[ it's a beautifully decorated room in a dingy house. a man, a woman, a glowing man, and a golden boy stand there. the man with claws and the glowing man are fighting, going toe to toe. exchanging banter. the boy stands off to the side with grit teeth and clenched teeth.
but your friend isn't here. the glowing mutant says to the clawed man. ]
I'm here. [ the boy says. the glowing mutant turns to the boy as if he's just remembered he existed. the boy steps out from where he'd been hiding in the shadows, a coward, terrified to hurt anyone and reeling from what felt when you touched the suffering this mutant has inflicted on others. you do this for one reason and one reason alone.
while he was gloating, while he was bragging, you realized you hate him. ]
Those people... I've never seen such trust in anyone as I saw they had for you. [ your eyes shut tightly, heart pounding with fury. the words come out hard, and fast, and mostly through your teeth. ] A parasite who made them pay him to kill them all.
[ your gaze lifts to the target. he regrows the hand that the clawed man - wolverine - just sliced off and you feel the rhyme and reason of his power, the beat of his heart and the swell of his lungs. you understand his physiology as it rebuilds itself, and there's a sudden sense of calm trickling through your mind as pieces slot into place. ]
I understand now.
[ it's nuclear radiation. he's a nuclear reactor. promising a miracle cure only to impart suffering and death. the people down below, the ones he just sucked dry and killed, had come here seeking solace. begging for their powers back. people like david, and sofia, people who had loved their bodies and their gifts and had it ripped from them. its all around you, boiling your skin, your blood, your bone marrow. you can feel the way it rots your cells, like it rotted their cells. your fist curls and the mutant begins to grow larger, and larger, and larger as he begins to bloat and swell, unable to control what is happening to him. his expression twists with pain because this isn't him.
this is you. ]
I understand where rage comes from. And what it feels like to want to kill. [ you aren't talking to him. you look to your teacher, your mentor, and you can see there's something dawning on his face. fear? horror? you've never known him to be afraid of anything. ] To want to stop a person forever [ kid, he's nuclear. you let him blow and everybody dies for miles. wolverine interjects, but you continue on like you didn't hear him speak. ] but then it stops.
[ meltdown's head smashes through the roof. his body collapses the building under it. he can't move an inch, isn't proportionally strong, only suffering as his body grows too large to sustain itself. you watch without feeling a thing.
kid, snap out of it. this ain't you, think about what's about to happen. wolverine's trying for a gentler tone, a paternal voice of reason, and you hate it. he grabs hold of your wrist. ]
Take your hand off me.
[ you barely even shift and he does, dropping like a stone as your power courses through him. you're still gold, bright shiny gold, when you should be lead. you don't notice. ]
Can you feel it? [ you ask. his hand is swollen to three times its normal size, tumor ridden and oozing blood. unlike meltdown, you don't crackle with untold power. yours is subtle, nuanced, and precise. ] That's what I feel when I heal them. That's what they've got inside of them.
[ your voice is flat. cold. you don't even recognize it as your own, barely register you're saying these words. your eyes swing to the massive mutant in front of you, the one radiating all of this power. the one you're making radiate all this power. it's intoxicating, a terrible thrill. you like it, you like it, you like it. kid, wolverine hisses between grit teeth. there's something wrong with your head. this cancer they've got inside them, it's made you sick.
you want to hurt him. it'd be so easy to hurt him. this feels good, this power. being the strongest person in the room and able to prove it, able to crush someone underneath your thumb without any effort at all. he reaches out with his other hand, grabbing your wrist again.
i'm sorry, the woman whispers at just the same moment, and breaks for the door. you let your power flare and wolverine stumbles back, hitting the ground, and that same arm snaps out to grab her instead. your grip is iron around her wrist, tighter than it needs to be.
you're going to kill her.
