The X-Project

Kevin and Julio drywall the inside of a house and discuss whether or not amends can ever actually be made...and the state of Julio's feet.

Construction wasn't actually hard. It was time consuming and it was heavy labor, but it was pretty easy once you had any idea what you were doing. Drywall, though, that could be a bitch. It wasn't actually difficult, it just had to be really precise. If you messed up cutting it and it didn't fit the wall perfectly then you had to cut a new piece. The ceiling and the wall had to be gapless where they met. Kevin had spent the whole day finishing up the ceiling of the first floor of what would soon actually be a habitable house. Now he had the joy of making sure the walls were done right, without any gaps.

"Ah dunno if Ah trus' you wi' tha' thin'," he told Julio, eying the guy with the nailgun in his hand. Kevin had one arm up to help brace the sheetrock against the wall's frame while he searched out the two-by-four beneath it with a stud finder. The screen lit up, letting him know there was a board on the other side of the drywall where it lay. "Jus' don' go killin' no one wi' tha' thin'. 'Specially not me."

"Just hold still," Julio said, pulling the hose over and hefting the nailgun, being careful not to use too many nails to put the drywall in place. The last guy who got nail happy was punished by being made to spackle and sand all the nail holes down. All of RedX had been very busy, working from when they got up in the morning until they crashed at night. Construction was labor intensive, and didn't leave Julio a whole lot of room to think about anything else, which was how he liked it. He barely even noticed his pressure headache from the faultline, mercifully dormant for a long, long time.


"Jus' make sure you aim," Kevin told him. It wasn't that he didn't trust Julio, it was just that he didn't trust Julio with a nailgun. Maybe that wasn't fair, okay it definitely wasn't. There were all sorts of ways to manage to get injured around there and Kevin didn't really look forward to the idea of his shirt getting caught by a nail, getting torn and then his skin getting to the sheetrock through that hole and eating away a chunk of the wall. For one, it would be damn inconvenient.

"A la verrga," said Julio, rolling his eyes, "Move over a little, gracias," he held the gun up and shot a few nails into the wall. He moved down along the two-by-four, trying to keep the nails in an even line as possible. He knew how to use a nail gun, it wasn't exactly rocket science. Aim, gently squeeze trigger, keep it away from anything fleshy and liable to bleed.


Kevin sighed, shaking his head. "Gracias aside, ya realize some o' us are gringos an' got no idea wha' tha hell yer muttering in Spanish, righ'?" Either Julio did it on purpose just because he knew half the people around him didn't know what he was saying or he didn't care if people understood or not. It made working with someone kind of awkward when you didn't know what they were saying because half the things out of their mouth was in an entirely different language.


"Sorry," Julio muttered shortly as he finished the last of the nails. Normally, Julio was good natured, but being in San Diego had him on edge. Actually seeing the destruction he had wrought rather put a damper on his mood. "I was swearing. It is like saying 'ay, fuck,' que no? Comes from having it as your first language."

Kevin shrugged. "It's fine." It wasn't entirely. Kevin was surrounded by people he didn't know which automatically put him on edge but being surrounded by a language he didn't know made it worse. It didn't help for someone he knew, even if not well, was contributing to that while working with him. "Y'know, yer usually not so--" he cut himself off, thinking that wasn't the right way to say what he meant to say. "You jus' usually smile more."


Julio looked up at Kevin, surprised. He pursed his lips, stepping back from the wall as they moved onto the next section to be hung. He tried to figure out what to say next, he was fairly certain that it wasn't a huge secret who destroyed San Diego, it was up on his journal for everyone to see, but you never knew.

"Would you find it hard to smile, when you are surrounded by the worst thing you have ever done?" he said finally.


Kevin's eyes dropped to the ground because he hadn't known Julio was what happened to San Diego. "Ah didn' know you had, actually." He busied himself by grabbing the next cut section of sheetrock and situating it where it was going. "'Sides, Ah can' be surrounded by tha wors' thin' Ah've ever done. Wors' thing Ah've done ended up in ashes an' far as Ah know the police did somethin' wi' 'em or they jus' flew away on tha breeze." It was obviously something hard for him to say and it had felt like trying to speak around a rock in his throat. Kevin only bothered saying it because it was important to remember they all had messed up and caused damage to other people for the most part. At least some of them had, especially with manifestation.

The other boy shrugged, detaching the pnuematic hose so he didn't accidentally nail his leg. He didn't feel like working, all of the sudden. He was aware that Kevin had killed his father on accident, and this wasn't a matter of who had the worse manifestation trauma. He made to run a hand through his hair, but stopped when he remembered that he had a bandanna on. "It is just hard," he said. "Listening to everyone talk about how hard things have been, or to people who have lost someone in the earthquake, or those that are still trying to recover from the injuries. I have not thought about how I could have stopped this in a long time, but being here, it is hard not to think that way again."


Kevin leaned back against the frame of the wall, careful to keep his head away from the wood until after he'd pulled his hood up. "It was when you manifested, wasn't it? It's not like you could've stopped it. It'd be one thin' if ya meant ta do it, Julio, but ya didn'. It jus' happened. Maybe it happened 'cause of you, but it was an accident. Wha' happened 'cause of you's no differen' than any other earthquake happenin' 'round here."


Julio shook his head. "Not quite true. The first earthquake I caused, in Guadalajara, that was when I manifested." he opened his mouth to say something else, but closed it. Then he sighed. "Magneto, he was the one who brought me to San Diego. He gave me a choice, and I chose to go with him," he rubbed his lips. Talking about this was still hard. It was easier for people who knew, because then he didn't have to explain things. "Was my life worth this?" he gestured out the window. "The destruction? The people who died? I have had enough people telling me that you cannot think like this, that it is only survivor's guilt and normal. And I have been told that I must work to make amends. But I do wonder if I can do enough to make amends."

