Log: Jamie and Lorna.

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Mucho backdated. Jamie and Lorna discuss magical applesauce and how to cope with life after Magneto. Jamie has some advice and is a lemur.




Jamie rapped on Lorna's door, a covered bowl and two spoons in his other hand. "Anybody home?" he called. "I come bearing experimental food, and I promise I'm not Jubilee!"
Lorna opened the door a tiny crack and peered out at Jamie, one eyebrow quirked suspiciously, "Are you Forge with yet another lump of charcoal that began its life as a harmless omelette before being subjected to a blowtorch?" She grinned and stepped back, pulling the door with her as she did. "Come on in, Jamie. What's the mystery food?"

"Semi-divine applesauce. Or, well, my best try, anyway." Jamie grinned back, setting the bowl down on the table. "You remember I told you about that applesauce the dwarves in Asgard used to patch up the hole in my leg? From their orchard that had hybrids from Idunn's garden in it? Been trying off and on to get the flavor right, because it was really freaking good applesauce on top of being a miracle cure. Mine's still kind of off somehow, but it's not bad."

"You made dwarven applesauce?" Lorna blinked at him then looked dubiously at the bowl, "What's in it, ground up gemstones or other clever dwarven clichés that I'm unable to think of right at this second?"

"Ha ha, very funny, grab a spoon." Jamie mock-glared. "About ten different varieties of apple, some cinnamon . . . " He waved a hand vaguely. "Bunch of other stuff that tasted almost right. I've been tweaking it for a while."

She accepted a spoon with some trepidation and took a small sample of the applesauce, sniffing it cautiously first. "Vanilla?" she inquired before tasting it then nodded, "Okay, that's weird. Good but weird. Did you use powdered sugar in it or what?"

"Little bit, yeah," Jamie admitted, picking up his own spoon. "It still doesn't taste right, though--the actual stuff tasted like . . .sunlight, and hope, and a whole bunch of things you don't have in your spice rack. Your spice rack is woefully lacking in abstract concepts, I'll have you know."

"I'm...sorry? They don't sell hope in Trader Joe's and sunlight goes bad really quickly so I just gave up on trying to keep it around. Besides, supplies are Dani's problem. I'm just a college student. I'd try honey instead. Maybe a little icewine." She took another nibble off her spoon. "Not that I'm really sure what you're going for here but hey, everything is better with alcohol."

"I have to be able to eat it, and I'm depressingly boring for a college student, so alcohol's out for a couple years yet." Jamie swished his applesauce around in his mouth thoughtfully. "The honey's not a bad idea, though. I'll have to figure out what kind it wants." He took another bite, then gave Lorna a look over his spoon. "Are you going to roll your eyes at me if I ask how you're doing?"

She didn't but she did wrinkle her nose at him. "You know what the problem with you asking that question is? You're going to know if I lie you to." Setting aside her spoon, she sighed and propped up her head on her hand. "I've been better. I'm better than I was last week. I don't really know what to tell you."

"I know all, I tell only some." Jamie leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. "It was the whiplash that really got to me, right after. The whole, 'don't hate me on top of everything'/'why won't you hate me, I'm horrible' thing. Not being able to decide if you want forgiveness or damnation has got to be one of the crappier states of mind I've ever found myself in."

"It's not that so much. It's just...if it wasn't me, if Malice was really someone real... Then it's all out of my control and I'm still a murderer. Because Malice died again when the collar came off. If it was me, I can try to repair some of it, I wasn't just a victim." Lorna shuddered and looked away. "I have blood on my hands either way."

"The thing a lot of people tried to tell me, after Skippy, was that I wasn't really a murderer, it was me or him and I didn't have a choice. Like the fact that it was self-defense mattered to how I felt about it." Jamie shrugged. "What the Professor finally said, that made the most sense to me, was that we don't live at our extremes, so we shouldn't define ourselves by them. I killed someone, once, in a moment of extreme emotional . . . 'stress' doesn't even begin to cover it. But that's not all of who I am. It's just part--an ugly part I wish wasn't there, but just a part. And that helped me . . . not exactly reduce it, in my head, but put it in a kind of perspective I could learn to deal with. And it helped me figure out why people were reacting to me like I wasn't a murderer--because they were seeing all the other parts."

