Sandy

[notrosecolored]

Scott said he'd be there with information in five minutes. He was at the door, fully dressed and with his glasses replaced by a visor, in four. It took him that long to grab a cup of coffee and walk to the lounge where Sandy was waiting.

He got his debriefing on the move, and directly into his brain.

He felt better for having been looped in, however perfunctorily.

He walked in, and stayed standing up. Looked the guy over, and wondered why the hell this kid was the recon specialist and then moved on.

"New mutant manifested in Chicago. She's sitting in a jail cell, supposedly for her protection. We're going to get her. How long do you need to pack?"

Comments

[granularity]

Sandy stiffened, just a little, and the effect was almost as if he'd been slapped. He sat up a straighter and picked up his cards to neaten them before placing them closer to Scott on the table.

He was a realist, no doubts about that. Practical, when it came to most things. But the JSA wasn't most things. And his honor and his duty, to his legacy and to the organization, was one of the few things that could actually throw him out of his perpetual fatigue and depression into something else.

Like anger.

"My chairman gave me an assignment," was his answer, curt and 'professional' for a given value of professional.

[notrosecolored]

Scott's eyebrows both appeared over the rim of his glasses at that response, but he didn't comment on it at all, actually. "That's your business, too," he said, with an amount of blandness that would have made dry toast seem exciting.

Would he walk away from an assignment Charles gave him? Not easily. He was determined to get the kid out. Not so much because he'd been given an order these days, but because that kid needed to be helped and helping mutants was what he did.

He'd do it, though. There were days he'd walk away from the whole fucking thing, and days - more of them as he got older, as he buried more of his kids and teammates - that he questioned Charles. He believed in what they were doing, still but he wasn't quite so sure how they were doing it.

None of it would stop him helping a kid, though.

[granularity]

Sand wasn't a good little soldier, hadn't been for a long time, at least not in his own head. How he acted and how he felt, how he restrained himself and hid his pain, hid his wounds, hid the strain... Sand, frankly, was a mess in a lot of ways. A mess in a mask and there might be the answer Scott was looking for.

But arguing or making arrangements was one thing; flat walking out on an assignment was another, at least in his books. Especially something like this.

He reached over, tried to sip at his coffee again, found it was empty, breathed out a low sigh and put a hand through his hair.

"No one works me to the bone but myself," he said after a moment. "And I take my responsibilities... seriously."

And he wouldn't actually say so, but it was almost abundantly clear that a good portion of that was because he literally had nothing else.

[notrosecolored]

Scott paused again for another moment or two before asking: "Is there something about me saying it's none of my business that makes you decide to give me an explanation?"

It was dry, and it was wry, but it had happened often enough now to call a pattern and while it was interesting it struck him as a little bit strange. Not bad strange, but strange strange. Truth of the matter was, he was enough of a mess himself that there was a limit to how entangled in somebody else he'd get.

Wait, no there wasn't. There was a limit to how hard he'd push to get entangled.

[granularity]

He actually considered the question for a moment before actually let out a chuckle. Whatever he'd set off a moment before was entirely defused.

"I think it's for the same reason you're in the running for 'best friend'," he admitted with a little shrug. "You don't push. Give me enough time to think. In this case, you gave me enough time to realize I was jumping down your throat for no reason."

He let his own gaze hit the ceiling before refocusing.

"This is probably the longest I've been in a room with someone I wasn't interrogating or have known for ages for... Years. You can blame that too."

He'd forgotten how to small talk.

[notrosecolored]

"My wife is-"

Scott stopped there, backed up and tried again.

"My wife and I were together from the time we were just kids. I wasn't even social then, but she was a telepath. That made things easier. Now, I guess I'm just out of practice when it's not a mission or a debriefing."

Why was he sharing even that, he didn't know. Maybe because Sandy was sharing and reaching out and deciding he was safe with the lack of pushing. Maybe because he was lonely and could. Maybe it was just as simple as it being what seemed fair in the moment.

