ic Save Tonight [IC]

[Gizmo]

Replacing the headphones in his pocket, Trevor idly straightened his jacket as a parade of Claremont students sprinted past, keeping any annoyance at he interruption he may have felt from his expression. "Think there's anything we could be doing to help?" he asked Erin. "Somebody needs to track Gibbons down, but... should probably be someone with a little distance from all of this." The lanky teen honestly would have been happier to go for that coffee, but thinking of the architect of evening's chaos sitting in smug satisfaction made his eye reflexively narrow.

[Electra]

"I'd like to punch her in the nose," Erin admitted, "which probably means I'm not the one to go after her. And just look where trying to handle her on our own has gotten us so far." She looked ruefully back in the direction of the ballroom. "I'm not even sure how, but I know this has something to do with the stunt she pulled last fall when she spread the rumor Alex was pregnant with Mark's baby. That was just obnoxious, but this is illegal. I kind of hate it, but I think we're better off dumping the whole thing on the headmaster and letting him sort it out. Leet will probably spill his guts about everything the second he's pressed on it. Knowing the effect Daisy has on men, I'm thinking he was probably just a dorky pawn." And knowing Daisy's effect on guys, Erin didn't think it was probably wise for Trevor to hunt her down, but she didn't want to say that aloud and make it sound like a dare or something.

[Cyroa]

James stood by the window and turned away from Eddie's sobbing. He watched Alex move to comfort him despite all that had happened and all that she was coping with. You're a far better person than I, he thought at her. He'd known that before of course but this certainly helped bring it into focus. I think I should go. If you or the others need me or need to yell at me or something, call and I'll always be there, he thought heavily. He had no intention of going back out there though. He reached for his comm, and unless stopped, he'd be transporting back to his ship in a moment.

[Gizmo]

Trevor gave Erin a faint, rueful smile as he stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "And since I am a man..." he filled in the implied concern. The lean youth tilted his head to one side briefly in acknowledgment of the potential risk before dryly adding, "Like to see you punch her in the nose, honestly, so there's that, too. Well. Not like Alex can't contact us if she needs help." He kept to himself that turning Daisy over to the proper authorities wouldn't do much to prevent him from confronting her more personally should he later deem in necessary. A dark part of him enjoyed the idea of the manipulative bully getting a taste of real, undiluted fear. Still, he had better things to concern himself with at the moment. "Want to get out of here?"

[Electra]

"Definitely," Erin replied with feeling. "Just let me check in with Alex to make sure things are okay. I don't want to leave her hanging, and it looks like just about everybody else has taken off." She walked to the door of the office and knocked twice, then stuck her head in the door. Eddie was kind of a mess, but at least he wasn't trying to punch anyone anymore. Erin ignored him for the moment and spoke to Alex. "You doing okay in here?" she asked Alex. "Anything we can do to help out?"

[alderwitch]

"You still have your Young Freedom beacon, you can use that to go see him if that's what you want to do. I'm not taking it away from you," Alex said gently as she stepped back to release him, knowing that he had to walk the rest of this path by himself. "Although, he might not be easy to find. Its summer and a weekend. Do what you need to do, Eddie."

She turned to Erin, her thought following James as he transported back to his ship more weary than her speaking voice was as it was shaded by the emotion she kept quietly contained, 'I really am no better or worse than anyone else, James. We all have our moments of rising above and falling below. I'm here if you need to talk.'

Then she finished her pivot to Erin, her wide eyes dark and sober in her pale face. "No, thank you, though. I will find Daisy and speak with her about stopping this nonsense, but not tonight. I'm sure that Zoe and Mike will need me and..." Alex's shoulders sagged, her fingertips going to the bridge of her nose for a moment before she straightened resolutely as she pushed down the bubble of exhaustion to be dealt with later. "I should email Summers myself about things."

[quotemyname]

"Yea," Eddie replied, "I guess I can." He quickly dug the beacon out of his pocket and held it in front of him. Taking one last look up at Alex, he resolved, "I'm going to get this over with before I lose my nerve. There's only one place I can think of him being anyway." With that, Eddie clicked the button on the teleport beacon.

A few moments later, Eddie appeared in the halls of Claremont outside the headmasters office. Not sure what to expect, or even if the man would be here at this hour, Eddie knocked on the door and waited...

