Not So Plain Jane - Familiar Demons

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

After her busy morning, Lorna goes into the city, runs into Jane and takes advantage of the coincidence. She ends up not punching her in the face, and Jane, in turn, twists Lorna's words to play with her mind.



Lorna left the office building with a manila envelope tucked under her arm. It was surprisingly windless but she adjusted her hat and scarf anyway. Coffee sounded like a must have, right now. There was a shop on the corner. Not a chain, just an honest to god coffee shop. Exactly what she needed. She jumped off the office steps and skipped around a large man in a brown coat. Then she jumped back to avoid hitting the woman coming the other direction. "Sorry!"

It had been a long day - her meetings had gone fine in the end, but getting to that end had involved far more arguing than Jane would have liked. The fact that the meetings themselves were also incredibly dull for the most part didn't help. Jane was already in a bad mood when some idiot almost ran her down, and then she looked up and saw who it was. "Jesus, can't I get a break?" she muttered, stepping back away from Lorna. Why did she always end up running into these people when she wasn't looking for them? She could spend days trying to find one of them, and then half a dozen in a day it seemed.

The familiar voice made her look again. Lorna's eyes narrowed, "Well, don't I have all the luck. Wish I'd have known it was you. I wouldn't have apologised." She'd told herself that she would hit Jean the next time she met her. But really, it seemed sort of inappropriate. Instead she skimmed the other woman's attire. "New job? I thought your type only worked at night."

The outfits did at least seem to be very good at distracting people... "Oh, but it's much easier to advertise the wears during the day." Jane rested a hand on her hip, watching Lorna. "So, can I just go on with my day or are you going to insist on a conversation?"

"Oh, no. This is entirely too good an opportunity. You get to buy me coffee and explain exactly why you've decided to become SlutBitch of the Year. I hear Emma is pissed about losing the title." Lorna grabbed Jean's arm and hauled her down the street. She really could use the caffeine.

Jane wrenched her arm free, the skin contact making her as uncomfortable as it always did. "Oh, I get to, do I? Lucky, lucky me."

"You do. Consider it penance for running off without so much as a farewell." Lorna's voice remained cheerfully false, like meeting an old friend. "And if you're very lucky, I won't break your face for you."

Jane sighed but continued along the road with Lorna, ignoring the threat and the suspicion radiating off of her - or at least not reacting to it. "Go ahead and take a swing, if you want, if it'll make you feel better." Not that the swing would connect if Jane had anything to say about it.

"Oh, it'll take more than one swing to make me feel better. But you know that." Lorna pushed Jean ahead of her into the coffee shop. "Oh, god, doesn't that smell divine? I'll have mine black."

If Lorna touched her again Jane was not sure she'd be able to keep her temper in check. Without turning to look at the woman she stepped up to the counter and ordered Lorna her coffee, and Jean's usual tea, and paid for it. "Go ahead then," she said, waving at where the barrista was getting it all ready.

Lorna smiled sweetly at her. "Oh, do sit, Jean. I'm just dying to talk to you. I'd love to find up what you're up to these days. I can't imagine fucking with Scott's head takes up all your time."

Jane raised an eyebrow and waved about the room, offering Lorna her choice of the available seating without a word. She couldn't be said to be here under protest, since she hadn't started protesting yet, but Lorna's 'sweet bestest best friends of all time' act wasn't getting old, it had started old and Jane really just didn't care.

Lorna flopped into a chair and tossed her envelope on the table. "Really, Jean. Sit. Talk to me. What's wrong with you these days? I mean, my god. It's not like I don't know what it's like to be with a Summers but damn, chica, you're over the line here."

Sighing, Jane settled onto the chair opposite, taking a sip of the bitter, unsweetened tea. Fuck but Jean had bad taste. Eventually she said, "There's nothing wrong these days. Or at least, nothing wrong that wasn't wrong before. I just... I need to live the life I want to live, not the life everyone else wants for me."

Mmm, delicious wonderful coffee. Giver of life and bringer of joy. "Okay. That's why I left Alex too. Expect that I didn't then sleep with one of his friends and send him a video tape." Lorna sipped her coffee and smiled at it. Sumatran. Yum. "Because that is horrible and despicable and above all pathetic."

"Yes, it was," Jane said, not exactly shrugging but not seeming to care over much. "So you're a better person than I am. Congratulations. It was horrible and despicable - that's not news. If you want to know if I regret doing it, or if I'm sorry, the answer is 'no, not really'."

"Oh, I don't know that I'm better, though you're not really providing much evidence for me to doubt that I am." Lorna crossed her legs and eyed Jean thoughtfully. "I asked you why you did it. Not if you were sorry. I actually assumed you weren't sorry. I figured you can't do something like that quite that cold-bloodedly without a reason though. So what is it, Jean? What did Scott do to you?"

Jane looked away, not really seeing Lorna as she answered, although at first it might not have sounded like an answer. "With a link, somebody's in your head, all the time. In all ways. You can't not know them, and you can't keep them from knowing you. And when it's something you want, it's wonderful. But I died, and the link went away, and I came back and there it was. And nobody ever asked if I wanted him in my head, if maybe I didn't need space and time, and so I tried. I went along with it and I didn't fight but he was always there and I could never get away from it."