She didn't respond for a long time, looking down at the table and just thinking about what he'd said. "I...have a problem with being out of control. When I got back, other than setting up a new therapist and stuff, I had to see my nutritionist again because Samson told me that I would likely relapse...with the anorexia, you know. And...I haven't yet. But when I think about the idea that maybe she was in charge...that I really was trapped and...that's when I can't look at myself in the mirror." The dining room chairs were too small to curl up on but she managed to huddle down anyway, hunched over her coffee mug. "It's sick, preferring to be a villain than a victim."

Jamie gave her a wry look. "If you find anything about getting kidnapped and brainwashed by a genocidal megalomaniac that isn't sick, let me know. Some things there just plain aren't healthy ways to cope with them. You just do what you can, whatever works." His eyes darkened. "If everything's going to be taken away anyway--if you can fight with everything you have, and still lose, and they know it as well as you do--sometimes your consent is the only weapon you have left. If you give it to them . . . then they didn't take everything away, and maybe you bent, but you're not broken. But not a lot of people want to understand about that." He smiled sadly. "With Skippy . . . it's easier for people to think that he was just a dupe, he wasn't real, he wasn't me. But it's not that simple, and I got tired of trying to tell people that."

"No, it's really not." She sighed. "It was almost a relief when Manuel went after me. It upset Alex and...well, everyone else I guess, but it was a relief for me. Someone was taking what happened seriously and demanding to know what I was going to do about it." Lorna wrinkled her nose, "Not that he's not still an ass of epic proportions."

Jamie snorted. "God, whatever you do, don't tell him he helped. He'll be insufferable for days. More insufferable. And he'll use it as evidence that he doesn't need to stop being an epic ass, because epic asshattery helps people." He shook his head. "It's not . . . that they aren't taking it seriously. That threw me, for a while, too, everybody rushing to reassure me that it was okay and they didn't think any worse of me, trying very hard to treat me like nothing was different. They're just trying to help the best way they can think of."

She shook her head, "I talked to him already. I don't think that is going to be a problem. Mostly he's just amazed that I'm not afraid of him anymore." She brooded down at her mug, looking into the deep black liquid as though for answers. "Alison never even asked. She just...accepted that it wasn't my fault and...she was here. First thing after she found out what I'd done and she just...was here. Alex never wavered. Jean was in my head and she doesn't doubt either." Her sudden sob surprised even her and she had to raise one hand to wipe away the tears tracking down her cheeks. "What's wrong with you, people?"

"Geez, yeah, anybody would think we cared about you or something," Jamie said dryly. More gently, he continued, "Hey. You were here for me when it was my turn. Not to put too fine a point on it, you helped keep me sane. Where else am I gonna be but here?"

"Staying far away like a sane person?" She managed a small smile even as she pushed away tears though it faded quickly. "Jamie, it's just...how do you do it? How do you go out there and prove to yourself that when you open your mouth it's not going to be everything that he drilled into you?"

Jamie snorted. "Hey, I just said you saved my sanity, I never said you did a good job." He shook his head. "For a while I tried telling myself I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction, I wasn't going to hide just because I was scared." He made a wry face. "That just lasted long enough for me to realize they wouldn't actually care one way or another, and it's hard to work up a good head of righteous defiance when nobody's on the other end. After a while . . . after a while you just go on. There's no real trick to it--I wish there were. But you go out once, and it's okay, and then you try again, and it's okay, and one day you wake up and you realize you're yourself again. It sounds cliche, but 'life goes on' really does work."

"I'm sick of having to wait until life goes on. Every time it does and the last hellish thing finally lets go, there's another thing to have to survive. Christ, how the hell did this all happen? I just wanted a nice normal life. No fighting, no evil supervillians, none of this." Lorna slumped lower, shaking her head faintly, "It never stops."

Jamie got up and sidestepped awkwardly around the table, pulling Lorna into a tight hug. "It gets better," he murmured. "Really it does. And I'm not going anywhere."