the way she'd sold those people out, the way she'd profited off their agony, she deserves it. there are so few mutants left, and you'd lost so many to senseless hatred. to find more suffering due to one of your own kinds greed? it's sickening. you hate her and you're going to kill here, there's not a question in your mind about it. ]
You don't get to escape this. [ you say, and you're still calm, so calm, but the rage is starting to leak into your voice as her cowardice irritates you. it isn't right that she gets to live when the people she'd lured here all suffered and died, slowly. she got her gifts back, got an extension on her life because of what they gave up, and that isn't fair. you can right this wrong, you can
I know that look on your face, the giant mutant rumbles from behind you, his voice an approving thunderclap. he's a giant now, something out of legend, and you're the prized golden goose leading him to his death. he's slowly being crushed under his own body weight, a beached whale. The power of death. Total power over everyone around you.
you feel her trembling in your grip. see the way she presses her lips together to try to stave off tears.
It is glorious. he says, and your eyes lift to his face. you think, maybe, if he had the dexterity to he would be smiling. there's something awed in his tone, something you don't like. something that says you and i are the same that makes your skin crawl with every new word said. I never thought I would see it in someone else.
the world snaps back into focus. the reality of what you're doing suddenly hits you.
you let her go as if you're the one whose being burned. ]
I don't want it.
[ she hits the ground, the strength gone out of her. instead you turn to him. a bolt of energy burns your cheek, but the second you register the pain it's gone. your hand curls to a fist, you don't even reach out to touch him, you just watch him curl into himself, shrinking down as the pain wracks him. you rob him of his powers, of his strength, and you stare emotionlessly down at his contemptible husk.
what... did you do with my power? he rasps. dying, but not dead. you could make him dead, but you don't want to, though you understand that this is just a technicality. this isn't the first time you've done this, primed someone to meet their end and then stepped aside as someone dealt the finishing blow.
you understand it will not be the last time you preform this role, either. that there's no point in fighting it anymore. this is reality, this is your reality.
this is your childhoods end. this moment, when you realize that all you've been doing is futile. healing the people that come after you, trying to kill you. pleading for reason when wolverine shows his claws, begging for people to stop before things come to this. it was a dream, a childish fucking fantasy, and you're wide awake now.
meltdown lies before you. a shriveled old man in a decaying body. pathetic.
but you don't want to be like him. you don't want to be like anyone in this room. ]
I gave it all back. All that sickness that you spread, it's now yours.
[ wolverine is back to his feet. you don't know if you fixed him or not, your eyes are on the man shaking at your feet. his eyes are wide and wild, a scared animal. kid. you coulda killed me back there. there ain't ten men in the world i'd say that to.
meltdown reaches towards you. wordlessly begging for mercy. you shut your eyes. you hear wolverine walk past you and towards where he lies prone. ]
I don't want to be a killer again.
[ and then you turn away.
you aren't deaf to the distinct snkt of claws extending and slashing through flesh, one fluid motion, but you don't look as they do. you take stock of your surroundings. remember the feeling of the people below - all dead, dead before their bodies were crushed underneath your little stunt, you felt their lives blink out and feel a hole now. the building is on fire - you're not sure when that happened, you feel shaky and out of sorts. wolverine doesn't try to touch you again and you think that's for the best.
once outside the building, you hear the woman say that she doesn't deserve to live. she'll stay here, on this unsalvagable and irradiated land, and die with it.
you don't tell her not to. you still think she deserves it.
we all got shame for the things we done. and i got more than most. wolverine says, his eyes are on the fire. ]
And yet you keep on. How do you keep on going, knowing what you've done?
[ he glances back towards you.
i don't know any better'n you what makes me tick. i fight every day with what i've got inside. and every night, i go to bed regretting all the things i done wrong in this world.
you hear the woman sob. wolverine slides his mask over his face again and steps around you, towards the motorcycles you'd ridden here on, yours is gaudily marked with an X and his something sleek and dangerous looking. it will be a long ride home.
and when i wake up, i decide today to try and do things right. ]
It's been more days than he's kept count of since Logan started loosing his grip on which memories actually belong to him and which he's unwittingly lost. Even now there are some things missing. Some things that come back at to him at the strangest times. A sound or a sight or a smell that reminds him of something he didn't know he forgot. But it doesn't take more than a moment to know that this one is his.
