13149/Our Monsters

Our Monsters
Date of Scene:	29 April 2021
Location:	Danger Room - X-Men Base
Synopsis:	Scott and Warren get a long talking to from Jean regarding battling inner demons and the importance of sticking together.
Cast of Characters:	Phoenix, Cyclops, Archangel

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Phoenix has posed:
Every day when she can, or as close as possible, for months now Jean takes time out for "her time". It's not her time to read a book, or get a manicure, or soak in a tub with a glass of wine and classical music. It's time for her to get in touch with herself. And bond with a god. Relationships are two way streets and upkeep on this one is a must.

The Danger Room is a common spot for her to retreat for these breaks thanks to the room's durability (just in case), and today the expanse of the DR takes the form of a tropical paradise. A high volcanic cliff overlooks a black sand beach and crystal waters so blue you can barely see the difference between water and sky in the distance. Palm trees provide shade, and there's the engineered scent of flowers on the gusty salt breeze.

Jean is sitting at the edge of the cliff with her legs crossed and hands raised and cupped in front of her. In the palms of her hands is a pool of living flame that shifts and rolls, occasionally looking like a songbird perched in her hands and others nothing but flickering firelight. She's not saying anything as she looks to the fire, but she's wholly wrapped in the rose glow of her powers and her hair floats and flutters against the current of breeze.

Cyclops has posed:
The doors to the control booth opens up and Scott heads inside, dressed in his uniform and preparing for a morning of working out some frustration. He came home late last night and though he didn't speak of the events that unfolded last night, his thoughts were surely loud, upset, and conflicted. At least he didn't show up drunk. He just drove in circles in his classic Mustang blasting Speedwagon and Journey, then at some point slid into bed and instantly went to sleep.

Now? He was going to blast robots to bits. That was until he saw that Jean was having her 'me' time. He glances down at his data pad and lets out a soft noise under his breath. She has the room booked. He sinks down into a seat and leans forward to watch, propping his chin up in the palm of his hands as he lets out a soft sigh.

Maybe he needs a cliff to sit on.

Archangel has posed:
Warren was coming down to use the DR for a bit of wing rehabilitation when he noticed the 'in-use' light above the door, so he headed into the control room to see what was going on. The doors to the control room slide open with a quiet *woosh* and as the Angel steps one foot inside he halts at the doors. He didn't expect Scott. He should have, because of course where else would he be? He doesn't even get far enough in to notice that it is Jean using the room, or what she is doing down there. Warren hesitates a moment, and then turns to go. Maybe Scott was preoccupied and didn't see him. Maybe...

Phoenix has posed:
The fiery songbird turns its head to look up to the control booth and there's the impression of a crest of feathers flaring around its head with a flare of blue flames that appear and disappear in a wink of color. It looks back to Jean who gives it a faint, sad, knowing kind of smile. Her expressions then shift to something brighter and a ghosted smile pulls at the corners of her lips before she nods once.

Rising up to her feet, she holds up her hands and lets the miniature phoenix take flight. It dematerializes in the air and the sparks it leaves behind fade away into the glow of Jean's power like a dying firework before the glow itself fades. Jean turns her head to look up to the control center and the psychic impression of her calm, clear voice fills the space in the booth.

<< Come on down here. Both of you. >>

Cyclops has posed:
With the doors opening, Scott will lean back and turn his attention towards it. He sees Warren turning away to leave and a pained expression falls upon his face. Loud and frustrated. As he rises up, he opens his mouth to say something, but instead his head is filled with Jean's voice. Busted.

He lets out a deep breath and rubs the back of his neck, then clears his throat. "Jean is down there having personal time." He slides the hood of his uniform back to reveal his thick and wavy hair, then closes his eyes. He swaps the visor out with a pair of shades that he pulls out of a drawer, then starts for the door. "You don't have to avoid me." He says to his best friend as he looks to head downstairs to the DR's doors.

Archangel has posed:
Busted indeed. Jean's 'mom' voice in his head causes and audible sigh to escape the lips of the Angel as he pauses his steps. He glances back to Scott, "I know I don't have to, Scott." He was choosing to? Is that the unsaid rest of that statement? Regardless if there was more to it, Warren doesn't say anything more and starts to head towards the main DR entrance. Scott he can possibly avoid, Jean? Not so much. Hard to avoid confrontation when it just gets projected into your head regardless of distance.

