Log: Angelo, Laurie, Amanda and Gail Collins

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Note: Posted a bit early, since there's timezone issues. :)

Gail drives Angelo and Laurie to see Amanda.



[Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.]

Laurie reached over and pressed the tuner button on the radio, looking for a different channel, one with something...different on. She didn't particularly want to listen to Mr Cohen right now, not with how she already felt. Having found a 'Top 20' hits radio station, she leaned back in her seat, not bothering to answer the questioning look her mother gave her. There wasn't anything she could think of to say, hadn't been able to find the words to really talk about anything for days. She turned her head, staring out the window as cars and houses drifted by, you never really felt how fast you were moving in a car.

Gail raised her eyebrow at her daughter's lack of speech, and flicked her gaze up to the rearvision mirror and the grey-complexioned young man in the back seat who was equally silent. "How is your mother doing, Angelo?" she asked - perhaps it was an obvious attempt to stir up her passengers, but she was damned if she was going to sit in silence the entire way to the clinic where this friend of Laurie's was.

He glanced up at the sound of his name, rousing himself from thought enough to answer the question. "Oh, she's... she's fine. Likes keepin' herself busy."

Laurie glanced over as he answered, having almost forgotten he was also in the car, he'd been so quiet. She had an idea that she knew the reason for that, and it didn't make her feel any better. They'd left him, him and Amanda, it had been the only decision they could make at the time but the guilt still plagued her.

"How...how have you been holding up?" she asked quietly.

"Well as I can", he said, equally quietly. "Bruises are healin', the ribs'll take a bit longer." That wasn't what she'd been asking and he knew it, but...

Laurie turned away quickly, blinking rapidly to keep tears from falling. "That's good. When she showed us what they did to you...I was worried, I didn't know how much damage they'd done."

It'd only been four days, that's what she kept telling herself. Four days wasn't enough to be better. He'd be okay eventually, they all would be, she hoped.

Gail watched the exchange, trying to let them talk without interruption, but given the subject matter, it wouldn't go on for long, she knew. "It's a small mercy no-one was seriously hurt," she said quietly. "But I'm guessing that's part of what you teach there."

Angelo blinked, looking up at her in confusion. "What is?"

"How to look after yourselves. And others." Gail met his gaze in the rear vision mirror, frankly. "Your mother doesn't give details, but it's not hard to read between the lines. Being a mutant can be a dangerous business, and the school needs to acknowledge that. And does, apparently."

"They do." Laurie replied, having mastered herself sufficiently to join the conversation again. This crying at the drop of a hat was getting tiring, to say the least. "They have self-defence classes, Angelo's a good teacher. I think he probably gets frustrated with me though, I'm not terribly good at it."

"Oh. Yeah, we've got self-defence classes, for most of the kids. Laurie's not as bad as she says, though." She didn't like hurting people, and he refused to consider that a problem.

"She frequently isn't." Gail smiled wryly at her daughter, and then flipped her indicator on to change lanes. "How long have you been at the school again, Angelo?"

He had to think about that for a moment - it felt like just this side of forever. "Uh... gettin' on for four years now. Just turned seventeen when I came east."

"And from what your mother tells me, you've done very well in that time." Gail glanced at Laurie again. "Even with the odd 'incident' involving demons or kidnappers or whatnot."
"There haven't been any demons in years", he answered automatically. "An' kidnappers... yeah, I do as well as I can."

"To hear Laurie tell it, I almost expected a demon swarm when I came to collect you." Gail's tone wasn't at all serious.

Laurie's ears started to tinge with red and she ducked her head slightly so her hair hid them. "Moooom." came the long drawn out word of protest.

Ah. There was her daughter. Gail chuckled a little, and gave Laurie a fake-innocent look. "You mean there aren't weekly demon swarms?"

"Not the last time I checked. In fact... Laurie, were you even here the last time we had a demon invasion?" Joking was good. Joking meant he didn't have to think.

"Nope." Laurie replied, grinning as she looked at Angelo through the rear vision mirror. "But one should always come prepared...and never give your blood to used magic salesman."

"Or toenails,. Or hair," Gail added sagely. "So if a man comes after you with a pair of nail clippers, you probably ought to question his intentions." It was becoming clear where Laurie's sense of humour had developed.


