Jennie & Laurie log: Apologies

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

Laurie and Jennie meet in the kitchen during the evening to discuss things.



Laurie placed a plate of muffins she'd baked the night before on the table and sat down, hands clasping the cup of tea she'd set down moments before. She'd asked to meet Jennie in the main kitchen, rather then anywhere else in the house. This time of night, it was usually mostly deserted other then die-hard late night snackers and insomniacs. She figured it was better to not have an audience for what was sure to be a somewhat fraught conversation.

Jennie wandered in about fifteen minutes later. She had changed out of her day clothes into yoga pants and ancient t-shirt that had a barely legible print of a cowboy and 'Chaparral Cowboys' in red. She took a seat across from Laurie and leaned forward, clasping her hands in front of her. Her features were carefully blank, as she waited for Laurie to go first.

Laurie pushed the plate of blueberry muffins toward Jennie before taking a quick sip of her tea to brace herself before she began. She hadn't looked forward to this, especially not after the conversation she'd had with Jean and the subsequent acceptance she'd had to come to regarding her powers. It wasn't every day you were forced to acknowledge that the universe, or whatever it was pulling the strings out there had decided it would be a good idea to give you the capabilities to be a monster, but no real knowledge on how not to be.

Which, admittedly, was an obscuration on her part, it wasn't like she couldn't have asked someone and Xavier's ethics class was something she attended regularly. No one had told her your own mind could sneak up on you though, or maybe they had and she just hadn't been listening.

"Would you like a muffin?" she asked, smiling somewhat hesitantly.

"I'm good," Jennie said. She was probably stalling, which irked Jennie. Jennie was always the type to just spit things out and be done with it. No sense in making things worse than they already are. To tell the truth, Jennie would have rather have had this conversation later as she was still pissed off from the commentary on the journals. Moreso than any one else, Laurie knew what she had been through. Laurie was a trainee. Laurie should have had the sense or at least the sensitivity to realize she had punched a big button.

"Well?" Jennie added.

"I'm sorry what I said hurt you." Laurie said, putting the muffins back down, she'd been thinking about what to say since she'd asked Jennie to meet her, and she finally decided that simple was for the best. She was currently carefully watching herself carefully, since she didn't want her desire to be forgiven cause any sort of powers shenanigans.

"Do you understand why it hurt me, Laurie?" Jennie said, expression or posture never changing.

"Because you thought I was dehumanising you?" Laurie asked, still not terribly sure why Jennie would have thought Laurie would think to ever do that, even if Jennie did have four legs at the time.

"It was de-humanizing, Laurie. Even to someone without my issues," Jennie leaned back and crossed her arms across her chest. "Think, why would I have such a problem? Why would Kyle? And that's only one half of the issue. After I told you it wasn't funny, and it was apparent I did not wish you to continue, you still did. Just because you think something should be funny doesn't mean that it is."

She had no real answer, since she herself couldn't say why she'd continued the joke even after Jennie had said it wasn't funny, the only thing she could really assume is that she hadn't thought Jennie was actually serious about the 'not funny' comment due to her normally flippant nature when it came to these things, although, notedly, not this exact thing. After the talk with Jean, and her subsequent cope failure and Yvette taking her in hand, which had surprised her, only not really, she'd sat down and actually read Jennie's team file. It wasn't something she'd normally do, and she still hadn't looked at Kyle's, although she was almost positive that Scott would ask her to if she expressed her discomfort with the idea. But she knew quite a bit more now then she'd wanted to, and felt just a little worse then she'd already felt. It hadn't exactly been pleasant reading, and if her own file was as thorough, she wasn't entirely sure she was comfortable with that.

"I didn't think you were serious." Laurie replied, realising she'd gone off to her thinking place and that Jennie had been waiting for an answer.

"Um, what part of 'not funny' can be read as unserious?" Especially the part where Jennie cursed. "Usually when someone tells you it's not funny, they mean it." There was also way too long a pause there between answers for Jennie's comfort. The older girl sighed and rubbed her temples. "Espeically considering I asked you to stop twice. And you still didn't get it. That's not only hurtful, but that's kinda disrespectful. Not only did you not respect the fact that hey, maybe I might not find that funny, but you didn't respect my requests to stop."

"I screwed up." Laurie admitted, biting her lower lip for a moment. "I was rude and I screwed up and I'm sorry."

She didn't really know what else to say, as far as Dr Grey-Summers was concerned, she was bordering on unethical behaviour and as much as she'd like to deny it, she couldn't say that she hadn't just wanted to take whatever was upsetting Jennie away. She didn't like seeing people upset, and she didn't like them being upset around her since that meant she had to deal with the upset, and if you could fix that...How did you say that to someone without them freaking out on you and thinking you'd actually do that, when you hadn't even realised yourself that it was what you were thinking till someone else pointed it out.

Jennie paused, trying to chose her next words carefully. She didn't know what to do if Laurie wound up crying. She'd feel like a heel, for one thing, though granted this was all Laurie's own fault.

"Dude, being sorry is one thing. Learning from it is another. I've fucked up a hell of a lot in my life, and I'm not that old. I did things that I thought were right, consequences be damned, because I felt that the end would justify the means or because I simply didn't give a shit. And I wound up paying the price for that line of thinking," she put her hands down of the table. "The only reason I question your maturity level is because I see way too much of me in you, you want things to be be right and you want them right freaking now. My learning curve was an extremely harsh one. Too many people have gotten hurt because of stupid or thoughtlessness on my part. I don't wish the same on anyone else." Jennie looked Laurie in the eye.

Put that way, Laurie could see where Jennie was coming from, and the automatic defensiveness that had started pulling her shoulders inwards in a protective hunch relaxed. It was something she could understand, wanting for people not to be hurt.

"I didn't want to see you taking it so badly, so I thought joking with you, making it not serious would help. And then when that didn't work, and you and Kyle started in on me, I got defensive and I just didn't think about what you were saying, only that you were attacking me. At least, it felt like you were attacking me. I didn't mean for it to get quite so rude and insulting." Laurie finally admitted, holding Jennie's gaze, even though her first instinct was to look away.

"But I wasn't taking it badly," Jennie said. "Not until it was rubbed in my face. Not--" she held up a hand, "that that was your intention. But I was all right with it, because it was something really incredibly stupid. But people were just so casually cruel about it, it was kind of galling."

"I saw Shiro's comments on the team journal, and I just went with how I thought the situation was," Laurie said, looking sheepish now, she obviously assumed a couple of things that weren't true here, and that Jennie saw her as an annoyance rather then a fellow team-mate and friend wasn't the largest it would seem.

"Shiro and I have issues that go beyond the dog thing," Jennie said sourly. "Mostly to do with the fact that he's kind of a jerk and I can be pretty bitchy." Jennie sighed. "But seriously, there's a reason they say assuming makes an ass out of you and me."

"I know. I'll make sure I ask next time before I go making jokes that may or may not be funny?" Laurie said, a hopefully look on her face.

"Don't even ask, just freaking think. If you don't know if you ' re crossing a line, it's probably a safe bet to not even do it," Jennie sighed.

Laurie winced slightly. "Okay."

Jennie rolled her eyes and fought the urge to bury her head in her hands. "Look, you got why me and Kyle got so upset, right?"

"Now? Yeah, I do." Laurie said, eyebrows raised. Hadn't they already gone over it only a minute or so ago? "And I said I was sorry, and I am."

"As long as the lesson's learned then I'm okay," Jennie pushed away from the table and stood, trying to untense the knot in-between her shoulders that had from from the conversation. Now if Laurie would apply Jennie's advice to future situations, she would be happy as a clam.