[Electra]

Erin stepped into the room as Eddie disappeared, crossing to Alex and putting a hand on her shoulder. The gesture was a little awkward, but heartfelt. "You don't have to do this all tonight, or all by yourself," she advised. "This is why you hired a staff in the first place, right? You need to be able to delegate. Eddie's going to tell the headmaster what happened, if he doesn't know already. Trevor and I can clear out anyone who's straggling in the ballroom, and the cleaning staff can take care of the rest. Call Doctor Marquez to talk to Zoe, and you and Mike go somewhere and unwind a little. You need that more than another confrontation, right?"

[Gizmo]

Trevor, leaning against the wall just inside the doorway to the office with his arms crossed, nodded lightly in silent affirmation of Erin's suggestion. It would be a simple matter to clear out the ballroom, and it might alleviate some of the uselessness he'd been feeling since the fighting broke out. If nothing else, manners demanded that their hostess not be left to deal with everything on her own.

[alderwitch]

Alex hesitated and then nodded, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her fingertips lightly as she considered her options, "If the two of you could take over here and make certain that the ballroom is cleared out and nothing else goes wrong, I would very much appreciate it. I believe that Mike's going to a diner with Zoe and perhaps I will meet them there. I can send an email from my phone on the way that will brief enough. Thank you both."

[Electra]

"We'll take care of it," Erin promised. Stepping closer, she dropped her voice and turned her body to exclude Trevor from the conversation for a moment. "Alex..." she began, then stopped, looking for the right words. "I know you want to help Zoe, but you can't be her mom. Her mom is dead, and you being alive doesn't change that. Trying to be parents for her is just going to make everything more complicated. And... and I know I'd resent it if Clarissa tried to pretend she was my mom just because she's technically the same person. I think you should let Dr. Marquez help her now." Erin shut her mouth and pursed her lips, obviously not sure whether she should've said anything. "Anyway, we'll take care of the ballroom," she finally added.

[alderwitch]

Alex made a wry little laugh that sounded too old and too broken to be any noise that should ever come from Alex's lips and turned towards the large window. "You don't understand, Erin, you can't. She's in my head, all the time, and so angry and hurt and scared that it rips at me all the time. Awake or asleep, I can't get away from it. I can't make it better and its destroying me."

Alex folded her arms under her breasts and stared out blindly into the night. She reached out to touch the glass with her fingertips, her profile hard in the light, "She cries out for me in her sleep, that relationship hard coded in the psychic link we share and spends all day shoving me away from her. I violated my ethics tonight to save her pain. I am not just someone who shares her mother's face. It isn't that simple. Selfishly, I wish it was that simple. Often. I'm not such a martyr that I'd do this all if I saw another option but I don't. I don't know what more to do except to keep moving forward."

[Electra]

"Maybe you can find another psychic who can help you take the link down," Erin suggested. She wasn't at all sure that it was smart to keep offering advice, or that she wasn't going to make things worse. But she kept going anyway. "Maybe the Scarab can help you. It's not doing any of you any good, is it? She doesn't want you in her head, and you don't need to keep feeling her pain. You're not who she's crying for, Alex. You can't think of it like that."

[alderwitch]

"I could snap it but it would be like cutting off a limb. It would hurt, all the time, and it would leave a void there of phantom pain. Zoe's had it her whole life and with everything else, she couldn't stand the strain. I'm not sure a fully stable adult could handle that loss much less an already grieving child. Its too risky." Alex said, rubbing her fingertips over her temples. "And it is me she's crying for, just not the me that she has. There's no easy solution. I'm not sure there's a hard solution, even. You saw how Mike reacted, that psychic link is sunk so deeply into our primal emotions that it will always effect how we react to Zoe. Even without it, our reactions have been set into patterns we're ill equiped to carry out."

[Electra]

"Maybe it would be like cutting off a limb, but don't you sometimes have to do that, when having it is worse than losing it?" Erin replied. "You're right I don't understand any of this the way you do, and maybe I'm totally off. But if Zoe's going to survive here, maybe she has to let go of what she lost. And she can't if you and Mike are there and trying to fill a place that can't be filled. Maybe you can be, I don't know, be something else to her, be her family still, without trying to be her parents." Erin hesitated, then rushed on. "I mean, nothing has worked so far, right? It's only gotten worse. Maybe you need to try something else."

[Gizmo]

Hands resting in the pockets of his suit jacket, Trevor studiously counted the ceiling tiles above the office's doorway, doing a commendable job of becoming part of the furniture. Being present for what was rapidly becoming an intense discussion between the best friends was more than a little awkward, but the attention opening the door to leave would draw to him wasn't an optimal choice either. Privately the lanky teen felt that parental advice and involvement was highly overrated, but he wisely kept the opinion to himself.

