xp_logs | Tuesday night, Jan and Terry

The night before Terry heads home, Jan helps her pack the last of her things. They chat about their mutual ex and come up with a brilliant plan. (Backdated)

"Where does this one go?" Jan asked Terry, holding out an object for the other girl to see. "You're really taking everything, aren't you? Are you sure you're coming back? This isn't one of those 'I say I'm leaving for a couple of months but I'm really going away forever' kind of things, is it? You're going to keep in touch, right? We have to make sure you aren't kidnapped or anything, you know."

"Well, it's more that I'm moving back home but I'll be here quite often for school and other things." Terry frowned at the thing, "What is that? I don't...oh, ah... That goes over here." She giggled and took the strange shaped clay piece out of Jan's hand. "I'll keep in touch, I promise."

"Yeah, I know. but still. You're going away. You won't be here for months. That's a long time. Anything can happen during the summer! You might decide you don't want to come back after all. If you do, that's ok, you should do whatever makes you happy, but..." Janet smiled and gave a light shrug. "If I shrink to one-inch size and get stuck again I won't have you around to find me. They'd have to send Kyle out to find me, or maybe one of the telepaths would go out looking for my tiny thoughts."

"If you shrink down again and disappear, I'll come home and find you. It's important that someone stays here to make Tommy behave himself." Terry tucked a few books into a box then flipped through a spiral bound notebook that she thought she'd thrown out the last time she changed rooms. "Besides, you're graduating yourself soon, aren't you?"

"It's more like someone has to stay here and make sure Tommy doesn't behave himself," Jan said with a giggle. "The boy just wants to hide out all day when he's not smoking or hanging out with Yvette, and even hanging out with Yvette can be done while hiding out. Yeah, I'm graduating next month, but don't worry, I plan on making sure he gets plenty of fresh air and sunshine and realizes it's actually ok to leave the school. It's not like he hasn't done it before, he'd just rather mope and complain."

"You really do have to make him leave the mansion occasionally. Otherwise he's going to waste his whole life in his room, making jewelry. He needs to get involved in something. You know how intense he is about causes." Terry reflected that she'd done a poor job of getting him out of his protective state herself. But Jan's cheerfulness was something of a force of nature so... "I started teaching him to play guitar. Try that."

"Oh, I will, definitely. I'll drag him through the gate if I have to." Jan thought for a moment, something resembling a small frown passing over her face. "Is he any good at the guitar playing? I don't know how to play guitar so I can't help him play better but I can listen and tell him to keep practicing and maybe work with someone else while you're gone. Anybody else around here know how to play the guitar?"

"Mr Maximoff does. He taught himself a while back." Terry managed to keep a straight face, trying not to imagine what would happen when you combined Tommy with Pietro. "Mr Summers plays the sax. Most of our musical people have left unfortunately."

"I wonder if he'd help him out any," Janet mused, her face brightening after a moment. "Tommy'd never ask, I'm sure, but maybe I will. For Tommy. And then I can learn, too. Wouldn't hurt, right? Could try the sax, too, I never thought about learning to play the sax but it sounds fun!"

"I think that would be a great thing for all of you. Sure you'll have to be fairly thick skinned to suffer both Tommy and Mr. Maximoff at the same time. They do their best not to be people...people. People persons. You know what I mean." Terry wrapped up a perfume bottle in tissue and nestled into a shoe box.

"I'll just let them at each other and watch from the sidelines," Jan said with a grin. "What's the worst that could happen? Mr. Marko will get them for sure if they break anything. Maybe Tommy can see what it's like to be around a not-people-person and become more of a people person again. He's really great with Yvette and there's no reason why he can't be that way with everyone else."

"You don't see it. I don't see it. But apparently it's there." That wasn't strictly true. Terry had seen the ugly side of Tommy, the part of him that was blind and hateful and enraged. Just because she chose to push him him toward the things that made him likable, that didn't mean she didn't know that he was capable of terrible things.

"He doesn't have to be like that." Janet shook her head. "I think he thinks he does, like he doesn't have a choice, but he's got one. I'm going to make sure of that and I'll make sure he knows it, too. He needs to get on with his life and stop hiding from the great person I know he can be."

Terry sighed and nodded, "The first time we went out, he told me about how he was an activist. How he was going to change the world. He can still do that, Jan. We've just got to make him see it."

"Like I said before, don't worry." Jan gave Terry a confident smile. "By the time you come back here, he's going to be a changed man. I'll see to that, you can count on it." Carefully, she wrapped up a few more small items.

Terry laughed, "I believe you."

Jan grinned at Terry and held out the items she had just wrapped. "Where do these ones go?"