***


Laurie talks to Angelo and Amanda about what's been bugging her for the last week.



Laurie paused at the door, feeling Angelo stop just behind her as she looked at the room Amanda was staying in. It wasn't bad, for a room that sick people stayed in. She looked up as she felt Angelo's hand on her shoulder, and tried to give him a smile but it didn't quite reach her eyes.

Angelo wasn't smiling either, though he tried in response to her brave attempt. "Go on in", he said quietly.

"I... okay." she replied, turning back and walking slowly into the room, not wanting to disturb Amanda if she was sleeping.

Amanda had been napping, but her eyes opened at the first hint of movement. She covered the sudden start with a brief smile at the sight of her visitors, sitting up a little straighter in the bed. She was back to the hospital gown after the incident two nights before, and she looked pale and dishevelled in that particular hospital way, but her voice, when she spoke, was still the same, although a bit hoarse. "Hey, Laurie. Cadge a lift off someone, did you?" She glanced up at Angelo. "And here's someone I haven't seen for a whole five or six hours. Thanks for bringing her in, love."

"Mom drove us in, I wanted to make sure you were okay with my own eyes." Laurie replied, shuffling slightly further in, her eyes shifting uncomfortably around the room before coming to rest on Amanda again.

"Well, don't just stand there making the place look messy, come in." Amanda gestured, beckoning the girl in, and the young man behind.

"Come on, 'm not contagious."

She certainly sounded okay, and that was a weight of Laurie's shoulders to be sure. Laurie pulled a seat across from where it sat by the door and took a perch on one side of Amanda's bed. "I'm sorry I didn't come by sooner. I was waiting for them to say it was okay to visit."

"Believe me, you didn't want to come any sooner," Amanda said wryly, noting Angelo's silence with an inner sigh. And she was being honest - she'd been adamant about anyone seeing her those first couple of days in the frame. As it was, she was sitting up in the bed, carefully avoiding contact with the pillows behind her. "Stoned out of my brain on painkillers, wasn't I, Ange?"

"She was", Angelo confirmed - progress, of a sort, even if he wasn't being exactly verbose. "There'd have been conversation, but it wouldn't've made much sense."

"See?" Amanda said, glad of the backup. It was difficult to tell a kid that the reason you hadn't allowed visitors earlier was that you'd been so fucked up from the pain you didn't want to see anyone.

"Well, I suppose I can forgive you on account of being stoned." Laurie replied, but her tone wasn't anything like it usually was, the joke coming out sounding more like an obligatory statement then any real effort to be funny. "They keeping you in for much longer?"

"A few more days - they want to make sure nothing gets infected." Amanda frowned slightly as she looked at Laurie - the girl was a far cry from her normal bubbly self, although that was to be expected. "But enough 'bout me - how're you lot doing? Ange tells me you got yourselves out; I've got to tell you, I'm pretty impressed."

"Yeah, so're we all", Angelo chipped in, glancing over at Laurie. "Even with a person already on the outside, it was a pretty good escape."

"We left you behind." Laurie replied, hands smoothing down the skirt she wore and then reaching up to adjust the air scrubber that was once again around her neck. She assumed Forge had made several of them, considering he always seemed to have a replacement when she lost one.

Ah. Amanda exchanged a look with Angelo. "Good," she said simply. "You did what you should have done."

"Really?" Laurie asked, her head coming up sharply and her gaze burned almost in its intensity. "What would you have done, if you'd been there?"

"Laurie, I was already gone. There was nothing anyone could do to stop what happened to me at that stage." She said it as much for Angelo's benefit as Laurie's. "And if I'd been in your situation, with none of the training I've had and a bunch of mostly non-offensive powers, in a strange place with deadly assassins lurking anywhere and no idea where to start looking? Too bloody right I would have gone. Better to get the fuck out of there and send someone most qualified in as a rescue team than to risk getting caught again or killed trying to rescue us yourselves. Even if I had still been there, you think I would have been able to live with myself if anything had happened to you lot while you were looking for me?" Amanda's voice was intense. "Sometimes, Laurie, you've got to make some pretty cold-blooded decisions, and the noble thing? Usually isn't what you should be doing. Not in the real world."

