xp_logs | Twisted Sister: Coping Strategies

Tabitha and Jane are approached, separately, by pairs of Stepfords who drag them off to parts unknown - which translates into a classroom where Nathan has finally tracked down the sister who shouldn't exist. What she is, in the end, is perhaps not so unexpected.

"Miss Tabitha."

The tone would have sounded imperious had there not been an edge of desperation there. The two blonde girls standing before the library's front desk were visibly uneasy, one of the sisters shifting from foot to foot, the other chewing on her lower lip anxiously. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, however, as if needing the comfort of proximity.

"Miss Tabitha, we need-"

"-you to come. There's something-"

"-we have to show you. Please?"

Tabitha stood uneasily. She looked around the library, but there were no other patrons. And this was Xavier's, if a student wanted to really do some damage, her presence wouldn't deter them. She moved from behind her desk. "Okay, calm down. Just tell me where we're going."

"To them, before they can-"

"-fight, because we think they might-"

"-fight. She brings it on herself but she's-"

"-one of us and so we don't want fighting." The Stepford on the left reached out and took Tabitha's hand, tugging on it. "You won't let them, will you?"

The junior librarian let the girl lead her, still completely bewildered. The Stepfords usually did that to her, though. "I can try, but who?" The way they spoke gave her a headache, but she really did want to help.

"Mindee," they said. In unison.

---

The knocking on the door of Jane's suite was almost frantic. It sounded like more than one person, an impression that was confirmed when the knocking was accompanied by shouting.

"Miss Jane! Miss Jane, we need you to-"

"-let us in, hurry, we need-"

"-your help!"

Jane threw open the door to find two obviously panicked Stepfords and resisted the urge to slam it back shut again. "What's going on?" she asked with some reluctance.

"He caught her! He caught her and he's-"

"-scary, and we're afraid of what she'll do, because she-"

"-doesn't want anyone else to know!"

"Wait, wait. Slow down. I need names here. Who caught who?" Jane realized that she'd been clutching the door with white fingers and let go, gently. She wasn't sure which of the sisters she had in front of her, but neither one appeared to be Mindee. Be an adult, Jane, she reminded herself. Help first, freak out later.

"HER," they said, in unison. Then the sister on the left picked it up. "He caught her finally, he's been-"

"-looking for the last couple of days, because he knows-"

"-she's trouble."

The girls were talking in circles, and Jane was dizzy from trying to follow the conversation. Stepping into the hall, she allowed the girls to guide her down the hall. "Okay, I'm going. Will you please tell me who he and her are before we get there? Their REAL names? And what you think is going to happen?" Because if this is something more than a small argument, I'm totally grabbing a teacher.

---

The voices were audible halfway down the hall from the classroom where the conversation appeared to be taking place. "-don't know why you're so surprised," the girl's voice said sweetly. "Didn't you do something bad, too? Boom goes the hallway!"

"Yes," Nathan replied, his voice steady but still audible - the door had to be open - to the two young women and four girls approaching. "But my 'bad' was finite. I think yours is stil ongoing, and that's the problem."

Jane threw Tabitha a worried look as they approached the classroom. What had these girls gotten them into? "Do you know who he's talking to?"

Tabitha kept her eyes on the door. "Would you think I was nuts if I said I think it's Mindee?" she asked in a small voice. "Because I think I am. Maybe just a little bit."

"I don't think you know what you're talking about," the girl inside the classroom said, the sweetness in her voice taking on a bizarrely vicious edge. "I think you know that, too. Why else would you have been sneaking around for two days, trying to figure this out? Why not go to the old bald man?"

Nathan was silent for a moment. Then: "Who said I didn't?"

"... no, you didn't," the Stepford said, sounding horrified. "You didn't. NO! Tell me you didn't!" There was no reply from Nathan, which provoked a telepathic shriek from the Stepford inside the room. The four accompanying Jane and Tabitha froze, their eyes gone wide and curiously blank.

Jane continued on a few steps before she realized that the Stepfords had stopped moving. Crap. "Now what?" she mouthed to Tabitha. Calling out to Nathan probably wasn't the best solution, or barreling into the room to make sure everything was okay.

