Thirteen Days: Amanda & Laurie

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Amanda runs into Laurie on her way up to her apartment and the two talk.



Things were chaotic, to say the least. Amanda staggered back from the office, shoulder aching under the weight of the files she'd brought back. Research, wonderful research, although what she wanted to do straight away was get out of her work clothes, into something comfortable, and maybe do some training with whoever else might be home in the Danger Gym. Passing the doorman with a tired nod and heading for the stairs, she made her way up to the second floor landing.

Where she headed straight into Laurie who had been going in the opposite direction toward the gym, and as usual not particularly paying attention to her surroundings. Luckily for Amanda, Laurie's hand, eye coordination was improving and she managed to catch the files before they crashed to the floor.

"Sorry," Laurie mumbled, attempting to sidle around the other girl. She'd been somewhat avoidant of people as the stress of the situation made controlling her powers an almost 24/7 endeavor, leaving her tired and wrung out. She'd be glad when the whole thing got less hard and more subconscious, that was for sure.

Amanda tugged at the neck of her blouse, feeling distinctly odd. Like she was playing dress ups. "No harm done, Laurie," she said, trying a smile. She was tired and worried and sick to death of researching Russian criminals, but Laurie was a guest, and a trainee probably feeling hopelessly out of her depth in her first emergency. "You up for a cuppa? I was just gunna make meself one," she said, letting a bit more of the South London enter her accent than usual, to put the other girl at ease.

Laurie glanced down at her own grey leathers, noting Amanda's tug at her blouse and smiled in sympathy. It was hard to get used to sometimes, a new uniform and the responsibilities that went with it, even if you'd been in the job awhile.

"Sure," she responded, turning to follow Amanda down the hall. "What kind do you have?"

Taking back the files, Amanda led the way. "Earl Grey, Darjeeling, English Breakfast.." she rattled off, grinning slightly. "If you'd rather coffee, I've got some instant there somewhere, tho' Angelo says it tastes like shite." Her smile wavered a little at the mention of Angelo's name - knowing he was potentially not coming back made her heart hurt.

Laurie placed her hand on Amanda's shoulder, careful to avoid skin to skin contact, "He'll be okay," she said, thinking of Forge and all the others up there, people she knew, people who might not be coming back. She had to think they had a chance, that they'd be fine, otherwise what was the point in all this? "And I believe English breakfast should be fine. I never touch coffee, hate the stuff."

"Wise woman." Amanda briefly patted Laurie's hand gratefully, careful not to prolong the contact. Reaching her apartment, she opened the door, balancing the files on her hip. "Come on in. Excuse the mess - been a bit short of cleaning time lately." There was a pile of blankets and a pillow on the couch that she shoved up to one end - whoever had been crashing there was obviously elsewhere at the moment.

"Always," Laurie said with a smile and a wink, looking around as she moved past Amanda into the room. Messy indeed, but it appeared a somewhat organized chaos, with DVDs and music CDs seemingly scattered in their own piles, a lot of British comedy made up the bulk of the DVDs that she could see, some framed sketches on the wall, some faces she recognized and some completely unfamiliar. However the sheer number of books left about the place was a surprise, Amanda hadn't seemed like the reading sort to her, but she supposed appearances could lie. "I admit I've been resisting the urge to tidy since I got here, I don't think people would appreciate me wandering randomly into their rooms and messing with their stuff."

"Yeah, definitely not a good idea - a lot of us bring work home, and it's not always good coffee table reading." Amanda dumped her files on the kitchen table, shoving a stack of magical texts out of the way, and set her bag down beside them. "Most of these are to do with the magic - I'm basically having to make up my own brand of it, so to speak, and it helps to have some guidelines. Plus there's a lot of weird shite out there we keep an eye on and they're into some messed up stuff." She grinned again. "Wanda's place is worse than mine - she's got the bulk of the collection there."

"It must be pretty cool, finding a new way of doing things with something that's pretty ancient," Laurie admitted, "And it does help to have guidelines, even with my Dad available now, there's still so much that's different between our powers. I kinda just have to learn as I go, and study like crazy."

"Yes and no. Before my powers got rebooted, there was so much I could do... I miss how easy it seemed sometimes. Then again, I don't miss the part where my brain used to try and crawl out of my ears because I was shoving raw power through it without paying mind to the whole process." As she spoke, Amanda was putting on the kettle and rinsing out a couple of mugs from the pile of dishes in the sink. "And the guidelines help - I use those as a place to start from, and then usually figure out most of it won't work. The notes my mate Charlie made tend to fill some of the gaps."

"Is Charlie all into the magic too?" Laurie asked, curious.

"He was, yeah. Not so much into the actual practice - he didn't have the right set up for it - but he was into the theory. He tended to get things faster than I could." Amanda smiled wistfully. "We made a hell of a team. Then the silly bugger went and killed himself a couple of years ago."

Laurie paused in her wandering for a second, going back over what Amanda had last said to make sure she hadn't heard that wrong. "He killed himself? Why?"

Amanda gave a small shrug. "I really don't know - he didn't leave a note. His mum was a controlling psychobitch - used to beat him up, kept him from his dad, that sort of thing - but he never said anything, never asked for help. When it happened... well, it messed me up for a while." Taking a breath, she opened the cupboard above her head and pulled down the tea. "I'm not as angry at him as I was, now. I just miss him. He was this amazing bloke, clever, funny, cute in that whole bookish way, tho' he never would hear it. And he was my friend. Remy and I go up to his grave every year, have a chat, that sort of thing."

"I'm sorry," Laurie said simply, moving over to sit on Amanda's couch. She was...still young, and she'd readily admit that up till a month or so back the likelihood of death coming any time soon would never have occurred to her. Now, well, she'd had a somewhat more intimate aquaintance with it on several fronts and she couldn't say she'd like the realisation of mortality much. She couldn't fathom why anyone would choose to die, no matter how hard your life was. She was also aware that she didn't exactly have a hard enough life to know what one really felt like.

