ArchivedLogs:Moving Forward

Moving Forward
Dramatis Personae Jackson, Kris	2013-05-17 '
Location <XS> Study
Quieter than the neighboring library, the study actually /is/ a retreat for those who want to sit and work. Lacking the larger social tables, this room has only single solitary chairs, individual soft lamps assigned to each. The high bay windows allow plenty of light, and the understated elegance of the room with its grated fireplace (often crackling, in winter) is an invitation to quiet work. For once the girl is seeking some solitude, and for nothing in particular. She's got a sort of worried, puzzled look on her face as she is crammed into one of the seats in the more intimidate study. In her lap is some sort of binder with plastic sheaths... protectors, really, of the sort one might stick cards or little pictures in. She's got this sort of far away blank look as she does so. Every once in a while, she'll pause to run her fingers over one of the pictures (yes, it's pictures) contained in the binder. From the look, most of them are grainy and/or washed out polaroids, and all variations on the same theme. At least she has the study mostly to herself. Kris only has the study to herself for so long, though, before an intrusion arrives. A quiet intrusion, at least; the door cracks open, and a very /colourful/ head pokes in. Today Jax's eyeshadow is blue-and-silver shimmer, a faint splash of silver glimmers on his lips, too. His clothing is subdued -- for /him/, anyway, silvery pinstripes shot through his dark jeans, a black fishnet shirt with elbow-length sleeves, a sky-blue tank top worn underneath it. His eyepatch has a skull and crossbones on it. Yarrr. "Kris?" His thick Southern drawl is quiet, as he slips inside, pushing the door closed behind him. He approaches but only somewhat, stopping to give the girl a bit of distance; his eye flicks down to the photographs and then back to her face. "M'sorry to interrupt, I just -- you got a moment?" The photos are, maybe, not surprisingly, the reasons for her anger problems. And some of them (she didn't get to keep those) were part of the reason she got to go back to a civlian life instead of a Philippine prison cell after her former life. Being a former child soldier buys less sympathy there than it did in the US, after all. Most of them are pictures of a young child, often in a fluffy dress next to an older woman and man who look like her. A few scattered photos are of a young lanky man, often holding a rifle in various pose while standing with other young men (a few even look to be smiling). And fewer still is that same 'young man' standing awkwardly in a dress with a young white couple, obviously trying to smile in a painful sort of way. In other words, a lot of these are the same memories she is constantly angsting or angry about. The dead-look she has on? Its 'silence' speaks greater than sobbing, or naked rage in some ways. The girl's pinky even taps out some sort of rapid rhythm without cease. For all that, having her name called draws the speaker a glare that is full of the sort of rage children really should not have. And then it's gone, almost as if it were never there, and she smiles, gesturing to a seat across her,"Please, professor." She reaches for the man's right hand to pull it to her forehead while she bows. Feeling traditional today,"What did you want to talk about." She's had a lot of practice repressing expressions it seems. It's possible that with the sharktwins as his sons Jax is well used to that kind of too-unchildlike rage; at least he absorbs the expression with a faint dip of his head, thoughtful, but no additional shock or judgment. "Just Jax, is alright," he says lightly, slipping closer when invited. At the contact, his right hand with its missing finger is -- /warm/, unnaturally so, somewhere uncomfortably past feverish. Maybe he just finished /baking/. After the bow, he sinks into the offered seat. He folds himself up into it snugly, legs tucked up beneath himself. "I -- wanted to talk about you, actually," he says, quiet as his eye fixes on her face. "It's kind of personal. Is this an alright time?" Kris finishes greeting the man properly in her own traditional way, and then reaches over to take her seat and slide the binder over to Jackson,"It... I'm not quite comfortable calling one of my instructors as one of my peers." The way she squirms, it might be a little more than cultural respect for educators at play,"I do not know if I can. I will try." As if it no longer holds her interest, she places the binder she slid over to Jackson for his perusal on full ignore mode. She meets the man's eyes briefly with a polite, interest smile, and then folds her legs up underneath her, choosing to look somewhere else. "I do not particularly like talking about myself. Except when I get a case of 'mind-vomit'. But this is... a time. I usually make these sorts of contemplations in the morning anyway. The rest of the day feels... too unfocused, diffuse. A good time for this sort of talk." In other words: Mornings