Not just his, of course.
That whole town smelled of death and desperation. The sour dry stink of the Salton Sea. His nose itches by memory alone.
"What the fuck was I thinkin'? Lettin' you tag along," he mutters, unaware that maybe this isn't his own recounting of events. Or that he's no more alone there now than he was before.
Not living it, just watching as they pick their way across the barren landscape. Smelling and feeling the death that waits for them in that shack. Watching himself - a younger, far more frightened man - try to keep pace with his teacher. Unprepared for what they'd find inside. For what they'd do to other mutants, mutants suffering from the after-effects of M-Day.
He remembers being that compassionate kid. Desperate to save everyone. Quietly dropping a mutant three times his size and trying not to look as Logan ends him, like that made him any better or less guilty for his part in it.
He doesn't notice Logan at first. The real Logan. By now this memory sharing is old hat. He's used to this. Being alone and then not, being at the kitchen table and then being in someone else's mind.
"I asked to," he says. "I thought it would help."
He guesses it sort of did. If this hadn't happened, if he hadn't been here and learned these terrible lessons, that day on Genosha - he wouldn't have had what it took to end Kevin Ford.
When Josh, the real Josh, speaks Logan looks him up and down a long moment. Not only did he not realize he was less than alone here, but it's increasingly difficult to know who's who in these places. Figments of the imagination and real people have started to seem interchangeable. Rarely does he know anymore if he's talking to someone or just to himself.
"I coulda left it at no," he says. What that might have meant for what happened out there doesn't seem to factor into his regrets.
"Mine, I think. Kinda hard to tell since we were both there."
He crosses his arms, looking at the carnage happening before them. Significantly less undone by it than his younger self. This isn't the worst thing he's ever seen. It isn't the worst loss he's ever felt.
"Anyway, it's not like this was the worst mission we went on. It was just, like, the only one I actually volunteered for."
When Logan watches it all play out again, his focus isn't split the way it was in the moment. Trying to keep his eyes on all the players at once while picking himself back up off the ground. Now he just watches Josh. Like he could glean a better understanding of what the boy decided for himself in those moments.
"You said you wanted to watch me tick. Did you get what you came along for?"
"I did," he says after a moment, lips pressing to a thin line. "I wanted to... to see the absolute worst you could be, and then figure out how to like... not go there."
The memory flickers at the edges. The sound of waves overlaps the scene they're watching before it settles again.
"Except I kinda screwed up the last part. So I'm basically certified in doing bad things, and then feeling bad about them, and then trying to be less shitty, but being shitty anyway." He shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets, slouching a little. "I can also drink you under the table now, so like, there's that too I guess."
There's some consolation in knowing this probably wasn't that— the worst he could be. It was messy, to say the least of it. But he's got regrets that run deeper still.
Nevertheless, knowing his life's best purpose is to serve as a warning always comes as both unsurprising and acerbic enough to eat away at whatever keeps the nihilism at bay.
"So two of my least popular habits," he snorts. "I wouldn't be too proud of that." It's a tease though. Not a scolding. In the casual sort of way he talks to anyone he feels like he's on equal footing with. Not kids. Not students. Not people who are supposed to be in his care. Josh isn't any of those things now. Not any more, and maybe this right here was where that connection severed anyway.
"Welcome to the club," he ventures to say. Still not sure if it's him Josh resents for finding himself a part of it at all. "I'm trying to think of somethin' reassuring to say here, bub. But I can't come up with anything that wouldn't just sound like... You know. A lot of horseshit."