It was difficult to find the right words, to say the least.

"Thanks." The single word held sincerity, and gratitude. "What Charlie did... I understand it better now. I've even forgiven him for it. It was a fucking waste, but when you feel like you're alone and no-one cares, you do stupid bloody things." The kettle was boiling and Amanda poured hot water over the tea bags in the mugs. "Milk and sugar?"

"Is there any other way to drink it?" Laurie asked, a quick grin lingering in her gaze as she made herself more comfortable, pulling a throw cushion over to hug. "So, what do you think is going to happen?"

Amanda used her tea making to cover the moment's thought that question took. She knew what she wanted to happen, but she'd also been working on the hard edge long enough now to know what was the more likely scenario. And she wasn't sure she wanted to tell Laurie it was possible she'd lose teammates before this was over. "I really don't know," she settled for at last, bringing the tea over. "I mean, they're going up there with the best team they could have, they've been prepped, they know what they're doing. But there's a lot of unknowns. And it's not like the movies - sometimes the good guys don't always win." And sometimes the good guys died - a shiver went through her as she thought of Angelo. Please, not yet. It's too soon. "They'll give it their best shot, at least."

"I want things to work out, for everyone to come home safe but I know it's not the movies. You know, it's funny how everyone keeps telling me stuff like that, like I don't know it already. I may be, well, I may not have the experience everyone else does but I'm not stupid, and I'm not treating this like it's some kind of holiday outing," Laurie said, wincing as she thought about how whiny she must sound. 'Wah, everyone's picking on me, I'm so misunderstood' God that was lame.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to talk down to you." Amanda bit her lip. "It's just... you make these statements sometimes, like how the law should be obeyed because it's the law, and it makes us think that you don't understand how the world really works. And it makes me not want to be the one to wreck that innocence, to make you as cynical as the rest of us." Amanda took a breath, looking down at the mug she held clutched in her hands. "The upshot is? There's a bloody good chance someone's going to die up there. They're up against bigger odds than they ever have been, and there's no guarantees they'll even stop that mad bastard."

Laurie winced again, that journal outing had not been her finest hour to be sure, but at least Marius hadn't been sore about it and she'd learnt something from it as well, even if it had taken a conversation with Doctor Sampson to do it.

"I don't think I'm ever going to be as cynical as the rest of you, if that's any help," Laurie said, smiling to take the sting out of it. "I still don't get why drinking is so gosh darn fun that you'd be willing to break a law to do it but I can concede it's not exactly world shaking in its importance to the grand scheme of things. I don't think it was ever about 'the law is the law' anyway, least not after talking to Dr Sampson. It's just something for me to hang on to, something that's solid. You've got to admit, something written down on paper is a lot more solid then having to think about each and every little choice. But it's, well, I guess it's an avoidance, isn't it? So I don't have to deal."

"And that's why we treat you the way we do sometimes, Laurie. Because we can see you're avoiding, that you don't want to deal." Amanda sighed. "And you know, sometimes we don't want to be the bad guy that pushes you kicking and screaming into reality. Especially now, when all I'm thinking is that I'm going to be on those comms when my boyfriend gets killed." She rubbed at her eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm just tired. Worried sick. And I don't want to have to justify why I do something I enjoy doing."

"Don't be sorry, I don't expect you to be," Laurie said, frowning. "I just choose to ignore this reality and substitute my own for awhile. I'm a teenager, it's what being young and arrogant is all about. Might as well get some mileage out of it while I can, right? Soon enough you're all going to expect me to be responsible and old like Mr Dayspring."

Laurie smiled at Amanda, but the look in her eyes was pleading, asking her to forgive, and maybe even to understand just a little why she couldn't be serious right now. Death was something that was familiar to Laurie now, but it didn't mean she wanted to think about it, not just yet, not till she had to.

She got a wan smile in response. "No-one's as responsible as Nate. He takes on the whole weight of the world sometimes." Shoving back a handful of hair, Amanda leaned back in her chair. "You've made a choice, Laurie. You asked to put on the leathers, be an X-Man. One of the consequences of that is you don't get to ignore the parts of the world you don't like or can't deal with. If you can't accept that, if it's too hard, there's no shame in that - you're a kid still, you're allowed to enjoy being a kid and all the stuff that goes with it. But you can't have both - that's why the team tries so hard to make sure you kids don't go following in their footsteps."

"Stop pushing me," Laurie said, irritated suddenly. She stood, unwilling to sit down for this conversation, and roamed as she thought. "Yeah, I'm just a kid but this isn't normal for me, this isn't my life. This is just some bizarre world I've dropped into where everyone expects you to be okay with everything, even when it's crazy."

"We're not expecting you to be okay, Laurie," Amanda retorted, but sounding more tired than angry. "And you can have the normal life you want, if you decide that. But you wanted to be an X-Man. Now's the time where you find out just what that involves. And what it costs."

"Yeah, I guess so," Laurie replied as the irritation slowly ebbed and she was left with nothing to carry her forward. "I'm sorry, I really am. I just can't do this right now. Maybe we can have tea later."

She walked out the door, not waiting for Amanda's response, or even looking back to see whether she'd been followed, she assumed not. She needed to go to the gym, work until she was so tired all she could do was sleep. Maybe then the fear in her gut would go away, because right now she couldn't stand it.

Amanda sighed, looking at the emphatically-closed door. Laurie would learn one day, when she was ready. Or maybe even when she wasn't - life had a habit of forcing you into a corner. And in the meantime, there was work to do - setting aside her mug, she reached for the top file on the pile.