Facing the music (Warren)

[Laurie Collins]

[[Picks up after Laurie snits out of Civics]]

Stupid, stupid, stupid, the thump of a foot against the baseboard of the wall punctuates each mental repetition, a steady, firm thwacking that leaves scuffs on the white-painted wood and makes Laurie feel a little better. She’s been perched on the wooden chair across from the teacher’s desk, swinging her legs back and forth, for what feels like ages, since he gave her the invitation to walk out and, spurred by embarrassment and anger and avoidance, she’d bolted before she really had time to think about it. I should have stayed there, finished the class, he would have forgotten by then or he might have been less angry at least…because he has to be mad now doesn’t he? After that? And Matthew would have been waiting for me so he couldn’t have kept me too long. Definitely should have stayed. Stupid. She gives the baseboard a final, resounding, kick and glances nervously towards the clock, it’s around the time Mr. Worthington usually lets them out but sometimes he does tend to run over…the idea of just slipping away is suddenly tempting, the fact that being tracked down eventually is inevitable doesn’t much deter her, at least it wouldn’t be now, but she has no idea where she’d actually go, or rather who she’d go to. Her mother’s going to be mad, Matthew’s going to be shocked, and everyone else has their own stuff to deal with.

So stay and face the music, she thinks, drawing her feet up to the seat of the chair, ready to fold in on herself and hug her knees as she waits, but at the last moment dropping them back down in front of her again instead and straightening her back with almost comical rigidity. She can feel some corner of herself shrilling in protest that she can’t really be sitting here, in a teacher’s office, for storming out of class, that she’s going to get detention and her mom will be mad and she’ll probably drop a whole participation grade. That corner of her mind, however, is silenced when the greater part retorts that her mom is already mad and however intimidating Mr. Worthington can be until he can send her to jail he’s not really the scariest thing she’s seen this month. Or even the scariest version of himself, she thinks and smiles a little, gripping the edge of the chair as if the gesture can help her physically keep herself together.

[Warren Worthington III]

Warren hadn’t expected Collins to take him up on his offer to walk out of class, though he’s pretty sure he hadn’t let his surprise show at the time. The fact that she had makes it clear, if further clarification had been needed, that he was operating on an out-of-date model of the girl.

Conversely, he realizes as the sounds of her impatient shifting around drift down to hall to his ears, after she’d left he’d expected her to walk off altogether; he’s surprised that she’s waiting for him.

He’s also surprised by how anxious he is about this meeting…. and only partially because he’s not looking forward to another confrontation with Gail. He’s feeling out of his depth here, walking into a meeting where he doesn’t know exactly what he wants to achieve or how he intends to achieve it, facing a student who has become an unknown quantity. The last thing he wants to do is alienate her further.

Well, he thinks ruefully, I guess that’s why they pay me the big bucks.

Standing outside his office door, he debates the relative merits of wrapping himself in a bubble of static air before walking in. Ultimately he rejects the idea – it would be too much of a show of distrust – but promises himself that he’ll get his blood tested for pheromone levels after the meeting, whether it feels necessary or not.

OK, here goes.

He walks in casually and nods to Laurie. Rather than sit behind his desk he slides his chair out and sits across from her, a few feet away.

"So… why doesn’t it matter?"

[Laurie Collins]

Laurie’s head jerks a little as the door opens but, though the effort is obvious, she restrains herself from jumping up or even turning towards him, though she can’t help twisting her hands together briefly in her lap as he crosses in front of her to pull out his chair. The way the afternoon, the weeks really, have been going she’s been getting nervous about her control of her pheromones lately and the convulsive gesture is a common external signal that she’s making an attempt at internal control. While she’d been in the future her older self had taken her aside a couple times for some “lessons” which were really more like specific pointers or stories describing how it had felt to use her pheromones in a certain way, and after listening to them, trying to apply them, she’d felt her control growing. In the Danger Room she’d been surprised at how much easier emitting an emotion contrary to her actual feelings was becoming, and she hasn’t emitted accidentally in quite some time, but she suspects that even if she someday gains perfect control the old fear of accidentally slipping will never entirely fade.

"So… why doesn’t it matter?"

She looks up at that, startled that he’s questioning instead of reprimanding, and notices that he’s slid his chair out from behind the rather intimidating wooden desk. The gesture is meant to ingratiate she suspects, but it instinctively provokes the opposite reaction, touching a shifting, mostly buried fear about just what the implications are if her mother can’t fix this and her teachers can’t tell her what to do. Right now she just wants to believe in the intimidating, unknowable power of people behind high desks again, and having them come around from behind them suddenly looking all too human isn’t really helping her pretend. She shakes off the thoughts and looks back down at the floor, shrugging in defensive sullenness. There’s a lot of ways she wants to answer that question, but the first impulse comes flying out of her mouth before she can think about it-

“You said it didn’t.” She clenches her jaw around that for a moment before rushing on, “And…and I don’t think it does. No one’s going to care about any of it if something goes wrong, but, yeah, whatever, that really doesn’t fit into the curriculum I guess.” She mutters, the rudeness rather tacked on at the end to distract him from the first, startled utterance. Just put me in detention and leave me alone so my mom can kill me when she finds out…

[Warren Worthington III]

500th post

> "You said it didn’t."

