Logs:Parley

Parley
Dramatis Personae Polaris, Wendy	2023-07-18 "I will."
Location <XAV> Command and Control Center - Xs Sub-Basement
Here is the heart of the Xavier Institute's true operations, the room most central to its purpose, where the Institute's most adventuresome and powerful individuals gather to receive exposition. The room is dominated by an oversized viewscreen on one wall, presently displaying an intricate diagram of the planet Earth, as well as a large central holographic projector and a handful of computer terminals along the periphery. Curiously, the whole place is rather dimly lit, as though its designers prioritized dramatic lighting over being able to find anything. Training has finished, for now; no doubt many of the exhausted team members are on their way home to rinse and repeat another grueling session for tomorrow. Somewhere else in this basement, perhaps Ryan is evaluating the current team roster and whether this latest session will cause it any more attrition. Somewhere else in this school, perhaps some of the team is drinking (more). For now, for here, Wendy is along in the C&C, watching footage of the latest Danger Room session, her fingertips pressing lightly to her temple with her elbow propped on the table. She's in flowy green culottes and a pink-and-white blouse, sandals shed and her feet tucked up beneath her, and though she's been putting notes in (Ryan's) notebook, right now she's just -- watching. Grimacing. Watching some more. The doors open, but Polaris does not immediate step through, hovering at the threshold waiting for permission she's pretty sure she doesn't need. She's wearing a black ribbed tank, paint-flecked carpenter jeans, black boots with only slightly more hardware than is strictly speaking necessary, no makeup, and no jewelry. Her hair is still damp -- bath, not shower -- and she has a towel draped around her neck to stop it plastering to her skin. The hesitation is brief, and an instant later she enters (sans permission) and picks her way unhindered by the dim lighting to where Wendy has installed herself. She glances from the recording on the screen to Wendy's expression. "That bad, huh?" Then, quietly and a little self-consciously, offers, "Parley." Wendy looks up, her fingers curling tighter around the pen she is not currently writing with. The simulation-replay pauses with a small flick of hand, and though her expression is sharp when she first glances to Polaris, it softens on that last word. Her shoulders sink, her eyes lowering back to the frozen holographic images of the team. "You'll get better," she says, and doesn't say, you'll have to, much though it may be there in the grim line of her mouth. What she does say is: "Jax not being here hurts way deeper than taking the extra bullets. Hive sees a lot but can't be taking all that in and deciding what to do about it at once. You all," here her smile is verrrry wry, "need some hierarchy." She taps the heel of the pen light and quick against the page, and then looks back to Polaris with a small quirk of brows. "Your metalbending's definitely levelled up." Staring at the paused simulation, Polaris nods her distressed and not at all perfunctory agreement. "Hive can be Jax, but then we'd lose comms, intel, and a field commander if we're cut off." She chews on her lower lip, the gesture more thoughtful than anxious. "We already got some non-hierarchical hierarchy going on. You could help them figure out who to deputize." Her shoulders hunch beneath the towel at the compliment. "Yeah. Magneto's been teaching me. I know you..." She takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry. For a lot of things, and I know that doesn't undo the hurt but. I really am sorry for not hearing you out." Wendy's lips compress, and she's looking away again at the mention of Magneto. Her shoulders have gone tighter, but begin to ease again with the apology. "You had a lot going on." There's a tightness in her voice that carries through to: "-- but so did I." Her eyes have gotten a little wider when they fix back on Polaris. "I was in those labs, too, you know." "I know." Polaris hugs herself, short-cropped nails digging into her arms. "You wouldn't have ended up there if it weren't for me. I wouldn't have survived if it weren't for you and we sure as fuck wouldn't have gotten out." She has to wrench her eyes away from the screen again to meet Wendy's. "You're my family, and I'm sorry I didn't treat you that way." She starts to run a hand through her hair but, still damp, it snags. "I'm not asking you to forgive me, I just wanna like. Thank you. For being there for me. I should have been there for you, too." Wendy exhales, slow and shaky, and her gaze has returned to the frozen holograph. She starts to draw another breath -- starts to say something -- lets it out again with a small sinking of shoulders. Now she does return to adding to the notes; interspersed with Ryan's messy-expansive scrawl and Scott's wide bold all-caps her slender-neat letters look somehow frail. "Maybe," she says, and it's quiet, her eyes large and solemn when she looks back to Polaris, "next week, you can start making it up to me." Polaris reaches for Wendy when she subsides, but doesn't make contact and pulls the arm back to wrap around herself instead. Though the classically distressed posture is identical, something eases inside her: a tight snarl of stress and fear and guilt not gone but loose enough perhaps to untangle. Invisible as it is, the change feels dramatic enough Wendy might have clocked it even without her powers, though she will never know for sure. She nods, still frightened but determined and a little eager, too. "I'll--" She bites back the "try" and very deliberately unwinds her arms, shaking them loose. "I will."