are for adulthood, the rest of the day is for being a kid. "It's alright," Jax says with a slight shake of his head, "if you ain't comfortable. Call me what you're comfortable with." When the binder is offered he looks over it, and his expression is hard to read -- quiet-calm, betraying not much past a thoughtfulness. He looks from the pictures -- one metallic-blue nail rests against one of the pictures of the 'young man' with the rifle. He looks back to Kris. "S'good to have time to --" His nail taps, and he glances down briefly. Back up. slowly flipping a page, but after this his attention is mostly just on Kris. "Contemplate. You know, folks come to this school from all sorts of different backgrounds. And ain't none of us can say we really understand entirely what another person is going through, but we -- do our best to help them take where they've /been/ and move with it to where they /want/ to be, you know?" Kris shakes her head at Jax, looking down in her lap. She hasn't really dressed up for the day, instead in her usual lazy casual wear,"I am never comfortable... Mister Jax." A compromise then. She looks up to examine the man's face. "Comfort is a physical thing for me." In other words, she never MENTALLY feels comfortable. But when Jackson picks that particular picture to put his finger on, a riot of emotions rolls over her face: rage, contempt, disgust, humiliation, and even, bizarrely, naked shame. Rather than comment though, she looks down to study her own nails, with their shiny, chipped pink paint. "Professor Logan understands me. He says we are alike. That we were made weapons. I see something familiar in him. He is not... gentle with me. I think it is because he knows there are some things that does not fix, or help. He is not... He is less interested in soothing me, and more interested in... empowering me. I think... he believes people have a right to their anger." She takes a deep breath and pulls her knees up, burying her face against it,"Some days I feel like I am moving forward. And others... I feel like I am a drain on those around me. Do you ever just see a forest and ache for it? Because there are not people there? But then... when I think about it... when I'm helping someone... THAT'S when I feel so human. Connected. Like my problems seem so small and silly." She bites her lower lip as she chews on that thought. "I prefer my problems to be small and silly. Those are the best kind." "People do have a right to their anger," Jax will agree with this, with a faint twitch of his lips. "There's a lot in this world that's worth getting angry over. But -- whatever you were /made/ -- ain't who you are. Being here is about choosing that." His hand turns upwards. "Like when you're helping someone." His smile curls a little wider, and he closes the binder in his lap. His elbow rests on the arm of the chair, chin propping in his palm and his long fingers loosely curled against his cheek. "Kinda sometimes wish all the problems was small and silly. That'd be more manageable, wouldn't it?" There's a lightness to his voice, even if his expression is still kind of serious in its calm regard. "I gotta tell you one thing for sure, though. You ain't a drain. Not here. You're a valuable member of this school and you got plenty to /offer/." His fingers taptaptap against the closed surface of the binder. "S'a lot of ways to be empowered. I ain't quite got Logan's way with --" There's a slight hint of amusement in his voice, warm rather than mocking, "-- people, but. S'all kinds of routes to being who you want to be. -- Kris, have you met Eloise, yet? She's a student here. Littlebit younger'n you, I think." Kris lifts her pinky's nail to begin to nibble and chew at it... no wonder her fingernail polish is so chipped and beaten, if she does that,"When the problems are silly, half the time you question if they even need to be dealt with. That's a nice thing." She chooses a window to hold her attention now. Looking someone in the eyes for lengthy amounts of time just ain't in her makeup,"Everyone sincerely treats me like I'm welcome. I just... feel like I'm getting so much more out of this than they are out of me. I'm getting tutoring from multiple people to get me ready for the next term, people to drive me to my doctors and my therapist as often as I need. I have adoptive parents who are CONSTANTLY calling to tell me they love me or sending me clothes. I have two amazing friends who never seem to quit being ready to help me." She squirms in her seat like she can't quite get comfortable. "And yet I can't stop thinking about how angry I am about MY problems." Her shoulders quiver for a moment and then steady a few seconds later, "Eloise." Her face is a study in humiliation and... raw envy. "She's... worked very hard, I think. She's so pretty. Looks so... natural." And like that, the first real outburst in a while is provoked as she slaps the binder off the little table with a loud thump, stands, and hunkers up with her forehead against the window,"Three years they stole. THREE YEARS. Do