Scott and Lorna, Sunday evening

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott takes Lorna some paperwork for her fall classes. The conversation takes a few unusual turns.


Folder in one hand, Scott knocked on Lorna's door with the other. "Lorna," he called out. "I come bearing paperwork..." His own choice of words made him smirk, just briefly. "Please don't barricade the door. If I have to break it down I can't fix it the way you can."

Lorna looked up from her book and waved one hand at the door, "It's open, Scott, you can come in. I'm not doing your paperwork for you though." She was sitting on her couch, legs stretched out and shoes abandoned on the floor next to her. Her expression was politely curious but not particularly engaged.

"It's actually your paperwork," Scott said as he opened the door. "Class lists, schedules... the usual start of the year 'these are the accomodations you have to make for complications relating to so and so's mutation' sheets... and yes, I could have emailed all of this to you but I find paper copies less ephemeral."

"Damn, and I unlocked the door for that?" Lorna sighed and tossed her book away, sitting up, "Is that my food list too or has Amelia not updated that yet?"

He handed her the folder. "She says she's still working on it. It's not like we've given her that much business lately that she should be behind on the start-of-term stuff, but the look I got when I asked her for an estimated time of completion was not encouraging."

Lorna sighed and flipped through the folder, "Okay, I'll work with the rough lists I have then. She's not really behind yet but I'd like to get the meal plans down now so that I'm not having to pile that on top of everything else. Oh, good, you did add my geo class, excellent. I think that will be more interesting than the earth science we used to run."

"Hey, I am on top of my end of the administrative crap." It was meant to be flippant, and was, mostly, even if the slightly twisted smile that slipped out along with it wasn't. "I've got time enough lately to do it properly. You should have everything you need in there."

Lorna looked up, surprised by the tone, "I didn't think you wouldn't. This was just...it's my major so it's important to me. I guess what I meant was thank you. Sorry."

Scott shook his head slightly. "Don't apologize," he said, managing not to sound quite so brusque. "I'm glad to see you're enthusiastic about the class. We do have a couple of students who might benefit from it big-time this year, after all..."

Lorna smiled, "I've been working with Julio. He's an excellent student. I was a bit surprised that no one had been working with him before but he's a really quick learner so I think he's going to be just fine. His control is actually pretty good. Mostly it's just getting him to trust himself."

Slow off the mark again, were we? I suppose we were. "It so often is, isn't it? Even when they haven't been through that level of trauma." Which reminded him, he had yet to do the start-of-term meeting with Leonard. Couldn't forget that.

"And that trauma...he's seeing someone, isn't he? I really would like to be sure that that's part of his cirriculum here. I can't really be the one to enforce it, being a horrible role model in that area." Lorna flipped through her class lists a bit more. "I don't know that I'm really a very good teacher."

"He's not into anything regular yet... I don't think." Unless Charles had already sent him to Leonard? "Charles has been handling that side of things, as per usual. I can check with him." Scott gazed down at her for a moment and then sat down in the chair closest to the side of the couch where Lorna was seated. "Crisis of confidence?" he asked, more bluntly than he'd really intended. "Your last batch of students enjoyed your teaching."

"My last batch of students spent half the semester hoping I wouldn't go insane and try to recruit them all to the Brotherhood," Lorna corrected him. "Before that...yeah, they evaluated me all right but I don't think I'm very good at actually teaching. Except cooking but that's not anything like real classes. Hands on stuff is always easier." She shrugged, "I'm just sort of doubting myself recently. Ignore me."

"I used to think I was a terrible teacher - and I'm one of the few homegrown staff around here with a B.Ed, remember." Scott's gaze shifted across the room to the window, his expression distant. "At least the kids never dubbed you Mistress Fuckwad or anything."

Lorna lifted a brow at him, "Are you still not over that? Come on, you had to have called your teachers worse than that. Besides, no one mocks the teacher who flings knives at her students. Never know when she'll finally snap...or miss." She shrugged and gave him a thoughtful look, "You're doing a good job of taking care of yourself. I'm a little surprised."

The slightly twisted smile came back. "I'm over it. Just pointing it out for comparison's sake. And thank you... I think. Nice to be able to surprise people with unexpected self-sufficiency."

"Well, I don't have much of a baseline to compare but as I recall, I wasn't even up to the leaving my room point. So you know, I'm impressed." Of course, then two months later she'd been in Hawaii joining a mission that she had wanted nothing to do with. Recovery time for an X-man was measured in weeks not months, simply through necessity.

Scott's smile twisted further and he looked away again. "Things need doing," he said simply. "When the alternative is sitting in my room feeling sorry for myself, I'd rather be working." Especially when he couldn't trust people to leave him alone to feel sorry for himself. Although Jim had been doing a very fine job of avoiding him completely since their little encounter.

"I usually pick feeling sorry for myself. This is why you're the fearless leader and I'm just the cook." She shifted and curled her legs up onto the couch, "It's commendable that you didn't jump back into everything though. And trust me, that last mission, you wouldn't have wanted to be on anyway. Ew, so much with the sleaze."

