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It’s Kamala’s idea, of course.
当然，这是卡马拉的主意。
Amadeus—Hulk, he’s Hulk right now—nods along, willing to go with it, and Scott gets the general impression he’s actually looking forward to this, for some reason. “Why not,” Hulk says, shrugging animatedly enough that Kamala falls off the edge of the couch with an, “Ooph!” Hulk goes on, “Maybe this time we won’t get interrupted.”
阿玛迪斯——绿巨人，他现在是绿巨人——点头同意，愿意接受，而Scott得到的总体印象是，出于某种原因，他实际上很期待这一点。 “为什么不呢？”绿巨人说道，他生动地耸了耸肩，卡玛拉从沙发边缘摔了下来，“哎呀！”绿巨人继续说道：“也许这一次我们不会被打扰了。”
He looks at Scott. Scott looks behind him, even though it’s more than obvious Hulk is talking about him. He’s learned not to sit on the couch with Hulk, because getting shoved or pushed—purposeful or no—was an inevitability. Everyone else readily accepts this. Scott just worries, God forbid, he’ll hit his head wrong and the glasses will go flying off and—
他看着Scott 。 Scott看着他身后，尽管很明显浩克正在谈论他。他学会了不要和绿巨人一起坐在沙发上，因为被推搡或推搡——不管是有意还是无意——是不可避免的。其他人都欣然接受这一点。 Scott只是担心，上帝保佑，他的头会被撞坏，眼镜会飞落，然后——
Well. 出色地。
Never mind that he’d actually like to be there, finds himself appreciating their casualness, the way touch is something easy, the way they laugh and poke fun and uphold a camaraderie that has him feeling seen.
别介意他真的很想在那里，发现自己很欣赏他们的随意，触摸是一件很容易的事情，他们大笑、取笑、维护友情的方式让他感觉被看到。
He’s still… new. Maybe. Well, not that new anymore, but newest and new enough. This is hardly surprising. They’re probably still more comfortable with each other than with Scott, and that’s okay. He doesn’t expect any different.
他还是……新人。或许。好吧，不再那么新了，但是新的，而且足够新了。这并不奇怪。他们彼此相处可能比和Scott相处更舒服，这没关系。他不期望有任何不同。
Being blamed for something, knowing it’s likely true, to some degree, and accepting this is a bit more familiar. He meets Hulk’s eyes. “I interrupted?”
因某件事而受到指责，在某种程度上知道这可能是真的，并接受这一点，这有点熟悉了。他与浩克的眼睛相遇。 “我打扰了？”
“Eh,” Nova says, shrugging and throwing his elbows over the top of the couch. “Hulk interrupted first.”
“呃，”诺瓦耸耸肩，将手肘撑在沙发上。 “浩克先打断了。”
“Technically, Hulk was fulfilling his answer to the previous question. He only interrupted in the sense that we moved on without him. It’s interrupting, yes, but it means we interrupted him first by continuing to ask and answer questions,” Viv says, her hands splayed out. “We had also moved onto Kamala’s inadvertent microaggression already with ghost stories by the time Hulk returned.”
“从技术上讲，浩克正在履行他对上一个问题的回答。他打断我们的话只是因为我们没有他就继续前进。是的，这确实打扰了他，但这意味着我们先通过继续提问和回答问题打断了他，”维芙张开双手说道。 “当浩克回来时，我们已经通过鬼故事转移到了卡玛拉无意中的微侵犯上。”
Oh. “Was this when I optic blasted Hulk?”
哦。 “这是我视浩克炸毁的时候吗？”
“Yes,” Nova and Viv said. “Obviously,” said Hulk, and Kamala cut in with a, “Understandably, of course! And hey, we could call it good fortune, too, since it means we get to try it again with everyone.”
“是的，”诺瓦和薇芙说。 “显然，”绿巨人说道，卡玛拉插话道，“当然可以理解！嘿，我们也可以称之为好运，因为这意味着我们可以和每个人一起再次尝试。”
He sits a little straighter.
他坐得更直一些。
“Never have I ever?” Nova asks enthusiastically.
“我从来没有过吗？”诺瓦热情地问道。
“Um,” Kamala says, clearly already feeling like she’s losing control of the situation.
“嗯，”卡玛拉说道，显然她已经感觉自己正在失去对局势的控制。
“With the fingers or with the shots of alcoholic beverages?” Viv asks.
“用手指还是用酒精饮料？”薇芙问道。
Nova snaps and points at her. “Yes!”
诺瓦厉声说道，指着她。 “是的！”
“No,” Kamala says firmly. “Everyone here is underage.”
