Logs:Positive Thinking

Positive Thinking
Dramatis Personae Jax, Sera	2021-01-22 "Might be they'll surprise you."
Location <XAV> Stables - Xs Grounds
The distinctive smell of hay and sawdust and horses greets visitors to this large barn, kept well-tended by the stablehand and those who have a passion here for equestrianism. The horses at Xavier's are well cared for, stabled in comfortable stalls. The walls host a plethora of tack for those who wish to take a jaunt around the grounds. The sun shines bright on another dubiously mild winter's day in Westchester -- chilly, but not January chilly -- and some students have ventured out onto the grounds just to get out of the mansion after a string of rainy days. Few have ventured out this far, but here Sera is, anyway, ensconced among the tools stored in the otherwise unoccupied first stall with her legs curled up against her chest and her backpack tucked beside her. There's mud drying on her hiking boots and leaves as well as straw clinging to the legs of her denim overalls as well as her green duffel coat, its hood pulled up as if to hide her tears from the horses poking their heads out of their stalls to watch her. Though she's taken some pains to keep her weeping quiet, the waves of her exhausted misery are not so easy to conceal. It's likely easy to feel Jax shortly before he arrives in the stables, sluggish metabolism straining itself to extract the winter sunlight before it fades. Beneath this is a dissonant mingling of nervous energy and a depression that has settled into well-worn and almost comfortable entrenchment. When the door opens, he doesn't look much like his disjointed mental state, bright and cheery in colorfully flower-patched overalls over a vividly rainbow colorblocked sweatshirt, slightly shimmery purple Docs, his shaggy hair dyed in vibrant purple-blue-green ombre, a metallic blue-green dragonfly in the center of his eyepatch. He has a canvas grocery bag slung over one shoulder and was heading for the tools in the first stall but stops before he quite gets to its entryway, teeth catching at his lip as a sudden uncertain-pained twinge spikes through him. "-- oh, sorry, honey-honey, I didn't know nobody'd be in here." He hesitates a beat before venturing: "You -- doin' okay there?" Sera's power quietly latches onto Jax, trying to reconcile his metabolism to hers despite their fundamentally incompatible physiologies, mingling their respective experiences of depression and anxiety but somehow easing both just a touch. She tugs the sleeves of her longsleeve t-shirt down out of the sleeves of her coat to hastily dry her eyes before Jax arrives, but when he does she looks exactly like a child who'd been crying until just a moment ago, damp sleeves clutched in white-knuckled fists. "I -- I'm okay," she blurts, half-hiding her face in the hood. "Sorry if I'm in the way, um. I just --" She breaks off here, unable to finish the sentence except by the sudden sharp pang of loneliness and the seemingly incongruous wash of solace that her power presses on Jax. Her shoulders sag, finally. "I don't know." Then a beat later, "Am I? In the way." Jax sets his bag down on a stool just outside the stall, propping it up against the open wooden door. "Oh, no, you ain't bothering me none and I sure don't think you're bothering them." He waves a hand back over one shoulder towards the horses. He glances towards the currycombs hanging on a wall but doesn't yet move towards them. When he looks back to Sera it's with another twinge that does not make it through to his expression of quiet concern. "'scuse my rudeness but you don't look so okay. You want to talk? Some cocoa, maybe?" A faint, fleeting smile passes over Sera's face at the oblique mention of the horses. "I hoped I wasn't and, they seemed pretty calm." Her shrug is slightly exaggerated. "I don't know much about horses." The twinge when Jax looks at her brings an answering twist of discomfort. Then she makes a concerted effort to reel her power back in. "Well, yeah, but...I talk with my advisor so much already. I don't think it helps." She fidgets with her sleeves, eyeing the flower-shaped patches on Jax's overalls. The ripple of guilt from her feels quiet and distant. "Besides, it's sad for you to talk me to me, right?" Despite this, she looks distinctly interested at the offer of cocoa. "I'm not sure I can deal with the mansion again yet though. It's fine there's just -- too many people." "M'sorry. Is --" There's a complicated shift of feeling churning in Jax's mind; kind of exasperated, immediately kind of guilty, a flutter of pain, a flutter of concern. He leans against the edge of the stall doorway, brow knitting inward. "-- talkin' not helpin', or talkin' to her not helpin'?" He's moving to take a large thermos from his canvas