Haylie Collins will blow you away (startwithaspark) wrote in artofwar_rpg, @ 2011-05-02 21:22:00 |
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Current mood: | content |
Entry tags: | {backstory}, †haylie collins; spitfire, ♦scott summers; cyclops |
Keep on running...
Who: Scott Summers and Haylie Collins
What: Scott hears the snow is all gone, and wants to walk a dangerous route, asks Haylie to help guide him, and set some ropes at the bad spots trail side by the cliff side and other 'dangerous' places on the runnable paths. They talk at length for the first time.
When: March 20, 1962 - 7 months after Scott was rescued in Louisiana
Where: Xavier Institute, Main Floor Hall and Grounds
Rating/Warnings: PG
Status: Closed; Complete
Scott was on the stairs, when he heard Haylie. Nearly zero squeak from her sneakers, that light but firm step, that had told him she was as dancer or a gymnast. It turned out she was a gymnast, according to Hank. And Scott had been up, unable to sleep, enough times, that he knew she was up a lot, too. Private person. If she had trouble sleeping, she would go out for a dawn run, when there was no snow or ice on the ground. Which was what made him call out to her.
"Haylie! Wait up! Are you going running?" Scott was ready to go out, bundled up for walking or running. With the cane he had been using since last autumn, and with a sack full of thin aluminum poles and rope, and a small sledgehammer. He had gotten Hank to make him up this pack a few days before. "Um, if so, I could really use some help, if you can give me the time."
It wasn't that Haylie didn't like Scott. He seemed like a nice guy and all, but after finding out about the damage he'd caused while his powers began to manifest? Well, it hit a little too close to home for her and those wounds were still too raw for her liking. So for the last seven months, she'd managed to tactfully limit the amount of contact she had with him in order to preserve what little sanity she felt she had left. And when she heard his voice asking for help, she winced internally and stopped in her path.
Turning around, she rested her hands on her hips and looked back at him curiously, noting the pack he had on him and running a hand over her ponytail. "Yeah, I was plannin' on doin' a mornin' run. Are you, uh, sure you're up for bein' out and about?"
Scott decided she was one of the ones who thought he wore bandages because he was still injured. "The bandages are just for outsiders to see, and to stabilize my eyelids so it makes it harder to open my eyes. And I'm pretty sure footed, now that I've been walking and jogging around the main buildings." He tapped his cane on the floor. He no longer did that in the library, since it annoyed people trying to study in there. "I don't fall down much any more."
If Scott could have managed it without wrecking the house and maybe killing Haylie, he would have rolled his eyes. Instead, he had learned to show his feelings through his voice and words. "Well, it's past winter, and no more ice storms expected this year. If I stay cooped up in here much longer, I'm going to have to run off the cliff by the lake just to deal with the boredom. The workout equipment here is great, but I need to do something to build my endurance. I've memorized the walking and running paths next to the house, but it's hard to get any kind of head of steam going, and it's as boring as reps in the gym. So, yeah. And if you don't mind tethering to me, I might not even slow you down much. Just stop where you tell me I need to mark the edges of the trail and help me get basic markers up. I can handle the real work once I have string up where I need to plant guides. I'll carry bigger, more permanent stakes back, over the next week or two. Frankly, I want to pay my freight around here, after all you folks have done for me."
Scott had learned how to do quite a few things without sight, and had been a spare pair of hands to Hank in the shop and labs, and even helped out with a duck shelter. For a blind guy, he could connect things pretty well, and hammer well enough he had only hit himself three times. "A couple of the others helped me to get a gear pack going for this, so I'm set with stakes and line, and have all my tools. I just don't know about anybody else who actually runs the trails and can help me to find them and lay base lines. Charles actually felt that if we have lines, it might keep somebody other than just me from running off the paths in the fog or heavy weather. So, it's useful, not just for me. But I clearly can't do the whole thing alone. Frankly, I think you may be the only other actual runner here who sticks to trails, since Hank brachiates sometimes and Logan seems to like cross-country, or so they tell me." By the time he finished saying that, he was grinning from ear to ear. "So, waddaya say, Haylie? A few times out, you lead me around, tell me about the trails, help me mark the trouble spots, and I'll promise not to get in your way or need your medical help? Besides, nobody wants to see me in multiple casts again. Mostly because I'm not good at sick list stuff. I'm told I make a pretty grumpy patient."