"It's all kinda horseshit anyway." Watching young Josh try to heal the dying and persist despite the futility of it. He could probably do it now, he thinks, probably pretty easily.
It doesn't feel right to call Kurt anything other than 'Mr Wagner' or Jean-Paul anything but "Mr Beaubier". But Logan has long since stopped being a teacher, or a mentor, he wasn't really one to begin with. However much Josh wanted him to be him once upon a time.
"Yer from the same place —err, time, as David right?" he asks. His already narrow eyes squinting curiously. "He doesn't seem so cynical about things. So how come you are? Ain'tchu one of The Five?"
He sighs to see these things play out again that woman sobbing as she tries to pull away from all this. It takes him a moment to gather his thoughts into something he can articulate. "Because nothing felt right. Not just this. I knew you shouldn'ta been there. With me of all people. But everything. With the X-Men. With Scott. Things were gettin' outta hand but nobody knew what they wanted things to be like. Just what they didn't want."
"And then you showed up here. Lookin' to follow me into the fire. And I just knew. We'd already failed you. I'd already failed you."
He cuts himself off, biting off the last of his remark. That this - this was where they'd decided they'd failed him? His hands ball to fists in his pockets. There he is in all his terrible glory, about to damn a woman - and himself, and Logan - to a miserable death in a childish temper tantrum.
And here he is about to have one.
He lets out a long, ragged breath. Trying to release the tension. His hands slowly uncurl and Josh - allows himself a moment to try to pull his thoughts together. He thought he was over this. All of it. He'd tried so hard to finally let it go.
"I died," he says finally. "And they buried me. And then I came back all kinds of messed up."
That kind of messed up, maybe. Angry, scared, confused - but not so furious that they track down their killer just to show him what he'd messed with. Meltdown rumbles his approval and Josh feels each word like a weight.
"No," he says again. And then after a moment. "Maybe about what was gonna happen to you." Helping kids grapple with their ever changing powers was never his job after all. Unless their power was stabbing things.
"You mean getting used up and tossed out? That was already happening."
The bitterness bleeds through more than he means it to. Josh squints thoughtfully at the memory.
"Nah. And, like, honestly? Making my depowered friends fight to the death so we can bring them back with their powers isn't exactly my idea of paradise... not when I could just, like... do it right now."
People like us. It doesn't bother him as much as it used to. Being on the same wave length as people like Logan. He gets the necessity of it, even if he still hates it.
"When they found me after I dug myself outta the ground, I was on Genosha. Just, like, torturing the dude that killed me. Killing him and bringing him back over, and over, and over again. Dunno how long I was there, either."
He shrugs, drawing his hands out of his pocket to rub at his elbow. Wolverine ends Meltdown and they all make their way out across the corpses left in their wake.
"Even Sabretooth thought that was pretty fucked up. That seems pretty, y'know, definitively supervillainy."
He's glad at least to remember that he did it in the end. He finished the job. If he did anything worthwhile here it was maybe just helping to keep Foley's conscience clean a little longer.
"Creed's just likes to talk a lotta shit. Especially if he thinks it's gonna stick in someone's head." He snorts. "Yer not a villain, Josh," he says gently. Even if that means fuck all coming from him. "Control is just... a fragile thing."
The part that sticks with Josh isn't the snkit of Logan's claws cleaving through Meltdown's withered frame. Maybe it should be, it's what comes after.
It's asking in a small voice how he does it.
It's the answer that he kept close to his heart, a mantra to try even when he didn't much feel like trying. Logan's gentle voice is maybe what he'd wanted to hear then, reassurance that he wasn't all bad. That the worst of his powers isn't the worst of him.
"I like hurting people, Logan. I like the power I have over them. Meltdown was right."
That part sticks in Logan's head too. Because he knew it was coming and knew he'd have no satisfying answer.
"Course you do. Everybody does. Doesn't make you monster. Might make you more human than anything." Even now it doesn't seem right, or at least wise, to try bonding over that. To say hey, it's ok I like hurting people too.