Sliping into the DR, Warren folds his arms over his chest as he walks along the 'cliff' face towards Jean, "Yes, mom?"

Phoenix has posed:
"Give me that mom crap and I will toss you in this fake ocean." Jean says over her shoulder towards Warren as the two come through the airlock doors into the room, where the normal cold sterile environment has been replaced by the humidity and breeze of the ocean coast. Her eyes travel briefly over Scott before she looks back out to the water.

"You two are miserable." She says once they're all closer. "I've been getting hit with the anxiety since yesterday. ...look, I'm not going to dig into whatever's going on. I know no one likes it and we're all adults. Just, if someone needs to talk then I'm here. Alright? I hate seeing everyone upset, and trust me, stewing doesn't help. It just lets things fester."

Cyclops has posed:
The fact that Warren is actively avoiding him stabs Scott in the gut. He smooths his face out into his classic stoic stone walled stare. One hand curls up into a tight fist for a moment, his nostrils flaring outwards. As he gives a look around at the peaceful room of fantasy. As he listens to Jean, he gives a nod of his head.

"It's my fault, Jean." There. He'll put it all on his shoulders. Just like he always does. He folds his arms over his chest, staring out over the edge of the cliff, stewing.

Archangel has posed:
Warren glances from Jean to the fake ocean and back, as if considering if it is worth it. He remains silent, glancing at Scott as his friend once again shoulders everything, but he isn't wrong. Not this time. If anyone was expecting Warren to make a retort, they are disappointed for a long and uncomfortable moment of silence. That is until Warren puffs out a long exhale through his nostrils and looks back to Jean, "Scott voiced his opinion that he is worried that if I go out into the field again I may loose control and hurt people. He grounded me." Sure, it isn't he other people Scott is worried for, but this is a simpler explanation. "I may have overreacted."

Phoenix has posed:
"Scott, stop." Jean repeats gently as she looks to the red-visored man. "Everything isn't your fault. We all make our choices with the information that we have. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you know full well that if we didn't agree with your orders then we wouldn't follow them. We trust you to do as best as you can, knowing that it may not be enough. That's okay. This job isn't about perfection, it's about doing the best that we can."

She turns her head to look towards Warren and her expressions tighten slightly, with that underlying awareness and weight of someone who's all too familiar with it. "...he tried grounding me too. I didn't listen." There's a ghost of humor in what she says, particularly given what she just lectured said man about. "That's the same question I always ask myself when I go out there. It's what I wrestled with accepting after we hit the DAMT facility. The same thing that sent me off to the mountains, ready to die again if I had to. It's why I spend part of every day trying to make peace with it."

She glances back out towards the false ocean and lets out a quiet sigh. "We all have our monsters. Every single one of us. Some of them are physical. Some are spiritual. Some are just in our heads. Gods, monsters, past regrets, fears for the future; we can't ignore them. We can't hide them in a closet. We can't pretend that they'll go away. All we can do is acknowledge it, give it a name, and learn what we can about it so that we don't let it control us."

Cyclops has posed:
"It's not -- that's .. not why I wanted you to sit this one mission out, Deathren." Scott says as he pinches his brows again above his glasses. "I just didn't explain it well. I'm sending Logan to hurt people. He's the guy that hurts people. I just don't want to lose my best friend if you go out there and decide you want revenge. I'm scared that the man I grew up with since we were kids will one day be unrecognizable to me. I feel the same away about Hank, Bobby and Jean. Everything that has happened to us has been terrible. I don't want to see us become monsters. I don't want my girlfriend to have a cosmic angry bird inside of her. I don't want Hank to feel like he has to experiement on himself because of the way he looks. I don't want you to become Death again. Bobby? .. How did Bobby come out the normal one?"

He unfolds his arms, letting them sway at his sides a few times. "I'm scared, Deathren, that if things went down out there, that maybe you'd.. /like/ it.. like hurting people.. I even scare myself when I get into that headspace, wanting blood. It goes against everything Xavier taught us and I don't even know if that's even the right path anymore. I'd rather be the monster, than see the people I love become one instead."

Archangel has posed:
Warren Worthington turns his attention back to Scott and waves his hand in a somewhat dismissive nature, "I was cliff noting it, but it all boils down to the same thing, you don't want me going out because you are afraid I am going to hurt people. And my position hasn't changed from last night, if that is the case then what makes his mission different than any other I will go on in the future? Because they shot me? Sure...but I am likely to get shot or shot at in the next mission, or the mission after that, or the one after that? You can't control what happens, as much as you would like to. The only way to keep me 'safe' is to keep me home, and if you are going to keep me home then what is the point of me being on the team anymore?"

