capeandcowllogs | Where did I go wrong?

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Where did I go wrong?

WHO: Generation X
WHERE: Jono's flat
WHEN: Saturday night
WARNINGS: Angst. Laborious self-blame.
SUMMARY: MY ~~PARENTS~~ BEST FRIEND IS DEEEEAD. Monet and Paige come by to help Jono break the news to Angelo.
FORMAT: Para to start, then whatevs!

Jono glanced at the clock for the second time in as many minutes. He'd told Angelo that Monet and Paige would be coming by this evening, let it drop that they'd be talking about the future, maybe in more detail to satisfy the grey mutant's skepticism, but he'd not said anything.... beyond that. This was going to be awkward as all hell, and Jono only had himself to blame. The knock on the door startled him out of his reverie; he dropped his communicator on the table and went to answer it.

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"Hi, cher," Monet greeted, arms crossed over her chest. She was clearly uncomfortable with, well, everything. But it was the right thing to do.

She lowered her voice so only Jono could hear. "Are you alright, Jono?"

If Monet felt uncomfortable, Paige felt twice as much. In her time, Angelo was still alive and kicking. To be honest, she was in a bit of denial about his death. It wasn't that she didn't believe-- it was that she didn't want to believe.

Well, she was just here for moral support and hugs.

"Hullo," Jono looked between Paige and Monet, then cleared his throat, trying to get rid of the odd note in his voice. This was so bloody surreal.

"I've been better," he admitted, and stood back to let the girls in to his flat. Just having them there was already helping to pull Jono slightly back on-balance.

The sound of the doorbell and the girls arriving with it was a welcome relief from the mindless reruns he'd been watching; Jono really needed magazine subscriptions of some sort.

He waved from his spot on the couch and said hello as they came in.

Without preamble, Monet dropped onto the couch beside Angelo. "You're killing brain cells with all of this mindless television," she chided, crossing her legs, "and you need every one you can spare, Ange."

Her voice was teasing but, for a very brief moment, a look of pain passed across her face. Oh, and, by the way, I got a call last year that you were crucified on the front lawn of the Institute. We never said goodbye.

Where would they even start?

Unfortunately, Paige was getting really good at telling people they were going to die in the future. First her brother, now Angelo. Paige is just quiet.

Strangely quiet, really, since all she ever does is talk.

Her mouth is pressed in a firm line. She really just wants to get this over with.

Jono followed the girls back to the couch and sat down on one of the arms, grabbing the remote and turning the volume down on the telly as he did so.

"Happy?"

He glanced over at Paige for a moment; maybe it had been a bad idea to tell Monet to bring her. He remembered with a pang how hard she'd taken the news of her brother's death... to ask her to sit through something like that again, well. He'd not been thinking.

Edited 2010-03-15 20:08 (UTC)

"I can always count on you to reaffirm my self esteem, M."

A slight feeling of apprehension crept into the back of Angelo's mind at the looks on their faces.

"So..." he said, dragging the word out.

Monet had been staring at the corner of the room for a minute before she realized that she was unconsciously averting eye contact with Angelo. After looking at Jono and Paige -- still anywhere but at Ange -- she also realized that she would have to start. M -- the pillar of strength, the unemotional superhero -- would have to take the reigns. Her heart would fall to pieces on the living room floor, but she would eventually put it back together again.

She always did.

Turning, she caught Angelo's gaze with hers. "There are a few things about your future that you should know."

"Well, our future, really. It affects all of us," Jono added, feeling slightly uncomfortable. He hadn't exactly been lying the other night, but he hadn't been telling the truth, either.

"We ended up leaving the Academy a few weeks after we dealt with the Warden," Jono said bluntly, figuring to start at the beginning. "Emma'd killed Adrienne, Sean was drinking like a fish because of Moira's death, and things were in a bad way. You took off down to LA with Jubes."

"Paige and I went to Paris with Sean," Monet continued, tapping her fingers against the coffee table, "to make sure he didn't kill himself, but -- "

And there her voice caught. She'd never properly mourned Sean, not really. She'd never properly mourned anyone. Instead of mourning Sean, Monet had gone to Paris. Run away. Escaped.

It seemed a good idea at the time, especially in the wake of Theresa's somewhat maddening denials and rationalizations. She had sounded to ridiculous. After all, Monet herself considered Sean a father figure, and no one was finding her ranting to his ashes about how he wasn't really dead. He was hit by a jet. A jet.

How could Sean have been so goddamn careless?

" -- but Sean was careless. He's dead."

The apprehension grew, and Angelo sat back, telling himself not to ask questions until they were done. Paige could hardly look at him, Jono looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, and Monet... she looked like she was going to be sick.

And then he felt as if a bucket of ice water had been poured on him.

Not Sean. He was... he was too strong for that. Angelo looked up to the man; he wouldn't get careless that way. Not to that point. Right?

"Are you--"

He cut himself off, looked at each of them briefly, and then down at his hands. Of course she was sure. Everybody dies. No matter how strong you thought they were, or if they deserved it or not. He didn't ask how it happened. He didn't want that hanging over him when he went home.

"What else?"

"We wouldn't be telling you if we weren't sure," Jono said baldly. This really wasn't something to be covered up by fancy language. The wound was still raw, though it had been years ago for him.

"You and Jubes came back to the X-mansion," he continued. "So did Paige. And me. We all stayed there, after."

Jono took a breath.

"Then the mansion was attacked by this... Church organization, or what-have you. They targeted the younger mutants while most of the X-men were away."

Bloody X-men. And he'd been one of them. He'd been on the team, and because of that, he'd not been there. Because of the X-men, he'd been too late. Everything he had ever done while under the banner of "X-man" had been done too sodding late.