Tabitha reached out to poke the one she THOUGHT was Celeste. "Part of me votes run for the hills," she admitted in a low voice. "But we can't just leave them." She angled her head to see around the doorway, struggling for a glimpse inside.

"I did," they heard Nathan say, "and he's on his way. The lot of you can't go on like this." His voice was almost gentle. "I think you know that, and that's why you were gone every time I showed up where you'd been. You knew that I'd seen what you are."

There was a long, vaguely sulky silence. "You should have left well enough alone," the girl inside said, a muted but still spiteful edge entering her voice as she went on. "Lucky old broken-brained man. People's stray thoughts should be their own."

"You're a little more than a stray thought."

"Am I? Why don't they want anything to do with me, then?"

As the conversation continued, the four Stepfords outside the room seemed to come out of their brief trance. The sisters turned to each other, blue eyes searching each other's faces for a long moment.

"They're not fighting," one said dubiously, finally looking up at Tabitha. "I thought-"

"-they would fight. She likes fighting, and he's-"

"-big and scary." The third Stepford was the one who first moved towards the doorway. Her sisters slowly - almost involuntarily - followed.

"He's not that scary," Jane replied. If four teenaged girls could go to what they were treating like certain doom, surely she could as well. Jane followed the girls to the door and popped her head inside. "Hey Nathan, is everything okay?"

Nathan was sitting on one side of the table, and there was, indeed, a fifth blonde girl identical to the other four sitting across from him, her arms folded. He looked up at Jane, essayed a slight shrug. "Obviously we have a problem," he said.

The four Stepfords were standing as close to each other as they possibly could. The sister that wasn't supposed to exist snorted loudly at them. "Look at us," she said derisively. "Why am I here, if I wasn't-"

"-supposed to be so mean. You were supposed to-"

"-understand, and help us feel better. Mr. Dayspring, make her-"

"-go away! We don't want her anymore. She's-"

"-not what we expected."

Nathan's eyes widened slightly. "Son of a - you did this deliberately?" He planted his elbows on the table and sank his head into his hands. A strangled laugh slipped out. "Shit. Where would you have gotten the impression that was a good idea?"

"She was talking about you, Nathan, about what you did last week." Tabitha stepped forward cautiously. "Is that why you're here, Mindee? Because of what happened?"

'Mindee' shot the other four a contemptuous look. "Couldn't deal. We had-"

"-no one to talk to about it. Everyone was-"

"-unconscious, or crazy. And there were black-"

"-snakes in our head." A shudder, in unison, shook all four of the real Stepfords. "Writhing and-"

"-shifting, making us feel sick. Everything was moving around, nothing was-"

"-right."

"That sounds terrible." Jane frowned sympathetically. "I wish we'd known. But why didn't you go talk to someone after?"

"Because they thought they'd solved the problem," Nathan said. "They created her-" He waved a hand at Mindee, "to hold all the unpleasant things that the rest of the group mind didn't want to deal with. And then were flummoxed when she wound up holding all the unpleasant things, and being angry enough to want to talk about it." He looked at the four sisters, with a thin smile. "Avoidance-"

"-never works," Mindee murmured, almost mockingly.

Tabitha flushed slightly. "Not to mention it usually brings the witches out to drag you out of exile." She would have to remember to apologize to Amanda later. "It just makes it harder to face things when you don't have a choice any more."

"Why did you go and get them?" Nathan said, directing the question to the four Stepfords. He inclined his head at Jane and Tabitha. "You wanted them here for some reason. Why? Celeste?" he asked, focusing on one of the girls.

She hesitated for a moment. "Well, she- Tabitha was kind to me when Mindee and I fought. And-"

"-Jane is nice to everyone, and doesn't look at us like we're freaks," one of the other four said.

"That's because you're not freaks," Jane said, her tone part assurance and mild frustration. Why did everyone she knew here think of themselves as freaks? "But next time you are feeling lost or down, could you please, please come talk to someone? Please?"

