Thursday, 3 pm

[x-polarisstar.livejournal.com]

After classes, Nathan comes up to talk to Lorna about their common experiences. It's all still too much for Lorna to take in.




Lorna stretched her hand out toward the silverware drawer, sifting through magnetic signatures. It was almost hypnotic, barely any kind of thought required on her part and the kind of sensitivity she remembered after Youra but without the pain. With a shudder, she released the fields and folded shields around herself to block the outside EM patterns. She'd learned a great deal from Magneto. And it still frightened her.

The knock on the door startled her but the questioning look from Alex just made her shake her head. Nathan, of course, classes must be done for the day. She went to answer the door herself, trying to face things on her own these days rather than hiding behind Alex.

Nathan managed a brief smile, then looked at Alex. "Your brother was looking for you," he said quietly. A dismissal, but a gentle one. As Alex departed, obviously reluctant, Nathan eyed Lorna, then shut the door behind her departing boyfriend.

"Did it help?" he asked. "The post."

Lorna shrugged. "Why does this school forgive so easily?" It wasn't a question that really needed an answer and she shook her head. "Would you like something? There's coffee and I baked cookies a little bit ago." She walked away, still uncomfortable around other people.

"Wouldn't mind the coffee," Nathan said, finding a seat and sitting down. There were definitely signs that Alex and Lorna had been occupying the suite fairly constantly this last week or so. "As for the forgiveness thing... extenuating circumstances are helpful on their own, for that. When it's extenuating circumstances concerning someone you care deeply about, forgiveness is actually quite easy."

She'd already poured him a mug so it was good that he'd accepted. "It doesn't feel like there were extenuating circumstances. I don't even know how much was me and how much wasn't. There are…things that I don't remember. Or that don't seem like they could have been right."

Nathan took a sip of the coffee. "I've missed your coffee, you know," he murmured, and then looked up at her. "What I said, about us having something in common now that I wish we didn't..."

Lorna leaned against the counter, her hands cradled around her own mug. "Yeah, very cryptic of you. When did you get a crazy dead woman in your head who wasn't from the future?"

"Never. But I lived for sixteen years with voices in my head that told me how to fight and when to kill, and knew the whole time that it was a part of me that had been warped to not care about the consequences of my actions. Not something from outside. Only," Nathan said a bit heavily, sipping at the coffee again, "anytime I wasn't in combat, I did."

Lorna watched him over the rim of her coffee cup, not saying a word. She assumed he had a point beyond 'I understand because I went through it too' She just hoped that it was something more comforting than 'don't blame yourself and this too shall pass'. Because that wouldn't even begin reparations.

"So," Nathan said, well-aware of what was going through her mind, "knowing something of this sort of situation, I suppose I had a question. About what you're planning to do now."

Ah. "I don't know." She turned away and picked up the plate of cookies offering them to him. "I talked to the Professor the other day. And Len right after that and I'll be in therapy for the next seven million years. And I have a semester of school to catch up on. And I have to figure out what you do when you've murdered people."

"The therapy will help. I know that sounds like an awfully facile thing to say, and it's not going to make it all better by any stretch of the imagination, but it helps you take a step back from it, if nothing else. And you're in the middle of it right now. Do you see that," Nathan asked, his eyes lingering on Lorna's face, intent, "or is it too soon?"

"Right now what I see most is that everyone is rushing to absolve me. But that doesn't change that it is still my fault. She wasn't a person. And there's only so much control she could manage. In the end, it was me." There was no sign that she didn't believe that with perfect faith, neither in her voice nor her thoughts.

"Would you have done any of these things without the collar?"

"Probably not to the people I did them to. And wouldn't have known how in some cases. Magneto is an excellent teacher, you know." Lorna knew what he meant but her point was not that she wouldn't have normally. It's that she was capable of it at all.

Nathan gave her a long, speculative look. "Everyone," he said, "is capable of doing things like that. If they're pushed enough. If they're warped enough. How do you think Mistra was able to turn so many people, so many different personalities into killers, if there wasn't that capacity for violence in all of us?" His voice grew a little sharper as he went on. "We restrain our worst instincts, or we don't. Or the ability to restrain those instincts is taken away from us. What category do you fit into, Lorna?"

"I don't know. I can't even separate what was her and what wasn't. She wasn't a bad person, Nate. Before she died, she wasn't. In love, maybe, but trying to do what she believed in." Lorna spread her hands, "I'd do what she did if it would help Alex. I know that. What does that make me?"