“不，”卡玛拉坚定地说。 “这里的每个人都是未成年人。”
“Slim could pretend to be thirty,” Hulk advises.
“斯利姆可以假装三十岁，”浩克建议道。
Scott puts up his hands. “I’m not buying alcohol.”
Scott举起双手。 “我不买酒。”
“Have you ever had alcohol? Wait. Never have I ever had alcohol!” Nova says it—and immediately holds up his hands and puts down a finger.
“你喝过酒吗？等待。我从来没有喝过酒！”诺瓦说完后立即举起双手并放下一根手指。
“Fine. Better than… shots,” Kamala mutters, putting up her hands. She doesn’t put down a finger.
“美好的。比……开枪好，”卡玛拉举起双手咕哝道。她没有放下一根手指。
“Hell yeah,” Hulk says, putting up his own hands, putting down a finger of his own.
“天哪，是的，”绿巨人说道，举起了自己的双手，放下了自己的一根手指。
Viv seemed to debate, then lifted ten fingers. Spider-Man did the same. “My dad woulda killed me.”
薇芙似乎在辩论，然后举起了十根手指。蜘蛛侠也做了同样的事。 “我爸爸会杀了我。”
Scott’s eyes darted among all of them. Slowly, they all looked to him.
Scott的目光扫过所有人。慢慢地，他们都看向了他。
Scott can follow the rules. This is… “If I’ve done it, I put down a finger?”
Scott可以遵守规则。这是……“如果我做到了，我会放下一根手指吗？”
“This was definitely a game back in your day, man.”
“这绝对是你那个时代的游戏，伙计。”
Kamala just nods. “Exactly.”
卡玛拉只是点头。 “确切地。”
Okay. Fine. Fine. He holds up his hands, then drops a finger of his own.
好的。美好的。美好的。他举起双手，然后放下一根手指。
Nova makes a sputtering, surprised noise. Scott just shrugs.
诺瓦发出一阵惊讶的声音。 Scott只是耸耸肩。
“I beat Reed Richards in chess, so he let me have a sip of his whiskey,” Hulk says.
“我在国际象棋中击败了里德·理查兹，所以他让我喝了一口他的威士忌，”浩克说。
“He probably let you win,” Spider-Man says.
“他可能让你赢了，”蜘蛛侠说。
“Shut up.” “住口。”
“Speaking of Richards—” “说到理查兹——”
“Yeah, we know exactly who gave you alcohol,” Hulk interrupts. He turns to Scott. “Which of the X-Men took pity on you?”
“是的，我们确切地知道是谁给你喝酒的，”绿巨人打断道。他转向Scott 。 “哪个 X 战警怜悯了你？”
This is… another rule. 这是……另一条规则。
Scott cocks his head. Okay. Reed Richards, he knows. And Nova has talked enough about the Nova Corps for Scott to intuit who he’s talking about. So the goal here is to ask, answer, and explain.
Scott歪着头。好的。里德·理查兹，他知道。诺瓦已经足够多地谈论了诺瓦军团， Scott凭直觉就知道他在谈论谁。所以这里的目标是提问、回答和解释。
“None of them. Xavier would never,” he says, lifting his chin defensively. “It was before I joined the X-Men. Whiskey’s gross.”
“没有一个。”泽维尔永远不会，”他说道，防御性地抬起下巴。 “那是在我加入 X 战警之前。威士忌太恶心了。”
“Agreed,” Hulk huffs, giving Scott something of a familiar, lopsided smile he doesn’t know what to do with. It’s obscenely friendly.
“同意。”绿巨人怒气冲冲地对Scott露出一个熟悉的、歪斜的微笑，他不知道该怎么办。真是友好得令人发指。
“I’ve only been operating for about a year,” Viv says. “There are many things I haven’t experienced.”
“我只经营了大约一年，”Viv 说。 “有很多事情我没有经历过。”
“Eh, we can help you fix that. Already got that kiss, right?”
“呃，我们可以帮你解决这个问题。已经得到那个吻了，对吧？”
“And my assertion that I am uninterested in such a manner with boys, yes.”
“我断言我对男孩子不感兴趣，是的。”
Kamala shrugs. “I haven’t. I mean, I couldn’t call myself an Avenger if I was doing stuff like that. But… It doesn’t matter. I don’t really want any, anyway.”
卡玛拉耸耸肩。 “我没有。”我的意思是，如果我做那样的事情，我就不能称自己为复仇者。但是……没关系。无论如何，我真的不想要任何东西。”
And so it went. 事情就这样过去了。
Most of the questions were largely softballs or clearly targeted. “Never have I been an X-Man.” “Never have I been an Avenger.” “Never have I been a Champion. What? C’mon, the kamikazee was worth it, guys.”
