does a hell of a lot better job of it. You've been through hell, Tommy. I get that. But you're really, really not the only one. Neither am I, and considering I actually grew up in Hell? If I can figure that out, so can you. Big difference? I apologize when I screw up."
That got a laugh out of him, more surprised than angry or upset. "No, you really don't. 'My roommate is nicer than I am' isn't an apology for ditching out on me, and neither is playing the 'I grew up worse than you' trump card. You're as self-centered as I am, probably for a lot of the same reasons, but that doesn't make either of us the bad guy here."
"There was an apology in there somewhere," Illyana grumbled, but eyed him curiously. At least he was acknowledging she wasn't the only one here who was self-centered - it was more than she'd expected. "So, who is? And if the answer to this question is Pyro, I'm going to throw something at you. Fair warning. I've heard it enough times already."
"The fuck do I care about Pyro?" Tommy snorted. He'd been annoyed at first, yeah, but point for point Xavier's and the Brotherhood were probably about even in terms of 'bullshit we've pulled on each other' by now. Tommy'd been given a lot of other things to think about in the meantime. "You have a thing for firebugs, you do you.
"If you want bad guys, look at The Right. The 'Friends of Humanity' and their street gangs. My old man. Belasco. Real problems."
Illyana opened her mouth to ask how Tommy knew about Belasco, then realized she didn't remember whether or not she'd actualy mentioned him, herself. Or, just as likely, Billy had - it wasn't as if she hadn't tried to drill into his head just how dangerous the demon sorcerer was. "I"m not going to argue that," she observed with a shrug. "I told you, I'm not even mad any more. I'm not sure I was exactly mad anyway."
Oh yeah, sure. But hell; if she was itching to save face Tommy wasn't about to call her on it. Not too overtly, anyway. "Could've fooled me," he said easily, with no heat behind it. Then, "so we're good?"
Illyana eyed him critically for a long moment, then nodded. There wasn't any point in being hurt when she really didn't care anymore, anyway, and it at least took Billy out of the middle. "Yeah, we're good." She cocked her head. "So, how are you doing? After everything?" She smiled, just a little. "Better late than never?"
A few weeks ago he'd have been (pathetic) grateful for the chance to unload a little, to talk to someone who might have half a chance at understanding, but the moment was long gone now. It was better that way anyway. The less he said the less likely his more private thoughts were to get spread around places he didn't want them to go.
"So they say," he cracked a smile, but it didn't entirely reach his eyes. "I'd say 'surviving,' but that sounds like I'm about to go all Inu-yasha and spend my time in the woods growling at squirrels. And no-one needs that mental image."
"I'm kind of getting a kick out of that mental image, actually," Illyana replied with a grin. Tommy, growling at small woodland creatures. Yeah, she could see it. "Surviving is good, though." Her amusement fading, she eyed him curiously. "Did blowing the place to hell help at all?"
"More than it should've, less than I'd like." He'd actually put a moment of thought into the honest answer. "Learning that there are more of those places out there harshed that buzz pretty damn fast."
Illyana made a face. "Kitty showed me one of their files - not yours," she specified quickly, figuring Tommy'd hate it if he thought she'd seen his, and she hadn't. "Fatale's. If they set up shop again, I volunteer to send their people on a one-way trip to a fabulous other-dimensional vacation destination." Except from the sounds of it? They belonged in Limbo anyway. They might actually enjoy it there.
"I'll keep that in mind." It was probably the closest thing to support he could expect, and his first vengeful reaction was to like the idea, probably more than he should. "Though I'm pretty sure they never actually stopped. There are other sites, probably other projects. Just because they've gone to ground on the east coast -- the world's big." And there was one reason to give more thought to Xavier's special project. A strike team was only good if you were using it against something, after all.
"Yeah." Maybe she should do a little scrying, and see if she could find anything. It was hard, though, when she really didn't know who or what she was looking for. "It's too bad Kitty can't hack them or something," she mused aloud.
"Maybe not yet, but there are a whole new set of fancy rich kid hacker types kicking around this place." Tommy started spinning his chair around again, the stillness finally getting to him. "I'm not ready to go hunting just yet, but I'm keeping my options open."
"Is that what you're planning, then? To hunt them down?" She could think of worse ideas. Illyana rolled her eyes at his spinning chair, then decided to just let it go.
"Dunno." Tommy spun himself the other way, staring up at a point on the ceiling. "But there's another new kid here who hauled ass out of a different facility somewhere down in Arizona. Now it may not be the same people, but given that one, the one here and the place Fatale and Alex were held... there are going to be more. Which means more kidnapped kids. Someone's got to do something."
