Lorna & Laurie: Burnt but not broken

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There's only so much one can do to go on normally after traumatic events. Laurie finally starts to break, Lorna is there to help try to patch her together again.



It was a moments lapse in concentration, an amateur mistake and her finger took a nasty slice from the knife she was using to chop vegetables.

Had it been a normal day, Laurie would have simply put the knife down and gone to wash her hand and stick a bandaid on it. This was not a normal day however, it was a day that was almost at the end of a long, fairly impossible to cope with week and the wound to her hand was the last straw in a long line of pain.

The knife went sailing, flung from her hand with as much force as she could muster, followed by a scream of rage that was surprisingly loud coming from a usually quiet and well-mannered teenager.

It came to a halt an inch from the far wall, quivering in the air, blade pointed back at Laurie. It hung there for a moment then shot itself away again, coming to rest with a light slap in a scarred outstretched palm. Lorna examined it for a second, noted the blood and then looked over at Laurie. "Hi. Cut yourself?"

"Yes." Laurie said, somewhat shocked that she hadn't noticed Lorna at all till just then. She hadn't even heard anyone coming near the kitchen door she'd been so engrossed in her own thoughts. "I'm sorry."

Lorna left the doorway where she'd been hovering, set the knife by the sink and grabbed the first aid kit. "How bad is it? Should I send you downstairs?" She wasn't going to ask, yet, about the reason the knife had been thrown instead of just sworn at. First things first.

Laurie looked at the wound, it wasn't superficial but it wasn't so deep that she'd need a stitch in it either. She bent her fingers to make sure no blood dripped anywhere. "It looks nasty but it's probably not going to need stitches, maybe just a butterfly clip?"

The first aid kit yielded an antiseptic wipe and band aid. "Okay, so, what gives?" Lorna asked casually as she took Laurie's hand to clean it up. "That's not like you."

Laurie watched Lorna clean up her hand, silent for a long moment as she thought about it. "It's too much." she finally responded.

"Can't argue with that," Lorna replied, not without sympathy, "I'm sort of wishing I'd stayed in Thailand with the giant bugs. What's eating at you worst?"

"Forge and Crystal." she replied after a moment, deciding that talking to someone was probably better then getting angry and throwing knives. "We were all here, you know? Just a week ago and now they're dead. It's not fair. And please don't tell me life isn't fair. I know it isn't. But it's wrong too, it's so so wrong and there's no one to hit, there's no one to blame for any of it. An entire island disappears and no one knows _anything_."

Lorna paused, jaw tense, looking very carefully not at Laurie. "I could tell you that there are people working on figuring it out. But that's not any better. No one knows and short of going back in time, there's no quick way to find out. We have to wait and maybe never know what happened."

It wouldn't do any good, none of it. Getting angry, crying, screaming till she was hoarse and her throat was burning from it. None of these things would bring back her friends, would let her know that they were okay, and happy and safe. So what was the point in expressing anything at all? It didn't help, she'd thought saying it would help. It didn't, it just made the frustration and helplessness worse. So why couldn't she stop, now that she'd started?

"I hate this so much. I hate how much it hurts and I hate that I don't really know if they're dead." she growled, clenching her free hand into a fist. "Most of all though, most of all, I just want them back. I want to hear Crystal complain about how much she wants to go home. I want to hear Forge saying that I suck at foosball. I want to know they're here and safe."

Lorna flinched, just barely. "We all want that." She hated the sound of the platitude in her mouth but in these situations...Christ, were there any other situations like this one? How did you cope with the death of an entire nation? "Laurie, have you talked to anyone about this? Dr. Samson, or...anyone? You don't have to try to cope with this alone."

Laurie took her hand back, looking at the bandaid for a second before turning back to the chopping block and slowly pushed the vegetables to one side, ready to be thrown in the bin. You couldn't serve vegetables that had been near an open wound.

"No. They asked but I didn't want to." she replied finally, picking up the chopping block and walking over to the bin.

"Alison practically threw me at him back when I first started to see him." Lorna got out the sanitizer and started to wipe down the counters. "He's surprisingly not therapist like. Easy to talk to. I used to threaten to throw things at him."

"They'll still be dead. Everything that happened, will still have happened. How is talking to someone going to make me feel less angry about all of it when it won't change it?" Laurie replied, placing the board to the side and pushing the plug into the sink. She might as well wash up, she didn't think she was up to cooking any more right now.

"It's not magic. Nothing is going to suddenly make you feel better or make you understand or anything. But talking about with someone who knows how to listen and maybe how to ask the right questions...that can help." That much, Lorna knew for certain.

"Maybe you're right." Laurie replied softly, pulling on latex gloves so that the bandaid didn't get wet. She pulled the taps forward and watched water start to gush into the sink. "Up to drying, if I wash?"

Lorna paused for a moment, looking at the teenager then nodded. "Sure, no problem."

"I will think about it." Laurie said, turning off the taps and starting to wash. "I'm not just saying it to get you to stop."

Lorna grinned, faking it a little but trying to lighten the pain, "It'd be okay if you were. You can even say 'stop prying, Lorna' or Ms. Dane for you, I guess. Just because I'm a teacher doesn't mean you have to listen to everything I say. Just don't tell the headmasters that or I'll get in trouble."

"It's alright to pry. I like that the teachers here care like that." Laurie replied, her own smile only a gentle lifting at the corners of her mouth but still something. "But I've always figured that if you're going to say something like 'I'll think about it', and not mean it then you're better to just be honest because people will just bug you later about it anyway. I mean, you'd ask me later what I'd decided, wouldn't you?"

"Probably. I pry. It's in the job description. Thinking about it is a good start." Lorna wasn't really drying the dishes so much as shaking off the excess water and dropping them in the drying rank. She had a Thing about that. "So is not throwing my knives. I already had to make Marius and Monet buy me a new one after they destroyed the blade on one. If you'd like to hit something, let me know, we'll head down to the gym and tap pictures of people we don't like to the heavy bag."

"I think I can do that. I say we start with that guy on the corner near my work who keeps telling me I'm an abomination whenever I walk past. I mean, one almost school riot and everyone thinks you're a menace to society." Laurie responded, handing over another dish.

"I keep my yearbook around for just that reason. Sure I could punch Magneto but did he ever steal my entire report the day before I was supposed to give it? I don't think so. But Erynn Brin did and she so deserves to know that I haven't forgiven her." Lorna shook her head, "We all cope in our own ways."