Crystal, Lorna -- Wednesday afternoon

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Crystal comes by to see Lorna as she'd asked to do on Sunday. Lorna, back from Vermont, is surviving on coffee and zero sleep. Somehow they manage to have not just a civil, but friendly conversation. They're just as surprised as you are.



Her doom was rapidly approaching. It was there, beckoning to her, a necessary evil that was compelling her to walk straight into the lion's den. No one else could do this for her and Crystal knew that she was all on her own. Straight ahead, beyond that door... Crystal landed, walking down the hallway to the room of horror that awaited her. She was there now; there was no turning back. Crystal was now standing outside the suite of the Kitchen Goddess herself. Steeling herself, Crystal knocked on the door.

Lorna was staring at her coffeemaker, empty again, when Crystal knocked. She wasn't actually sure how long she'd been doing just that--apparently her brain had just given up on her when she'd gone back for another cup. Taking a deep breath, she regrouped and set her mug down on the counter. Door. Right, need to get that. "Just a minute," she called as she cross the suite's living room. "Oh, uh, hey Crystal." She'd sort of been hoping that the girl had given up the idea.

"Hello," Crystal replied. "Do you have time to speak with me now or should I come back at a later time?"

Go away. "No, now's fine. Can I get you something to drink? I was just going to make some mor...some coffee." She stepped back from the door, opening it wider to allow Crystal in. The room was decorated sparsely, like she'd never bothered to actually settle into the space. A few knick-knacks here and there but nothing on the walls. Splashes of color came from the pillows on the sofa and the afghan thrown over the back of a chair. It wasn't minimalist, it was just boring. Only the bookshelf had any life, crammed with volumes: hardcover, softcover, fiction, non-fiction.

"If you are going to be making coffee for yourself," Crystal replied as she stepped into the room of Miss Lorna Dane, quickly glancing around at her surroundings, "I will also have a cup." Crystal wondered if the queen of the kitchen would have good, gourmet coffee or the instant junk so many people seemed to prefer. Either way, she wasn't much of a coffee drinker, and was only accepting to be polite.

"I have other things to drink too, if you prefer." About half her attention was on pulling the coffee beans from the freezer and moving them to the counter where the grinder rested next to Mr. Coffee--still her one true love. Lorna could literally make an entire pot of coffee while in the shower which was handy in the mornings because she hated grinding beans the night before. "Are you hungry? I was going to have a snack." She had to, actually, as much as the thought made her sick. She was already way behind in her caloric intake for today. "Please sit, this will only take a minute."

The door closed and Crystal walked over to the sofa. "Coffee and whatever else you are having is fine, thank you," Crystal replied, sitting down. She'd had days to think about what she wanted to say, but now, sitting here, with Lorna keeping busy in the kitchen, she wasn't quite sure what she would end up saying and if she'd even get to convey what she wished to tell Lorna.

Lorna let her nervous energy bleed itself out into arranging a plate of fruit and cheese and then a second one of assorted petit fours that apparently she'd stumbled through making this morning. That must have been before the first pot of coffee had kicked in. They looked edible anyway. She double checked the coffee to be sure she hadn't screwed up and forgotten the filter or something--that could happen when she used her powers to make it. But all seemed well and she'd already left Crystal alone for too long. "Coffee's brewing," she said apologetically as she set down the tray on the coffee table.

Crystal nodded. "I.. I am sorry for what I said and did to you in the dreamworld. I said horrible things to you before I remembered who you were, and I did not mean them. Well, to be honest, she meant them, the other Crystal I mean, most of them anyway... but you and Angel and the others did seem quite off... still, what 'we' said was quite impolite and I would like to apologize."

Lorna sat slowly, looking at Crystal curiously. "It's not necessary, I already said that. There's not really anything that you did that requires an apology. Like I said in the email, no bruises, no harm done. I really wish we'd managed to come up with a way to get a handshake out of the princess before the whole locked in the bathroom thing but oh well." She selected a strawberry with exaggerated care. Crystal might not have needed to make any apologies but Lorna certainly did. Choosing the right words though would be something of a trick. "Really, I'm the one at fault--as usual. I wasn't any kinder to you or her and I knew better."

Yes, Lorna had known better. The whole group had to have known that she wouldn't have remembered them. However, words had been said between the two of them even after that, when the both had their real memories back, even if those memories had been fighting with the false ones. "Well, it was a very unusual situation," Crystal began, "and it is not one that I would care to repeat."

"Christ, no. I don't think any of us are too keen on going through that madness again. My real job requires enough bending of the law, plane-jacking and jail breaks are way outside of my 'fun things to do on a Saturday' list." Lorna got up again, talking over her shoulder as she went to get the coffee. "I was telling David...Mr. Haller... that I'll miss the blond though. My hair doesn't hold dye or bleach."

"Oh?" Crystal looked surprised. "Medusa can dye her hair... I assumed you could, too. I thought... you were fine with it the way it is." She reached out for a petit four, looking at it for a moment before looking back at Lorna. "But now, after all that happened there, I see that I was mistaken." After getting over her initial delight at regaining her powers and her confusion over what was bothering Ms. Dane, the answer had become quite clear.

