I didn't mind people counting on me. I thought I was scared of it at first, but when I took over the Paladins in the spring, I realized that hadn't been my hangup. Normally, when someone counted on you, they wanted you to do something. That came with a target, an objective, a goal – something to focus on. People needed you until they didn't. That was easy.
What I had really been scared of was my 'potential'. I'd been hearing that word a lot since Miss Pryde had been in charge. I heard it more once I started getting hands-on mentoring from Mister Summers.
I hated that word.
What people expected when they were counting on you in a moment was different than what they expected from your potential. It was less concrete. People always say things like they want you to reach your potential. What the fuck did that mean anyway? Everyone always wanted something different when they said that, and it was always something vague; something you couldn't ever tell if you reached.
Making me lead the squad of students was supposed to help me reach my potential. Fuck that. I just wanted to make sure all my friends stayed alive. Maybe keep myself from blowing up the planet in the future. Beyond that?
Well... for the moment, I really wanted Mister Summers to stop looking over my shoulder while I was comparing field reports in the library.
My discomfort must have shown in my body language, "Am I bugging you?" He asked, sounding amused.
"Yes," I said bluntly, setting aside the files from past X-Men teams and my own. It was past midnight and I was doing some studying while I had nothing else going on, "You watching me makes me feel like I'm doing this wrong."
Mister Summers shrugged, "Not sure how you can read reports wrong, but okay."
I wanted to chuck a folder at him when he sat down across from me, "You know what I meant. This job makes me nervous."
He shook his head disbelievingly, "I've seen you actually doing the job. You're not nervous then," He said, "You're nervous now because things are quiet."
He wasn't wrong. It was like I said before. When there was something going on that needed to be dealt with, I was fine. But leave me alone with my own thoughts for too long, and I'd get in my own head about every little abstract thing. It was yet another marvelous thing that came with regular insomnia – that I was alone with my thoughts a lot, giving me plenty of time to ponder what-ifs and critique my own bullshit.
The power of hindsight helped me be meaner to myself than I already was.
Seeing that Mister Summers didn't seem to be leaving without me spilling some semblance of my guts, I tried my hand at just that, "I mean... at least whenever things are loud, I know something screwed up is going on. When it's quiet? Well, it feels like stuff is happening that I'm just not there for. But I somehow know it'll come around and bite me when I let my guard down."
That might have been the paranoia that came with a lack of proper sleep. I'd been told way back when, that even if my body didn't need the rest, my brain did. But even if it was paranoia, it wasn't particularly wrong. Most things that had happened to us lately came out of nowhere. We didn't get tips that let us head things off at the pass. We got hit by whatever the people who wanted to hurt us were planning, and then had to react.
It looked like Mister Summers knew what I was talking about, when he spoke up again, "A word of advice? That's how you end up with stress grays before you're 30. I know trying to relax is easier said than done, but the job is taxing enough without worrying about the things you can't control. Take it from me."
And I did. Because it had credibility coming from him.
If anyone could understand how FUBAR things could get at a moment's notice, it would have to be the guy who'd been leading X-Men teams for the last decade-plus. There had been nothing that Mister Summers hadn't seen or had to deal with at some point. If he was telling me to chill out, it was likely in my best interests to listen. That seemed to be the rule of thumb for a lot of what he had to say to me.
He'd been mentoring me for a while, giving me as much hands-on feedback, advice, and instruction as he could since he'd dumped me into the position I was in.
"You've got a lot of potential," Mister Summers said, thinking he was encouraging me, "I can see you're working your ass off to live up to it."
And there it was.
The silence that hung in the air in the library just seemed to make me angry. But it wasn't like I could just flip on the guy because he triggered me. He didn't know. It wasn't like I made it a habit of telling the people around me what my buttons were.
I swallowed in trepidation of the answer to my forthcoming question, "What do you all want from me?"
"Depends on who we're talking about," Mister Summers coolly replied.
"Any of you," I almost snapped, "Take your pick."
My belligerent attitude resulted in a staredown that I backed down from in the end. Cyclops wasn't the one to try that sort of thing with. Good to have that reconfirmed.
He didn't have to humor me, but he did, "Alright. Well, I'll give you a few. Emma, despite what you may think, just wants you to be safe. That manifests itself in trying to make sure you're as prepared as possible. Piotr, he wants you to be strong. He's seen and felt firsthand just how much this can take away from you. Things are going to happen to you that are going to hurt, and I'm not talking physically. You've gotten few tastes of that by now."
Yeah. Enough to know that I didn't want anything like it to happen again, but not enough to think I'd seen the worst. This guy had actually seen 16 million mutants get obliterated in Genosha. I didn't have anything on that on the 'shitty things happening around me' scale. When it came to the trauma Olympics, he won by a large margin. That wasn't saying much though; my life had been cushy and carefree until my powers manifested.
"And what about you?" I asked. He had been the one to stick me with leadership. It would behoove me, after all, to know what his endgame was.
Mister Summers smiled the kind of smile that I hated seeing, yet had been forced to look at more and more lately. The kind of a grim, 'what can you do?' sort of acceptance, "What do you think the life expectancy of this job is, Bellamy? That's not directed at you. It's more for me," He specified, taking a moment to actually think about his own question, "...I've been doing this since I was a teenager. How much longer do you think I'm going to cheat death or get lucky?"
When he let out a sigh, for once I didn't see the indomitable leader. I didn't see the guy who never flinched, even in the face of being tortured by aliens, or being sucked into the vacuum of space to die. I didn't see the guy who stood stoically, even at a funeral for dozens of students. He looked tired, and I had to stop and think about just how young he still was.
The guy wasn't even 30 yet.
Mister Summers momentarily lifted his visor, keeping his eyes shut as he rubbed them, "Eventually, I'm going to run into the psycho that can put me down. Eventually, some asshole organization is going to get their ducks in enough of a row to take me out. And even if there isn't a bullet necessarily with my name on it... well, you were there to see what Kitty did. She wasn't the first to make the sacrifice play. She won't be the last."
He meant himself.
"And you're okay with that?" I couldn't help but blurt out.
"That's not really a question I can answer until it's right in front of me, is it?" Mister Summers said, "But what I know I'm not okay with is neglecting the next ones in line."
I let out an incredulous laugh, disbelief coloring my voice, "So, I'm next man up?" If that was what he was telling me, we were all screwed.
He found it just as funny as I probably should have, "Oh, God no. There's at least two generations of X-Men to get through before your name would ever come up," He laughed, "But that doesn't mean I can ignore it when I see it. If I had to put money on it, I would say without question you will be next man up. One day, anyway."
"Hooray," I deadpanned.
And who wouldn't be excited? If my trajectory was anything like his, I could expect to watch several friends die, have my significant other (the SAME significant other) die twice on my watch, be front-and-center for multiple racial atrocities, and all of the other assorted horseshit that came with hanging around the X-Men for too long.
I say that, and yet, I had every opportunity to leave. I could have carried my ass back to San Francisco to never be heard from again anytime I wanted, but I never did. Good or bad, what did that say about me?
"I'd tell you to get some rest, but that would be a moot point," Mister Summers got up and placed a supportive hand on my shoulder, "Remember, all you need is the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
I squinted up at him trying to remember where I'd heard that before. It took me a moment to place it, "...Did you just quote Alcoholics Anonymous at me?"
Mister Summers raised both eyebrows behind his visor in minor surprise, "Not going to ask why you know that, but yes," He cleared his throat before making an effort to save face, "Ahem. Good talk."
Nice recovery, boss.