"Letting it become everything. Letting it consume you. That's the only choice you got in the matter."
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timeasmymeasure
FEB 2021 PROMPTS
Date: 2021-02-18 12:14 am (UTC)for logan. cw radiation sickness, death, cancer mention
Date: 2021-02-18 12:15 am (UTC)but your friend isn't here. the glowing mutant says to the clawed man. ]
I'm here. [ the boy says. the glowing mutant turns to the boy as if he's just remembered he existed. the boy steps out from where he'd been hiding in the shadows, a coward, terrified to hurt anyone and reeling from what felt when you touched the suffering this mutant has inflicted on others. you do this for one reason and one reason alone.
while he was gloating, while he was bragging, you realized you hate him. ]
Those people... I've never seen such trust in anyone as I saw they had for you. [ your eyes shut tightly, heart pounding with fury. the words come out hard, and fast, and mostly through your teeth. ] A parasite who made them pay him to kill them all.
[ your gaze lifts to the target. he regrows the hand that the clawed man - wolverine - just sliced off and you feel the rhyme and reason of his power, the beat of his heart and the swell of his lungs. you understand his physiology as it rebuilds itself, and there's a sudden sense of calm trickling through your mind as pieces slot into place. ]
I understand now.
[ it's nuclear radiation. he's a nuclear reactor. promising a miracle cure only to impart suffering and death. the people down below, the ones he just sucked dry and killed, had come here seeking solace. begging for their powers back. people like david, and sofia, people who had loved their bodies and their gifts and had it ripped from them. its all around you, boiling your skin, your blood, your bone marrow. you can feel the way it rots your cells, like it rotted their cells. your fist curls and the mutant begins to grow larger, and larger, and larger as he begins to bloat and swell, unable to control what is happening to him. his expression twists with pain because this isn't him.
this is you. ]
I understand where rage comes from. And what it feels like to want to kill. [ you aren't talking to him. you look to your teacher, your mentor, and you can see there's something dawning on his face. fear? horror? you've never known him to be afraid of anything. ] To want to stop a person forever [ kid, he's nuclear. you let him blow and everybody dies for miles. wolverine interjects, but you continue on like you didn't hear him speak. ] but then it stops.
[ meltdown's head smashes through the roof. his body collapses the building under it. he can't move an inch, isn't proportionally strong, only suffering as his body grows too large to sustain itself. you watch without feeling a thing.
kid, snap out of it. this ain't you, think about what's about to happen. wolverine's trying for a gentler tone, a paternal voice of reason, and you hate it. he grabs hold of your wrist. ]
Take your hand off me.
[ you barely even shift and he does, dropping like a stone as your power courses through him. you're still gold, bright shiny gold, when you should be lead. you don't notice. ]
Can you feel it? [ you ask. his hand is swollen to three times its normal size, tumor ridden and oozing blood. unlike meltdown, you don't crackle with untold power. yours is subtle, nuanced, and precise. ] That's what I feel when I heal them. That's what they've got inside of them.
[ your voice is flat. cold. you don't even recognize it as your own, barely register you're saying these words. your eyes swing to the massive mutant in front of you, the one radiating all of this power. the one you're making radiate all this power. it's intoxicating, a terrible thrill. you like it, you like it, you like it. kid, wolverine hisses between grit teeth. there's something wrong with your head. this cancer they've got inside them, it's made you sick.
you want to hurt him. it'd be so easy to hurt him. this feels good, this power. being the strongest person in the room and able to prove it, able to crush someone underneath your thumb without any effort at all. he reaches out with his other hand, grabbing your wrist again.
i'm sorry, the woman whispers at just the same moment, and breaks for the door. you let your power flare and wolverine stumbles back, hitting the ground, and that same arm snaps out to grab her instead. your grip is iron around her wrist, tighter than it needs to be.