Haylie didn't ask if he was okay to be out because of the bandages over his eyes. It was because she was worried about his knee, and if he was fully recovered at this point. And while the blindness made her a little uneasy, it also made her take stock in the fact that she could actually look at people without hurting them. Which must really hurt to realize for Scott. And while she was still nervous around the others - mainly due to her fluctuating power surges while Xavier helped her with those pesky control matters - she felt for the guy. The first time she'd ended up getting hurt, she'd been out for a week and driven everyone crazy with how stubborn she was when she wanted out of bed.
"Alright, Summers. Just don't start beggin' me, you'll embarrass yourself." It didn't take a set of eyes to know she was smirking as she replied good-naturedly.
Scott deserved that tone in her voice, and he laughed aloud. He'd been pretty ridiculous, but he'd also gotten her into the swing of the thing. "Hey, I think I just BARELY squeaked by without actually embarrassing myself. Seriously, thanks. And thanks for being there when I was hurt so badly. If you hadn't stabilized my knee, I'd probably be limping instead of running, today! I wasn't so far out of it, I don't know how you came through for me." He had gotten right up next to her. "Once I catch my stride, I'll show you what that knee you saved can do. Just take it easy on me, 'cause you run me into any obstacles, I'll probably go down pretty hard."
The laugh from Scott caused Haylie to relax slightly, and as he came up beside her, she pulled out a pair of black leather gloves. The material squeaked quietly as she put them on and flexed her fingers, but it was something she'd taken up as a precaution, should her mutation start to get unruly. "No need t'thank me. I was just doin' my job." She shrugged casually, brushing off the praise with slightly flushed cheeks and a non-comittal hand wave. Thankfully, Scott couldn't see any of it.
Scott never understood it when 'civilians' passed off a thank-you sounding like that. But even more, he wondered what that weird sound had been. She certainly wasn't wearing leather or one of those new-fangled cloths for a run. Well, time would tell. "Well, that does not detract from the fact that you and the others saved my life, and you had the foresight to take care of my knee. So I can keep on running." He tried to keep his tone light. Scott knew he had a tendency to make it all sound way too serious.
"Let's just start with walkin' Fly Boy." She chuckled and wrapped an arm around Scott's to guide him as they walked down the trail. She was in no hurry to get back to the mansion, anyway.
Scott flinched at the sudden touch, then relaxed. He'd never been very much of a toucher before, though he could feel how different it was, when you could not see somebody. She also made it clear that they were walking. Maybe she did not like the idea of a tether, or maybe she was being more realistic than Scott. He shifted his arm so it would be less like somebody leading a blind guy (he hated that), and sighed. "I guess I'm ruining your run, now. On the other hand, it'll make it easier to talk. But what are you wearing on your hands?" He'd brushed her hands rearranging his arm in hers. He bet it was leather, and he also had an idea those gloves were the source of the odd squeaky sounds. There had to be a story behind a girl wearing leather gloves on a run through a forest.
Haylie took note of the way Scott flinched when touched and was going to keep that in mind for later encounters with him -- not that she blamed him. She herself was known for not allowing others to touch her when her powers were acting up. Allowing Scott to adjust their arms, she glanced down at her gloved hands and back up at him when he asked. "You're not ruinin' my run. Sometimes I just walk, dependin' on how I feel. As for the gloves? Well, they're made to help contain my powers so I don't overwork myself tryin' to control them."
"That makes sense to me," Scott said, as they walked out of the house and Haylie closed the door behind them. At this hour it was chilly, but Scott had accounted for that. "These gifts we have, well, I'm probably a pretty good example of how they have their drawbacks." Scott had stood at Christmas dinner, and thanked them all for being there for him, and after, in conversation, he had explained what had happened to him in the bomber, that had left him needing rescue, and effectively blind. It was at that time that he realized that he was not the only one who was shy to speak about his experiences.
