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Rachel Anne Summers is lost again (the_phoenix) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-04-19 20:05:00

Who: Rachel and Scott
What: Father/Daughter bonding time.
When: A few days ago.
Where: A pub somewhere.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for alcohol, cursing, and some mention of traumatic dream pasts.
Status: Complete!


After the past few weeks, Scott thought it might be good for him and his daughter to spend some quality time together. They hadn’t really, since before he’d come to Orange County, and he wanted to change that, before she started to think she wasn’t a part of his life.

He worried about these things.

It wasn’t that Rachel thought she wasn’t a part of Scott’s life. It was that she was worried that her dreams were pushing him away. They’d been closer, even, when she was working half a world away than they were since she’d started dreaming.

Rachel felt like that was his fault, but it was probably more fairly a combination of the two of them. She thought about that while she chalked up her pool cue, “You’re going down, Dad. I got way better at this while I was abroad.”

“Good, you aren’t a daughter of mine if you can’t kick someone’s butt at billiards,” Scott challenged. He needed this. Some time with the two of them just hanging out. It was partly his fault - he didn’t know how much space she needed vs how much space she wanted, in relation to her dreams.

"Am I even technically a daughter of yours?" Rachel joked. Maybe there was some truth to her rhetorical question - after all, the Scott in her dreams, the one that had been her father, wasn't this Scott. But this Scott wasn't the other Scott in her dreams, either.

More likely, it was meant to throw him off his game. She lined up the opening shot and broke, watching as a green stripe dropped down into a corner pocket, "Guess you're solids."

“Oh, I’m pretty sure you’re mine,” Scott replied. “With an attitude like that you have to be a Summers. And I’m pretty sure I’m the only one to sleep with your mother.”

"Well that's territory we never need to discuss again." Because seriously, talking about who did or did not sleep with her mom? Yeah, that was definitely not a conversation she actually wanted to have.

She downed half of her beer glass, then made her way around the table and lined another shot up, "But you're right. I'm definitely too big a smartass to be anyone else's kid."

It made Scott grin though, as he started to pull ahead of her in the game. Hey, if it throws her off, so much the better. “I remember this time when you were two…” His missed a shot and stepped back. “You got your hands into your diapers and smeared crap all over the walls. Then you grinned at us like you’d just made high art.”

He grinned. “Remind me to tell that one to Kitty.”

"Of course you'd tell that kind of story to Kitty. And she'll laugh about it hysterically and tell it to the twins, and then I'll have to mind wipe all four of you. Because every single one of you is an asshole." Rachel snarked. Thrown off? Pft. She wasn't even a little thrown off.

She sunk four balls into various pockets before she missed again, evening the score again.

“Hey. I’m a dick. There’s a different.” He picked up a pitcher of beer and poured them a couple of glasses. He passed one over to her then sipped at his own. “Kitty is an asshole.”

Rachel picked up her glass and took a sip too, while darting her eyes to the side a bit, "Yeah, she is. Complete asshole."

It was kind of amazing how attracted to each other they still were, even though they were both known to be assholes at times, and even though she'd aged years overnight, and even though she still went over Booker's place sometimes for a 'nightcap'.

"... but I'm a dick too, I guess, so we deserve each other. Maybe."

“That gonna be a thing? I need to know if I need to give her the evil eye.” Scott tapped his glasses with a smirk on his face. He should go out and blast Booker, but that would be a little hypocritical. “I just want you happy, Rach. You deserve that much, no matter who it’s with.”

"I don't really know. I want it to be a thing, but then it might screw everything else up. You know? I got Rikku's blessing. Hell, she practically begged me to grab Kitty and never let go of her, but I still feel bad. And we might not work out, too. Kitty rushes things and it's not like I'm the patient one. I take after Mom too much for that," Rachel frowned a bit and downed the rest of her beer, while looking the table over. There were only a few balls left.

"Your shot, pops."

“I never regretted Jean. Or Maddie, or Emma,” Scott said. “Even when things ended. In the dreams, Jean and I were still friends. But I watched Kitty take too long before, and I’ve watched her go too fast before. I think that’s something everyone goes through. Sometimes you hit a home run your first time, sometimes it’s the third or fourth person you win with. But you can’t let fear stop you from trying new things.”

He missed his first shot and cursed.

"Hah!" Rachel hopped on over to the pool table and lined a shot up that would hopefully knock the last two stripe balls in. One ball did, in fact, make it into the corner pocket as expected, but the last ball rolled the wrong direction, and she snorted a bit as she stepped away from the table, "I should learn how to use my TK to cheat at this stuff."

“Use trig, it’s better.” Scott leaned on his pool stick. “But we’re never going to get anywhere, we’re both too good. Want to get some fries and sit?”

"I already use Trig, it's just that you're better at using it than I am." Rachel admitted, with a bit of a chuckle. She nodded, though, and picked up their beer pitcher, "Yeah, the games are going to go too quickly or become mexican standoffs. Let's get some food and relax. You can tell me all about how things are going with you and Ms. Monroe."

“That doesn’t mean I cheat,” Scott said. He gave her a lazy smile. “I’m not going to utter a peep about me and Ororo.” Pause. “Unless you ask certain questions.”

"Oh I'll ask specific questions," Rachel challenged, "I'll ask every specific question. You'll regret ever telling me to ask anything at all."

“Why don’t you start with an easy one,” Scott said. He got them some fries, the cheesy kind with salsa and sour cream and everything. And bacon bits. “I’ll even be honest.”

"OKay. Easy ones." Rachel tapped her finger against her chin for a few moments, then nodded, "This one should be easy. Do you love her?"

