Flashback! August 1989
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Monday, January 08, 2007, 9:30 PM
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=XS= Scott's Room - Lv 3 - Xavier's School
This room is everything you'd expect from Scott Summers. The room is bland, clean, and organized. The walls are a shade of baby blue, with a darker blue border around the top of the walls. A window gives him a few outside of the mansion. A desk rests against one wall with a laptop, and various papers on it. Above the desk is an inspirational quote on top of an Alaskan wildlife scene. The covers and sheets of his bed are folded with a military-like precision, the color matching that of the rooms border. He has a wood bureau as well, with a few extra pairs of his sunglasses sitting on the top.
[Exits : [O]ut]
[Players : Scott ]
August. 1989. Scott Summers has managed to dress himself. The tee-shirt is even right-side out, thanks to the little stitched lining he's learned to feel out around the collar. It's a sweat-stained around the arms, though, as the room has grown rather warm. And that explains his current position, leaning far over a bookshelf, fingers walking along the windowsill looking for another latch, a second inch-and-a-half of frustration between he and the cooler air outside.
August, 1989, and Jean Grey has come home for a two week break between summer courses and fall, and has been greeted with the news of a new student to the little school in the big house on the hill. Moody, the analysis given, 'with good reason' tacked on in low, concerned tones. 'You should visit him' was unnecessary to add.
Slim and coltish at eighteen, with long auburn hair worn in a french braid with little wisps escaping, she's dressed as a picture-perfect model from an L.L. Bean catalogue, down to the lightweight white capris and the little alligator guarding the left breast of a polo shirt in sky blue. Unseen, but not unheard, she stands outside in the comparative cool of the dark hallway, and knocks thrice on the wooden frame of the door. "Hey..." she calls. "Um. Hi. Can I come in?"
From inside, there's a sound of a clatter, then something rolling along wood, a moment's pause, then glass shattering, as Scott starts to turn, his arm catching on a vase his arm had slipped behind in attempt to open the window. There's a muffled 'dammit' followed by a louder, panicked, "Just a minute. Er, yeah, whatever, come on in. Door's open." Inside reveals a a very red-faced teen, his skinny 14-year-old frame kneeling amid broken glass, as he tries to feel about to pick up the larger shards.
Under-used and under-greased, (At least until the serving staff get wind of it.) the bedroom door squeaks loudly as Jean opens it, wider and faster than she's wont to at the sound of the shattering glass, intensely familiar sound to a young telekinetic. "Oh my god," she gasps. "I am -so- sorry if I startled you. Here." The wind of her passage can be felt, even if the sight of the arms, legs, and wide green eyes quickly scuttling to crouch beside him is lost to any eyes present to see. One hand reaches over, touch telepath light and tentative, to rest warm fingers against bare forearm as she assures "It's OK, let me do that -- um... I'm Jean, by the way."
"I got it!" Scott snaps, awash with shame and helplessness. At least until a piece of glass jabs at his finger, replacing those emotions with a more immediate physical pain. "Dam--" he cuts himself off, growling in frustration as he wraps the finger in his shirt, a small stain of red appearing on the white cloth. "Sorry. S'my fault. Just stupid clumsy. I'm Scott."
"You're -blind-," Jean snaps back, before swift irritation with someone being needlessly prideful ( -Boys-. Honestly. ) is caught up to by shame for snapping at someone in Scott's obvious condition. "Shit," she swears and sighs, language college coarsened, before a guilty look around in case Professor Xavier, or worse, Warren, is lurking nearby. "I mean... sorry. It's not, like, you're..." With another sigh, she stares intently at the pile of glass shards, slowly forcing them to arrange into a pile. "Sometimes, I'm not very tactful if I think people are being dumb," she explains the obvious. "How's your hand?"
"I am not!" Scott starts to retort. "Blind /or/ dumb. Just," he lets out a frustrated sigh, not wanting to fight over. "Just sick and tired of all this. Not being able to, to do anything. My finger's fine. Don't cut yourself," in comments to the glass he can hear being moved about.
"Picking up broken glass with your eyes closed is being dumb, even if you aren't," Jean points out, with further staring at the pile to get it to arrange itself. "And don't worry about me..." There's a pause, cautionary, before she realizes there's no need for it and shares that "I'm telekinetic." in the same tone used to share things like 'I'm a college student' and 'I like ham sandwiches'.
"Telewhat? Oh, wait, you're /that/ Jean," Scott says, recalling the brief history of the school he's been provided. "Yeah, well, maybe it's not the /smartest/ thing ever, but...I can't expect people to do everything for me for the rest of my life. Blind doesn't mean I'm helpless!" he says, with the force of one trying to convince himself of that as well.
"Of course it doesn't," agrees Jean, voice moving away for a moment as she rises to retrieve the wastebasket beside the comfortably ornate old bedside table. It moves back as she returns to kneel and think very hard at the glass shards to move them into it. "But nobody expects the Professor to run a marathon, and nobody expects you to pick up sharp objects you can't see -- and you're not going to be blind forever anyways," she assures briskly. "The Professor and Moira have someone looking into machining some special glasses for you. Ruby something-I'm-not-an-engineer."