As he let Haylie lead him the way she wanted to go, he nodded. "I'm not even so sure what your gift or gifts are. I know, working on some gear for the Danger Room with Hank, you have some kind of electrical, or electromagnetic ability. Does direct contact with others set it off? And no, you don't have to answer my questions about your gift! I'm just a Nosy Nelson." Scott did not want to put her off. She was both the person he identified, along with Hank, who had actually carried most of his weight, with his rescue. And he had already figured out that she was a likable, easy going kind of person, at least by his lights... such as his lights were. And besides all that, it felt good to be out before dawn on a chilly spring morning with a girl at his arm, though he was not going to admit that. Not that he was any kind of lurking Lothario.
If Scott had his sight, he'd have seen that Haylie was in running shorts, a t-shirt, and sneakers only -- in spite of the weather. There was a recurring joke around the Institute that she was part furnace due to the unusually warm skin and her penchant for rarely getting cold. But as she led him down the path, she listened closely to what he had to say and when he asked about her powers, she cracked a tiny smile.
"It's not electromagnetic -- far from, actually. It's a little more loud and obvious than that. My understandin' is that it's some kind of sonic boom that just... cuts things up." While her tone started out as nonchalant, it quickly turned into something resembling a mixture of sadness and guilt. "Or they just... explode. So in a nutshell, I make things go boom."
Scott shivered, not at all due to the chill air. "Oh no... I hope you didn't experience it the way I did, Haylie. But if that's the way it works, then you probably have had a really bad time of it." He squeezed his arm against hers, and noticed for the first time how warm she was. "I keep imagining I understand how this mutation stuff works, and I always find out I'm wrong. Sometimes I think God must be laughing at us." He had heard a couple of real horror stories. Erik had told him about his own first emergence of his powers, late in his stay in the concentration camp, shortly after the New Year began. It had brought Scott nightmares.
"Uh, I-- I'd be lyin' if I said I didn't." Haylie's reply was quiet, her gaze focusing elsewhere as she tried to keep things in check. As a side-effect of her mutation, her powers flared with her emotions and she was still trying to work on controlling that. Xavier helped, of course, by setting up a series of mental blocks to help her contain things. And keep prying minds out. Xavier was the only telepath allowed inside of Haylie's head, and she wanted to keep it that way. "I still have nightmares all the--"
In her distraction, Haylie missed a root sticking out from the ground and when her foot snagged it, she was propelled forward. With her enhanced reflexes, she was quick to try letting go of Scott's arm so he wouldn't go down with her. How successful that maneuver was, however, was up for debate until she got her bearings after crashing to the ground.
Scott felt her tugging away from him, and had to let her go, or risk being swept up in her fall or trip, whatever was going on. The last thing he wanted was to slam into the ground, and jerk his eyes open in response. He stumbled a step or two away from where she jerked, and stopped.
At least they were barely off the main paths around the mansion and outbuildings, so they were nowhere near the cliffs. "Whoa, Haylie!" He stopped and snapped open his cane. He'd practiced with it a lot while walking and jogging on the 'safe' paths by the buildings. A few times he'd been saved from bad falls. "Hey, what happened? Are you okay?" He felt out with the cane, and touched something soft. Hoped it was not her face.
"Sonuva--" She grumbled from her spot on the ground, pushing herself up off of the ground as soon as she felt Scott's cane poking her in the side. "I'm fine. I tripped over a stupid root." Once on her feet, she brushed herself off and gathered her composure -- thankful that Scott wasn't able to look at her because he'd see the flush of pink in her cheeks and she had a feeling that he'd never let her live it down.
"Hey, maybe I should be leading you around?" He made sure it sounded silly. He was glad she was okay, but this also highlighted how careful he was going to have to be. The first time he'd tried jogging, he'd fallen, opened his eyes, and blasted about 20 feet of brick walkway into rubble.
Clearing her throat, she wrapped an arm around Scott's again and continued on their path. "Are you okay?"
He took a deep breath, relieved. Glad she was back on his arm. "I'm good. Sorry I didn't try to catch you. If you'd pulled me down, and I'd opened my eyes... it worried me. You really ARE okay? I'm good for miles. I'm like the dog nobody ever let's off his lead right now. Spoiling for a good run. Your fall sort of reminds me, though, I need to take baby steps, if you know what I mean."