大多数问题基本上都是垒球或明确有针对性的。 “我从来都不是X战警。” “我从来都不是复仇者。” “我从来没有成为过冠军。什么？来吧，神风特攻队是值得的，伙计们。”
They learned that apparently everyone in the room except Hulk could do the splits. Kamala had rescued the same cat from a tree nine times. Nova could do a cloverleaf tongue. Hulk had been legally licensed to work at a younger age through some government interference with the child labor laws.
他们了解到，显然除了浩克之外，房间里的每个人都可以做劈叉动作。卡玛拉曾九次从树上救出同一只猫。诺瓦可以做立体舌头。由于政府对童工法的一些干预，浩克在较年轻的时候就获得了合法的工作许可。
That last one seemed to shift the mood a bit.
They turned to talking about their first injuries, if they’d had any—as all of them already knew, they all had.
Viv revealed she’d never seen someone die in person, though given her connection to the web, any matter of horror was accessible to her. Everyone else had seen someone die.
“Two years ago,” Kamala had said. She was planted next to Hulk again. “Can’t forget something like that. It… really changed what it meant for me to be a hero. I talked to a lot of people. It’s… You know it happens, but it’s different when it happens to you.” The other nodded along.
“I was eight. Wasn’t even hero-related,” Spider-Man said. “Freak accident. Me and a bus-full of kids just… yeah. You can imagine. Still didn’t prepare me for the hero business.”
When it came to Scott, he shrugged. “I don’t remember… seeing my family die when our plane went down. Which makes sense in hindsight, I guess.” He didn’t really catch Kamala’s sharp intake of air. He squints, trying to answer this right. That’s the rule. “After I got my powers. I first saw it happen when I opened my eyes and the guy in front of me got obliterated. I think I was ten.”
It gets a little quiet.
Scott backtracks, trying to understand why. He answered the question correctly, like they expected. He had done what they wanted, but now they want something else? He can’t tell. He wants to be sure, wants to do this right, doesn’t want to be scorned for messing everything up or getting something wrong.
He examines the patterns, and it occurs to him everyone else talked about someone else. Someone else, some extension beyond themselves. Scott had just told them the first person he killed. That he had been responsible—never mind that it was the first time he’d seen anyone die. It was something he did, was responsible for.
“Geez, Slim,” Hulk says quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Scott doesn’t know how to respond. “It was a long time ago.”
“It really wasn’t,” Spider-Man says. “You’re still a kid.”
“Well, it feels like a long time ago,” Scott amends, not bothering to point out that it did happen many, many years ago, according to the current timeline. “Things have changed a lot since then.”
“Anyway,” Nova says, waving, putting on a fragile smile and exchanging a look with Kamala, who seems both relieved and desperate to have a Talk. “To move on from bleaker pastures—never have I ever kissed someone,” Nova finishes.
Everyone puts down a finger. The astonishment goes to Kamala first, then circles around as everyone explains their first kiss, Viv making note of hers being uneventful, and Hulk pretending to look dramatically and viscerally hurt by this, clutching at his heart, and getting an elbow from Kamala for his trouble.
When it comes to Scott, he has to resist the urge to shift uncomfortably. For a too-long moment, he’s quiet. Kamala opens her mouth to say something, only for Hulk to say, “Jean Grey?”
Scott blinks. He shakes his head. “No. I haven’t— no.” He really, really hopes he isn’t blushing.
“Kisses with family don’t count,” Viv reminds him. “This is for romantic kisses. Or kisses intended to be romantic in some variation outside familial bonds.”
“I know that,” Scott says, sounding petulant to his own ears.
“So?” Nova leans forward. “Who was it?”
Okay, a direct question that saves Scott from explaining in a circle. He sits a little straighter. “Jack.” When they stare on, clearly expecting more, he goes on, “Winters?”
Kamala taps her chin with her finger, pointedly not looking at anyone, even as Spider-Man and Hulk share their own look, and Viv shifts forward in her seat, bracing her hands on the edge of the couch. “It rings a bell, I guess?” Kamala says. “I don’t know who that is. How long have they been on the team?”
Scott’s head tilts. “What team?”
“...The… X-Men?”
“Oh!” Nova leans forward and punches Scott’s shoulder. “You dog! You kissed a girl who didn’t know you were a superhero, didn’t you!”
Viv abruptly stands up. The others look at her, but her gaze is distant for a moment, wrought with tension Scott doesn’t understand. “That is… Jack O’Diamonds.”
