X-Men 1st Redemptions

58: X-trageneous

"Yeah, like turning into gorillas," Wally said.

"Please...don't bring up that," Shine said. "I still...ugh." She made a face.

* * *

"I'd like to go 5 hours without something going wrong," Scott said, "someone going missing, or anything else!"

"At least they found her," Jean said.

"Yeah, but...this is exhausting," Scott said.

"You're not even the one dealing with it," Wally said, a bit salty. "We are, so just relax, dude. Go to bed if you want."

"Sure," Scott said flatly. "I wish we'd never captured that nuisance! Should have let those other scoundrels keep her."

"Scott!" Jean cried. "Don't you know what they were going to do? I could sense it... It was not good."

Scott didn't get it.

"Just the same," he said, "you can never trust someone who can shape-shift like that and will lie to your face and use people."

Morph looked over at him silently.

Scott never noticed. He just sighed and went off.

"He did not mean it that way." Jean patted Morph's shoulder. "He's tired. He's not thinking about his words carefully. We trust you, of course." She went off.

"You know," Wally said, "just once, I'd like to see her actually not defend him for saying something he shouldn't have said... You okay, buddy?"

"I..." Morph put his hands together. "You know, Mystique likes to throw it in my face that this team will never trust me again... I hated it. But what if she's just saying the obvious? What if it's true?"

"In her world, I guess," Wally said. "But don't let that cynicism get to you. She's a bitter woman."

"Not that different from us," Morph said. "Maybe Shine was right all along about that."

"Shine usually is," Wally admitted. "And maybe we're all alike in a way, but you can still fight that feeling, that attitude. You don't have to think that way."

Morph sighed.

"On the bright side," Wally said, "nice to see you've finally warmed up to her a little... I mean...not that she's exactly easy to like...but I notice a distinct lack of hostility lately."

"I'm starting to think being unkind to people just to make yourself feel better is a pathetic waste of time," Morph said. "Don't know what even got into me... Maybe that Dark Self is still in there a little."

"Yeah, or you're just human like the rest of us and sometimes petty," Wally said. 

"So how do you kick that?" Morph asked.

"As far as I know...practice?" Wally shrugged. "And...well, it's not like we don't think of it sometimes, just don't give in to it. A good thing I do is I try to think of how I'd feel if I were them. It's surprisingly hard to do that, but if you do, it's way more difficult to be mean to people."

"That's really simple," Morph said. "Sounds like a kindergarten lesson...but it's just that hard to do it."

"Maybe her being stuck here was a good thing," Wally mused. "It's definitely making us all think about how self righteous we can be..."

Morph didn't notice Wally ever being self righteous at all. It was about as unlikely as Shine being dissuaded from her goals. Wally might be a softer-tempered person, but he was just as steadily good, in Morph's view.