milliways_bar | (no subject)

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A woman walks into the bar. Redhead, appears under the age of thirty, wearing a turquoise dress with black polka dots, a pair of stylish black heels. If one looks very close, those might be a pair of Death Stars hanging from her ears; in all other respects, though, the woman looks composed and collected. Maybe even a touch reserved.

Any resemblance to a certain redhead drunkenly singing Queen, and then various Soviet songs a few nights ago is clearly just a coincidence.

Clearly.

Nadine makes her way over to the Bar, and requests not food nor drink, but one Charles Xavier's thesis. The document appearing, she finds herself a table and starts to idly flick through. It's something to read while she decides what to eat.

(And she wants to get an idea of how the man thinks before she decides on how to handle a telepath.)

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"Logan -- Wolverine -- is very well known. So are some of the older X-men. There are comics."

She does not fidget.

Really.

"And there is a school."

If that helps?

"A good school?"

"It tries to be," X allows.

"Classes are interrupted. Sometimes. When people decide to attack."

Beat.

"I have been helping with self-defense. And hand-to-hand."

She arches her eyebrows over people attacking a school.

But-

"Self-defense is a skill badly need to be taught," she says, and means it. Training helps.

"I teach it here, too. When people need it."

This time X does not shrug.

"It is important."

She and Nadine definitely agree on that.

"Do people often teach things here?"

"Sometimes," X admits.

"It can be useful. And they advertise. On the noticeboard."

Beat.

"It is a good way to find out what people know. Or want people to know they know."

"I think I'd make a terrible teacher."

X does not laugh, but --

"I coach Little League, too."

A pause.

"It helps."

"It's...good, having normal things like that.

I have no patience for teaching, mind."

"You do not have to," X says earnestly.

"But it helps. Me."

A lot.

"I'm glad of that," she says. "I...join groups. Acting classes, sometimes."

Useful, for a spy.

"Or things like that."

X tilts her head, considering that.

Then --

"You have been in a play?"

She's curious.

"A few," she says. "It's...fun."

"Oh."

X almost looks pleased. But hard on the heels of that sentiment --

"I am not very good. At fun."

At least not so much as she's noticed. Maybe she missed something.

"But you find enjoyment in things? And amusement? That counts. Everyone has a different idea of what 'fun' is for them."

"I like to be useful."

X's response is matter-of-fact.

"Many people think that is not the same."

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