"I dyed my hair for 19 years. Brown because that was dark enough to cover the green but it washed out easily and using my powers just speeds that up." Lorna set a coffee mug in front of Crystal, "Sugar or cream?" She set both next to the mug and then held out her hand to catch her yearbook that she'd just yanked off the bookshelf. She flipped through the first few pages then turned it to show Crystal. "Queen's court of honors. The girl next to me was my best friend, Jillian."

"'Queen's court of honors'?" Crystal asked curiously, examining the pictures on the page.

"Yeah, uh, it's a group of scholarships that are given out to graduating seniors for various achievements. I just like that picture." She regretted showing Crystal the book now, high school was a long time ago and so far from who she was now. "I have no excuse for that dress though. I blame the fact that it was in style at the time."

Crystal nodded. "It is a nice picture. Styles change. People change. I'm sorry I said I hated you. I don't."

Lorna looked startled, "I...Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal." She pulled the book away, closed it and hugged it to her. "Anyway, yeah, so brown hair."

Crystal nodded. "Brown hair. You dyed green hair brown, and in the dreamworld you dyed brown hair blonde." She took a bite of the petit four, then put just a touch of cream and sugar into her coffee.

"I always wanted blonde hair. Well, except for that time when I was fourteen and thought it would be really cool to have jet black hair." Lorna tucked the yearbook away again and wandered back to the couch, picking up her coffee. She drank it black in little, savoring sips. "I think that the dream me wasn't always blonde though. I changed it up a lot, whatever was fun."

"It is fun to change the color of your hair?" Crystal asked. "I know that Jennie has changed the color of her hair many times. I have never done anything to artificially alter the color of my hair."

Lorna shrugged, "To try different looks, sure. Didn't you ever play dress up?"

"Not really, no. I mean, a little bit when I was very young, but not very much." What need did you have for playing dress up when you already had all of the clothes you could ever want made just for you?

"Yeah..." Lorna smiled slightly, "I guess you wouldn't. You already had the life that most girls dream of." She took a block of cheese but toyed with it instead of eating. "How is the petit four?"

"It is very good," Crystal said, proceeding to finish it and have a sip of coffee. She gazed into the cup for a moment, then looked back at Lorna. "None of us gets to choose how we start our lives. We don't get to choose who our parents are, biological or otherwise, where we live, how we are raised... I am happy with the life I have been fortunate enough to have. Is that really so bad?"

Lorna shook her head, "Not at all. You were born lucky. There's nothing wrong with that. Luckier here than in a world without mutants even." That hadn't been the case for all of them. Hadn't been the case for her. "Do you think that I think it is something bad?"

Of course I am luckier here than I would be in a world without mutants. That was never a question in my mind. "I do not know what you think. I just know that sometimes people here make it seem as though I should feel guilty because I have never needed a dramatic rescue by people clad in black leather, for being here because my parents wished for me to attend an actual school, not because there was nowhere else for me to go or because this was the only place where I could learn how to use my abilities in a safe environment ."

"Not...not guilty I don't think." Lorna said slowly, shifting to face Crystal a bit more directly. Explaining this without being biased one way or the other would be hard. "They just...when you go through something like these kids did, when you feel a certain way about something, you want people to recognize it and understand it. To give you some kind of respect for living through the experience even. I came to the school like you did--not because I needed rescue or because I couldn't control my powers. But I've been on the other side of it too, without any way out but the hope that someone will swoop in and save the day. I don't think anyone wants you to feel bad about where you came from. They just want a little respect for what they've survived. Because in a lot of cases, they wouldn't have." Lorna's smile turned a little wry, "Of course, then there's the fact that growing up means going through a period where it's all about you all the time."

"I think people here do recognize it," Crystal told Lorna. "It is joked about as a club, yes? The 'something terrible happened to me - I was kidnapped, abused, and/or used as a weapon' club. We make light of it... does that really help the situation?"

"Absolutely," Lorna replied.

Crystal nodded, still not sure that this was really the best way to deal with the situation. Sure, she'd made a few cracks on the journals and wasn't averse to referring to certain someones as a bucket-headed lunatic or evil blue shapeshifter, but that was the truth, wasn't it? "Well, it is good to know that despite the horrible things that have happened to people here, they are able to move beyond that point and go on with their lives."

"There's a kind of solidarity in gallow's humor." Lorna finally took a bite of the cheese she'd been toying with, giving herself a moment to think. "Even when you move on, it doesn't erase what you went through. So you have to come up with a way to talk about it that doesn't destroy you a little at a time. So we make jokes about being possessed by evil telepaths or kidnapped to be used as a weapon. About being members of the nearly killed a loved one club. It's not actually funny. It's a way of saying, 'hey, you aren't alone. I've been there too and we'll get through it.'"

