They were running on a clock, but no one was going to be able to perform at 100% without some rest first, James especially. Veil didn't know really how to relax and be patient in this situation. Most of the things they did were rushing around, it was rare that they would stay still with an impending doomsday situation. Professor X was proving impossible to reach, and at this point, Veil had to wonder how much of that was willful - that if Xavier never responded, then the X-Men couldn't fail to stop the X-Cutioner. She was currently pacing back and forth in the training room, deep in thought and riddled with anxiety.
Sapphire was looking for Veil, there were a few things that they really needed to talk about. Namely, at the moment, it was because she was having some problems mentally at the moment. She was having problems getting her powers to work right or do anything that she actually wants them to, aside from that shield she really managed to do earlier, and somehow freezing Kris and keeping her alive that way. Something that she still had a bit of a headache from, as if her brain had broken or
something. It didn't matter now though, as she found Veil in the training room, walking into the room.
"Hey there Veil," she said to her as she watched her friend pace back and forth.
"Feeling better?" Veil asked hopefully. She didn't know everything that had happened down in the tunnels with Sapphire, only that she had somehow reverted to the mental state of a child. But given the lack of giggling and snowflakes, she figured that Sapphire was feeling better - which was good, as if things went wrong putting the bombs on ice was going to be one of several backup plans. There were too many bombs for them to be able to go in with just one strategy to handle them, too many chances for it to all go wrong.
"I have a massive headache, but I'll live. It was super weird, like a small part of my brain kind of broke or something like that... Super weird, but odds are I hopefully am not going to do do something like that again since ow... If we were still in an actual combat situation then that likely wouldn't have ended well..." "Yeah, I'm not going to pretend to understand what happened either," Veil admitted.
"I never paid attention during X's psychic awareness lectures - probably should have, but c'est la vie," she shrugged. She bit her lip slightly though. Her mind was still analyzing over and over again their situation and what Xavier's motivations were. The more she thought about her upbringing, the more she realized she was still one of Xavier's child soldiers even now.
"...Are you okay Veil?" she decided to ask her friend, it was obvious that something was bugging her.
"Do you think X is actually a good person?" "I don't know, I've never met the guy really or interacted with him at all, hard to tell just based on what I've heard on most things. Why?" "All of this... It isn't sitting right with me," Veil admitted.
"He tells us to not get involved in superheroics, but then sends us to deal with the Hounds more or less. He gives us M-Pox cures, but only if we'll go walk into a trap. And now, when the X-Cutioner is holding every mutant in DC hostage, he's conveniently unavailable... as if he expects a tragedy to happen and doesn't want to tarnish the X-Men name." "Well I honestly don't know what to tell you." she said with a shrug,
"I mean who knows really..." Veil sighed, but she nodded. It was a heavy question that would just lead to more questions. And right now, they needed to be focused and certain. Anything less than that could end in tragedy. They could decide what to do about Xavier another day, but the mutants of DC couldn't afford to wait for a philosophical debate.
"Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?" "...It's a bit complicated... And a conversation in which I'd rather be talking to you as my best friend and not as the leader of the Underground, okay? So throw that out of your mind or whatever." "Yeah, of course," Veil answered, her eyebrows furrowed. She was trying to instinctively guess what it was that Sapphire wanted to raise, but she was drawing blanks - unless this was going to somehow be about Havok, but Veil sincerely doubted that.
"What is it?" "It's uh," she started to say, but she was at a loss for words. It was hard for her to actually say anything for once, since usually she didn't have any problems whatsoever with speaking her mind. Then again, she also was horrible when it came to talking about her emotions in anyway.
"...I've been having problems," she admitted. Of course, her saying that could mean a million different things, but problem was it was hard for her to find the right words to describe what was going through her head.
Veil tilted her head ever so slightly - had it not been a serious conversation, she would have pointed out that Sapphire needed to be more specific. They all had problems, countless problems - one of which was the ticking clock.
"What kind of problems?' Yeah, she knew that she wasn't being very specific, but it bought her a little bit of time to figure out a better way to answer.
"I mean, every time I've done anything or even tried to, most of the time things seem to get made worse or something goes horribly wrong because of what I end up doing or something like that... It's hard to really explain what's wrong..." she said somewhat softly.
Veil nodded, listening to her friend's plight.
"You're a perfectionist, Sapphire. And you're being too hard on yourself. If it hadn't been for you, Stareyes would have died." "But others have died because of me," she said softly, referring to what had happened with Cayden before, since that was something that still haunted her, and it was something that still messed with her and she thought of it as something that she could have prevented.
She shook her head.
"We can't control what other people do - the people who pull triggers on innocents and don't care about the consequences. All we can do is try and save as many people as we can... and sometimes, that isn't everyone." "You say that, but my brain doesn't think that and never has. The only thing I ever seem to be good at is hurting people more then helping people..." "Your words have power, Sapphire. Even if you may hear a little voice telling you that you can only hurt people, it isn't true. And you shouldn't let that voice have power over you. Only you can decide who you are and what your worth is." "If you say so..." Veil fell silent. She couldn't help Sapphire if Sapphire didn't want to be helped. The most that she could really do was listen and be supportive, to try to be there for her.
"I keep just seeing only every time I screw up. For instance I keep seeing Cayden's face, when he essentially died in my arms and I couldn't do a damn thing about it... Actually what I ended up doing probably made things worse rather then helped that entire situation. When Magneto attacked, I got trapped in my own head and couldn't do anything and couldn't help at all really. Then I could have ended up killing her when I froze her, I didn't know it would work, hell might as well not have done anything anything since we probably would have gotten the same result probably if I hadn't done anything..." Veil nodded, listening to what Sapphire was saying. She felt horrible for her friend, and she didn't have all the answers. She knew that she couldn't fix Sapphire's problems for her, that the best she could do was be supportive.