And then he understands.
It’s stupid, childish, the wrong move to make when he should never make a wrong move, but he tucks in on himself regardless, making himself smaller. Viv is looking into him. Into Jack. “You don’t need to do that,” Scott says.
“I was confirming that they were the same man. Can I confirm this?”
That gets a reaction. Scott’s ears go hot, and he reels back, trying to stop the shame from flooding his chest. Still, he nods, even if he feels like he’s being dissected. “Confirmed.”
“I know the year you were pulled from,” she says.
“I know that. Everyone knows.”
“Wait, take a step back—what’s going on?” Kamala says, rising as well. “Who’s Jack O’Diamonds?”
“All this time, I can’t believe Cyclops, leader of the X-Men, blah blah blah, was, like, what? Are you bi?”
He shakes his head. He doesn’t mean to. He backtracks, stammering, “I don’t know what you mean by that. What you’re asking me.”
“Stop,” Viv says. Her voice is hard, urgent. Everyone stops. “Cyclops, do you wish to speak alone?”
He stares again. His fingers are prickling, his whole body wound with tension. He doesn’t know what this is a preface for. He should know. He’s supposed to be good at reading people. It’s the deal with psychics. He had to compensate. Viv’s hard to read. Scott just shrugs. “‘M fine.”
“Someone please talk to me,” Kamala says. “Scott looks uncomfortable, Viv. You know that nobody here has to answer questions they find squidgy.”
“What?” Scott says.
Kamala’s eyes go wide. “That’s— God, I forgot to say that rule earlier, I’m so sorry. It’s— I mean of course you don’t—”
“Slim finds all questions uncomfortable, I think,” Nova says, shrugging. His tone is pointedly dismissive, a clear attempt to settle down the situation, even if he still looks confused. “We can just move on.”
“He already confirmed,” Viv says. “Jack Winters is seventy-two years old now, still alive, not in jail.”
Scott’s chest is starting to hurt, a headache rising hot behind his eyes. “I know—”
“Shit,” Hulk says, and then he’s standing, too. “Shit. You don’t—”
Scott automatically shrinks back. He shouldn’t. He knows better. He isn’t afraid of Hulk hitting him—he knows he can protect himself, but there’s still that panic, that nausea. And then Hulk is shrinking, becoming Amadeus again. “Sorry,” Amadeus says. “Sorry. It’s— Jesus. When you said you didn’t have a roof over your head until the X-Men—”
Scott glares. The effect is, obviously, entirely lost on the group.
“Shit,” Amadeus says one last time.
Spider-Man holds up a time-out sign. “I’m with Kamala. Can somebody please explain what’s happening? Like, yesterday?”
Scott huffs, sitting back in his chair. “Does it matter?”
Amadeus’ eyes go wider than Kamala’s. “Does it— Did you think this was an interrogation? Is that why you’ve been answering everything?”
Obviously, Scott doesn’t answer that particular question aloud. The answer is obvious enough by now.
“No, I didn’t mean—” Kamala says, and Viv interrupts, “Is Jack Winters a child predator?”
Everything seems to stop. It’s the kind of silence that Scott is used to predating some kind of horrific disaster. Often, that disaster is him.
He scowls, crossing his arms over his chest. He shouldn’t be upset. Clearly, this is his own fault, his own undoing, and yet he still feels prickly, anxious, defensive as though they had targeted him, attacked him. He knows better. He should know better. He isn’t impulsive, and yet, feeling like prey in a corner, that’s exactly how he acts. “I was living on the streets with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t kill everyone around me after running from a stupid orphanage. What kinds of people did you think I was stuck with?”
It’s quiet again. Probably one of those things nobody ever knows what to say to. It’s why he doesn’t say it. Besides, it’s all in the past. It doesn’t matter.
“I’m sorry, man,” Spider-Man says quietly. He extends a hand, as if ready to touch Scott’s shoulder, but then he hesitates. It’s the hesitation that almost makes Scott flinch.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Kamala says. She sounds close to tears, but it’s clear she’s trying to keep it together, probably worried that she’d accidentally make this about herself instead. She’s constantly worried, constantly trying to do right by everyone around her. “I should have been clear from the get-go. I didn’t set the ground rules when I should have, and because of that—” She shakes her head sharply. “I’m so sorry, Scott.”