Crystal reached for a piece of fruit. "I understand this. I... everyone has experiences, both positive and negative, and those experiences become a part of us and can change who we are. The fact that I have not had my mind taken over by an evil telepath or been used to cause harm and destruction to others does not mean that I have not had my own share of experiences. They have just been... different, without the involvement of being kidnapped, and I hope that I never have to go through what so many people here have to experience."

"We hope the same. No one here wants anyone to ever have to go through what some of us have. That's the reason behind all the uniforms and drills and such. Unfortunately, being an openly mutant school makes us a target for the kinds of people who would like it if mutants didn't exist." Not to mention those mutant groups who disliked that Xavier's didn't consider non-mutants as lesser beings. "In some ways, having those kinds of experiences legitimizes you in the eyes of the other students. I suspect that having had your first run in with the field trip curse will earn you a little cred." Lorna grinned to show she was joking.

"Yes, I am now the girl who swears with the best of them and beats the crap out of teachers, and that's even without common knowledge of what happened in October." She sighed slightly. "I half expected Mr. Summers or Ms. Munroe to come speak with me about what happened even though it was just a dream, and the first time it was not really me at all."

Lorna suppressed a smile, "Nah, it was quite a bit out of your control. It'd be a little out of the realm of sanity to hold anything that happened there against someone." Lorna was pretty sure she could hear mocking laughter in her head over that one but she told her sense of irony to shut the hell up and leave Alex and Shiro out of this. "Besides, I resent the implication that I got the crap beaten out of me. It's not like I was trying to really fight with you."

"Julio said it, not me!" Crystal pointed out, then took a bite of fruit. "Of course, you were not really you there, either," she added after a moment, "even after you had your memories back. Apparently, Princess Crystal was also into staying physically fit, although she also did some horrible things to her body." She shuddered slightly, thinking of the awful food, drink, and drugs that version of her had tried over the years.

"Not really--I get a lot more weight training done here. You always call that you Princess Crystal," Lorna mused out loud, "I wonder if everyone is doing that."

"Actually," Crystal said, smiling slightly. "I have also called her 'some sort of theoretical me that might have been had I been born into a world without mutants' and 'a Crystal who might have been had my entire life been different'. 'The other me' or 'Princess Crystal' are a lot easier to say." She finished the piece of fruit. "As to what the others might be calling her, or even what they might refer to their other selves as, I do not know."

"I just meant that you don't say 'I' when talking about that life. I guess it sounds a little strange to me." Disassociated--but then, Crystal made it quite clear that she didn't like 'Princess Crystal'. Lorna on the other hand, didn't have that problem with her other life. "We could ask I guess. It's an interesting question."

"That was not me," Crystal said firmly. "My whole life was different there, and not in a positive way, not any of it. I said things and did things that I wouldn't really do, and it wasn't really me. It was a fictional version of me that never really existed except in the shared dreamworld." Princess Crystal was still there, though, lurking about, filling Crystal's head with words the real Crystal didn't want to say.

"I wasn't that different." Lorna stared into her coffee mug, mostly empty. "Or...well, maybe it was. But not in a bad way. Fewer problems, a different path in life. It was all very normal." She couldn't hear the wistfulness in her own voice. "Maybe it was a little bit boring."

Lorna hadn't been that different? Crystal didn't believe that for one minute. Lorna had just said it herself; she had had a different path in life. If that wasn't different, if the events leading up to what had made that change in her life weren't different, what was? "For all the faults and psychotic supervillains and evil telepaths this world has to offer, I still prefer it over the dreamworld." She looked at Lorna with an exaggerated pained expression. "In that world, everyone listened to a talking seagull and wanted to touch each other."

The green-haired woman snickered, "Well, only after we remembered who we were. Before that I wasn't really keen on touching anyone and I probably would have assumed I was having a bad reaction to my meds if I'd heard a talking seagull."

"I wasn't quite sure what to think about that talking seagull," Crystal said. "I thought maybe it was a hallucination... but Angel was talking to it... and Angel was very into the touching." She shook her head. "I let the others take care of the touching part. I chased the street magician, but I was not about to run after him shouting that I needed to touch him."

"And that's why no one slapped you. Well, for that." Lorna rubbed at her temple and got up again to refill her coffee. "Would you like anything else to drink? Some more coffee or something?"

"No, I am fine, thank you." Crystal had another sip of coffee, then looked at Lorna. "I should probably go now. I have taken up a lot of your time already. Thank you for speaking with me."

Lorna was too tired to do other than smile back, "It was nice talking to you, Crystal. I'm glad you stopped by." The odd part was that she had and she was. It had been nice to talk to the girl without the constant worry that she was going to offend her again and make the school look bad again in the teen's eyes. See, Forge, I'm not completely unapproachable. You just have to hit me a lot first.

Crystal stood. "Thank you for the coffee and the snack. I am glad that I stopped by, too, and I enjoyed being able to speak with you." No harsh words, no insults, and it seemed that even though they'd had serious issues in the past, she and Lorna could actually manage to have a civil, even friendly, conversation. Returning Lorna's smile, Crystal left, the door closing softly behind her.