[granularity]

He didn't say anything at the obvious change in tense, but he did incline his head for a moment in silence. The man had probably heard enough on the subject, but he could be respectful.

He couldn't imagine how something like that could be. Wes and Dian had been... well, it made complete sense to him that they'd gone within days of each other. That was just how the universe was made. That was just right. Separating them was wrong on every level.

His own romantic adventures had consisted of exactly one person, who'd ambushed him with a kiss that had gotten him removed from his leadership position in the JSA and lost him one of his oldest friends. Looking back on it, there hadn't been much to the whole thing besides desperation: Kendra had been looking to escape the idea of being with Carter because of 'destiny' and he'd been looking for anything and anyone to hold onto. Anything or anyone to see him as worthy.

And of course, the one who'd kissed him had been destined for someone else. He'd saved the world, spent a year spread out throughout the Earth to hold it together and let it heal after Gog's attack, another prison, and he'd come back from that with hope. Hope that had, of course, eventually been dashed. Because some people were meant to be.

And he was meant to be...

Who knew.

"I never had friends my age. I was an orphan, and then I was with Wes and my aunt, and then I figured out what Wes was doing at night and joined him in his work. Then I was..." he spread his hands, "Sandy the Golden Boy, kid sidekick. The one whose hair got ruffled."

He ruffled his own hair and his eyes were anywhere but Scott's.

"Then I was the object lesson in the velvet cage."

[notrosecolored]

Scott was at that stage of grief where sympathy was more likely to break him than not. He'd never wanted it, but now he absolutely needed to not have it. He was still learning to function without her, to be able to talk about her without breaking down, but he didn't want more sympathy.

He couldn't stand more sympathy.

So silent respect and moving on in this slightly odd exchange of information felt about right.

"I don't remember much before Charles found me." Jack of Diamonds. He remembered that, but that wasn't something that was worth revisiting. "Being in the hospital, one foster home out of what must have been several." Those foster parents had died. "I was the first of us. Jean was the third. Bobby was between us and a couple of years younger . The kid sidekick and golden boy sounds a lot like him."

[granularity]

"The first and the last for the longest time, at least amongst the JSA," Sandy admitted. "What happened to me almost got Wes kicked out of the group. I'm not sure he ever really lived it down in some of their eyes. After all, I might have been his sidekick but they were all like uncles and aunts to me."

He started working on the fries then.

"Bobby is the iceman you have, isn't he?"

[notrosecolored]

You bring somebody in, you take responsibility for them. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Something happens to them, it was on you. Scott knew better than to say that out loud.

"Bobby's Iceman. The other couple who were there in the early days were Beast and Angel." Codenames. That was more useful, he realized. More public, more known.

[granularity]

Sandy carefully avoided talking about his feelings on the whole thing, because he couldn't. He couldn't because he couldn't be honest and he hated being dishonest.

"I remember reading about them. Tight work. I missed that whole... period."

He cracked something like a smile.

"Threw Captain America for a bit of a loop. I never got to work with him during the war, but he'd assumed we were all long dead. Ted..." wait, codenames were better, "Wildcat, he still likes to greet him with a 'boo'."

[notrosecolored]

Codenames were working to keep identities put together. Should have started there, but they were moving along now.

Scott gave a soft snort, and a minute shake of his head. "I'd love to tell you amusing stories about Captain America, but most of our encounters have ended with one or both of us flying through the air and occasionally through a wall or two." How could anyone not like Steve? It was a mystery, but Scott was that guy.

It wasn't the aggressive kind of hate he reserved for real bad guys, at least.

"I'm sure finding out there were some people from his past still around in his presence was startling, but I'm sure it wasn't a bad thing. I know he and Wolverine go back to the war, too."

[granularity]

Most of the people he was talking about didn't have much of a secret identity. That was the thing about being trapped outside of reality or, in his case, in a cage for years. It kind of destroyed the need for things like that. But--

"I can understand that." And really, he could. "The guy's not exactly the bending type. Thankfully, most of our interactions have been about neighborly issues. Anything else, we leave to the League."