Scott blinked his eyes behind his glasses. That wasn’t an easy one, that was in fact a really hard one. “I uh…. maybe it’s too soon for that. They’re sparks…”

"Too soon for that?" Rachel snorted, and leaned back in the booth they'd gotten. She refilled their beer glasses, while smirking a bit. Kind of like she knew some deep dark secret her dad didn't, "Either you're in love or you aren't. The rest is just negotiating fear."

“Yeah, too soon for that,” Scott replied, his eyebrow quirking. “So what, are you in love with Kitty?” He was curious as to what her answer would be, in light of what she was saying. “And I’m not afraid.”

"Yeah you are. Liarpants." Rachel snorted, and lifted up her beer, while pointing at him, "I love Kitty. But when you're an adult, it's just not that simple. That's the part that screws guys like you over. Because there's all kinds of love, and what if this love isn't the right love? What if it's too soon? Too soon is just an excuse. It's an excuse because you're scared. You're scared that if you say something like 'I love you' before the other person has figured this out, they're going to run away. Or growing up tells you that you're not supposed to love a person at first sight, that that isn't really a thing, and so if you have feelings it's too soon to have them."

She shook her head, "Fuck that. It's not too soon to feel. It's just maybe too soon to act, which is another thing entirely. But if you don’t admit you feel, you’re not going to act in time."

Scott was hard to read through his glasses. He chewed on a fry when it arrived and let Rachel say her piece. It seemed like she had a lot to say. He sat back and folded his arms. "And if you know now, what happens if you don't act fast enough?"

"I see what you did there, Dad." Rachel snerked, and selected a french fry. It was the cheesiest, most chili coated fry in the stack. Or at least the second cheesiest. Scott had already selected the best fry.

He was turning it all around on her, but she couldn't say that her speech was entirely to inspire him with, either. The more she thought about it as she chewed, the more she realised she was mostly yelling at herself. I hate it when you're right.

Scott earned himself the best fry, by virtue of being Scott Summers. Yeah. He rested his chin on two fingers and smirked at her. “It sounded like you were trying to convince yourself.”

"I was. I'm a gigantic scardeypants too, as it turns out." Rachel made a face at herself, and snagged another french fry. Randomly, she said, "It's nice to talk like this, you know. Even if you're showing me up."

"I think maybe later we both have some talking to do with a couple extra people," Scott pointed out. "We need to make this a weekly thing. I don't give you nearly the amount of time that you deserve to get."

"Well, you've been busy. And I wasn't sure..." Rachel squinted one of her eyes closed, then shook her head. There wasn't any point beating around the bush, "You've been standoffish since the dreams. I keep waiting to dream the dream where I figure out what I did to deserve it. Was it the Phoenix thing? Because I don't think I had as much control over that happening as you think."

"It's nothing that you did. I just ... don't know how far you've gone, and how much you've dreamed, or how much you want to know ahead of time," Scott explained. "And I'm afraid of what you'll think of me by the end of it.”

"I'm up to the part where I claim the Phoenix for myself and you all pretty much shit bricks. And I'm still not telling you that in another universe you're my father." Rachel replied, while stealing another french fry. They were really good and she was probably going to gain eighteen pounds, but she didn't care.

"But I'm not her. And you're not him. I have her marks and some of her powers, but I'm not her. Kitty isn't kitty, either. She's not Kate. She's this Kitty, in this world."

“You’ve got a long way to go.” He sighed, and nodded his head. “None of us are those people, but we’re enough alike that it’s impossible to peel away the layers and not see ourselves. I feel like we have chances to fix mistakes. I couldn’t save your mother, because I didn’t know in time. But maybe I can save others, maybe I can make amends with the people I’ve wronged.” How he wished he could with Hank.

“You’ll have an uphill battle convincing Kitty she’s not the same person. We’ve been trying since this all started, but she took it all in. I think because she was one of the first of us to start dreaming, and she had no one to help her through it to see straight. And I didn’t always listen properly when she was freaked out about something. It’s one thing to be told it’s not the same, and another to wake up from something traumatic and feel it happening to you.” He paused, then decided Rachel had a right to know. “She went a long time thinking she’d died in the dreams. And then she found out she hadn’t, only to die and be resurrected in one night after being stuck intangible for weeks. Things like that happen and it becomes even harder to convince someone to step back from the dreams.”

He could never confirm it, but Scott suspected Kitty had recut some of her scars back into place after that. “...honestly you should be hearing that from her.”

Rachel's eyebrows had gone up as Scott had started recounting some of Kitty's history, and only rose up higher before he was done. She'd mentioned bits and pieces of some of it, though never in detail. Still, what Scott was describing only made Rachel even more defiant about the differences between everything.

"The things carry over, sure. But we still aren't those people, no matter how hard the dreams might try to push us there. By the very nature of living a completely different life here in this world, everything is changed and we are never going to be the same. I mean, I have her marks, but I'm not The Hound. I claimed the Phoenix in my dreams, but I don't even have a fifth of that power. No matter what the dreams do to us, we'll always be some amalgam of both things. And you're right. You really shouldn't be telling me that stuff."

Scott held up a hand, “I agree with you. We’ll always be a mixture of things. The trick is trying to remember who we were before the dreams, and holding onto those pieces that are better than the people we dream we are. Or the multiples we dream we are, in some cases.”

"Right. I just need to..." Correct all the mistake that Rachel had made. Because there were plenty having to do with not realising her feelings for Kitty at all. Or ignoring them while Kitty dated this man and that man. She wrinkled her nose, "I need to talk to her. About a lot of things, apparently."

“You can talk to me, too.” And Scott left it open that that should go both ways. After all, they were family, bound by blood, both genetically and in the loss and pain given to them by the dreams.