"That's why I let go. I didn't wanna risk you gettin' hurt." Haylie tried to be nonchalant about it, but there was still that vague hint of concern in her tone that was indicative of her innate protective nature. "I'm fine, seriously. I'm built to go a couple of rounds with that tree." And there was the return of her sarcasm, complete with a smirk that hopefully someday Scott would be able to see for himself.
"Be careful with those trees. I hear they fall down on you if you give 'em a TKO." He laughed, and then reached for her hand. "Tell you what? We just walk the trails today, and you can tell me about all the hazards, and we can set string so when I come back, I can set the deeper posts and ropes, with help or on my own. And if any trees grab you, you can expertly explain where I can look, and I'll blast you free. Expertly, though. I don't want YOU in a cast for weeks!"
“Pfft. I can take ‘em.” She replied with a laugh, staring down the tree that tripped her just because she could. When Scott reached for her hand, Haylie jerked back instinctively and felt her chest tighten in fear. But after reminding herself that her gloves were on and she was in control, she took hold of his hand and exhaled deeply.
"That's better. Next time, if you trip, I'll grab you so you can't fling a hand out and swipe my glasses and wrappings off. Now, let's go before they figure out we're plotting against them." He was feeling pretty silly now, but he was also wanting to move along. He'd been putting this off, afraid to ask for help, for at least a week. Now, he wasn't too worried about it. As they walked along, he urged her to lead him a bit, and give him a lot of description of the path they were walking. He also used his cane, almost expert with it already, to make sure nothing right in front of his steps was going to trip him.
She reached a point where she needed to ask him what was, and wasn't, to be marked. So they had a little talk about it. "...so just about anything that might be a hazard at night, in the fog, or to your friendly neighborhood shut-eye guy. If we mark more than is needed, well, Charles said, better it be well done than underdone. He doesn't want to have me lost in the forest. Somehow I don't think he wants to send another rescue party out for me." But he was smiling about it. He was just happy to be out and about again, planning something that was good for him, and probably going to be good for others. "So, I have all these short metal posts we can step on and sink at the side of the trail where you're concerned about hazards, and can mark places where we have to flatten the path or remove obstacles, then tie string through the loops at the tops of them. I come back later, with bigger stakes and rope, and my cane, and find them, upgrade them. Actually get some real work out of me, instead of being just Hank's tool guy. I can use some help threading the strings, too. You game for it?"
Haylie listened intently to Scott's explanation of what needed to be done and grinned slightly. "I'm game. Demolition's my specialty."
Scott laughed at that. "I hope you don't mean that literally. I can see the news reports. ‘Demolishment Lass and Foolish Lad Die As Escarpment Slides into Lake'. How about we just keep it to regular work? So, help me figure out where to string rope and I'll hand you spikes to plant. Don't let me take any headers off the path."
"Define 'literally'." She replied with a chuckle, giving his hand a squeeze as she led him over to where they'd mark the edge of the running path. "Once you see what I can do, you'll understand why demolition is my specialty." There was an awkward pause and the urge to slap herself for being insensitive. "Oh, I-- I didn't mean--"
"Tell you what, you just describe it to me, and I'll be... completely blown away, I'm sure." Once again somebody had forgotten. He wondered how many times that would happen. "Don't worry about it. I'm not helpless, and I believe you can utterly demolish anything you care to bust up. Let's just make this a productive project. I don't want to have to pick up any missing pieces of myself along the way." He had deadpanned the whole thing and then burst out in hilarity, almost falling over.. "Wh--ha, ha!"
As she was no stranger to sarcasm or deadpanned replies, Haylie simply nodded along until he burst out laughing. Her reaction was nothing short of comically confused as she stared, hands on her hips. "...Did you hit your head recently?"
He was still chuckling. "Think of it this way. I've survived two air crashes, one as a sole survivor. I come out here, and get blown up setting up a safety device so I can't fall off a cliff? Ah, fate! I'm pretty sure I'm safe with you, actually."
"You sound harder to kill than I am." She remarked in awe, shaking her head with a smile as she tapped his arm gently in hopes that he'd hand her some spikes so she could get to work. "Alright, let's get to work before the Professor starts to worry."