Warren blinks in surprise at that. As far as he knows, he’s never suggested anything of the sort; on the other hand she doesn’t seem the sort to lie about something like that. He’s about to ask her to explain that, when the obvious interpretation suggests itself. She means, in the future. Great… I’m encouraging my own students to drop out of school. Note to future-self: cut that out!

> " And…and I don’t think it does. No one’s going to care about any of it if something goes wrong, but, yeah, whatever, that really doesn’t fit into the curriculum I guess."

He frowns slowly. "Cynicism doesn’t suit you, Miss Collins. It’s no use blaming ‘the curriculum’ as if it were the weather… or, I should say, as if it were something we can’t control. The curriculum can change, if there’s reason for it to. "

He wants to get up from his chair and pace, but decides not to. "I’m glad you’re thinking about real-world relevance… too many students don’t bother. And, from what I understand about the future you visited, it sure sounds like you’re right about the country giving up on civil rights… for mutants, anyway. It’s happened before… the Japanese during World War II, for example."

And, judging from Josh’s memories, Warren himself had given up on everything but winning the next battle, and the next one, and the next one… and he’s not sure how he feels about that. At least he’d stayed active, rather than retreat into a narcotic haze or fly into some high-voltage wires. But he’s not going to worry about that now.

"So, here’s what I think matters, Laurie: I think it matters what we fight for, and it matters how hard and how smart we fight. When it comes down to a shooting war, that means knowing tactics and strategy and weapons and how to use your powers and how to use your body, which is one reason we teach those things. " He considers pointing out that she has, in the past, expressed relatively little interest in that side of the curriculum, but decides not to go there… the last thing Collins needs is more guilt.

"But right now, today, it’s not a shooting war. The MRA is not the law of the land, mutants still have civil rights in this country. And some of us are fighting to keep it that way. And in this fight, that means knowing law and government and historical precedent and why we have civil rights and where they come from and how to respond when they’re challenged. Which is one reason I teach those things."

He wants to shrug, and doesn’t. He just looks at her for a few seconds, wondering if any of what he’s saying is getting through. "So, that’s what I think matters. How about you: what, in your view, does matter? Or, let me rephrase that question," he adds hastily, inspiration starting to glimmer. "What are you willing to fight for? "

[Laurie Collins]

"So, that’s what I think matters. How about you: what, in your view, does matter? Or, let me rephrase that question…What are you willing to fight for? "

Laurie’s listened to that speech in complete silence, not so much as twitching even when he’d mentioned the future she’s been trying so hard to forget, just kept her face hidden behind her hair and her hands clenched in her lap. With that though she jerks her head up again and shakes her hair away brusquely revealing a face contorted around the mouth and eyes.

“Stop it.” She tries to snap out, though it comes out more like choking, her hands falling away from her lap to grip the sides of the chair, bracing her. “It’s not…there isn’t…it doesn’t matter. You keep talking about our civil rights and fighting and trying but you’re just doing the same thing you’ve always been doing!” she draws in a sharp breath and looks really scared for the first time since she’d slouched into class that morning and flopped into her seat: eyes wide and every muscle and bone pulling her inwards in that old impulse to just get away, to hide behind fear like she’s been hiding behind this new, sullen anger. Nothing’s changed, just a new tactic, she realizes now that she thinks about it and that doesn’t help. More than “doesn’t help,” it terrifies her even more. I have to change, I have to make it different, and if I can’t change on my own no one can tell me how because they don’t know, they can’t know, since they didn’t stop it in the first place.

She’s speaking again, stuttering on before she can stop herself- “You’re just…this is what you’ve always told us, all this government stuff, but unless you weren’t already doing your best, before we ever came back from the future, then it doesn’t work does it? You do your best and they die anyway, that’s what happens, that’s what happened, and you’re not changing anything and I’m trying to change and all of a sudden no one can tell me how so I-“ she cuts off breathlessly and shakes her head, upset and embarrassed at bursting out with this to Mr. Worthington of all people, when if she’d let anyone in on this it should have been Matthew or her mom. But maybe they’re too close, it’s easier to divert them because I can make them mad, make them worry, flashes through her mind and then she’s back to the prime directive of this conversation now that she’s gone and blurted out some frantic approximation of her thought process which is “distract.”