you know how critical those three years were to... someone like me? Those were the most critical three years. Those are changes I cannot reverse. The Achres (her adoptive family), they're just happy to have a child. They're so nice, wonderful, and I'm..." Big sigh. "You know the funny thing about problems is they ain't really relative," Jackson tells Kris. "At least, they're only relative to /you/. If you stub your toe and it hurts like crazy, does it hurt /less/ if I tell you a man in Harlem just got shot? Probably not. Might stop mattering much if I turn around and shoot /you/ after but -- you only got your own experiences to go by, you know? And saying someone else has problems /too/ don't make /your/ problems no better or no worse. Or no less important to deal with." He unfolds, somewhat, at this outburst, legs swinging down to the ground. He doesn't immediately stand, though. He picks his phone out of his pocket and opens it up, absently sifting through -- his mail? Yes. Email. Until eventually he opens up a picture -- himself, standing atop a cliff in climbing helmet and harness with another woman beside him, taller, smiling, trim athletic build and soft feminine features framed by a kind of /sweaty/ mess of brown hair. "There's things that can't be /un/done but -- might be more help there than you think." He leans forward in his chair to offer the picture to Kris. "S'is my friend Jess. She didn't /start/ transitioning till she was through college. I'd known her a year 'fore I even knew she wasn't assigned female at birth." "There's a lot of treatment out there, and it ain't an overnight miracle and it'll be a whole other long road for you but -- but I just want you to know that it ain't a road that's /closed/ to you. And we take the health care of all our students real serious, here. We can make sure you have access to the care you need. And that ain't --" For a moment he hesitates, a faint blush in his own cheeks. "-- There's a while where you /will/ probably be getting more out of here than you feel like you can give back. And that's /okay/. You know, when I first come to this school I had pretty much nothin' to offer. Just a whole lot to take. But the thing about giving and taking is it don't have to happen all at once. And the more you find your /own/ feet and get solid in who you are the more you'll have to offer people down the road. And I think you? Are going to have /plenty/ to offer." There's that overwhelming boil of envy that erupts on her face. Lighter when she's simply shown a picture of 'just' a pretty woman. Sharper, for Kris, when she realizes it's another transwoman. Something he says, at least mollifies her, though, she curls up there, against the window in that manner that suggests she isn't quite wanting to be very visible. For all that, she can't quite stop taking peeks out of the corner of her eyes at the picture. The one thing she DOES have to comment on it is still telling enough,"She's tall." Translation: She's tall like me, and she's really feminine. "My therapist is more interested in treating my post traumatic stress. And I told my endo the dosage is too low. I can feel it. That I should be taking injectables. That I need a higher dose of spiro." Like many young women in her position, she has, in other words, ended up with doctors not particularly familiar or specialized in the sort of care she needs. And also like most such young women, that's probably a hint she isn't paying attention to her prescribed dosages. "I just... THIS makes me feel so... stuck. I'm so... big... and I don't know how to do anything right. I practice my voice every day, but it's still not right. My friend Megan... she taught me how to put on makeup correctly for the first time recently. I thought I was doing so well. Then my roommate... she means well... but we meet for the first time and she calls me a g- I... It's like that's all it took to feel ugly again. And all my friends, they're moving forward so fast, and I'm..." She suddenly plops down in the seat, drilling her eyes into the picture again. Like she can't stop looking at it. "When can I stop thinking about all this and just... be a teenager. Like them? I'm so tired of worrying all the time." She very suddenly DOES look tired. "When do I get to be like you?" "I don't know when you get to be a teenager," Jackson admits, his hand dropping with the phone to his side. He turns off the screen, slips it back into his pocket. "Be nice to give some pat answer but honestly the world is -- kind of terrible. And sometimes it takes a lot out of you. And ain't really a whole lot we can do to -- give it /back/." He perches on the edge of his seat, hands resting on his knees. Bright metallic nails tracing against the thin silver pinstripes in his jeans. "But that don't mean you can't build something great going forward. S'what we're here to help you do. There's always gonna be worries, you know? But the great thing about not -- not just being on your /own/ -- is sometimes there's other people around who can help deal with 'em. And the