"I'm sorry. That's really rough," Veil said softly.
"I don't know what to do..." "Have you thought about therapy?" Veil asked
"Contemplated it once," she responded with a bit of a laugh,
"But when would I have time for therapy exactly?" ”Maybe when this is over, it’ll be time for a break. You can’t help other people if you don’t take care of yourself, you know - and with how X has been lately, maybe it’s time for us to split off from the larger Mutant Underground and try our own thing for once.” "Maybe... We'll see since we still might be busy or something like that." ”Your well being is more important than whatever we might be up to, Sapphire, I mean it.” "If you say so Veil, if you say so."
Andy had taken a shower after traipsing through the sewers, and then found a quiet place to think. The easiest solution was the room she shared with Zari and Stareyes. Andy had gotten into the habit of thinking of Kristin as Stareyes after their encounter with SHEILD. It was odd to think of everyone by codenames, but she kind of liked it. Even if she wasn't too happy with her codename. Havok hadn't helped with that. She sighed and laid down on her bed. Was this what she wanted? Fighting instead of running. What all did the MU do? So far it had been fighting some really tough enemies. Heck, she had never expected to meet Magneto in her life and here he had been pulling down the roof over their heads.
Zari was currently tinkering with Mr. Jaws in their room too. Though she was at least doing so relatively quietly as she sat there with a screwdriver and was just tinkering away. It let her own mind wander to all of the chaos that had been going on lately, but the nice thing about her gadgets was that it was rather calming to her to mess with them. For the moment she was more or less somewhat ignoring Andy, though she was debating about whether or not to say something to her to be nice.
The tinkering noises Zari was making weren't annoying. Strangely Andy found them comforting. It was a sound that meant someone else was there. She considered trying to make conversation. Anything she could ask seemed invasive, or just about MU and what their group had been up to when they split up. She didn't want to talk about MU stuff. Zari was from another world and didn't know much about B-Movies which were one of Andy's interests.
"Do you need help with anything?" She finally asked.
"I don't know much about computers and technology but I can provide a spark of electricity if you need one." She propped herself up on her elbow, so it was tucked under her. Her damp hair pulled out of her face, but loose.
"I don't think so... Typically I can keep the power going through the circuits, however if there is a power surge a little zap of electricity might help a bit..." she said, looking over towards Andy now.
"So... How are you doing?" she asked her, figuring that she might at least try to make some conversation.
"Well let me know if you ever need that zap." Andy gave Zari a crooked smile.
"I'm doing alright." She looked down at her hands and the smile dropped. The day had been harrowing.
"I don't know if this is the place for me. They were really upset with Glimps, which I get since she killed people in front of SHIELD agents, but I..." She trailed off realizing she was about to get really personal with someone she barely knew.
"SHIELD isn't so bad... I mean yeah, she killed someone in front of them and that sort of thing from what I'm seeing is kind of frowned upon, and usually, the response tends to be more violence, which honestly I'm used to... My mom is in SHIELD... And it's okay to not know where you belong, in all honesty, I kind of know the feeling... I'm a bit of an oddball, even by the standards of where I grew up, which if it wasn't obvious... Well isn't here." "I don't know much about SHIELD. Just that if you get caught breaking the law around them as a mutant you end up in super max." She shivered a bit at the thought.
"And I don't mind you being an oddball. I think you're interesting. Me... I'm just an orphan." She shrugged.
"There is nothing wrong with that either... Everything happens for a reason, even if sometimes that reason isn't exactly clear..." she said simply, still fidgeting with her robots.
Andy frowned at the phrase everything happens for a reason. She had never really liked it since her whole life had just been terrible thing after terrible thing. Anytime she had something resembling happiness it was taken from her.
"Do you really believe that? That there is some grande scheme behind it all pushing us to a fate we have no control over? That certainly was a mood for Andy.
"Yes I do," she said without hesitation,
"Actually I know it for a fact, or you can just think I'm crazy, I'm typically considered an eccentric anyway so eh, adding crazy wouldn't be that big of a jump." Andy looked up a little surprised at how forceful Zari sounded about it. She wasn't certain if Zari believed it was a good fate or bad one though.
"Do you believe that force is good or evil?" "Probably more of neutral, neither good or evil... Everyone has some sort of fate, even if it doesn't seem like it at first, ever wonder why sometimes bad things just happen to good people? Sometimes those people then turn it around and make it into something better, or they go down a sort of rabbit hole and make everything worse... It just depends." Andy wasn't certain how Zari's response made her feel about her own fate. What had been the first domino for her path? Had it been set when she was found in the ocean or after that when she killed her foster brother? She closed her eyes.
"I hope I can turn my fate good." "I'm sure the path that fate has laid out for you is a good one, even if it doesn't seem like it at all at first." Andy smiled and opened her eyes looking at Zari.
"I'm sure yours is too." Andy tilted her head thinking.
"What is your path? I mean, what brought you here?" "That's a bit complicated... And waaaaay easier said than done, I'll just say that." Andy snorted a small laugh.
"Well if you need help getting it done I'm happy to help." Zari was closest to her age Andy thought. And both were bits of odd ducks it felt like here at the MU.
"If I need help you'll be one of the first people I ask." It felt good to potentially be needed. She felt useless around the MU because she really was only good at fighting. She wasn't going to be helping in finding or defusing the bombs at all. She hated that she couldn't help more.
"And if I need help I'll ask you?" She said, more asking for permission if Zari wanted to help.
"That works for me," she responded happily, giving her a smile.
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