2012-08-17 The Snooze Button

School orientation begins very soon for Xavier's. The mansion is all a-bustle prepping for new arrivals, old returnees, and lesson planning. Jean needed to get out for a bit to finalize her student orientation schedule, so she headed into Salem Center and the Grindstone for a quiet cup of coffee and their free wifi.
The redhead is seated at a table with a large iced coffee near at hand, tapping away on a netbook diligently. She's in khaki capri pants and a sleeveless blouse, with her hair up in a ponytail.
"Is this seat free?" A voice asks nearby. Warren only just recently arrived and is currently trying to ignore the stares he's getting as he orders his coffee and brings it to the redhead's table. He has his own iced drink and some coffee-shop pastries on a plate. "I'll be quiet, I promise," is even offered with a friendly smile.
"You're always welcome, Warren," Jean notes with a small smile. "I just had to get out of the house for a bit. So much planning chaos and," she gestures to her temple to indicate her telepathy. "Since I got back, I pick up a lot more, and have to put up thicker shields. It's exhausting."
Warren sets his food down before turning the chair around so that he can sit more comfortably. "Thanks, Jean." He grins as she explains her reasons for being out, "Oh, you don't need to tell me. I'm rather glad you're out and about, actually. I know things have been hard since you got back." He takes a sip from his own iced drink, "I mean, -I've- been at the mansion for a while now and -I- barely see you!" Speaking of that, "I should be moved out of my room soon so you guys can use it as you need. The vacation was much appreciated."
"I've been up to my eyeballs in lesson plans and orientation write-ups, Warren. I'm sorry if I've been aloof," Jean says apologetically. "I had some catching up to do. How have things been otherwise, since the announcement and all?" She sips her iced coffee as she watches him curiously.
Warren shrugs, the wings rustling with the movement. He glances around at the stares before looking at the pastry, "It's all right. I'd offer to help, but I know very little about teaching things. We didn't tend to do lesson plans and orientation at work. Well, Orientation, but that was Human Resources' schtick." There's a wry sort of smirk, "I guess things have been a little quieter than I had hoped aside from that Tabloid thing. But then again, I've been hiding out here, mostly and not really checking my email or voicemail. I might have broken the Inboxes."
Jean has been carefully obscuring her own features via telepathy. The customers will remember the winged celebrity, but their memory of the woman he was having coffee with will be so vague as to be useless. It's just her way of keeping the Institute safe if anyone recognizes her as a teacher there. "What did you think would happen?" she asks gently, curiously. She wants to know why he revealed himself and what he anticipated.
"Maybe more of this brought to light. Maybe more realization that really, we're not all that different." Warren offers some of the pastry over, "Feel free to have some." He then goes back to answering the question, "Maybe it's a good thing that things have remained fairly quiet? Either that or I'm just lucky. It's like that horrible movie, 'Michael' with John Travolta."
"The world needs to wake up, Warren, but at the moment, they've heard your alarm and hit the snooze button. It's not time yet," Jean notes quietly. "Maybe sometime soon, but not yet. I think the best strides have been made with Piotr being on the Justice League. He's made himself into a good example, and hopefully the public will eventually even believe it. Then, maybe, we'll be more accepted." She takes a piece of the pastry and nibbles at it.
"Ouch, Jean," Warren still smiles though as he works on his drink. "Just because I didn't join a team." He also takes a bit of the pastry then, "Well, if no one cares, then at least I won't get jumped all the time for being weird."
"Warren, you are a rich kid born with a silver spoon in your mouth who had everything, including a major part of a company, and then rubbed your mutant-ness in people's faces expecting them to be ok with it. You were already a playboy and one of the one percent," Jean points out. "If you wanted to be loved, you'd have made a better statement if you'd decided to donate all your money to the homeless and kept being a mutant a secret." She shrugs.
Warren's hand pauses over the pastry, "So now it's about money? I don't want to be a beloved celebrity. I don't want to be a household name or see my face on backpacks and t-shirts. I did what I did so that I could be myself. Because hiding who I am was killing me from the inside. What makes you think I don't already donate to charitable foundations? That I've stopped doing that? I stepped down from the company because their policies weren't all-inclusice. They'd hire people of different races, of alternate sexual preferences, but they wouldn't hire someone who was a mutant." He takes his hand back and looks down at his drink, "I'm sorry you think that I rubbed it in people's faces."
"Bill Gates donates an asinine amount of money to charity. But he's still hated for being rich." Jean shrugs. "It's all not about being a mutant, Warren. You had some things stacked against you to begin with, is all I'm saying. I just really don't understand why you're upset that people reacted the way they did. If you don't care how they view you, why are you hiding out?" she points out.
"So you hate me for being rich?" Warren's brows crease in confusion. "You asked, I answered. I was staying in a place where I was comfortable, had friends, and didn't feel so damned lonely. Where it wasn't just me and the computer and my phone, beeping at me with messages every five minutes. Where I was always able to be myself and didn't have to put on a public face."
"For me, revealing myself at this time is too risky. Not because I'm afraid of someone hurting me. I'm afraid of someone hurting my students, or the school. Xavier's is important, more important than ever right now, because it's someplace safe for children too young to be examples or too scared to stand up to the masses. So I do what I can in secret, as an X-Man, while taking great care that our actions as a team are not traced back to the school," Jean explains. "It's a dangerous line we walk, not for ourselves, but for the kids. One slip up, and it's the Xavier's students who would pay the price. Like I've been removing the memory of me talking to you here from the memories of the patrons, because those patrons know Jean Grey as an Xavier's instructor."
"That was a concern as well and I brought it up to Professor Xavier. He said that he would take care of things." Looking at the half-eaten pastry on the table, Warren then gives a nod, "Right. I'm sorry, I should have thought about that. I don't want you exhausting yourself just for talking to me. I...can catch you later."
"It's not that Warren. I just worry that a lot of us don't really think things through before we act. The world is teetering on the edge and it could go either way, into mutant acceptance, or into what we found in the Ukraine. I'm scared." Jean admits.
"There are always extremes, Jean," Warren points out as he gets to his feet. "Don't let the one extreme scare you to the point where you can't try to encourage the other. I think that we -can- encourage mutant acceptance. It's been done before with other intolerances. It will just take time and patience. But someone had to at least give that giant rock a first push to get it rolling." There's a brief smile then, "Don't be too scared, Jean. It'll work out." He'll leave the pastry as he takes a few steps from the table. "I'll see you back at the mansion."
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