“Look, whatever, can you just give me my detention?” she mutters, recoiling to the back of her chair in one of the better physical manifestations of ‘don’t touch me, don’t even look at me, go away’ the human body has probably ever achieved.

[Warren Worthington III]

Warren’s first reaction to Laurie’s outburst, somewhat to his own surprise, is anger. Of course, he’s well aware that in the future Laurie is talking about, his own efforts to maintain the peace between mutants and baseline humans proved utterly useless, leading to an interminable war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, not least of whom his own husband… but he’s not emotionally prepared to have his nose rubbed in the fact.

Not that he lets it show in any particularly overt way; he’s had far more experience with controlling himself in meetings than that. Nevertheless, a careful observer might notice it from his thin-lipped silence and the way he pinches the bridge of his nose as he listens to her. She hadn’t meant it personally, and he knows it, and they aren’t here to discuss his feelings.

> “Look, whatever, can you just give me my detention?”

Warren shakes his head incredulously. "Laurie, if I wanted to punish you, do you really consider me foolish enough to do so by assigning you to sit quietly for an hour? " He smiles, not especially genuinely, and shrugs. "If I wanted to punish you, I’d assign you to lead class discussion tomorrow on tonight’s reading, or some other public speaking task. But the fact is I don’t see the point. "

He paces back and forth a little, unsure of what to say. Finally, he sits back down.

"You’re entirely right, of course. There’s a ticking time-bomb out there that’s going to make any discussion of mutant rights or human/mutant cooperation completely moot if we don’t stop it. And if knowing that is changing your priorities, I can respect that."

He’s on his feet again, a bit exasperated and trying not to let it show. "But if you’re not interested in political solutions – and you’re far from being alone in that – you’re going to need to decide what kinds of solutions you are interested in.

Do you want to help Storm and Jake search for the culprit? Improve your fighting skills and help neutralize whoever it is once we identify them? Improve your control over your mutation in the hopes of keeping the District calm if it turns out we can’t stop it? Help evacuate the District? Something else? Leave this problem to other people altogether and work on a different problem?" He shrugs one wing slightly.

"I understand it’s frustrating, trying to change with no one to tell you how. But, frankly, I strongly recommend you get used to it. We’re not here to tell you who to be, let alone who you’re supposed to become… that part is your job. All we can do is show you options and help you get wherever you decide you want to go."

[Laurie Collins]

Laurie’s posture concaves back into defensiveness the second Warren’s lips thin. Even though she’s long since lost her fear of being judged for her mutation or even for being Primer’s daughter (especially since that seems to have stayed under wraps for the most part with no one who actually knows seeming to hold it against her) a lifetime of searching for anger and disapproval in the faces of every conversational partner doesn’t exactly go away overnight. She’s still much more likely to imagine either when it’s unjustified than to miss them when they’re there, even if the person’s being as subtle as Mr. Worthington. It doesn’t help when he starts off his response with a half-genuine joke about her punishment either, so that by the time he gets around to his actual speech she’s more concerned with whether to bolt or snap back at him than with what he’s actually saying. She hasn’t stopped to think about why he’s angry or disapproving, because she’s causing trouble she supposes, or sounding snotty. Truthfully she doesn’t even have a good sense of what she’s just said other than that she’d been trying to get him to stop giving her the same Civics class speechifying when it was just serving to remind her how little had changed.

What she does catch of Warren’s speech is, she realizes in a peripheral way, rather sensible and actually something like what she’s been wanting all along- some options other than blindly striking out any which way in response to in-the-moment fear, some hope that she actually can have an impact and that the people in charge are still thinking. But that’s only peripheral and most of her is taken over with responding to the pacing and the bitten-back exasperation, locked into the mindset that if her initial outburst has been rebuffed then she’s perfectly justified in shutting right back down to snitting.

“Not here to tell me who to be? Right. That’s why for almost a year I got lectured on speaking up and the second I do I get lectured to do it the way you think I should.” She folds her arms over her stomach and peers up at Warren through a few strands of hair that have drifted in front of her face. She’s obviously going for stoically rebellious and probably falling a few notches short due to the fact that she’s also obviously rather simultaneously horror stricken and impressed at her own daring. “So if you’re not going to punish me what am I doing here anyway?” Just get mad and give me detention and stop talking to me about the stupid future.

[Warren Worthington III]

> " Not here to tell me who to be? Right. That’s why for almost a year I got lectured on speaking up and the second I do I get lectured to do it the way you think I should. So if you’re not going to punish me what am I doing here anyway? "

Warren snaps back, for once without thinking about it first: "So that’s what you’ve decided, then? You’re going to fix the future by being rude to me in class? I can’t imagine why that approach didn’t occur to me."

He regrets the outburst immediately. No… sarcasm is not going to help. He folds his hands together behind his back and walks stiffly to the window, getting himself at least slightly under control as he looks out at the grounds.