There was silence for a little while as Lorna stared into her coffee cup, absorbing that. Thinking about the invasion that was having someone else in your head. The thought alone was almost claustrophobic. Finally she drew in a slow breath and quirked an eyebrow at the other woman. "You wouldn't let the Professor close the link before. Scott mentioned that the other day. They did ask if you wanted time and space and you said no. So, again, what happened?" Her irritation with Jean was starting to wane, pushed out by the growing confusion.

"It was already there," Jane said, reaching up to touch her temple. "How could I look at him and feel what he was feeling and tell him I didn't want it? I had loved him. I wanted to love him. I hoped, maybe, it would be ok." A big, fat, screaming lie, but enough of the rest of it was true, in some way or another. "But it wasn't ok, and every day it was getting worse and worse. I was trapped, but it was me who was holding me down, keeping me back until I couldn't find any other way to change things."

Lorna shook her head. She understood the feeling. The point where you were suffocating beneath everything that was supposed to be perfect. The way that the life that you wanted could turn on you and cage you in... "You couldn't force yourself to be in love. Do you blame him for that?"

There was something kind of deliciously ironic about the fact that Lorna had started the day wanted to smack her, and now was almost sympathizing with her. "Yes," she said, "some. Myself more, probably - I built my own cage - but I'm angry with him. For not noticing, for wanting it so much that I tried to twist myself. For all of it. It's unfair, but there it is."

"So that's what's driving the raging bitch mode then?" Lorna may have sympathized but she was also one of the few who'd seen the wreck that Scott was after getting that tape. Sympathy didn't preclude wanting answers. "I can see sleeping with someone else. But the tape...that's evil."

Green eyes met green eyes and there was no guile, not the slightest hint of anything hiding or lurking behind Jane's gaze. "I wanted it to hurt," she said simply. And she could see in the flickers in Lorna's mind that it really, really had.

"Congratulations. It did." Lorna finished her coffee and stood, picking up her envelope. "Luckily, he has a support system. The same one that you walked away from." Lorna threw away her cup in a nearby trash can. "Stop blaming Scott. You're the one who reads minds. It wasn't his fault that you didn't tell him something was wrong."

Jane remained sitting, cradling the still mostly full tea cup. "I am well aware that of what I walked away from. Fix your own relationship before telling me how to deal with mine."

"You haven't walked away. Not really. Not when you keep coming back for one more hit." Lorna ignored the crack about her own relationship. That wasn't the issue here and Lorna wasn't going to let her make it that. "If you want to walk away, then do it. If you want to keep hurting the people who love you, then you're going to start feeling it back on you."

"People keep talking about the things I'm doing to the 'people who love me'. Tell me, Lorna, does the fact that they love me give them claim over me? Does Alex's love for you mean he gets to make decisions about what you do? What about Sam - he still loves Alison, should he get to have absolute say in her life? I'm pretty sure that's not how this works. I didn't and I don't ask to be loved by any of you."

"What did I say, Jean? I know you're not stupid, stop pretending like you are. I said if you keep hurting people, you're going to get hurt. How can I make it more clear? Walk away, vanish, stop communicating. No more tapes. No more chance encounters. Nothing. You run into someone on the street like we did, you turn and walk the other way." Lorna frowned, "Unless you're ready to come back, we don't want you. Got it?" Lorna figured that there would be very unhappy people at the mansion if they heard about this. But right now, she wasn't concerned about them.

"I tried to walk away from this one, would happily have turned and walked away. You're the one who grabbed onto me, and you're not the only one who does it. It's not like I'm looking for you all. But, fine, threat received loud and clear. I guess it's progress - you've gotten over your fear of yourself and the knowledge Magneto gave you of what you can really do. Maybe your willingness to hold it over somebody's head to get what you want is also progress. I'm sure he'd think so, anyway."

Lorna flinched, realizing that was exactly what she was doing. And worse she was taking all this out on Jean who had been there when Malice wanted to kill them both. "God..." She took a step back, horrified. "Jean, I'm sorry. I had no right...fuck. I'm sorry."

She didn't smile - Jean was a nice woman, a good woman, and particularly after the tape it was important not to give anybody any extra reasons to be suspicious, so she didn't smile. But man-oh-man did she want to. "Don't worry, Lorna," she said, sounding resigned, as though she had no choice but to go along with what Lorna had said, "I've no intention of pushing you to find out if you'd actually go through with it. I've no real desire to end up on the list of lives you've destroyed."

Lorna backed up further, biting back a bitter comment, hating herself for even wanting to say it. Was this what she'd become? What Malice had made her? This vicious cruel person who tore into the people who were supposed to be her friends? "I still think that there's something wrong with you. And I pray to God that whatever it is you fix it." She clutched her envelope. "I have to go."

Jane nodded. "Good bye, then, Lorna. Next time I see you, I promise I'll walk away. Feel free to do the same."

"I will." Lorna hesitated then shrugged, "Be well, Jean. I hope what ever it is that's hurting you, you can fix." Without waiting for a response, she turned and hurried away, out of the coffeeshop and back into the street.

Jane watched Lorna leave and the barest of smiles finally escaped. Oh no, she thought, I don't think the thing that's hurting you can be fixed, Jeannie, dear. I don't think it can be fixed at all.