Lorna sniffled and clung back to him. He'd grown up so much in the two years that she'd known him and she suddenly felt dwarfed by him, not that he was really that much taller. "I don't really deserve friends like you, Jamie. Any one else would have smacked me for my self-pity by now."

"Well, I'm a weirdo, so you're gonna have to put up with a hug instead." Jamie rubbed her back, and a soft chuckle sounded in his chest. "Tell you what, though, if you stick with the self-pity long enough to turn into some kind of Gollumoid hermit-critter that never leaves her room, then I'll take you up on that smack."

"God forbid. Did you see his hair, all stringy and gross? Thanks no. I'll keep my styling products even if I am hiding out." She sniffled again and squeezed him tightly. "I'm totally crying all over you. This is dirty pool, you know. Making me cry."

"See, this is how I know you won't hide in your room forever. Even you don't have a lifetime supply of conditioner in here." Jamie sniffed himself. "I'm a big cheater, didn't you know that already?"

"I could send Alex out to get it," she pointed out, her voice thick, "He steals mine anyway. Then I could stay here. Alex would bring me things to make me pretty and Dani would bring me food to cook with. It would be a good life of not having to deal."

"You'd miss sales," Jamie pointed out. "Online shopping just isn't the same thing." He grinned. "And do you really want to bet I couldn't get them on my side with a carefully-phrased pitch about your best interest? I can be very convincing. People like me."

"That's because you're a cheater. With all your cheater reasons and your cheater ways." She poked him in the side without letting go in the least. "Cheaters never prosper, you know. I learned that when I was little." But she lifted her head and smiled at him. "You're making it very hard for me to be miserable, you know."

"Well, crap, and here I thought I was doing so well when I made you cry. I'm going to have to rethink my whole strategy here." He smiled down at her. "Anyway, misery's like salmon, you don't want to let it sit out too long."

"Ew. That's terrible. You and your colorful farmboy metaphors." But she was still smiling. "Thanks, Jamie."

"That was a colorful cooking metaphor. If you wanted a colorful farmboy metaphor, remember the family business is cattle. I have this whole lexicon of methane jokes." Jamie squeezed her shoulder. "Anytime."

"Doesn't that make you a rancher, not a farmer? I'm having vague thoughts of that Oklahoma musical." Lorna hugged him again and eased back, finally managing to stop sniffling.

"Nah, we've been on the land since the Civil War, the whole 'what it got called by the guy with the homestead grant' thing supersedes the whole question of what we actually produce. And Great-Great-Granddad called it a farm, so it's a farm." Jamie leaned back. "You feeling better?"

She nodded. "Yeah, I am. I mean, it's not like everything is sunshine and roses but...I'm feeling better." She smiled. "I still say it's a ranch and not a farm. And I have many years of Hollywood westerns to back me up."

Jamie smiled, nodding, then snorted. "Oh, like Hollywood knows anything about anything. I've had cheese from your so-called 'happy cows,' you know."

"And it was delicious, I'm sure."

"Not the point!" Jamie replied, wagging a finger. "Those were manic-depressive cows, or I'm a chimpanzee."

"Why do you tempt me with all these monkey jokes? Why?" Lorna reached into the fruit bowl casually and pulled out a couple of pieces. She set the pear in front of her then sunnily asked Jamie, "Banana?"

"Yes, thank you." Jamie peeled the banana and gave her a look. "Although a taste for bananas is not in any way indicative of chimp-like qualities."

Lorna nodded solemnly, green eyes guileless, "Of course not. Wouldn't think such a thing."

Jamie shook his head dubiously. "I'd like to believe you, but I dunno, I think you secretly think I'm a chimp."

"You're the one who said it, not me," she responded calmly, nibbling on her pear. "I never ever said you were a chimp. Not even a little bit."

"Yeah, but you're tricky," Jamie pointed out. "Tricky like a very tricky person who tricks people. The fact that you didn't say it probably means that you think it."

"If I'm tricky it's only because you're a cheater. A cheating cheater of cheateryness." She tapped her temple, "Besides, you can't see my brain, you don't know. Maybe I think something different. Maybe I think you look like an orangutan instead of a chimp. Or perhaps a lemur."

Jamie grinned. "Lemur I could handle."