40 Days (in the Desert): Mardi Gras - Haller, Lorna

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Lorna gets some unpleasant news and does a little damage to her possessions. Jim investigates but Cyndi takes over dealing with their irate BFF.




"Right. Yes. No, I understand. Thank you.... Yes, you too. Good bye." Lorna hung up the phone, set it down on the coffee table very carefully and took a deep breath. Then the phone whipped up and flung itself across the room, smashing against the wall, bits of plastic and wire flying everywhere. She didn't scream though she wanted to and clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms. Just breaking the phone wasn't good enough. Stalking over to her bookshelf, she grabbed a small blown glass flower and hurled it with all her strength.

There was something nerve-screaming about the sound of breaking things even when not this close to a session with Jack and news of a recent bombing. Considering who was behind the wall separating the next suite, following his original plan of taking an early day to decompress and finish his sketch had not really been an option. Jim rapped on the doorframe in warning, then went right for the knob.

"Lorna?" he said. Or tried to say, because he was only on "Lor--" when a glass smashed against the door he was opening.

Lorna swore and ran for the door. "Wait, wait, damnit. There's glass, don't come in. What do you want?" she half-scolded, half-demanded, clearly none too pleased to see anyone right at this very second. She knelt and started to pick up the bigger pieces of glass, ignoring the impulse to just leave them and throw a few more things.

And now the dance had begun. Yeah, no. Jim squeezed himself through the crack in the door, aided by the total lack of bodyfat Lorna had futilely been trying to remedy for a full year. "The fact I'm wearing shoes kind of foils your excuse," he said. "And I don't know. Maybe it was when something exploded against the wall." His mismatched eyes flicked to the cracked plastic lying on the floor. "Lorna," Jim said. "What did the phone do to you?"

She looked up--way up, stupid Jim being tall--and made a face, "I was killing the messenger. I don't want to talk about it. Get out of here so that I can clean up." But, knowing that wouldn't work, she climbed back to her feet, glass cradled carefully in one hand. She was fairly certain she had a vacuum in the coat closet.

Jim stooped over the spot she'd left to pick up what pieces he could. Crushed phone. Shattered glass. He remembered the last time he'd dealt with a scene like this.

Scott. After Jean had left.

"Lorna," Jim said, "just talk. It's a little tougher to throw me against a wall when you don't like what's being said." The telepath's mouth tilted slightly. "For some people, anyway."

"Not that hard, you're wearing plenty of metal." She tossed the glass into the trash and brought the vacuum back over, snaking the cord to the wall. "I don't want to talk about it. This whole thing was a stupid idea in the first place and, I might add, your stupid idea so I'm really not in the mood to talk to you about it. We clear?"

The eyebrow her friend raised was not amused. "Thanks. Great. Because you not telling me what that stupid idea actually was -- that's going to do wonders towards solving the problem where I keep having them." There was too much sarcasm in there. The off-day was showing. Jim tried to rein himself in a little; his next were calmer. "Can I at least be told why I'm not being talked to, please?"

"Alison would understand," Lorna muttered instead, running the vacuum over the carpet with short savage shoves and yanks. "She knew how to take no for an answer and would go away."

"Well, I'm not Alison." Oh, no. The tense social situation clinched it -- Jim could hear the words coming out and knew they were wrong, but couldn't stop shit "I'm not Alison and I'm not Jamie." Now his voice was pitching higher and everything around him seemed to be hyper-focused oh no shit SHIT

"So sorry all the friends who 'got' you screwed off to the other side of the country," Cyndi snapped, "but what I am is what you got, so maybe once in your life you should try just taking it!"

The alter hurled the shards Jim had collected onto the carpet. They bounced, sparkling.

"Cyndi," Lorna said flatly. "Maybe you have better hearing. Get out. I don't want to talk to any of you right now. I'm sick and tired of losing people and I'm not going to stand by anymore."

Cyndi actually gaped. "Oh my god," she said. "Is it even possible for you to make any less sense? 'I'm tired of losing people, so go away!' Do you even see the forest of your own insanity anymore, or are the trees just that dense?"

"GO AWAY! Right now, Cyndi. Not forever, just right now because I'm NOT in the mood to deal with your bullshit. All right?" Lorna dropped to her knees again and started picking up the glass that the alter had dropped.

"Ooo, 'I don't wanna talk about it.' The great catch-all for the avoidant." Cyndi jutted one hip out, resting her hands on them in a posture far too bizarrely feminine for David's gawky body. "Yeah. Not even close to sale. Jimmy may go for that hands off shit, but not me. You know why? Because if we do it his way and keep letting crap slide, 'right now' is gonna be 'for eternity.' Oh, and with a side of starving yourself and getting benched. Again."