There was also a card game that no one but those invited ever mentioned, but that was private.

"Much easier to have Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman deal with it. Diana especially. We're a little short on diplomats around the brownstone."

Jay and Alan could, of course. They could be friendly. But when push came to shove, it usually involved Alan flashing them out and the JSA doing what they felt they had to do anyway. Not the most diplomatic.

[notrosecolored]

Secret identities weren't a big thing amongst Scott's team members. It was a thing for some of the students, but that was more a matter of confidentiality than an alternate life. The kids who could pass would have the option of going back out into the world for as long as it could be given to them. Not many of them seemed to make that call. Scott didn't blame them.

"I don't much care about what the other teams out there are doing," he admitted. It was an understatement. He couldn't have cared less if he tried. He had absolutely zero fucks to give, over all. "We're pretty narrow focus. We're not even considered a hero team, super human or otherwise. The people who make those kinds of classifications consider us a terrorist organization about as often as they don't. Those are the same people who dispatch the Avengers to deal with threats above and beyond their capacity to handle themselves, and Stark seems to be a big fan of registering people with special abilities. Meanwhile there's legislation proposed every other year to register mutants like we're a bunch of dangerous dogs and the lucky kids with an extra gene are being locked up in prison cells. I've got just about all I can handle without worrying about the Justice League and Superman."

He had some, um, issues with the Avengers, the government, and Stark.

[granularity]

"JSA doesn't classify you that way," Sandy admitted quietly. "And if you look back, you'll see the government doesn't much like us either."

The JSA had been practically destroyed at one point, false charges brought against the founding members. Some of them even locked up. Carter still held a grudge, and it was one of the very few that Sandy agreed with. What it'd done to Kent, to Wes, to Terry...

"We practically had to start the whole thing up again when I got--" and there it was, almost a slip. He really wasn't used to talking so much. "When I woke up. Because they wouldn't fall in line." Because while the All-Stars had fought for their country, they'd refused to help with the witchhunts afterwards. "We're not mutant specific, or even metahuman specific, but we're firmly skeptical. Especially of any kind of registration."

Because the JSA kept their own records. And didn't trust those records to anyone BUT them. Family took care of their own. And they'd seen what had happened when other people got their hands on that kind of information.

Mr. America. His family.

The Haywoods.

They'd almost lost Tomcat and Ted hadn't even known he had a son the week before.

"I'm not making false equivalences." It wasn't the same. It couldn't be. The issue of mutants was so much bigger. "I'm just saying I wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be doing this, if Kara and Mr. Terrific and your professor didn't feel we were aligned in some sense."

[notrosecolored]

"I know."

He thought about and nearly was a much bigger smart ass about his agreement, but in the end went with the direct and simple, and hopefully the unmistakable.

"I don't have any trouble believing that or objections to working with you. There aren't many scenarios I can see putting us in direct conflict." Very, very few, actually. That was a good thing, because he could think of lots of reasons he'd conflict with lots of groups. He was good at anticipating trouble.

The near miss didn't go unnoticed, but it got the same response as his mention of Jean. Respect, but without pushing.

"I'm just..." Bitter. Disillusioned. Angry. Sick of putting kids in the ground. "Frustrated," he finally settled on.

[granularity]

"I'd be more worried if you weren't," he said with a shake of his head before popping another fry.

"It's a pretty terrible. I mean, why're we here, right? That kid couldn't be older than 12 and she's sitting in a cell underground getting treated like a goddamn monster."

And Scott might notice that Sand's voice got slightly sharper as he went along before settling out with a breath.

[notrosecolored]

"I used to be able to... I don't know, justify it or understand it a little, or something. I manifested and nearly killed a whole lot of people who weren't doing anything but going about their day. Kids have killed their parents, teachers, schoolmates when it happened."