Illyana nodded. Someone did - but someone was, right? Maybe she should...she pushed that thought aside for now, and instead frowned at Tommy. "Who's the newbie? And how do you know Fatale and Alex?" She knew their names, yeah. But now that she thought of it, he'd mentioned Fatale before, too.
Tommy slowed his spin slightly, and smirked. "You're not the only one with extracurriculars, 'Yana. I just work harder at not crossing the streams."
Illyana stared for a moment, then laughed. "I wondered why you weren't one of the people lining up to have me lynched."
There was that, and the pangs of guilt at leaving Kitty to take the fall for the tracker, but he wasn't about to admit that to Yana in a small enclosed space. Tommy shrugged expansively. "Bringing him here without giving people a heads-up and the illusion of security was a dumb move. But you don't need me to pile on to make that point."
"Yeah, I got it. But honestly? It never really occurred to me that people thought this place was safe to begin with." She shrugged and offered a crooked smile. "Anyway, whatever. I wasn't destined to be Miss Popularity around here, anyway."
"Destiny's a crock. It's what you make it." He looked at her sidelong, then flipped the backrest of the chair over and hung over it, looking at her upside down. "You've got friends here. Billy, for one." Which brought on a lot of its own questions, but it wasn't like Billy was going to be a bedpost notch for her. That was something.
"Billy for one, Kitty for two." Illyana smiled - he looked silly upside down - and shrugged. "There's a few others, but that's enough, really. The rest?" She shrugged again. "Really don't care. That's my point. If they want to be pissed at me, it's on them."
"Tell you what, I'm going to be pissed at you soon if you don't start typing again," Tommy pointed out, an upside-down grin on his face turning into a frown at his current angle. "Or do you want me to take a turn for a while?"
"I'm on it, I'm on it." Illyana wrinkled her nose, then turned back to the keyboard. "You do upside down things until I catch up. Just stop trying to buzz my chair. It's distracting."
That was a promise he could keep. Almost certainly. Probably. So to hold on to the idea of getting out of there before he withered and died, Tommy nodded, still upside down. "Deal."
This was all the Professor's fault.
If he hadn't held his stupid "address to the school", Illyana reasoned, she wouldn't have texted Pyro from it when everyone had started acting stupid. If she hadn't texted, she wouldn't have taken off to go see him (okay, she really couldn't find it in herself to regret that part, but still) and wouldn't have been attacked by S'ym.
If they hadn't been attacked by S'ym, she wouldn't have worn herself out casting healing spells and miscalculated the timing on her return 'port, and gotten caught at having sneaked out when grounded. She wouldn't have gotten detention matching library books to the electronic card catalog that had suffered some kind of glitch, making the Professor feel that a complete inventory was in order. And she definitely wouldn't have gotten stuck spending detention with one of the people she had absolutely no desire to be in a room with.
The only consolation she could think of was that at least it wasn't Tamara.
"I need another stack," she said flatly as she pushed the last of the book from her current pile to the side. Honestly, every last book thus far had shown up. She was half believing the Professor had made this whole thing up just to mess with her.
Tommy had started out on the computer side of things until the in...cred...ib...ly...slow system had made him threaten to put the tower and the monitor through the small window all at once. Stacking books and running them back and forth to the shelves was marginally better, and it gave him a break from the deadly silence coming from the other side of the room.
So yeah, he deserved some kind of punishment for inciting Bobby to go screaming off the roof with him at about a million miles an hour -- and he'd fallen on his sword as being the instigator, so hopefully Bobby wouldn't get nailed as well. But this was rude, even for Xavier and his stupid lax standards. Maybe it was supposed to be like making him room with Inu-Yasha. A 'growth experience.'
"Your wish, my command, etc whatever." Tommy delivered the next teetering stack of books to the clear spot on the desk.
"Whatever." Illyana grabbed the first of the books and started typing the title in, then paused to wait for the computer to catch up. Honestly, what was wrong with this thing? It was worse than the one in the lab she'd "fixed" in Limbo.
He was going to die of bored. Literally, physically expire. Become a corpse. This was hell, and it was Xavier's fault. Tommy had the rest of Illyana's books put back and the next stack ready to go within, like, seconds, and now all he had to do was wait until he died. He made a circuit of the room, first one way, then the other, not going near enough to Illyana's chair to knock into it. Then maybe he went a little closer, to see how near he could get before her chair wobbled.
"If you keep that up, I'll type slower," Illyana warned.
Tommy collapsed into his chair again, sent it wheeling across the room and ponged off of the wall before it slowed to a halt somewhere on the rebound. "So what did I do this time?" He'd been staying away, except for this god-forsaken punishment, so he couldn't possibly have managed to piss her off again. Unless staying away had been the problem, in which case he officially really did not understand girls.