you're going to kill her.
the way she'd sold those people out, the way she'd profited off their agony, she deserves it. there are so few mutants left, and you'd lost so many to senseless hatred. to find more suffering due to one of your own kinds greed? it's sickening. you hate her and you're going to kill here, there's not a question in your mind about it. ]
You don't get to escape this. [ you say, and you're still calm, so calm, but the rage is starting to leak into your voice as her cowardice irritates you. it isn't right that she gets to live when the people she'd lured here all suffered and died, slowly. she got her gifts back, got an extension on her life because of what they gave up, and that isn't fair. you can right this wrong, you can
I know that look on your face, the giant mutant rumbles from behind you, his voice an approving thunderclap. he's a giant now, something out of legend, and you're the prized golden goose leading him to his death. he's slowly being crushed under his own body weight, a beached whale. The power of death. Total power over everyone around you.
you feel her trembling in your grip. see the way she presses her lips together to try to stave off tears.
It is glorious. he says, and your eyes lift to his face. you think, maybe, if he had the dexterity to he would be smiling. there's something awed in his tone, something you don't like. something that says you and i are the same that makes your skin crawl with every new word said. I never thought I would see it in someone else.
the world snaps back into focus. the reality of what you're doing suddenly hits you.
you let her go as if you're the one whose being burned. ]
I don't want it.
[ she hits the ground, the strength gone out of her. instead you turn to him. a bolt of energy burns your cheek, but the second you register the pain it's gone. your hand curls to a fist, you don't even reach out to touch him, you just watch him curl into himself, shrinking down as the pain wracks him. you rob him of his powers, of his strength, and you stare emotionlessly down at his contemptible husk.
what... did you do with my power? he rasps. dying, but not dead. you could make him dead, but you don't want to, though you understand that this is just a technicality. this isn't the first time you've done this, primed someone to meet their end and then stepped aside as someone dealt the finishing blow.
you understand it will not be the last time you preform this role, either. that there's no point in fighting it anymore. this is reality, this is your reality.
this is your childhoods end. this moment, when you realize that all you've been doing is futile. healing the people that come after you, trying to kill you. pleading for reason when wolverine shows his claws, begging for people to stop before things come to this. it was a dream, a childish fucking fantasy, and you're wide awake now.
meltdown lies before you. a shriveled old man in a decaying body. pathetic.
but you don't want to be like him. you don't want to be like anyone in this room. ]
I gave it all back. All that sickness that you spread, it's now yours.
[ wolverine is back to his feet. you don't know if you fixed him or not, your eyes are on the man shaking at your feet. his eyes are wide and wild, a scared animal. kid. you coulda killed me back there. there ain't ten men in the world i'd say that to.
meltdown reaches towards you. wordlessly begging for mercy. you shut your eyes. you hear wolverine walk past you and towards where he lies prone. ]
I don't want to be a killer again.
[ and then you turn away.
you aren't deaf to the distinct snkt of claws extending and slashing through flesh, one fluid motion, but you don't look as they do. you take stock of your surroundings. remember the feeling of the people below - all dead, dead before their bodies were crushed underneath your little stunt, you felt their lives blink out and feel a hole now. the building is on fire - you're not sure when that happened, you feel shaky and out of sorts. wolverine doesn't try to touch you again and you think that's for the best.
once outside the building, you hear the woman say that she doesn't deserve to live. she'll stay here, on this unsalvagable and irradiated land, and die with it.
you don't tell her not to. you still think she deserves it.
we all got shame for the things we done. and i got more than most. wolverine says, his eyes are on the fire. ]
And yet you keep on. How do you keep on going, knowing what you've done?
[ he glances back towards you.
i don't know any better'n you what makes me tick. i fight every day with what i've got inside. and every night, i go to bed regretting all the things i done wrong in this world.
you hear the woman sob. wolverine slides his mask over his face again and steps around you, towards the motorcycles you'd ridden here on, yours is gaudily marked with an X and his something sleek and dangerous looking. it will be a long ride home.
and when i wake up, i decide today to try and do things right. ]
no subject
Date: 2021-02-18 01:55 am (UTC)Not just his, of course.