“The assumption of this having been a required interrogation exists outside the primary and regular conclusions,” Viv says, facing Kamala now. “It isn’t your fault that he is an irregular exception.” She turns to Scott then, before he can immediately fixate on that, “And it is not your fault that you provide such an irregular exception. We are all irregular exceptions of a kind. This means facing trials as we seek to understand and inform each other.” She pauses, still staring at him. “That Charles Xavier recruited you and immediately turned you into a child soldier perhaps makes your propensity toward assuming a regulation such as an interrogation would occur makes more logical sense. I apologize that we were not cognizant of that—”
He holds up his hands and shakes his head, his mind spinning. Where the hell had that come from? “That’s— what? Xavier didn’t make me a child soldier. He saved me.”
Kamala gives Vivian a Look, then says, “Later,” in a tone that almost suggests the others maybe had a conversation about this before, though Scott can’t even begin to fathom why.
Viv nods, and Amadeus begins to protest before Nova swats at him.
“We’re all sorry, is what we’re trying to say,” Nova says. “We know you’re a really private guy. We didn’t mean to… uh….”
He deflates, resisting the urge to fidget with his visor, and fidgeting with his hands instead. “‘S’okay. I’m, um. Sorry I…”
“Can I hug you?” Kamala says.
He looks up at her, his mouth pinched together. And then he tries his best to offer a convincing upturn of his mouth. “You guys don’t have to ask to hug me.” Or ask to touch him, or treat him in ways they all comfortably treated each other—including him—up until this moment. He doesn’t think he can say that. If nothing else, it wouldn’t be fair for them. He knows, logically, that when people find out about things like that, their comfort levels around that person change.
That doesn’t mean Scott knows what to do with this information. He wishes he could just go back in time and fix it.
And then Kamala is hugging him, pulling him from his miserable stupor at the back of the chair and into a standing position, lifting him off the ground a bit. He only squirms a bit, somehow surprised and not at all knowing what to do with his arms, though it’s clear Kamala doesn’t seem to mind.
When she puts him back down, she quickly wipes at her face before taking a deep breath. “Okay. I’m— I’m so sorry. But also, I… I want you to know that this is a safe place to talk about your experiences, but you don’t have to. Just if you’re comfortable doing so. And I’m so, so sorry to have put you in an uncomfortable position. And I—” Her breath hitches, and she hugs him again. “I’m… I’m really sorry for everything that happened to you.”
He freezes again, then nods into her. The words, ‘Thank you,’ exist somewhere in his head, he thinks, but he can’t really say them right now. It… It all sucks, obviously, but… But he appreciates that she’s trying.
“We can take Winters down,” Nova says. “We— We can make him pay.”
When Kamala’s arms retreat, he’s automatically wrapping his arms around himself, half-processing everything they’re saying. “No, it… You don’t— It wouldn’t be that simple, Nova.”
“Why not! If he— he deserves—”
Scott shakes his head, swallows, and stands a little taller. “Because it isn’t just him, and I don’t have proof. I don’t—” He feels his head losing itself a bit, detaching, almost as if he’s becoming a bystander to his own body, no longer himself, no longer feeling that deep well of anxiety from anything more than a muffled perspective. Like he put a visor over everything, and only a little light slips through. “He has connections to a lot of people in a big network, and I have no idea how that would have translated over the decades other than to maybe get bigger, and going after him would just— would— no- everybody else like him would run.” He drags his hand under his nose. “It’s history. And I—” Just as quickly, things are starting to crash in again. He’s losing control—or he had lost control already, and now he was losing something else. “I– I know what he deserves. And it… I… I’ll handle it. I just— I can’t right now. I don’t want to, and I— I don’t want you all to treat me like I’m delicate.”
He’s trying not to breathe hard, and trying to make eye contact, even though it feels like he can’t see straight. The others are listening, paying attention.
Amadeus speaks up first, jostling in to elbow Scott in the ribs. “You’re not delicate. You’re slim. And I could probably still break you in half as the Hulk—”
Scott pokes Amadeus in the chest and narrows his eyes. “Assuming I don’t blast you and—”
“Lalalala— what?! I didn’t hear that!” Amadeus elbows him again, and then Nova’s throwing an arm over his shoulders and ruffling his hair.
“Just don’t do any barrel rolls to prove how un-delicate you are, and we’ll say we’re square,” Nova says.
Spider-Man punches Nova in the shoulder as Scott tilts his head, confused. “He means to say that we know that already, duh. All of us got some horrible things in our pasts, Cyke. It’s part of the gig.”
“As they say—‘You ain’t special, we’re all traumatized fucks ‘round here.’” Viv says, nodding.
They stare at her.
“That sounded so wrong.”
“I think it’s intended to be morbidly humorous?”
“Who even said that?”
Scott snorts.
Everyone’s heads swivel back toward him.
He shrugs.
“...Anyone up for a trauma-dumping sesh?”
“Nova!”