Warren shakes his head and makes his way to the cliff's edge, placing his arms behind his back as he stares off into the water of the fake ocean, "I'll let you in on a little not-so-secret. I already AM a monster. He is never gone, Scott. He is always there in my head, in my ear, whispering. I fight with him every time I go out...for fucks sake I am fighting with him now. He wants control, he wants to lash out and take a piece out of your hide. You can't put me in a bubble to keep me safe, Summers because no matter what bubble you shove me into, he is still there."

Phoenix has posed:
"I said it before, and I'll say it again." Jean says quietly as she hooks her thumbs into the pockets of her pants. "Alone, we fall. Each of us. We'll fall to our monsters, to our fears, and to our despairs. There's no walking away. There's no retirement packages. Something will always bring us back no matter how far we go. All that'll do is pull us away from the support that we need."

"We're all scarred and broken for as much as we try to hide it, and the most we try and ignore it the worse it gets. Scott will always have the weight of needing to be Atlas and try to shoulder the burden. Hank will always be cursed with the question of what if and the dangerous temptation of maybe knowing how to fix it. Bobby will always stand in the shadows of those he feels are greater than he is. Warren will always have Death in his wake. I will always have the Phoenix. After all of this, we're more than a team. We're more than a family. We're our souls, because even if we lose a piece of it inside us, we've given parts of it to one another. We /need/ each other to be our anchor. Or our common sense when we're being stupid. Our humanity when we can't find it."

Cyclops has posed:
"You're not a monster to me, Warren." Scott says in a raspy, tight breath in his chest. "I'm sorry if I upset you, or made you feel like you weren't competent enough to be in the field. I just .. was sitting you for one night. Just so that the emotions wasn't so fresh. That's all. I didn't mean for it to become all of this." He says with a motion of his hand outwards. "This bigger talk full of feelings and frustrations. I've been really good at hiding my feelings for all these years and when I try to express them, I do a terrible job. I was just trying to protect you. That's all."

Archangel has posed:
Warren sighs, "That's the thing, Scott, I'm not yours to protect. You can't take it upon yourself to try and protect me from myself. There is only one person that can do that. So unless Jean decides to plant you in my head to fight my demons for me, there isn't anything you can do about it. Keeping me home wont' stop the war in my head from happening."

He looks over to Jean, "If anyone could, it's probably you, but I don't even think you can block him out. Not entirely...or if you did I wonder if he would just tap at the barriers until one day he explodes out."

He is quiet for a moment before he continues, "When Henry was cleaning the wound on my wing last night, he had to carefully pluck a few feathers that didn't belong. They were barely hanging on, and the organic ones were pushing them out, but they were there. He has theories about why, and why I 'change'. Something about when I get upset my blood 'boils' and solidifies the iron in my blood to form the flechettes. I haven't heard any better ideas. Guess I was a bit heated yesterday."

Phoenix has posed:
"At the end of the day, it depends on how much of Death is a separate entity and how much is you." Jean says simply, though not without a sympathetic scrunch to her face. "If it's just a manifestation and strengthening of the negative things that your powers can lead to, then it's not ridding yourself of the influence but finding a middle ground and control. Otherwise, to say go into your head and fight it would ultimately be asking me to just do a psychic lobotomy on you. Similarly, if it's separate and bound to you, there's the difficulty of removing it without yanking chunks of you away in the process."

"I'm-- ...it's a complex thing I'm still figuring out for myself, actually. I'm really running on theories and hypotheses about how to deal with these kind of "split personas"." She says with a gesture of her hand towards the space around her, proof of her own workings to make peace with darker impulses. The same hand comes back to rub at the back of her neck.

"Anyway. We all want to protect one another, but what matters more is standing beside someone and not in front of them. And not having deep and meaningful conversations right in the heat of the moment." She says to the two with a gentle smile. "We all have our good and bad points. We'll find ways to deal with them together."

Archangel has posed:
"That's the thing, isn't it. Just what did Apocalypse do to me? Did he just bring out the worst in me and unlock the parts of me that were already there, or did he manifest a whole new persona within me? I lean towards the former, because I do retain some control most of the time I am Archangel. I mean, I lived as him for quite some time before I finally reverted, so I have to assume it /IS/ me at least in part. Just the more violent, moody, part, "Warren sighs, kicking a rock off the cliff into the waters below. "So then it becomes about control. I guess I just need to work on either containing him, or retaining more control when he shows up. He can be useful at times."