That whole town smelled of death and desperation. The sour dry stink of the Salton Sea. His nose itches by memory alone.
"What the fuck was I thinkin'? Lettin' you tag along," he mutters, unaware that maybe this isn't his own recounting of events. Or that he's no more alone there now than he was before.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-18 05:44 pm (UTC)Not living it, just watching as they pick their way across the barren landscape. Smelling and feeling the death that waits for them in that shack. Watching himself - a younger, far more frightened man - try to keep pace with his teacher. Unprepared for what they'd find inside. For what they'd do to other mutants, mutants suffering from the after-effects of M-Day.
He remembers being that compassionate kid. Desperate to save everyone. Quietly dropping a mutant three times his size and trying not to look as Logan ends him, like that made him any better or less guilty for his part in it.
He doesn't notice Logan at first. The real Logan. By now this memory sharing is old hat. He's used to this. Being alone and then not, being at the kitchen table and then being in someone else's mind.
"I asked to," he says. "I thought it would help."
He guesses it sort of did. If this hadn't happened, if he hadn't been here and learned these terrible lessons, that day on Genosha - he wouldn't have had what it took to end Kevin Ford.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-18 06:16 pm (UTC)"I coulda left it at no," he says. What that might have meant for what happened out there doesn't seem to factor into his regrets.
"Is this your memory or mine?"
no subject
Date: 2021-02-18 06:35 pm (UTC)He crosses his arms, looking at the carnage happening before them. Significantly less undone by it than his younger self. This isn't the worst thing he's ever seen. It isn't the worst loss he's ever felt.
"Anyway, it's not like this was the worst mission we went on. It was just, like, the only one I actually volunteered for."
no subject
Date: 2021-02-18 06:53 pm (UTC)When Logan watches it all play out again, his focus isn't split the way it was in the moment. Trying to keep his eyes on all the players at once while picking himself back up off the ground. Now he just watches Josh. Like he could glean a better understanding of what the boy decided for himself in those moments.
"You said you wanted to watch me tick. Did you get what you came along for?"
no subject
Date: 2021-02-18 07:42 pm (UTC)The memory flickers at the edges. The sound of waves overlaps the scene they're watching before it settles again.
"Except I kinda screwed up the last part. So I'm basically certified in doing bad things, and then feeling bad about them, and then trying to be less shitty, but being shitty anyway." He shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets, slouching a little. "I can also drink you under the table now, so like, there's that too I guess."
no subject
Date: 2021-02-18 08:14 pm (UTC)Nevertheless, knowing his life's best purpose is to serve as a warning always comes as both unsurprising and acerbic enough to eat away at whatever keeps the nihilism at bay.
"So two of my least popular habits," he snorts. "I wouldn't be too proud of that." It's a tease though. Not a scolding. In the casual sort of way he talks to anyone he feels like he's on equal footing with. Not kids. Not students. Not people who are supposed to be in his care. Josh isn't any of those things now. Not any more, and maybe this right here was where that connection severed anyway.
"Welcome to the club," he ventures to say. Still not sure if it's him Josh resents for finding himself a part of it at all. "I'm trying to think of somethin' reassuring to say here, bub. But I can't come up with anything that wouldn't just sound like... You know. A lot of horseshit."
no subject
Date: 2021-02-18 08:20 pm (UTC)It doesn't feel right to call Kurt anything other than 'Mr Wagner' or Jean-Paul anything but "Mr Beaubier". But Logan has long since stopped being a teacher, or a mentor, he wasn't really one to begin with. However much Josh wanted him to be him once upon a time.
"You think about this a lot? Why?"