Cyndi looked down at the woman crouched on the floor, and her hands slid back down to her sides. "Look," the alter said, more softly this time. "You got somebody too dumb to give up and too masochistic to run away. A couple of them, who are going nowhere. So how about maybe instead of leaving grooves with your fingernails from the dragging you try something new and exciting, and make it easy on yourself and just use us."

"The investigators just called and told me that they were closing the case and that they couldn't find my sister. So the last six months have been a complete waste of time and effort and a hell of a lot of money." Lorna dropped the glass again and stood up, stalking away from Cyndi. "I. Don't. Want. To. Talk. About. It."

"Well, that's a world of too late." Cyndi watched the other woman's retreat, unmoving. "So basically you're saying hope has totally been abandoned because these guys are morons. Wow. Good story."

"Yes, exactly. I'm weak, okay? We've covered that. And right now, I'm weak and angry and I don't want to talk to anyone." Lorna went into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. "They're not morons. They're actually very good. And they can't find her so that's it. It's over. So I'm going to be angry for a while and throw some things and you're going to go the hell away and let me."

Cyndi snorted. "Dude, you do that and a) eventually you gotta clean it up, and b) the Moment's gonna be ruined later when you look around and realize that hey, now all your shit's broke." The alter dropped onto Lorna's couch, rolling her neck idly. "And y'know, you got some pretty major other options."

"It always makes me feel better. Why do you think I even have so many dustcatchers?" Lorna glared at Cyndi and threw up her hands, "Fine, you won't go, I will." Leaving the floor covered in glass and plastic, Lorna grabbed her jacket from the chair and stormed out. She didn't have a destination in mind, just anywhere that wasn't around people.

There was not a personality in David's head that was going to let her get away that easily. Cyndi bolted off the couch and into the hall after her. Jim was thinking I can't let her leave like this. Cyndi thought Wow, good thing she's all pissy and distracted, because it'd have been pathetic if I'd tried to be all supportive and had to fight the doorhinges.

"Lorna, you got to stop doing this to yourself," the alter called, hurrying to catch up with the rapidly departing flurry of green hair. "Okay, it's shitty it all got dropped, but even when things aren't going bad you freak they'll get bad. You drop good stuff before it's even got a chance. How're things ever going to get better if you won't even try?" She reached out to grab Lorna's shoulder. Not hard, but just enough to mean she couldn't keep running without a fight. Cyndi held Lorna in place, trying to meet eyes that wouldn't meet hers. "What're you so scared of?"

Just for a brief moment, Lorna looked terrified and she wrenched away, breathing harder than could be attributed to her brisk pace. "Don't touch me!" She looked around. The hallway...why did it always have to be in the hallway? It seemed like her entire life played out in a series of fights here, in front of the whole freaking world. Lorna spoke softly but not without venom, "I'm not doing this. I'm just not. I tried, all right? You can't say I didn't so fuck off. This isn't about anything else and don't you dare try to drag it in. I'm pissed off right now and you're making it worse."

"Yeah, well welcome to me. I make crap worse. Or y'know, I would if that were actually possible." Cyndi crossed her arms, looking at the other woman with uncharacteristically serious green eyes. "Seriously, step back and look at the big picture here. You tried and failed. And and that means, like, . . . what? Something went bad, and once again life is proven to suck." Cyndi cocked her head. "See my total failure to understand how this is a shock."

"Screw you. So, life sucks so I should just suck it up and deal?" Lorna shook her head, "Whatever. I do that plenty. This time, I'm going to be mad for a while about it and then I'll get over it. And it'll happen a lot faster if you do like I've been telling you and back the hell off. I know I'm being stupid and irrational, I'm not a complete idiot. You don't like it, don't watch." She turned and walked away again, shrugging into her jacket. She suspected that Haller would keep following as long as she kept walking but...what else was there to do?

Cyndi threw her hands in the air. "Look, this only works if you stay long enough to hear the actual moral. I'm not saying suck it up. I'm saying that if you fail again . . . at this point, what's it to you?" The alter shook her head, exasperated. "I'm not saying don't be pissed. Cain's not here to chuck me into an ocean so I will even set crap on fire to help get the hate with burning. Also to set crap on fire. But I gotta point out that it really can't get worse. It could get better. So what do you actually got to lose?"

Lorna turned back, looking at the alter like she'd grown another head, "What are you babbling about? Is this some kind of special crazy logic because hi, I'm saner than you are so you're going to have to help a poor girl out." She knew turning around was a mistake. Never let any Haller keep talking. They used crazy math to get their way.

Cyndi blew nonexistant bangs out of her face. "Okay, let me summarize: don't see this thing with your sister-cousin-whatever through out of hope, because clearly that's dead. Now just do it for stubborn. Because right now, you got nothing to lose." Her lids half-lowered at Lorna. "No. Seriously. You have got nothing to lose."