problems don't never go /away/ entirely but you get to a point where it's easier. To find the sunny moments between them. And /then/ you get to a point where the cloudy times are the anomalies." "I know a clinic. Downtown. They're real queer-friendly. They got a lot of experience dealing with trans folks. /They'll/ know how to get what you need safely -- on a schedule that's good for you. It don't sound like your current treatment plan's really working so great. If you'd like, I could take you. See if the doctors there listen to you better. I think they will, I've had lots of friends with great experiences there. But if they don't, we'll keep looking till we find ones that do." "Why are all the adults here... different. Honest? When the soldiers rescued me, all they did was tell me how much trouble I was in. When the Department of Homeland Security took me in, they kept telling me how my nightmare is over. When I was adopted, my parents told me I'd never need to worry about anything again." Kris pushes a few strands of hair behind her ears,"I get here... and all the adults are... 'It's hard, it sucks, but we're going to help you deal with that.'. I... like it. Adults have never been this honest with me." She doesn't really offer much in the way of a verbal response. Instead, Jax mostly just gets an armful of Kris as the girl impulsively tries to hug the teacher,"This is why people need you. The world is being screwed up, right now for a lot of people, and you are just calmly walking around, fixing things left and right. Who is helping YOU, though, Mister Jax? Sometimes I see you, and you look sad. Who is helping YOU?" She regains her composure a moment later,"I will need help explaining the change in doctor to my parents." And then of all things... a normal question,"Mister Jax... What do you do when a boy is extremely pretty, but unbearablly irritating and stupid?" Jax's single eye widens, startled, and a quick smile flits across his face. In this hug he is very warm, again, likely uncomfortably so but he returns it in a quick tight squeeze before letting her go. "-- Might be we're more honest cuz a lot of us have been through --" He shrugs a shoulder. "I mean, a lot of us know, y'know? That it's kind of just stupid to pretend like everything's going to be fine, that's not how you work towards /making/ them fine. You acknowledge they're screwed up, and that gives you a much more solid place to start tryin' to fix 'em." The first question pulls his gaze downwards, to his knees; his hands drop back to his lap. His fingers trace against the pinstripes. "Oh, I got my own support network. Think I'd've fallen apart long ago without 'em. -- I can help talk with your folks. They sound like they care about you a lot -- sometimes people just don't actually even /know/ how they should start helpin'." The last question startles a laugh out of him; it's bright and warm and for a moment the air around him is, too, a quick flutter of soft sunny-yellow glow that dies away as the sound does. His cheeks are flushed slightly pink, when it fades. "Oh. Oh, gosh. Well. Honestly? I'd hold out for a boy who ain't. Sometimes they're redeemable underneath. Probably best to figure that out in a -- platonic sort of sense though, first, 'stead'a wasting your time on someone who's just kinda a doof. Cuz there's a whole lot of pretty in the world. And a lot of real /awesome/ boys." The girl returns to her previous standing position, hands clasped behind her back. As the man speaks of fixing things, she actually blushes, looking down at her own clothes, which suddenly seem... very shabby. She fidgets with the urge to change into something... pretty. She'd have to go all the way up to her room,"Keep talking to them, Mister Jax? I think... I think maybe you might need the twins as much as they need you... if that's not out of line for me to say. I know they're okay." Swips a strand of hair back again,"I... my parents are supportive, but they're... this kind of stuff is awkward on a good day, but talking about it with your parents? Well..." She shakes her head. She turns as if to skip off towards her room after this, her own cheeks flushing at that answer,"So... skip the annoying ones... I... I'm still allowed to look at him, though, right? I mean, while I'm holding out for better." She looks down her nose and imparts to the man,"Because he's very pretty." "I need them," Jackson acknowledges this simple and quiet, his head tipping down. "Think it'll be a lot sunnier for me when they're home again." His smile is at least sunny enough, warm and bright. "Yeah. It's -- not everything's easy conversation with everyone. But some conversations are important to have. I'll be -- if y'need any help through any of this, I'll to what I can." His nose crinkles up, smile a little brighter. "Ain't no harm in looking," he says, kind of amused. "Y'take care, Kris." He lifts his hand as if to tip a hat -- he isn't wearing one but then in the next moment he /is/, a large silver-banded black Stetson that he lifts to the girl in farewell.