Warren reaches up and rubs at the back of his neck, glancing off into the waters of whatever place this is simulating. "Maybe I should try yoga."

Cyclops has posed:
"Yoga isn't bad. Jean and I do it on the weekends." Scott says with an amused smile over to Warren for a moment. Not something that he normally would admit. "Why don't you come over and join us? It's actually a real workout. A lot harder than people give it credit for."

He takes in a deep breath, then glances back over to the pair of them, his eyes moving from one to the other thoughtfully. "You two have a lot in common, currently. Probably wouldn't hurt to have weekly sit-downs where you can talk to each other."

Phoenix has posed:
Reaching out, Jean places a hand on Warren's shoulder. It's nothing more than that, just the light weight of her hand that's no warmer than normal for previously having held fire. "If he is apart of you, then you already have the advantage. You're not trying to learn about someone entirely new and alien, just coming to terms with a piece of yourself. I take time like this to let Phoenix out. In little pieces, in a place that's quiet and controlled, so that we can just get the feel for one another. We can learn where the edges are, reflect on what we can do together versus against one another, and establish those boundaries. But she's also her own mind for all we're bound together, so it's a little different. But the same thing may apply."

She lets go of his shoulder and looks aside to the angel, though she does give half a nod to Scott. "Hiding the Archangel part of you away and being afraid of it will only make it stronger. Emotions don't go away because you ignore them or refuse to voice them." Take note, Mr Summers. "They just build pressure and explode in ways you can't control. Putting them out there - but on *your* terms - means you have the power. So when you're healed and ready and with tiny baby steps, let it out into the light one thread at a time. Pick one little facet of Archangel at a time. Find a place you feel safe and comfortable. Have a friend sitting around if you'd feel safer. It's a scary prospect, but if the horse is going to run anyway it's better to do it with the reins in your hands."

Archangel has posed:
The hand touching his shoulder causes Warren to turn his head and look to Jean. Taking a deep breath, he reaches up and pats the hand on his shoulder with his before lowering it again and nodding to her. "That sounds like a plan. Come down here and let him out, see if we can't come to terms with each other on some level. I mean, I've done it before, right? At least marginally successful anyway. Tempers being what they are, sometimes I lost it. I'll give it some thought."

Warren looks over his shoulder at Scott, then back to Jean. "He does yoga? Please tell me he doesn't wear yoga pants. The world is not ready for that."

Cyclops has posed:
There is a slight scoff from Scott's throat. "No, I don't wear yoga pants. I wear workout shorts and a tank top." He says as he leans over to bump his shoulder against his. "Can we be good now? We can go out for beers tonight, talk about sports, or how much money you have." There is a brief smile upon his face before he slides his hands into his pockets.

Phoenix has posed:
"We have spandex costumes. At least yoga pants are comfortable." Jean's smile cracks into a quiet laugh as she calls up to the room to end the simulation. She also thanks the room, interestingly enough. The oceanside cliff fades away into the polished, alien steel plates that is the room itself.

"You two go hug it out and go have a man date tonight or whatever the kids call it these days. Maybe next week, we can get the gang together for a Harry's night. No work talk. Just cards, beer, and wings. As for me, I'm going upstairs to get some lunch. Then, I'm going to treat myself to some shopping for the school's pool deck and pretend it's for the good of everyone else when instead I plan to spend most of the summer laying there roasting myself with a pina colada."

Archangel has posed:
"There is a new club I have been thinking about trying out called Lux. Maybe we can check that place out. I hear it's pretty high-end, but if you are with me they may make an exception," Warren grins, looking to Scott. "Just don't embarrass me."

He glances over to Jean, and leans in to give her cheek a quick peck. "Thanks."

Cyclops has posed:
"Ah. Yes. Club Lux. Jay Guthrie and his band just played there a few nights ago with Andrea. It made the news during their new casino opening." Scott says as he gives a glance to Warren, then lets out a slight scoff. "I can do high end. Just tell me what to wear and I will blend in." At least he's learning that dad-jeans and polos don't fit in 'everywhere' these days.

He gives him a pat on the shoulder, then turns to follow after Jean. "Come on, let's all get some food and hang out. I need to get out of this uniform."