"What are you talking about?" Illyana replied, spinning her chair to look at him with exasperation. "How would I know what you did to get detention?"
"Then you missed the world's greatest adventure thrill ride," he pointed out, staring at the ceiling as he slowly spun down to a halt. How she'd managed to ignore the massive ice structure melting across the lawn, he'd never know. "I mean you. I haven't even been near you in weeks, so how did I piss you off this time?"
"Hmmm. Maybe because you haven't been near me in weeks?" Illyana rolled her eyes, then sighed. "Look, I'm not mad anymore, okay? You made it clear I freaked you out, whatever. Don't worry about it."
Now what was she on about? Tommy frowned at her. "You didn't freak me out. You chewed my ass out for taking me to Limbo, then you got pissed at me for not biting when you suggested yes taking people to Limbo. Which you've done since, so I really don't get it, but that was obviously a no-win scenario from the start."
Illyana stared. "Umm...okay, I'm on board with having chewed you out. And I tried to explain why, but you really weren't listening, so maybe you missed the part where I said I was afraid you'd freak? Which...I figure you pretty much did, considering you blew me off for the next week, and then made cracks about not wanting to deal with American Horror Story." She shrugged. "Anyway, I gave up on hiding it all. What's the point? At least this way, I know up front if people are cool with it or not."
"Kid shows up wearing a stranger's face, gets nearly eviscerated by a fanged and clawed asshole calling himself a dog-demon, then gets talked at by a sorceress going on about demon magic?" Tommy raised his eyebrows at her, because if she couldn't see the utter ludicrousness of the entire event, there was no fucking hope. "Horror story. Amazingly," he drawled sarcastically, "some things are not all about you.
"And I had my own shit to deal with right after leaving that goddamned place, and I'm fine, thanks for asking." He really wasn't, though he could probably lay claim to 'coping slightly better' at the moment thanks to all the shiny distractions. At least the nightmares weren't every night. "Kitty checked in, at least, which was nice of her."
"Yeah well, Kitty's a much nicer person than I am. I'm not about to argue that." She shrugged. "I should have checked in, okay. But y'know, Tommy? Not everything is about you, either. And I was just trying to help. Even your brother realized that, and he came and apologized for you having been an ass."
"Billy doesn't speak for me." The sense of betrayal stung on that one too, more so because he'd actually begun to
Whatever. He didn't need either of them to try to understand.
"Maybe he should speak for you," Illyana pointed out. She got to her feet, because honestly, what was the point of even talking about this? "Because y'know what? He does a hell of a lot better job of it. You've been through hell, Tommy. I get that. But you're really, really not the only one. Neither am I, and considering I actually grew up in Hell? If I can figure that out, so can you. Big difference? I apologize when I screw up."
That got a laugh out of him, more surprised than angry or upset. "No, you really don't. 'My roommate is nicer than I am' isn't an apology for ditching out on me, and neither is playing the 'I grew up worse than you' trump card. You're as self-centered as I am, probably for a lot of the same reasons, but that doesn't make either of us the bad guy here."
"There was an apology in there somewhere," Illyana grumbled, but eyed him curiously. At least he was acknowledging she wasn't the only one here who was self-centered - it was more than she'd expected. "So, who is? And if the answer to this question is Pyro, I'm going to throw something at you. Fair warning. I've heard it enough times already."
"The fuck do I care about Pyro?" Tommy snorted. He'd been annoyed at first, yeah, but point for point Xavier's and the Brotherhood were probably about even in terms of 'bullshit we've pulled on each other' by now. Tommy'd been given a lot of other things to think about in the meantime. "You have a thing for firebugs, you do you.
"If you want bad guys, look at The Right. The 'Friends of Humanity' and their street gangs. My old man. Belasco. Real problems."
Illyana opened her mouth to ask how Tommy knew about Belasco, then realized she didn't remember whether or not she'd actualy mentioned him, herself. Or, just as likely, Billy had - it wasn't as if she hadn't tried to drill into his head just how dangerous the demon sorcerer was. "I"m not going to argue that," she observed with a shrug. "I told you, I'm not even mad any more. I'm not sure I was exactly mad anyway."
Oh yeah, sure. But hell; if she was itching to save face Tommy wasn't about to call her on it. Not too overtly, anyway. "Could've fooled me," he said easily, with no heat behind it. Then, "so we're good?"
Illyana eyed him critically for a long moment, then nodded. There wasn't any point in being hurt when she really didn't care anymore, anyway, and it at least took Billy out of the middle. "Yeah, we're good." She cocked her head. "So, how are you doing? After everything?" She smiled, just a little. "Better late than never?"