"You and Jubes were caught in it."

Edited 2010-03-23 17:58 (UTC)

"I'm sorry, Angelo."

Monet couldn't remember the last time she'd apologized to someone, but at this moment, right here, regret bubbled to the surface and it overwhelmed her. She was sorry that she wasn't there. She was never there. Ever reaching, holding on, and grasping for something --

-- but all she ever got was air.

Her palm, steady and sure, came up to cup Angelo's cheek in a extraordinarily rare sign of affection. Maybe he would push her away. Maybe she would deserve it. At the very least, this time, she would try. "Jubilee survived. You didn't."

Oh.

Angelo felt the presence of Monet's hand on his face, warm and comforting. Very slowly, his hand reached up to cup hers, then take it in his own and lower it down just a little. He swallowed, and it hurt.

"That's what you wouldn't tell me?"

For a few moments he was silent, turning his face away. Then he flipped out his free hand, the motion a second too short to be casual.

"It happens, right?" he said, and for the life of him he couldn't look them in the eyes. "Life, death, all that." He'd always accepted that, of course. His father died, his friends died, his teacher died... Others may see death as an uncommon thing that always took them by surprise, but he'd known for so long that it happpened all the time. His mother had put him to bed as a child to the sound of gunshots.

"I... I knew I wouldn't..."

He gripped Monet's hand so tight that it hurt.

"No," Jono said, narrowing his eyes at Angelo. He knew, in some part of his mind, that this was Ange's tried and true method of coping. The former barrio boy had already "died" once in his lifetime, and Jono could tell that Angelo was already just making room in his head to accept this new death as something inevitable.

...which it was, but Jono had problems with that, even if nobody else bloody well did.

"This doesn't just happen, Ange. If it just sodding "happened," I would've told you straight away when you got here. I am not going to sit back and let you pass this off as nothing, mate, because it bloody well isn't just something that happens."

His own anger at this was startling, but it felt... good. It was right. It was something that he should have said - should have done, he didn't care where - a long, long time ago.

Edited 2010-03-23 23:15 (UTC)

"Jono," Monet said, voice raw and sharp. Not helping. They could all be angry about it. They could break a few bones, punch a few guys in the face, or scream until their faces turned blue. They could pretend it wasn't inevitable.

Monet was so tired of running away.

"It happens," she said to Angelo, lacing her fingers with his, "but when it happens to you -- " The pain was unbearable, then, harsh and stinging like an old wound not quite healed. "It shouldn't have happened."

Edited 2010-03-26 03:06 (UTC)

Paige had thought that she would break down again, like with Jay and everything before. She had cried more in the past few weeks than maybe she ever had in her life. Sam always said she was the strong one but Paige never felt more powerless.

All she could do was put her arm around Angelo and try to keep them together even though, well, they weren't, were they? Maybe she was naive but she had thought that once they were a team, it would be that way forever. But Angelo and Sean were dead and everyone was scattered across the earth and she was living in the past. It was all so unfair.

"We should take advantage of what we have now and not worry so much about the future." Funny, coming from someone who worried as much as Paige did. "Being here is like a blessing in disguise."

He glared back at Jono, though there was no real anger in it. Of course it just 'happened'. Nothing made him more important than anyone else that died; nothing could have made his death any different. Thinking otherwise meant self-pity, and he didn't do self-pity.

Angelo didn't want to think about the way that it might have happened. He might change his mind, then.

"It's never supposed to," he said, and squeezed Monet's hand gently; he was glad she hadn't let go. He didn't think he could do it on yet; things were still processing, and right now her touch felt more real and more solid than his own body.

He realised Paige was speaking.

"Si." He gave her a small smile that looked nothing like his usual one. Even though any moment, one of them might go back. Or all of them. A part of him had been wanting to go home since the moment he'd stepped out of the Porter; to see Jubilee again, the school, be with the Jono and Monet that he remembered.

But being here meant that Ev might show up. Being here meant you didn't die... at least not permamently, from what he'd seen and heard.

"Maybe."

Edited 2010-03-30 01:53 (UTC)

At the reprimand from Monet, Jono rounded on her, fully prepared to tell her to sod off and that this was important, damn it - but something in Angelo's glare stopped him.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again; Paige chimed in with her optimism then, and Jono knew he shouldn't be making this about his own anger. It still bloody hurt, though.

"Paige is right," Jono said. "But I still say it's bollocks that it happened. It's not just something we're all going to ignore."

Touch was so important -- sometimes it was the most important thing -- so Monet really thought nothing of turning away from Jono's perceptual scowl and dropping her feet into Angelo's lap. "Don't mind him," she told Angelo lightly, needing so badly to tone down the seriousness before it threatened to overwhelm her. "He's just mad that Paige and I refuse to leave him alone."

"We won't leave you alone either." A beat, then: "Will someone please pour me a glass of wine?

He tried to laugh as Monet made a deliberate attempt to ease the tension, but it caught in his throat. He managed another smile for her, anyways, and forced himself to lean back a bit, his eyes not really looking at some spot on the far wall.

"Alcohol wouldn't be a bad thing right now," he muttered.

Jono rolled his eyes at Monet, but was inwardly relieved as she lifted the mood somewhat.

"Sorry, we're fresh out," he replied dryly. "Besides, you're setting a bad example." That last was a little forced, but he could tell Angelo still wasn't ready to settle back into being... well, Gen-X.

It occurred to Jono that, after tonight, he might never be, and that was a sobering thought.

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Where did I go wrong?

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skipping paige with perms

I'm going to continue if that's okay?

very okay! so sorry for taking so long :(

Re: very okay! so sorry for taking so long :(

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