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Date: 2021-02-18 08:53 pm (UTC)He sighs to see these things play out again that woman sobbing as she tries to pull away from all this. It takes him a moment to gather his thoughts into something he can articulate. "Because nothing felt right. Not just this. I knew you shouldn'ta been there. With me of all people. But everything. With the X-Men. With Scott. Things were gettin' outta hand but nobody knew what they wanted things to be like. Just what they didn't want."
"And then you showed up here. Lookin' to follow me into the fire. And I just knew. We'd already failed you. I'd already failed you."
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Date: 2021-02-18 09:21 pm (UTC)He cuts himself off, biting off the last of his remark. That this - this was where they'd decided they'd failed him? His hands ball to fists in his pockets. There he is in all his terrible glory, about to damn a woman - and himself, and Logan - to a miserable death in a childish temper tantrum.
And here he is about to have one.
He lets out a long, ragged breath. Trying to release the tension. His hands slowly uncurl and Josh - allows himself a moment to try to pull his thoughts together. He thought he was over this. All of it. He'd tried so hard to finally let it go.
"I died," he says finally. "And they buried me. And then I came back all kinds of messed up."
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Date: 2021-02-18 09:30 pm (UTC)"I know," he says. "Everyone comes back messed up."
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Date: 2021-02-18 09:40 pm (UTC)"Were you scared?"
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Date: 2021-02-18 09:43 pm (UTC)He looks back at the memory unfolding. Meltdown looming over them while Logan coils under the weight of that sickness.
"Of dying there? No."
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Date: 2021-02-18 09:52 pm (UTC)What he could've done. The damage he could do.
"I'm not from where David's from. I was with the Brotherhood, then I was with the Hellfire club.
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Date: 2021-02-18 10:02 pm (UTC)"Oh. I thought you'd been there too. Kraoka."
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Date: 2021-02-18 10:06 pm (UTC)The bitterness bleeds through more than he means it to. Josh squints thoughtfully at the memory.
"Nah. And, like, honestly? Making my depowered friends fight to the death so we can bring them back with their powers isn't exactly my idea of paradise... not when I could just, like... do it right now."
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Date: 2021-02-18 11:05 pm (UTC)"That's what happens with people like us, bub. We're put to use. 'Til we're not useful."
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Date: 2021-02-19 12:19 am (UTC)He shifts his weight a little.
"That makes supervillains out of people, y'know."
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Date: 2021-02-19 12:34 am (UTC)"Once in a while. Yeah. It does," he nods. It's certainly been enough to make him whatever he is. "But most of the time it just grinds people down."
"Is that what you think about? Bein' a supervillain?"
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Date: 2021-02-19 12:40 am (UTC)He shrugs, drawing his hands out of his pocket to rub at his elbow. Wolverine ends Meltdown and they all make their way out across the corpses left in their wake.
"Even Sabretooth thought that was pretty fucked up. That seems pretty, y'know, definitively supervillainy."
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Date: 2021-02-19 12:58 am (UTC)"Creed's just likes to talk a lotta shit. Especially if he thinks it's gonna stick in someone's head." He snorts. "Yer not a villain, Josh," he says gently. Even if that means fuck all coming from him. "Control is just... a fragile thing."
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Date: 2021-02-19 01:04 am (UTC)It's asking in a small voice how he does it.
It's the answer that he kept close to his heart, a mantra to try even when he didn't much feel like trying. Logan's gentle voice is maybe what he'd wanted to hear then, reassurance that he wasn't all bad. That the worst of his powers isn't the worst of him.
"I like hurting people, Logan. I like the power I have over them. Meltdown was right."
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Date: 2021-02-19 01:35 am (UTC)"Course you do. Everybody does. Doesn't make you monster. Might make you more human than anything." Even now it doesn't seem right, or at least wise, to try bonding over that. To say hey, it's ok I like hurting people too.
"Letting it become everything. Letting it consume you. That's the only choice you got in the matter."
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