A few weeks ago he'd have been (pathetic) grateful for the chance to unload a little, to talk to someone who might have half a chance at understanding, but the moment was long gone now. It was better that way anyway. The less he said the less likely his more private thoughts were to get spread around places he didn't want them to go.
"So they say," he cracked a smile, but it didn't entirely reach his eyes. "I'd say 'surviving,' but that sounds like I'm about to go all Inu-yasha and spend my time in the woods growling at squirrels. And no-one needs that mental image."
"I'm kind of getting a kick out of that mental image, actually," Illyana replied with a grin. Tommy, growling at small woodland creatures. Yeah, she could see it. "Surviving is good, though." Her amusement fading, she eyed him curiously. "Did blowing the place to hell help at all?"
"More than it should've, less than I'd like." He'd actually put a moment of thought into the honest answer. "Learning that there are more of those places out there harshed that buzz pretty damn fast."
Illyana made a face. "Kitty showed me one of their files - not yours," she specified quickly, figuring Tommy'd hate it if he thought she'd seen his, and she hadn't. "Fatale's. If they set up shop again, I volunteer to send their people on a one-way trip to a fabulous other-dimensional vacation destination." Except from the sounds of it? They belonged in Limbo anyway. They might actually enjoy it there.
"I'll keep that in mind." It was probably the closest thing to support he could expect, and his first vengeful reaction was to like the idea, probably more than he should. "Though I'm pretty sure they never actually stopped. There are other sites, probably other projects. Just because they've gone to ground on the east coast -- the world's big." And there was one reason to give more thought to Xavier's special project. A strike team was only good if you were using it against something, after all.
"Yeah." Maybe she should do a little scrying, and see if she could find anything. It was hard, though, when she really didn't know who or what she was looking for. "It's too bad Kitty can't hack them or something," she mused aloud.
"Maybe not yet, but there are a whole new set of fancy rich kid hacker types kicking around this place." Tommy started spinning his chair around again, the stillness finally getting to him. "I'm not ready to go hunting just yet, but I'm keeping my options open."
"Is that what you're planning, then? To hunt them down?" She could think of worse ideas. Illyana rolled her eyes at his spinning chair, then decided to just let it go.
"Dunno." Tommy spun himself the other way, staring up at a point on the ceiling. "But there's another new kid here who hauled ass out of a different facility somewhere down in Arizona. Now it may not be the same people, but given that one, the one here and the place Fatale and Alex were held... there are going to be more. Which means more kidnapped kids. Someone's got to do something."
Illyana nodded. Someone did - but someone was, right? Maybe she should...she pushed that thought aside for now, and instead frowned at Tommy. "Who's the newbie? And how do you know Fatale and Alex?" She knew their names, yeah. But now that she thought of it, he'd mentioned Fatale before, too.
Tommy slowed his spin slightly, and smirked. "You're not the only one with extracurriculars, 'Yana. I just work harder at not crossing the streams."
Illyana stared for a moment, then laughed. "I wondered why you weren't one of the people lining up to have me lynched."
There was that, and the pangs of guilt at leaving Kitty to take the fall for the tracker, but he wasn't about to admit that to Yana in a small enclosed space. Tommy shrugged expansively. "Bringing him here without giving people a heads-up and the illusion of security was a dumb move. But you don't need me to pile on to make that point."
"Yeah, I got it. But honestly? It never really occurred to me that people thought this place was safe to begin with." She shrugged and offered a crooked smile. "Anyway, whatever. I wasn't destined to be Miss Popularity around here, anyway."
"Destiny's a crock. It's what you make it." He looked at her sidelong, then flipped the backrest of the chair over and hung over it, looking at her upside down. "You've got friends here. Billy, for one." Which brought on a lot of its own questions, but it wasn't like Billy was going to be a bedpost notch for her. That was something.
"Billy for one, Kitty for two." Illyana smiled - he looked silly upside down - and shrugged. "There's a few others, but that's enough, really. The rest?" She shrugged again. "Really don't care. That's my point. If they want to be pissed at me, it's on them."
"Tell you what, I'm going to be pissed at you soon if you don't start typing again," Tommy pointed out, an upside-down grin on his face turning into a frown at his current angle. "Or do you want me to take a turn for a while?"
"I'm on it, I'm on it." Illyana wrinkled her nose, then turned back to the keyboard. "You do upside down things until I catch up. Just stop trying to buzz my chair. It's distracting."
That was a promise he could keep. Almost certainly. Probably. So to hold on to the idea of getting out of there before he withered and died, Tommy nodded, still upside down. "Deal."