"Human," was Nathan's quiet response. "And hypotheticals aren't really going to help here, I think." He leaned back in the chair with a sigh. "What you need to do is decide how much of it was her and how much wasn't. For your own peace of mind. I think the therapy will help you with that... it's the best thing for it. I mean, I still see Jack once a week, and I probably will be doing that for the foreseeable future."

Lorna sighed. "Yeah. Lots and lots of therapy. And here I was finally getting away from that. Len is recommending someone here as well as in Hawaii. Just have to make the security stuff go through." She shrugged, "Right now I don't think there was all that much of it that was her. She didn't really have a lot of personality, just a few memories is all. Mostly it was me. She pushed things but it was me who did it."

"And would you have, without her pushing things?" Nathan shook his head before she could answer. "Don't answer that. It's not fair. It's too early, and I'm sure as hell not qualified to be helping you analyze your experience." He sipped at the coffee. "But it can be done. That's all I'm saying. You're not going to get rid of the guilt anytime soon, and the memories are here to stay. But if you do one thing... if you acknowledge to yourself that however much influence she had on you, the influence was there... there's a way forward. It might be a really damned narrow way, but it's better than nothing."

Lorna scrubbed her hand over her face, taking a deep breath. "I think that's really it. I just don't know what I'm going to do right now and trying to figure it out is just really beyond me. I can't even give an explanation that someone doesn't disagree with. It's just…I should just keep doing what I've been doing. Talking about it just makes it all more confusing."

"It's too early," Nathan repeated. "But after the post, I'm guessing that you understand that however much things have changed for you, there are a lot of people here willing to accept that, and you, and help you do what you need to do to live with what's happened." It was a careful choice of words. There was no real moving past something like this, he knew that.

"I understand that this school is full of crazy people. By the way, what's up with the kid snacking on people?" Lorna had puzzled over that on her self-imposed exile, wondering just where he'd come from and what the heck was going on with him.

"Yeah, that's rather novel, isn't it?" Nathan asked wryly, letting the subject change pass. "He's evolved to need to feed on mutant bone marrow or some such thing - I've been tuning Moira out when she goes on about it, mostly because I'm holding a grudge. They were able to ID his powers because I came down for an MRI and he jumped me."

"And he offered to snack on me? Isn't that a little like a rabbit volunteering to eat a carrot? Or does he think I'm evil and is looking to be brave?" Lorna sipped at her coffee, eyebrows raised, glad that Nathan had let her shift the topic.

"No, just helpful, I think. He rebooted Forge's powers, and was wondering if you needed the same." He tilted his head, regarding her. "You don't, do you. Forge is right. Yours are back already."

She hadn't used them in anything more than a passive way since they'd come back. Shields, sensing. Nothing overt. "Since Monday," she said, shrugging. "They're…stronger, I think. I really don't know. Those last few days I wasn't really in any condition to notice." Her hand moved up to touch the collar that was no longer there.

Nathan eyed her for a moment. "I was taught things to do, with my telekinesis, that I'm still struggling to unlearn," he said quietly. "I can blow up someone's heart with a thought. I have."

"I could probably do that. I can certainly short someone's brain, as proven several times." She smiled without amusement. "And magnetic storms don't give me a headache anymore. So there's a plus. Flight's more efficient too."

There were all kinds of things he could have said to that. About how she knew things, now, about Magneto, about the way he used his powers, that only another mutant with the same gift could grasp. But she wasn't ready to hear them, Nathan assessed, taking another sip of his coffee.

"I'm sticking to my Matrix-ish stunts," he said, almost lightly. "Flying is still very much not for me."

"Does that mean they're not going to be adding a cape to your uniform?" Lorna asked straight-faced. There was a headache brewing behind her eyes and Lorna tried to remember if she'd eaten at all that day.

"No, because first comes the cape, then comes the tights. And I don't have the legs for it." He gave her a thoughtful look, then finished his coffee. "I should go. Don't want to wear you out, and you're either needing to eat or rest, I'm not sure which."

Lorna just nodded not about to argue that since she suspected the answer was both. "Moira would probably like the tights. I don't suppose you'd find my boyfriend for me since you tossed him out so unceremoniously." She held out her hand to take his coffee mug from him.

"One blond, check. I'll have him delivered to the doorstep in the same condition in which he left." Nathan rose, then gave her a faint smile. "I'm here, you know. If you want to talk, or just vent." He hesitated. "I've missed you," he said quietly.

"It's been…a very difficult couple of months. I didn't even know how much until I got back and Alex told me about everything." Lorna looked down, "I wish I could be gladder to be back than I am."