"Yeah, yeah, I got that the first three times you said it." Lorna rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulder, more twitchy than dismissive, "But you seem to be missing the point. There's nothing to see out. She's gone. My parents couldn't find her, I couldn't find her and the agency that has sucked away pretty much half my paycheck since this started? They couldn't find her either. So that's it. We're all done. My family is still my family. No harm, no foul, it's just a few wasted months."

"Wow, we really are on two totally different planes of obvious, aren't we?" Cyndi shook her head. "Dude -- you need to find somebody who doesn't want to be found. What totally-un-Xavier's-affiliated resource do we know that does this kind of stuff? And already has before for like, say, two missing students?"

"I'm not asking Remy." The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them and then they hung there in the air, like little taunting reminders of all the other ways she'd failed in the last year and the ways she'd failed before that. Lorna swallowed hard and took a deliberate step back. "It's over. Acceptance is part of the grieving process, right? I've got to accept that I really have no sister."

"Uh, you should maybe wait for the body before you start the funeral." Cyndi pushed her hands through her hair. Man, damage upon damage. No wonder Jim had punked out. Okaaaay, spinning fast now. "You don't have to go to Remy," Cyndi pointed out. "They got a whole office full of people who do this stuff for a living. That whole place is like, ex-super-spies. And also Mark."

"Right, because clearly if the professional investigators can't find her, I should go to the spooks and freaks none of whom, I'll remind you, like me. Or I could just honor my parent's daughter's wishes and leave her alone and not sic the most invasive people possible on her." Why was she still standing her having this conversation? Surely she could have been in the DR by now, killing something inanimate.

"Pff, they can do discreet." Theoretically you had to have settings if you were a spy. Yeah, that sounded about right. Except now Cyndi needed to figure out who would actually be appropriate. Which meant actually trying to figure out what everyone over there did. Which, considering the discretion Snow Valley kept despite the fact the mess that was Haller had actually spent a whole mission with them, was an even bigger challenge than Lorna's defeatism. Ninja sexbunny is all criminal stuff in Europe, and oh yeah, putting her with Lorna would be utterly terrifying. Pete . . . okay, I don't even know what Pete is but whatever it is long-lost relatives seems kinda beneath it. Just no to a heinously terminated love-interest. Uhhh . . . oh wait!

"Hey, have you ever actually met Sofia?" Cyndi asked. "Like . . . I don't actually know her origin story, but she does profiling, and profilers got to profile for somebody. You could try her. She might be able to hook you up." It was a longshot, nothing more than a hunch -- but if it didn't pan out Lorna could always follow up with someone else there, even if it was through Jim.

And even Cyndi wasn't crass enough to say that from what little sense he'd gotten of the woman, Jim had thought maybe Sofia could use the contact.

Lorna just glared, "I'm not showing up at the office of the resident shrink. That's low, even for you."

Cyndi shrugged. "Yeah, there's such a thing as email now you can't use that excuse. Jimmy the enabler could even do it for you to break the ice. Besides, I think you're safe. Nate survives her just fine, and you're not one of the people she's paid by the hour to analyze. Also, her coffee is good."

Oh, going to the coffee place was just mean. "If I tell you that I'll think about it will you go away?"

"Nope," Cyndi replied cheerfully. She grinned and held out her hand, sparking flame into the air just above it for an instant. "But we can stop the deep talking and just set crap on fire. It's totally cleansing. Trust me."

Lorna took another step back. "I've been burned, thanks. I'll pass on another go around. The scars I have are ugly enough." Sometimes when she said things like that she wondered if she was speaking metaphorically as well as literally. Then she scolded herself for being a melodramatic nitwit. "I'm going to go break some things now."

"God, you and Jackie. That's so common. Why is everybody so married to their cliche preconceptions of, like, expressing aggression? Nobody's even willing to consider that just maybe burning actually does make everything better." Cyndi replaced her hands on her hips. "Okay, so how about something for your revenge fantasies. Like, I think the Dork's nails could use some color. Y'know. To make him cheerier." Cyndi held up one hand, fingers spread, and grinned the grin that promised her host's utter, abject humiliation. "There's lots of emo. Let's make it lots of color."

Sometimes, it wasn't even worth responding. So Lorna walked away.

Cyndi sighed, ruffling her hair. Great, she wouldn't even take a sacrifice of Haller's dignity. Dude. I tried.

She didn't feel like being Jim again yet. Her head wasn't settling. There had been some problems with that ever since the incident at the museum. Still, the unevenness was still nothing near where it had been after China or San Diego. They just had to ride it out. And maybe later they could find Lorna again when she was a little less in loathing for the world.

And in the meantime Cyndi was going to find something to set on fire.