Laurie and Wanda log

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

Backdated to Saturday 28th July 2007 around Lunchtime

Wanda saves Laurie from a rather squishy fate.



Stepping outside of the salon, Wanda slipped on her glasses and looked around. For all that she'd just spent the last two hours getting spoiled rotten, things still weren't looking as up as they could have been. The whole last few months felt as if they were sitting on her shoulders--Jennie and Amanda, Forge, Medusa and the island--not to mention insane women at her college. It was frightening how things snowballed.

Shaking her head as if to clear it, she started to thread her way through the crowd. Maybe she would round up someone for lunch when she got back.

Laurie had just exited one of the many stores available around New York in which to purchase things, several bags vying for space under her arms as she made her way rather distractedly through the crowded streets. She still needed to find a store that sold yarn, or at least something resembling knitting products and she hadn't yet managed it.

She supposed she could ask one of the many fellow travellers moving along beside her but a brief look at their faces made that an unlikely prospect. There was just something about New Yorkers that made you want to hide rather then ask anything.

It was somewhere in the middle of this reverie that she noticed the sound of the horn and the fact that she appeared to be in the middle of the street with a rather large car headed directly for her.

'Oh dear...' Laurie thought, frozen.

The horn made Wanda's head snap up, hands pausing in her search for the motorcycle keys that were hiding in the bottom of her purse. There was car that could possibly have been going through a red light heading straight towards a young girl who looked nothing more than a deer in the headlights.

Cursing, she took two steps into the street and grabbed the blonde by the back of the shirt. A good strong yank and a giant step backwards had her safely out of reach and her sudden charge flailing around a bit but also no longer in danger of being flattened.

Wanda, still holding her by what was really the scruff of her neck, went to say something and then paused, catching a glimpse of the Xavier's bag underneath the purchases. "Doesn't Xavier teach you to look both ways these days?" she asked voice dry but amused.

Laurie had been in the middle of an 'Oh God, I'm going to be smooshed' thought when she was pulled to safety and it took her a moment to derail that thought and get the little red caboose that was her mind back on the rails. She blinked up at Wanda for a few seconds, trying to translate English through the veil of 'Gah!'. "Um...yes, I think?"

She took a moment to thank whatever deity was looking down on her that she'd worn the high collar shirt today. It was never a good idea to have skin contact with her when she was having a moment, whatever that moment happened to be.

With an amused snort, Wanda let go so she could reach down and snag one of the fallen bags from the street. "I suspect that actually might make it's way into the year book. Instead of "Survived the Brotherhood" and/or "survived being attacked by a pack of rabid wolverines"--the actual animal and not any current resident on your campus, I might add--being struck by a car in the middle of New York might actually get some attention." She grinned. "I do not believe we've met. I'm Wanda Maximoff, former resident of Xavier's--you look familiar, did you room with Jennie?"

"Oh! Yes. Um, Jennie talked about you a couple of times. You help her with the powers right?" Laurie asked, trying to move some of the remaining bags into one hand and then giving it up as a lost cause and simply nodding in greeting. "I'm Laurie. I tend to hang around the Brownstone waiting for Amanda to get back, so you might have seen me there. Or, um, this one time, Mr Wisdom almost fried me because I was snooping about the offices, which I totally never did again, promise. But later he forgave me, so it was all good."

"I can promise that not all of us are like that there--some of us would have threatened to hang you out of the window by your toenails," Wanda said, laughing. "Now I remember, I have heard your name before a few times. Pleasure to finally meet you." She glanced down at her watch and then made a quick decision. "Never let it be said that a Maximoff lets someone escape a near death experience without feeding them. Except for Pietro and our father, of course. Up for a quick bite?"

"I am always up for eating." Laurie replied with a bright grin, organising her bags into a more portable arrangement "I like to note that while I am not an energy projector, being this bubbly takes work and many, many calories of highly refined sugar. But cold meat products on sandwiches will do in a pinch. And excuse me for saying this but, you seem a little bit more sunny then Mr Maximoff, you sure you're his sister?"

"You'd be surprised," Wanda said dryly, "how often I get that. Trust me, there was this one time that Pietro was actually incredibly bright and cheerful for a full day. I'm fairly positive someone drugged his breakfast..."

***

"So then Mr Kane just picks up Angel and runs down the entire length of the field with her. It was so awesome." Laurie said, gesturing with her chopsticks, and then looked sheepish as she got a napkin and cleaned up the drift of Pad Thai noodles that had been flung from them with abandon.

Since she'd met Garrison and had seen Angel from a distance, Wanda could imagine the scene Laurie had laid out for her and burst into laughter. "You lot certainly know how to have a good time," she said, looking nothing more than amused at Laurie's enthusiasm. "And don't look so sheepish, my dear. Nothing I like more than a healthy dose of spirit. I can see why Jennie likes you."

"Too much sometimes." Laurie admitted, piling some noodles onto her chopsticks with a moments concentration. "I've been letting my temper run away with itself lately."

"Someone got caught in the crossfire?" Wanda asked simply before taking a sip of her water. She'd heard something about a journal fight a while back but she tended to avoid getting in the middle of those since she no longer was at the mansion.

"Kyle, not that he didn't give as good as he got. Luckily, we sorted it out and he didn't stop talking to me forever like I thought he might. It kinda sucks when someone won't talk to you, especially when you have some of the same classes as they do and need them to help you with the really tricky dances Mr Sefton assigns" Laurie replied, wrinkling her nose at the memory of the fight. It hadn't been one of her best moments, especially not the threatening and walking around in a snit parts.

Wanda smiled in sympathy. "Sometimes the people you manage to hurt the most are the ones closest to you, because we know the exact thing to say that will make them hurt the most. But the good ones are the ones that will forgive you at the end of the day. I like Kyle, even if I did break his tree branch one day when he wouldn't come down. A good person and he's probably as lucky to have you as a friend as you are to have him as one, just keep that in mind."

There was probably a reason she'd been the counsellor after Pete had left, she thought to herself.

"Yeah. I'm just, I worry now about whose going to be next." Laurie said, poking at her food with the chopsticks and not looking at Wanda directly. "It's hard to keep getting hurt, and to keep caring so much about it all. I want people to stop getting hurt, and for people to stop hurting us. I've been looking at becoming an X-man when I'm old enough, so I can help."

"Laurie, I hate to say this but no one stops being hurt. I know we get hurt in the ways that seem to be the biggest ways and the most constant. Joining the X-Men is a good way of helping but they get hurt as well. And sometimes the thing that hurts the most is doing your best and something still happening."

She rubbed the back of her neck and sighed, half-closing her eyes. "And do you know what's been the hardest thing to deal with, for me? Adults are meant to safeguard children. It's hard when they start to grow older and can take care of themselves...and harder still when they go from someone to keep safe and turn into a friend." And Wanda was suddenly facing the reason it had been so hard for her--the people that had been hurt the most in the last few months had started out as people she had been responsible for. In the end, they'd been friends and there had been nothing she could have done.

"I think that must be hard, especially with Xavier's being like it is. We're not really your standard school with the whole segregation of teachers and students. I mean, it's hard to treat someone like just someone you see for a few hours a day when you see them in their boxers at 4am trying to inhale a bowl of cereal before going for a training session. I think maybe it's worth it though, because we get to help more then most people."

"I think I'm going to refrain from asking who exactly you had that experience with. And you're right, the people in the school get some very unique lessons from the world and each other. Both with the actual school itself and everything else." There was silence for a few moments as they both continued to eat. "It's an interesting line they walk."