Scott pulled one knee up, so the heel of his sneaker rested on the edge of his chair, and the light behind his glasses dimmed as he closed his eyes.

"Early on, you might've even convinced me to get on board with testing kids so they could be found before they manifested. Give them somewhere safe to learn to control it, knock out some of that fear and everything would be all right...."

He snorted. "We've got fucking hate groups storming the school gates. Go out on the street and mothers are pulling their kids away and everyone's wondering how many ways you can kill them. Nothing short of us being dead or 'cured' is going to satisfy them."

He'd... noticed the extra sharpness and cursing. Clearly, since he was talking this much.

"Including 12 year old little girls."

[granularity]

"Testing that sort of thing is like communism: great on paper, but it never seems to get implemented the way it's supposed to," was all he could say to that. "And the people legislating the whole thing have about as much understanding of reality as the folks who try and deny climate change."

He took another fry.

"And trust me, that's happening. It's like a constant itch under my skin."

[notrosecolored]

"Maybe someday they'll get their heads out of their asses and decide to worry about something worth the time and effort - and that won't fight back."

Scott wasn't prepared to join Magneto, he wasn't about to go off his rocker, not yet, but he was not the kid he had once been, either.

He stretched and stood up. "I'm gonna go ahead and suit up. Are you capable of riding in a car?" Hell, he didn't know.

[granularity]

That actually got a laugh, but it quieted quick enough as he leaned in with a conspiratorial expression.

"If you can believe it, I can actually drive one."

But he pushed himself up from the chair and picked up his hat and his coat to suit up properly.

[notrosecolored]

Scott was going to take slightly longer than that, but he was already up and grabbing his bag. He figured he could just about do this one in jeans and sneakers, but he may as well put on the uniform. It made him recognizable and sometimes that helped the kids.

He disappeared into the bathroom. "Good. I'm going to need some help on the trip back." Both in staying awake and having another adult in the car.

He was back out inside two minutes in throat to toe black leather, aside from the bright yellow X emblem on a shoulder. "Let's go save a kid."

[granularity]

Sand nodded and headed for the door, opening it for Scott, waiting for him to lead the way to the car. He didn't know which one it was, after all.

[notrosecolored]

It was a black SUV, because of course it was.

It didn't take long to get to the jail, park the SUV in a dark ally where it would go unnoticed for at least a while and to head in. He expected this to be a case of walking in, introducing himself to a kid and walking out again with minimal scuffle.

That wasn't what happened.

It wasn't a twelve year old that was waiting for them. It wasn't even law enforcement, though Stryker must have had one of his fanatical Purifier in the agency, though, because that was exactly who and what was waiting for them.

The suggestion of a trap was never too far from Scott's mind, but this had seemed routine enough that he was blindsided. His reaction times were fast, which meant he was able to say 'Trap', shift gears and start fighting fast, but that wasn't going to be enough. It wasn't going to be enough because he had walked into an underground, confined space and was outnumbered. If he even tried to use his optic blasts, he was going to bring the building down on top of himself.

They were apparently prepared for Sandy, or just wanted him out of the way fast, because it was Sandy who got hit first. There was some kind of bang that literally blew him apart. After that it was just chaos and close quarters righting.

The last thing he remembered before it all went dark was a loud crack, a flash of bright light behind his eyes and the taste of blood in his mouth when something a hell of a lot harder than even his skull impacted with the back of his head.

[granularity]

The thing about sand was that it gets everywhere.

The thing about Sand is that he really didn't like getting blown up, but he disliked his professional work being undermined even more. The fact that it had resulted in them losing track of a young girl (did she even exist?) and his new 'friend' getting knocked over the head just made him extra irritated.

But while his instinct initially was to do a bit of knocking around given their underground location, he knew that the most important thing was to find out where the issue in communication, either intercepted or false, was originating. And that meant letting the majority of his granules hide amongst the folds and equipment of the men who'd attacked them to 'follow' where they were taking Scott.

...hopefully Scott wouldn't be upset about this choice.