"Don't listen to them," Mindee said scornfully, before any of the sisters could answer. "Even if they don't think we're freaks, plenty of other people do. 'Oh, look, it's the children of the corn,'" she said in a high-pitched voice, affecting a giggle.

Nathan shook his head. "Not true, and even if it was - it wouldn't matter. The key is to not think of yourselves as freaks." Mindee fell silent, staring down at the table. Nathan rose slowly, glancing at the other four.

"You should all probably sit down," he said. "I can sense Charles at the end of the hall, and I think that he's going to want to talk to you for a while."

---

"So," Nathan said a few minutes later, out in the hall. Charles had indeed asked them to leave, although not until thanking Nathan for bringing the problem to his attention, and Jane and Tabitha for having done their best to try and help the Stepfords. His politeness had seemed rather... abstracted, though, in comparison to the regret and concern in his eyes as he'd focused on the sisters. "That was... odd."

Jane resisted the urge to hit Nathan very, very hard. "Odd? That was incredibly freaking weird, Nathan. You could have mentioned what was going on."

"Especially when I straight-up asked about it." Tabitha refused to admit her wording could have been better. Her heart went out to the girls. "Are they going to be okay?"

"I don't know. I hope so. Charles is... good with these things," Nathan said, almost under his breath. "Better than anyone else in the world, at least. I still can't believe they actually chose to create Mindee..."

He trailed off, looking pensive. He was moving quite slowly. His back - or rather the not-quite-healed gunshot wounds were still bothering him, and it wasn't as if he'd slept particularly well the last couple of nights.

"I'm sorry," he said after another moment, awkwardly. "About not being upfront, with either of you... Mindee was right in a way, I wasn't sure I was dealing with a telepathic projection. I thought... well, I don't know what I thought." His voice was unsteady for a moment, but then his jaw clenched. "That my mind was playing tricks on me, maybe. Things still aren't quite right." He could have meant himself, or with telepathy in general; either way, he didn't elaborate. "I decided last night I had to talk to Charles." Well, it had been more like right after the encounter with Jane and Mindee. It had just taken him that long to force himself to make the decision, and by then it had been so late that he hadn't had much alternative than to wait for morning.

Jane sighed. Crap. Now she couldn't yell at him. "It's okay, Nathan, really. Just remember to keep us in the loop next time, even if you think you might be a little unsure about things. Two heads are better than one, three heads are better than two, etcetera."

"I'll remember that." Nathan took a deep breath, his shoulders squaring slightly as he gave them a sideways look. "I had a point too, though. They did come and get both of you."

Tabitha stilled, then smiled slowly. She shook her head on a small laugh. "So they did. This mean they're coming out of their shell? It'd be nice to see them around more often," she said hopefully.

"I think they'll be around for a while, yes," Nathan said after a moment. "Something like this... I don't think they're ready to be on their own, even if they are graduating." He looked down at Jane, a faint, slightly sad smile tugging at his lips. "Those of us with non-standard backgrounds take a while to adjust to a 'normal' life, right?"

Jane returned his smile with a shrug. "They'll get there. It just takes patience. And time."

Tabitha's PDA chirped to life in her pocket, her eyes worried as she picked it up to see the problem. "Oh, no. I'm going to be late." She shoved the machine back into her pocket. "I'll keep my eyes on them too, you guys let me know how you think they're doing. I've got to run." She waved vaguely over her shoulder as she dashed down the hall.

"See ya, Tabitha." Jane waved as the other woman rushed off. "I probably should head off, too. Big test on Tuesday. Must study hard."

Nathan nodded. School first," he said quietly, and realized that yes, they were in fact going to pick up and continue with their day. All three of them. Because that was what you did here - there was trouble, you did the best you could to deal with it, and then you moved on.

And maybe that wasn't such a bad thing after all.

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From:

x-jeangrey.livejournal.com

"They created her-" He waved a hand at Mindee, "to hold all the unpleasant things that the rest of the group mind didn't want to deal with.

Silly girls should have learned from my example that that never works.

Great log, guys. :D