Scott knelt to pull a set of spikes out of his backsack. "Charles has faith in us, Haylie. I bet he doesn't worry about YOU at all. You seem to have it together, scary mutant gift or not." He handed her a handful of spikes, nodding as she slipped them away from him. "But I have to admit, I am hard to kill. But I'm not exactly proof from a long fall. I spent a year and more recovering from the first one, and over three more months mending from the second. That's why I like a safety net. So, let's build this one."
The comment about her having it together earned him a scoff and shake of her head as she took a few of the spikes from Scott. "I really, really don't. If I did? I wouldn't have a no touchin' policy around everyone."
He stopped, went still. "I thought that was just code for 'no sex on dates'." He wished he hadn't blurted that out. "Uh, tell you what. You touch me, and if it kills me, you win out over an alien abduction, two air crashes and illegal experimentation on other kids while I was in the Orphanage. There's gotta be a trophy for you in that. You certainly touched me when I needed medical help back in Louisiana! Or was that Jean and her ghost hands? I don't think so?" Two blunders. Or three? Like everybody else, she was going to think he was nuts now that he had mentioned aliens. Maybe she'd think he was talking about unregistered Mexicans.
"Uh, well, that works too. In my case? It's more like 'don't touch me for your own sake'. I don't want anyone else gettin' hurt when I still don't have full control over my powers." Haylie shrugged at the alien bit. Really, after making a man explode without touching him, she was beginning to think aliens were normal. "Were they green like they say on the radio?"
Scott decided she was not just kidding him along. So, he might end up being whispered about behind his back. But why not find out? "No, they were pinkish, seemed a lot like us, but were mostly covered with some kind of space armor. I could see that their faces were rimmed with what looked like feathers, hair like feathers. Their eyes reminded me of hawks' eyes, or eagles' eyes. One of them, armored like that, just picked up my dad like he was a toddler. Took both my parents, wrecked the plane, and returned to their spacecraft. Released us, Alex and me, like some bird kill they didn't want. Like we were just... sport." Scott had not said a word about this to anybody since he was fifteen years old, and the anger, the hatred, poured out around it. "So, now I'm just crazy Scott, right? I don't talk about this. But if I ever find them--" He let it trail off. Espousing murder around the girl who had possibly saved his life seemed a bit over the top.
He knelt and found the edge of the trail, and twisted a stake into the ground, tying one end of string to it, having handed Haylie the roll of string. He was good with his hands, even without his eyes. And he had tied a lot of knots, remembering how his mother had taught him. He gave it an extra jerk, feeling the rage inside him.
Haylie listened intently, holding onto the roll with enough slack to let Scott maneuver it as he wished without it just coiling to the ground. "I'm so sorry t'hear that." And she really, truly was sorry. Her family had been the only thing keeping her from killing herself when her powers manifested, so she couldn't even begin to fathom what she'd have done if she'd been in his position. Maybe she isn't as strong as she thinks she is.
"And you're not crazy, Scott. You know what you saw, and I believe you. And... well, I'm not about t'go around broadcastin' it to the others." It really wasn't her style.
"Thanks. I went through some hard times because I talked about that. I should just let it go, because I don't think I'll really ever be able to do anything about it. Even the Air Force is about to stop investigating UFOs." He shrugged and asked her if she had the next peg in place and tied up. The work would go better if talk was just talk, and not about aliens, death, mayhem and trouble. "So, what kind of music do you like?"
"You know, I could use some broadening of my horizons. I've barely heard anything by Ella Fitzgerald. But I love to listen to Sinatra. I also happen to sing some of his best songs!" Just talking made the work move along, and they managed to still be talking about music an over and hour and a half later when they had run out of spikes. They had just barely made it up toward the Bluffs, according to Haylie.
"So, there I was, on a bomber run, when the Flight Commander asked me to sing 'Blue Moon'!" Scott laughed, and told how the radio went crazy, as half the training squadron tried to sing along. "We all got pulled into the School Commander's office, and he told us we were each getting 10 demerits. And then he said those of us who could sing one of his favorite songs decently, could shave off 5 points. Turned out he was an Elvis fan!"
Haylie actually laughed at the story, shaking her head with a smile as she led Scott back to the school, arm comfortably wrapped around his the entire time. And suddenly, she was very glad she'd been part of the rescue effort. Because then she may well have never gotten the chance to talk to him like this.