"Heh." Scott sounds less assured. "He's just saying that to make me feel better." He leans back against the bookcase, experimentally unwrapping his finger and touching it with the other hand to see if there's fresh blood. "I know. I get it. Guess I appreciate the thought. I'll just have to learn to live like this." Apparently, Scott's decided Jean a bit easier to talk to than the Professor. "You know the worst part is /knowing/ I could see if I opened my eyes. And I can't. And being afraid I'll forget or they'll slip open or something. Ever tried to keep your eyes closed when you're walking and you can feel there's something you're about to trip over?"
"When he found me, I was catatonic in a mental hospital and hiding out in my own head," Jean states, standing up and fading out again as the last clinking clatters of the glass stop, and the wastebasket is returned to its home. Once again she returns, and once again, a light touch rests on Scott's arm. "I'm a little bit telepathic, too, like you probably know. I was ten and couldn't make the voices stop. The Professor helped -me-, you should be no problem. And you're still bleeding."
Scott's head turns to follow the sounds of her movement across the room, then back. At the bleeding comment, he twists up another section of shirt. "Two? Man, that's rough. Glad he was able to help you. That's his thing, though, isn't it? The thought stuff. Mine's not the same thing at all, though. I can't control this, this /curse/." Not just a bit of bitterness in his tone. "Ever. They checked. Ran brain tests and stuff, even. It's not going to go away, no matter how much I wish it would."
"Hey..." Jean's tone is gentle, her hand moreso as it closes around his wrist to try and still his hand so her other can examine it. "Don't think like that, OK? The Professor will find a way to fix it, and if not, then Moira will. And can I look at your finger? I'm going to be a doctor, when I'm done my degree and get into medical school." Again, the easy assurance about her life. 'I'm going to be a doctor' in that calm matter-of-fact tone of one who knows precisely what to do with themselves for the rest of their life, and the order it will unfold in. In other words, an eighteen year old.
"Yeah, well, I'm not getting my hopes up. Believe it when I see--" Scott breaks off, the expression catching in his throat. "Is iiiit," his voice cracks, and he stops trying to recover with a cough and clearing his throat. "Finger doesn't hurt. Still bleeding bad?"
"You will," Jean states, with a firm look down at the younger teen. "See it. I promise," Because, God help her, Jean's promise carries any actual weight. Lips compressing, she turns her attention to his finger, and reports that "Yeah... you sliced it really good, although the glass is sharp enough that it's clean, which is why it doesn't hurt much. Come one," she tugs at his arm. "Let's go down to the medical bay. You can use crazy glue to seal cuts like that, did you know?"
"Yeah, you'll have to show me the way, because I don't think I can find my way back down there," Scott admits. A moment later, he adds a very hesitant. "Do...do you know if it was expensive? Whatever it was I broke. Cuz I, I don't really have much money."
"Just take my arm," Jean encourages. "Or hand, or I'll take yours or whatever," is tacked on a moment later, on a sneaking suspicion that the egos of fourteen year old males are very sensitive to coming off as girly, even when it comes to who's on whose arm. The door creaks open again, at a concerted thought, and she pauses for a moment to stare at Scott before laughing. "Oh -man-, if I ever had to pay for all the windows and vases and refrigerators I broke when I was learning to use -my- powers, I would be -totally- screwed. Don't worry about it, the Professor's got more money than, like, Africa."
Scott reddens at the laugh. "Okaaay," he says, obviously still not quite sure what is believeable or not in these parts. He shuffles to his feet, extending an elbow, awkward as much from the motion itself as from not knowing the exact direction whe he's offering. "And, uh, thanks."
"Just wait 'til you get your glasses," the still-taller-at-this-point Jean sketches out future plans as she takes Scott's elbow with a casual grace and a touch still light, gritting her teeth gently to brace against any stray telepathic sensitivity kicked up by the prolonged contact. She steers him as swiftly out of the door as possible, tempering her normally exhuberant and youthful strides to match uncertainty. "The grounds are going to blow your mind. And the lake... hey, how do your eye... beams...? How do they travel underwater? Would that slow them down?"
Scott moves with a bit more confidence than alone, and certainly than his first days of stumbling about but each step is still in new territory. He doesn't comment about the glasses, already having spoken his doubts on that matter. "Underwater," he says, thinking over the idea. "Don't know. Haven't really had any chance to swim since...this happened. Might not make a difference, though. It's...not really a laser, even though that's...what people said it looked like. Lasers are hot, though." The explanation comes slowly, reluctance to talk about something it's much easier to try to forget entirely.
"Physics," notes Jean, with the weighty Knowledge of a college student who is now a sophomore and not a freshman, "Says that light travels more slowly through water than air. If light does, it makes sense that other particles or waves or whatever your eyes are doing would do that too." There's a pause, where she snickers, and adds on that "Worst case scenario, we catch some fish in a -seriously- weird way -- elevator's just over here."
Scott laughs at that, a lighthearted sound that shouldn't be so foreign to one barely a teenager. The sound catches him off guard, fading a bit prematurely. A bit of a smile remains, though, the thought of startled fish still there. "That'd be cool. Maybe I'll get to try it sometime."
I don't understand that.
"Crazy glue's water proof," Jean points out on the heels of another laugh. And then the elevator chimes, and the future Dr. Jean Grey shuffles her reluctant patient into it with further explanations of the delights of the Xavier School and its grounds. "...and the Professor's got a -Rolls-," being shared at some point along the way.
Scott is fourteen and pessimistic. Jean is eighteen and optimistic. They meet. A vase breaks. They do not make out, because that would be really creepy. Love at first sight will have to wait 'til Scott can see.