"I'd like to see your definition of offensive powers, given that Angel could probably melt someone if she so chose and I can do some extremely nasty things given no one around that I care about much. But I guess you're right, especially considering I'm not likely to go around killing people in cold blood, nor is Angel likely to melt anyone for that matter." Laurie replied, somewhat wryly.

"An' neither of us would've wanted you to", Angelo spoke up firmly from behind her. "'specially not when they were pretty nasty people. Might've hurt you if you'd tried it." Or worse, he didn't say.

"'S why I said 'mostly'," Amanda pointed out. "And there's more to fighting than raw power - there's a mindset that goes with it that you only really get with training. 'S why Ange and I spend so much time getting our butts thrown around by people more experienced than us."

She found herself fiddling with the blanket and made herself stop. "Laurie, you lot did the best thing in the circumstances. Anything else, you would have at the best got caught, or at the worst got yourselves killed. Or had to kill someone else." Where Angelo trod lightly, she had no problems being blunt - Laurie needed to know what kind of world it was out there. She tended to see things in terms of movie heroics, black hats versus white hats. "I don't blame you for what happened. 'S part of the package, part of what I signed up for when I joined the Trenchcoats." She met Angelo's eyes again. "Part of what Angelo agreed to when he joined the leather brigade. Sometimes, we're gunna get hurt, but that's what we're willing to do, if it means we have a shot at another bastard. I'm just sorry you lot got caught up in it as well." And it wouldn't happen again, she decided. Time to create some more distance between her world and Laurie's.

"Fine." Laurie replied, and graced them both with another smile that once again, didn't quite reach her eyes.

It really wasn't worth arguing about, they had made the choice not to go back and that was that. No matter what Laurie might really believe on the issue that was the way it was.

Angelo was unconvinced, but... if she didn't believe she'd done the right thing, nothing either of them was going to say would make her believe it. "So", he said after a moment, very obviously changing the subject, "they still on to let you out when they were goin' to?"

Amanda nodded, not happy either, but too tired and sore to keep arguing the point. If Laurie wanted to feel guilty, then that would be what she would do. "Maybe not," she admitted. "Not if I keep opening things up again."

"That I can help with." Laurie replied, a genuine smile finally appearing.

This she could do, and what was more, this she knew how to do thanks to her biology classes. Reaching forward, she placed a hand on Amanda's wrist, closing her eyes as she pushed, it wouldn't have an immediate effect but the increased hormones available should speed the healing process along fairly substantially.

Amanda winced a little at the contact on her raw wrist despite the bandage, but held still. She could feel the tension thrumming through Laurie, even though there was no other indication of her mutant power being engaged. "Thanks," she said quietly, not wanting to distract the younger girl.

Laurie kept her hold on Amanda's wrist for a few minutes, eyes closed as she concentrated. It wasn't like with someone like Kyle, who she would have had to keep hold of for some time since his mutant healing factor would purge her power too quickly for it to have a beneficial effect otherwise, with Amanda she just had to give a little push and hold on long enough for her power to build up in the other woman's system and then she could leave it go.

"There, that should be enough." Laurie finally said, opening her eyes. "It's not a healing factor, unfortunately but those should heal quicker then they normally would otherwise."

Angelo had just been watching through the whole process, silently, but he spoke now. "Better than it would've been. You ever tried that one before?"

"No." Laurie replied, blushing softly. "Sorry for using you as a guinea pig, Amanda, but there's not that often I get a chance to try something new out like this."

The witch waved the apology away. "You gotta start somewhere and if it means I get out of here on Monday like I'm supposed to, you won't hear me arguing." Her tone turned wry. "I remember, back in the day, using Ange a bit the same way with the healing spell. Call it karma or some such thing."

"Hardly", Angelo objected quietly. "Whole different situation. An' it's not like I was gonna complain."

"You never do." It was said quietly, and with a certain sadness, before Amanda looked back to Laurie, forcing another smile. "'M glad you came to visit, and not just because of your powers, Laurie. 'S good to see you, it really is."

"I'm glad I came too." Laurie replied, relaxing for the first time in what seemed like days. Everyone was okay, or would be okay, eventually.