"Oh." Kevin fell silent because, really, what did you say to that? You couldn't just go and pat him on the back and tell him it was all okay because it wasn't and that sort of lie was just too big. "Amends ain't abou' singular actions, though. Amends're about tha kinda person you are. You make amends by bein' a good person, by helpin' others. S'not possible ta measure a life in exchange fer others. It ain't about your life versus theirs. S'about yer decision versus tha consequences an' acceptin' them. You'll never put right what you've done. Amends is 'bout not doin' it again." Kevin sounded to himself like someone who spent a lot of time in a church. It made him tense up more than he was and shift uncomfortably because his relationship with the divine was nonexistent right now and had been for years. Still, he was pretty sure he was on the right track where Julio was concerned.

"Obviously I would not like to do it again. I almost died in Japan so it would not happen again. And I can spend the rest of my life trying to fix what I broke, but I can never fully do it because you cannot bring back the dead," Julio stopped and laid the nailgun carefully on the ground, and then stretched, trying to unkink his back. The tension was winding him into knots. "I do not wish to run from this, it is why I came. But being here, it just reminds me how of unfair it is that I am an idiot child walking around, when other people are not."


"Leas' you realize it. Ah mean, lots o' people migh' jus' feel bad in tha' way that fades after a bit. Some people migh' jus' shrug an' make excuses. S'gotta coun' fer somethin', you comin' back ta try to help fix wha' ya caused an' choosin' ta face it instead o' runnin' from it. Takes a bigger person'n mos' known how ta be, or even wanna be." Kevin shrugged again, feeling suddenly too old on the inside of himself. "Bu' wha' d'Ah know, righ'?" That whole talking thing, being a mature nearly grown up person always felt odd to Kevin. He still felt like a stupid sixteen year old in Atlanta half the time without any right to say anything to anyone even about how big of a person you had to be to face destruction you'd caused. He also felt like a hypocrite.

"Yes," Julio sighed. "It just feels like not enough. It is like, I am going, 'here, I am sorry I killed your cousin. I did not mean it, but let me fix your house for you so it is all better." The boy bent down and retrieved the nailgun, re-attaching the hose. Sometimes he wondered what would happen if everyone knew he was the cause of the earthquakes, and not just the person at Xavier's. But he knew that wouldn't be a good idea, it was hard to make amends when you were dead.


"One guy can only do so much, even if ya wanna do more." When Julio attached the hose back to the nailgun Kevin pulled the stud finder back out of the pocket he'd slipped it into and went searching out the next beam for him. "Ah still think it's somethin' you at leas' care, though. Yer not actually a bad person, y'made a bad choice." Kevin wondered sometimes if it was like a joke from God. He gave them these powers and they destroyed lives a lot of the time or put people in a situation to choose between their own life and the lives of others. What were they supposed to be, modern martyrs? Bein' a martyr's overrated, he thought sullenly and waited for Julio to start nailing down the beam he'd found so he could find the next.

"Sometimes I think, we don't get a choice when we do bad things. So we make up for it by choosing to make amends," said Julio, firing in another set of nails into the wall. "It makes it easier to look at yourself in the mirror, que no?"


Julio's words made Kevin think of his dad withering away before his eyes. Solemnly he nodded in agreement. "Wonder where that leaves tha one who don' know how ta make amends," he mused aloud quietly. After all, how could Kevin ever make up for what he'd done to his father, or what he'd accidentally done to Chakra? His only answer so far was to avoid people and swath himself in as many layers as possible. It didn't seem adequate.

"You find a way," Julio said. Finishing the line and stepping back in order to allow Kevin to find the next set of nails. "I am still making this up as I go along. Mira, someone said to me, when I first woke up and realized what I had done, that the only thing I could do was go forward. One step at a time. That is what I am doing." And he hoped, that one day it would work.


Kevin had the stud finder out and searching for the next two-by-four as he listened to Julio. "If ya don' go forward ya jus' stan' still, don' ya? Ah mean, ya can't go backward so still's tha only thing y'can do if ya don' go forward." Finding the board, Kevin stepped back but kept the small device there so Julio could find it before he pulled it and his hand away.

"And staying still, makes you 'emo,'" Julio said, a note of his old humor creeping back into his voice. "I do not want to stay still. My guilt is heavy enough as it is. I cannot make amends if I stare at my feet all of the time."


Kevin actually nearly snorted. Something about Julio just saying the word "emo" seemed horribly, horribly wrong and it made him smile. "Ah bet they ain't pretty feet either," he teased lightly.

"You play soccer for ten years and tell me how pretty your feet are," Julio sniffed. "My feet can scare small children and animals." He shook his head and shot another line of nails into the wall. Just a couple more pieces and they would be done.

Kevin snickered softly to himself. "Yeah, well, y'know us Americans, all 'bout tha football instead o' soccer." Kevin did not look like he'd ever played football, and he hadn't. He worked out, he lifted weights, and he'd even swim, but he didn't do that whole organized sports thing pretty much ever. He grabbed sheet of dry wall once he was certain there weren't any more studs behind the current one and propped it up in place before finding the next stud for Julio. "One day Ah migh' be able ta sand wi' mah bare hands, but tha's tha best Ah can figure."


"One day," Julio said, and hefted the nailgun.