bag, unscrewing the cap to turn it into its own small cup and pour it full of steaming hot hazelnutty cocoa. It's only after offering the cup out that he adds, "Sad don't mean I don't want to talk to you." "Ms Briggs is...very nice," Sera hazards, somehow at once achingly sincere and just touch condescending. "I don't think she understands what I'm going through, but I'm not sure that's her -- maybe it's just hard to understand. Or maybe I'm bad at explaining it." The swell of her frustration, muted as it is, eases at the sight of the thermos, and she sits up, tucking her knees under herself to accept the cup with both hands. "Thank you!" Her delight at the treat overwhelms the clumsy attempt to keep her power tamped down, and it seems to soften the unexpected lance of sorrow that follows. "Oh! I'm glad, I know it feels like -- that's just because I miss...the you that I knew." She takes a sip of the cocoa and seems to find a momentary rest in the flutter of delight it brings yet again. "I guess I've been feeling kind of...unwanted? Not that I blame anyone! But I don't think Ms. Briggs's positive thinking is going to help me or my..." She licks her lips. "...family." "You do got kinda a complicated situation," Jax agrees, leaning back against the wall. "I sure don't understand it, but -- I don't know if we need to get every detail of other people's lives to get each other, you know? A lot of folk have lives that are so much weirder and more difficult than I'll ever get but feeling unwanted? Missing your loved ones? Mourning? Those is real and those is tough. You don't have to -- I don't know. Smile or have happy vibes or focus on the positive. Sometimes things are hard, an' it's okay to just -- I don't know. Have cocoa and let 'em be hard." "I'm not even sure I understand it all," Sera admits. "But I mean she doesn't get that they...aren't my family. Exactly." The wave of her sorrow is mostly muted by her struggle to contain it this time. She curls in around the cocoa. "Let them be hard, but then -- what? Maybe things will always be hard for me, and I don't want to keep making it harder for everyone else, too. They have enough to deal with already and I make even the nice things hurt." Her mouth pulls to one side, an overture towards a smile, but there's a trickle of cold dread beneath it. "That's not going to make anyone want me more." "Well, your power ain't like to always leak quite the way it do now. You're already learning some ways to get a bit of hold on that. An' if you're just talking about being sad in general --" Jax's eye is fixed somewhere on the ground between them; there's a rhythmic quick churn of something happening with his mutation, though quite what it's doing is not visible; still, the effects lend a soothing calm to the anxious edges of his mind. "I can't tell you what's gonna happen in the future. Maybe there will be some part of life that's always tough. I don't got a single friend that ain't carrying around their own share of hurts, though, and I don't love 'em no less for it. I got my share'a days I want to come out to the stables and cry and my friends don't love me less for it. I don't know." Jax lifts a shoulder, looking up at Sera briefly with a crooked twitch of mouth. "Maybe you just figure out what you want to do, and other people can make the choice if they want to be around or not. Might be they'll surprise you." Sera's posture eases, very gradually, her power borrowing the soothing effect of Jax's mind. She takes another sip of the cocoa. "I meant both but -- yeah. It's been hard to even think about making any friends, but maybe it won't always be like that." She actually does smile this time, a whisper of curiosity and wonder beneath all her weariness and pain. "I'm pretty bad at figuring out what I want to do, though. It seems to be like pretty much everything. Someone might like that, I guess." Jax bows his head, a flutter of sadness stirring and then pressed back down. "Yeah," he agrees, "I think someone might." He looks back up with an easier hook of smile, this time. "You don't gotta figure it all out at once. There's a lotta everything around to try. You want to meet Sugar an' the horses? So happens I know a lot about 'em, if you're curious. Sugar can be a bit startling but some of the horses is real sweet." Sera sits up straighter, and Jax catches just the faintest edge of the pins and needles in her legs as she straightens them back out. "Oh, I would love that!" Though now she tilts her head, the keen edge of her curiosity no longer so faint. "Is Sugar -- not a horse?" An incipient excitement bubbles up out of her as she rises now, bouncing onto the toes of her boots, pins and needles be damned. "I went through a hole in space I can probably handle meeting a hippogriff or something!"