Logs:Squandering Your Potential
| Squandering Your Potential | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-10-24 "This abduction thing was bullshit." |
| Location
<XAV> Gardens - Xs Grounds | |
From indoor gardens to outdoor, though without the protective greenhouse glass the back gardens do not last all year round. Still, the gardens out here are well-tended and well-worth spending time in, as well. The paths wending through the beds of flowers and herbs and vegetables spread out through the school's back grounds, tended by students as a credit class. Benches offer seating and a small pond is home to koi and turtles, as well as a few frogs. At the far back edges of the garden, a droning buzzing marks a few stacked white boxes as beehives. It's a glorious day outside, mild and sunny. Jax is waiting outside, finishing up the last of the curry he's been having for lunch. Though he's tucked on a secluded bench near the back, the vivid landscape of his mind, at once too painful-bright in its internal color scheme and too washed-out-flat in the numb blankness of his emotional plane, is easy enough to find. The bold colors he is in today -- deep purple shirt lined at the inside of his collar and turned- up cuffs in a vivid pomegranate print, flared corduroys in an gradient green arrangement of vertical stripes, hair in bold purple-blue-green ombre -- just make his very pale complexion look all the more washed out, ghostly pallid where it used to be brightly decorated, too. He's trying a little futilely to keep a very aggressive bee away from his Tupperware. "-- got flowers still all round here, I ain't one," he is grumbling as he very gently shoos the bee to one side with one hand. Quentin is late -- maybe predictably, he's been late to every other advising appointment Jax has scheduled, and though maybe there was a chance that being the one to request the meeting, this time, would mean he cared enough to be on time, he is still late. He's in jeans, a pink tee shirt with "When I grow up I wanna be" printed bold across the chest; it has said, underneath, "a SHIELD agent's Bad Day" but is shifting, reprinting, to read instead: "on Genosha's Most Wanted list" He doesn't offer any apology for his tardiness. Just plops himself on the bench beside Jax with a small but audible huff. "This abduction thing," he's complaining immediately, "was bullshit." Jax has encouraged the bee away for at least a few seconds, and is just taking a gulp from his thermos when Quentin arrives. He half-chokes on his drink at this introduction, hot coffee going up his nose and his mind flashing loud with a nightmare whirl of grinning slugs and bloody death. He blinks. He swallows. He wipes the coffee from his face and the flashbacks from his mind, bright mental picture shifting to a meditative-slow layering of oil paints building itself into a painting that can't quite yet be made out. "I, too," there's light amusement in his drawl, "found it less than ideal." A very brief annoyance pinches Quentin's brows, but he's quick to shake off this unnecessary digression and return to the important topic of how much this misadventure has inconvenienced him. "Your class got cancelled because nobody wants to teach it in the first place and the sub we did get was some wuss who couldn't handle one stupid prank and if you don't catch up I might have to take the whole thing over next term when I could be taking some real class." His sense of injustice is practically radiating off him, hands balling up into fists against his knees. "It's so dumb, why do we need a whole class to talk about sex, anyway, I promise you everyone there knows what it is." Jax takes several beats to consider this complaint. His mental painting is still painstakingly layering itself. He takes a drink of his coffee, and then another. "I think unfortunately it's a harder class than some to make up too much lost time, so much of the curriculum relies on the conversations we actually have there with each other in class and ain't things you can just -- read extra to catch up on." This is his first answer, patient and with only a minimal hint of apology. "An' it's really a lot more about healthy relationship building. I think a lot of folks at a lot of stages in life could do with some extra thinking on how to have the kindsa relationships they want, but it's twice as needful when you're just figuring out what kind of life you want, too." "God, have you talked to my classmates? I am not going to be learning anything from them. Can't you just give us a test and --" This ends in a sharp and frustrated exhalation. Quentin's fists are still balled up as he slouches heavily back. "And I know what kind of life I want. I'd have it already if my parents didn't make me do all this over again, I should have graduated by now." He shifts uncomfortably, glowering at a bee (the same bee?) as it bumps up against his arm en route to Jax's thermos. "Like I could teach half the classes I'm in and I still... It's just -- doesn't it drive you crazy? When you were here you were already taking down Prometheus labs and you still had to just go to calculus after?" "Oh, I definitely never got so far as calculus, I was a mediocre student at best and math was very not my jam. I did have to go to trig after but I can't say that was the height of injustices I was feeling at the time." Beneath Jax's lightly amused tone there is a shiver of something grimmer, greyer. Ghostly sketches start to trace themselves over the calm mask of blending paints in his mind. A much-younger him in an old Xavier's dorm, brow scrunched up deep not at the headache of math homework in front of him but at the way the boy patiently trying to help tutor him through it is flinching in pain every time he moves his bruised arms. A tiny sharkpup straggling thin and limping out of a cell block. Giant bat-wings shredded to tatters in the process of escorting people away from heavy gunfire. The images fade on Jax's next breath. His hand has squeezed tight around his thermos. "I think my experience was just -- real different. I ain't never had to sit through a class where I felt like I knowed everything and I definitely didn't have to deal with constantly hearing the difference between what I know and what my teachers know. I think -- when there's something you really excel at it can be hard to see where you still got plenty to learn from other folk." "You..." Quentin's disbelief stalls him. His hands uncurl, palms now pressing down to his knees. He's frowning over at Jax with a slow but growing perplexion. He pushes on through the utter bafflement that Jax could have been bad at things and refocuses: "Okay but now. Like, here? The X-Men? You could wipe the floor with Summers and everyone knows it, don't you ever get tired of -- being surrounded by all these --" He clenches his jaw, exhaling hard. There are other faint ripples of imagery half-surfacing, and while the first features bold red beams punching through a thick Prometheus wall, the rest are quieter moments, conversing on a bench in this same garden in some much earlier year or working quietly in a garage space nowhere near as fancy as the workshop the kids have now. "We don't decide on leadership via single combat 'round here." Jax pops the lid of his thermos and snaps it back into place. "To this day I'm still learning so much from Professor Summers. 'bout keeping folks together through impossible situations. 'bout how to be someone worth looking up to. Plenty stuff you ain't gonna learn no matter how many books you memorize." Jax isn't quite snapping, but there's a tighter clipped edge to his voice, a prickle in his mind that he pushes deliberately back. This time when he opens his thermos he actually takes a sip. His tone is lighter, after. "I wouldn't be one tenth the person I am without the support and the skills and the wisdom of a horde of folks who you'd probly be looking down on if they was in your class today. However much you think of yourself now, I guarantee you ain't gonna see hardly none of your potential without actually learning to see the worth in folks around you." Quentin seems to be looking half-through Jax, now, distant and focused on something his eyes aren't quite seeing. His hands clasp together, chin dropping to the support formed by his interlaced knuckles. He still sounds a little huffy, but his shoulders are getting less tense. "Guess I'll see you in class next term." | |