Rubble within a decade, if things go on the way they’re going. Maybe she’s right… maybe we’re past the point where the law is any use. Maybe it’s the Battle of New Orleans in reverse, he thinks wryly, remembering the lecture he was giving his civics class a few minutes ago, and I’m engaging in diplomacy long after the war has started.

The problem is, he’s in more or less the same position as his student… he has no idea what else to do. This really isn’t an X-Man field mission sort of problem; there’s nobody for them to beat up. Or, well, there is, but they don’t know who it is yet. And his network of contacts isn’t anywhere near what it used to be when he had access to the Worthington fortune; there’s not much he can do to contribute to the hunt that’s going on.

And besides, this thing in Washington isn’t the only way mutants get forced into Camps, he reminds himself. The Institute has stopped at least three variations on the MRA from being signed into law in the last several years, using the same tactics he’s trying to teach these kids; just because those tactics fail in the wake of a major mutant atrocity doesn’t make them useless.

No. It just makes them feel that way. Which, he realizes, is exactly what Laurie is saying. He turns back to face her.

"Right at the moment, Miss Collins, I’m not entirely sure what you’re doing here. Thus far, what you’ve done is judge my contributions to the future of mutantkind and find them wanting, while refusing to say anything concrete about your own intentions along those lines. My best guess is, what you’re doing here is picking a fight with me in order to keep at bay your own feelings of helplessness.

I share those feelings. But I’m not your enemy, Miss Collins, and picking fights with me and your other teachers won’t help.

That said… if a punishment will make you feel better, fine. I’m assigning you an extra project, Miss Collins: I want you to summarize all the approaches you can think of to preventing the incarceration of mutants in the future you visited and identify the one you most favor, along with an analysis of its strengths and weaknesses. Due on my desk exactly two weeks from today. You’re free to solicit suggestions and ideas from other Institute residents, but the analysis must be your own. Understood?"

[Laurie Collins]

Laurie flinches back visibly from that first sarcastic outburst, then flushes furiously and leans forward again, face tightening back into anger. For a moment that harsh tone, something she’s unused to as someone who most people either outright dismiss or treat like she’s fragile enough to shatter at a shout, is almost enough to snap her out of her frantically angry fugue. She imagines for a moment dropping the tight posture, the clenched jaw, and apologizing, crying like half of her still wants to. Then she could be sorry and she could be forgiven both now by Mr. Worthington and later by her mother, and she could go back to her room and read like she used to, immerse herself in something again without those constant surges of restless helplessness and anger. She could just go back and say it was just a stressful week and be the girl she used to be. But that’s only a moment and then he’s going on and she’s letting the lump in her throat dissolve into anger and nothing is going to change here.

"Right at the moment, Miss Collins, I’m not entirely sure what you’re doing here. Thus far, what you’ve done is judge my contributions to the future of mutantkind and find them wanting”
Right. Because it’s all about you here. I definitely came to class today thinking “how can I make Mr. Worthington specifically feel bad about the stupid future we all messed up? I know! I’ll read a book in front of him and then wait for him to force me to yell at him!” I’m a tactical genius. Finally my vendetta is complete. All she lets show of that however is a derisive grimace and a roll of her eyes, watching him sullenly as he goes on.

“…My best guess is, what you’re doing here is picking a fight with me in order to keep at bay your own feelings of helplessness.”
And that’s not fair because of course he can read her, businessman, politician, teacher that he is. Hell even she knows she’s doing that, it’s been her strategy, but she hadn’t expected to have it thrown back at her like that when she has no chance of retaliating. So what does he want from me? Not to question him? To just shut up and be manageable then? No. All the vulnerability, the uncertainty, hardens right out of her posture in a moment and she listens to her assignment with a blank face, obviously having shut him out completely now.

“…Understood?"
“Yes,” she says flatly, not even sullen anymore, “I understand. Can I go please?”

[Warren Worthington III]

> " Yes. I understand. Can I go please? "

Except she doesn’t, he’s pretty sure. Oh, the assignment, sure, but other than that he doubts she’s really understood a word he’s said. Well, he thinks ruefully, certainly handled that like a professional educator.

Not that he really is one, of course… he’s making it all up as he goes along. The surprise is he doesn’t slam into brick walls like this more often. It’s unpleasant enough at its current frequency, though, especially when it involves students like her… smart and competent and, at the moment, completely out of his reach.

At least the assignment itself would do her some good… assuming she actually worked on it, rather than just tossed something off. Right now, he’s not sure she’ll turn anything in at all, and suspects that if he pushes it she’ll just drop the class.

"Yes. Only, one thing… please, for your own sake, find someone you’re actually willing to talk to before you do something you’ll regret? "