[alderwitch]

"We haven't tried to fill that niche. Mike won that fight we had. She's been left to her own devices and I'm not exactly happy with the results. She's had relations with Eddie and now James. Do you think she's being safe? My kid? I'm not exactly confident at this point. And if she has a kid of her own, she's hardly going to be able to deal with that." Alex said unhappily, hugging herself tighter, "She's drinking and doing everything too fast and too hard and with her power set, its not even just herself that she's putting at risk. That car stunt on the way over here? Not okay. She's like a ticking time bomb of a teenager determined to act out as many ways possible. We may not be the parents she wants or is used to having but by God she's going to learn some sort of self restraint if I have to have Mike sit on her."

[Electra]

Erin opened her mouth to reply, then shut it again and regrouped. Who was she to be giving anyone advice, anyway? Especially Alex, who was always so sure. All she had was her own experience, and that wasn't really that much the same. She took a step back. "I hope it works out," she said instead, sincerely. "Try to get some sleep at some point. You look really tired." She ran a hand through her already disordered hair, then turned to leave, looking a bit surprised to see Trevor still there.

[Gizmo]

Expression studiously passive, Trevor opened the door for Erin and gave Alex an amiable nod, deigning not to acknowledge having overheard the conversation between the two girls in any way. Following his date back out into the hallway, he tilted his head to one side in subtle inquiry. If Erin wanted to talk about it, he was ready to listen; otherwise he was prepared to set to work clearing out the ballroom of any stragglers.

[Electra]

Erin took the offered out, heading down the corridor at a brisk clip as though in a hurry to escape from the conversation. "I can't imagine there'd be too many people left in the ballroom now," she said, speaking quickly enough that she almost tripped over the words. "We'll just clear them out, make sure there's nothing still dangerous or smoldering in there, and we can hit the road. Want to go patrolling?" she asked him suddenly.

[Gizmo]

Trevor was starting to get used to Erin's sudden changes in topic, and the lanky youth smoothly matched the tall girl's hurried stride down the corridor. "Sure," he replied simply. He'd been planning on squeezing in some time on the streets between then and the next sunrise anyway, and he could certainly appreciate the desire to work one's aggression out on someone who actually deserved it. "Gear's in the limo. Have it waiting for us."

[Electra]

"Excellent." There were only a few stragglers left in the ballroom, mostly younger kids who had lost track of their rides in the confusion of the evening. It didn't take long to get rides for people and see that the cleaning crew was getting to work on the site. Erin took out some aggression by rolling tables around and disassembling the stage, heavy work that didn't take a lot of thinking. She didn't talk much, and kept her face mostly impassive, but to a trained observer it was obvious that she was worried and unhappy. It wasn't until they were finished and heading out that she finally spoke up. "I shouldn't have said anything," she told Trevor. "It just made things worse."

[Gizmo]

Trevor gave Erin a long, silent look before replying, choosing his words carefully. "You prevented an extremely powerful friend from hurting anyone or doing something he'd regret, saved James from Eddie's... stunt and remained calm and collected enough to help Alex deal with the aftermath, but you feel bad because you offered honest, well intentioned advice?" The lean young man raised his hands to ward off the inevitable protests. "You're a hero; have to get used to people treating you like one." All of it was delivered with his usual soft inflection, but the sheer amount of speech from the laconic teen lent his words weight.

[Electra]

Erin stared at Trevor for a moment, startled by the sudden effusion. Finally, she blew out a breath and rubbed her face with one hand, wiping away the lonely remnants of her makeup with the gesture. "Thanks," she told him, "I mean it. It helps to remember that I managed to do some good tonight. But I've got no business giving Alex advice. She's a million times smarter and more put together than I'm ever going to be. I just hate to see her hurting, and Mike freaking out, and Zoe totally messed up, and feeling like things would be better if they could look at things differently." She shrugged helplessly. "But maybe I'm just projecting and have no idea what I'm talking about. Let's go and beat up on some bad guys. It's so much easier."

[Gizmo]

Trevor let out a breath that might have been the faintest inkling of an exasperated sigh. "New rule," he decided as they walked to the elevator. "When it's just us, we say whatever we're thinking." The lanky teen mimed turning a imaginary dial on his belt. "Turbines to honesty. Deal?" He punctuated the last word lightly by tapping the down button then hooking his thumbs in his beltloops, pushing back the sides of his jacket.