Do I tell her? No. She doesn't really want to know. The slightly wary circling around the topic was proof enough of that. Besides, discussing it with anyone but Ororo was liable to make people think he wanted to be convinced otherwise. And he didn't.

"I only know what Ororo told me. Haven't been reading the reports," Scott said a bit vaguely. "Doesn't surprise me that there was sleaze, given the circumstances..."

"I needed a shower after it and I was only there for a few hours. I can't even imagine how much more awful it must have been for the kids." Lorna leafed through the pages again. It was pointless to do so, she wasn't really looking at them after all but it was useful prop. "If you had found out Alex was alive before you met him...would you have wanted to see him?" she asked abruptly.

Scott twitched at the sudden and rather unexpected change of subject. "Umm... yes," he ventured slowly, trying not to look at her like she'd grown a third eye in the middle of her forehead. "Why would having known he was alive before I actually met him change anything?"

"If you had to make the choice, I mean, to go out and track him down. Interupt his life. Would you have done that?" He wasn't entirely succeeding in covering his opinion that she'd just become a crazy person. Luckily, Lorna was used to being looked at that way. Nevertheless she shrugged one shoulder uncomfortably, "I guess it's not really a very good question. You two weren't give a choice about being separated."

Scott's expression went oddly flat. "In a way," he said slowly, "I wonder if he wouldn't have been better off. If we'd never had our reunion... of course, then I'd have to hope that he hadn't had problems with his powers, too." Not that the school had done much to help Alex there, either, had it? You mean you didn't, Mr. 'I Pretend To Teach Energy Projectors Properly'. "But he would have been spared quite a bit if he'd gone on in blissful ignorance that he had a brother out there."

Including meeting Lorna. Scott didn't say it but Lorna didn't really need him too. Scott had been the one to predict that she and Alex would never last after all. "That's a good point. Bringing family into this life...especially if they don't need help, it's selfish." She sighed and rubbed at her temple. "I, uh, have a sister. Cousin. Whatever. Jim thinks that I should find her but I'm not sure. Would you rather have never met him?"

A sister? Then Lorna's last question sank in, and Scott's jaw trembled briefly before settling into a harder line. What was it with conversational land mines? "Of course not. I just wish..." No. Not going there. "I wonder if he wishes he'd never met me," was what came out, muttered, and Scott swallowed. "I suppose there's my advice," he said, trying to sound more brisk. "Remember that you're not the only one who'll have an opinion as to whether the reunion was worthwhile."

"That's what I'm worried about. Of course, I can't ask her unless I find her--at which point the question is kinda moot, you know? I have to take away the choice to give her the choice." Lorna sighed, "Still...thanks. That's helpful."

"Something else," Scott said after a moment. "If the question is still 'Do I find her?' then you have no need to rush. I wouldn't make a decision one way or the other until it starts feeling real." He smiled faintly. "Nothing's forcing you to deal with the question right this second."

"I've been thinking a lot about...honesty. And truthfulness. They're not always the same. Forgetting about her now doesn't seem like either." Lorna shrugged, "I'm not making any decisions right now but I am thinking about it. She's chosen to ignore me for 18 years. I can take a few weeks to decide about her, I think."

"I imagine finding her won't be something done quickly, even if that's what you decide." Was he actually trying to give someone advice? On a personal matter? Today must be a hypocritical day. "I... wish you well, with it," he said a bit awkwardly. "Whatever happens."

Lorna's smiles was not a little bit wry, "Sorry, first I tell you how well your doing then I shameless dump my problems on you. What can I say? I'm a horrible person." She looked down at her class list, "Do I really only have one Stepford in my Phil class?"

"Yes. Apparently the others think Phoebe is insane for wanting to study something so boring - or so she informed me when we were talking about her classes." Scott didn't even touch the 'horrible person' comment. "She's a bit of a troublemaker, you know. Just like the other three.

"Great, that's totally reassuring. Just so long as she pays attention, I don't care." Lorna shrugged and continued to go through her papers, "Oh dear, Crystal's in Beginning Cooking. She still sort of hates me I think. Well, this should be a joy. By the way, can I have a new sous chef? Possibly two?"

Scott rose. "If you can recruit them, yes," he said briefly. "Surely there must be a couple of prospects among the student body."

"Probably, if not, I want to hire some. I just lost Jamie and so I'm down six people. It's incredibly frustrating. I don't really want to spend all my time cooking. Contrary to popular belief." She closed the folder again and set it on the coffee table. "I'll let you know how the hunt goes."

"All right. Anything that's missing in there," he said, waving a hand at the folder, "just let me know." It was a pro forma comment. He knew that nothing was missing. "I'll let you get back to... whatever you were doing," he said as he turned for the door.

Lorna nodded and twisted to pick her book back up off the floor where she'd tossed it, "Will do. Later, Scott."