LOG: [Lorna, Haller] Flying the Kite of Parting

[x-legion.livejournal.com]

On Haller's birthday, and Lorna's last day at the mansion, the two friends manage one last day of complete immaturity.



"Oh come on, it'll be fun! Have you ever even tried?" Lorna hopped to her feet off the blanket on the grass and put her hands on her hips. Her shoes had been abandoned twenty minutes before; they sat over by her bag and the bright tangle of fabric stretched over a wire frame. She picked that up, untangling the long ribbons that dangled from it and gave her best friend a challenging look, "It's my last chance to do this. Pleeeeease?"

"Okay, okay," Jim relented. He was eyeing the kite with the thinly-veiled trepidation of one who'd never had much to do with toys even as a child, and, like a high school student who'd somehow arrived at his senior graduation with only the barest grasp of literacy, felt it was too late to ask for pointers.

See if I ever accept the 'last request' card again, he thought, cautiously accepting the offered kite. It was hard to tell if it had been twisted somehow or had been assigned an aerodynamic design by MC Escher. He scrutinized it, suspicious of its motivations. As an inanimate object it was not forthcoming with details.

Lorna grinned and reeled out a bit of string. It was a good day for this, breezy but neither too hot or too cold, just the right amount of sun and clouds to prevent being blinded. And possibly, yes, she was enjoying the inevitable awkwardness that was going to result from this. "It's simple, promise."

Liar, said Jim's pessimism. Though no expert, he was having a hard time imagining how any activity that involved someone with as much leg as him flailing back and forth across the lawn anywhere near something with a dragging string was going to end well.

"I'm not afraid of it," he said, belying all appearances to the contrary, "we just lived in the city, that's all." He shook the kite dubiously. "I bet the weather at Muir would've degloved this thing in 30 seconds. How are we doing this?"

It was going to end well for Lorna no matter what. The comedy value alone was worth twenty bucks she'd put into it. "I'm going to hold this string and you're going to run until it catches the wind and flies on its own. Then come back here."

Jim raised an eyebrow at her. "So . . . I run, and you just stand here."

Lorna beamed at him, "Well I can't run. I'm not wearing shoes." She wiggled her polished toes by way of demonstrating.

"Uh huh." Resigning himself, Jim took a tentative hold of the strings were they joined what he assumed was the underside of the kite. It swung from his hand with deceptive placidness. He didn't trust it for a moment.

A few moments later, after a few attempts to pelt across the lawn while simultaneously exorcising his sense of shame, he felt his suspicions were confirmed.

"This exercise clearly angers gravity," he called to Lorna after the third time the kite had seemed to catch the wind only to decide it missed the earth, and consequently sought to return to it with great and sudden enthusiasm. The tump the frame made each time the kite arced into the dirt seemed increasingly determined.

"You fail at kite flying," Lorna retorted, shaking her head at him. "How on earth can a grown man fail so completely at something any 8 year old can do? It's like your kite flying gene is missing." She rolled her eyes and held the spool of string out, "Okay, come here and hold this. I'll get us started."

"Oh, come on. It's not like I can tap into my inner child here. He's got his own stuff to do." Jim traded her the kite for the spool. It was just string wound around a stick. There had to be some sort of catch.

"Um, what do I do if you get it airborn?" he asked, waving the spool vaguely as Lorna began to retreat to acceleration-distance. "I mean, how do you steer?"

"Which is too bad because I'd bet he could have done it. Let the line play out a little bit, not too fast or too far," she explained patiently. "I'll come back over and help you once I get this up. Haven't you seen Mary Poppins or anything?"

"Yeah, okay. I'll figure it out." You need to relax, he told himself. Lorna was right; the kite was unfamiliar, but it was hardly rocket science. This was transferred stress, plain and simple. Damn self-awareness.

Jim took a deep breath and set it aside. Tomorrow was tomorrow. Right now Lorna was here. The telepath made his shoulders relax and grasped either end of the spool. Set aside the future, or miss the present. Not that hard a choice, really.

Getting a kite into the air was only the first half the equation, once there, Lorna wasn't at all convinced that Jim would manage to keep it there. But with any luck, it would stop him from getting that kicked puppy look in his eyes whenever he remembered that she was leaving. "Ready?"

"Ready."

As Lorna released the kite the string went taut with a gentle tug. Quashing the instinct to jerk, the telepath instead fed it more line as he'd been instructed. He took a slow step back, then another, thinking vaguely that the movement might help the kite catch more wind. It did.

Lorna laughed and clapped as the kite caught wind and jogged to Jim's side. "Good! Very good!" Impulsively, she half-hugged his shoulders from behind, not constricting his arms. "See? Fun!"

With the disparity between their respective heights, the hug was angled in such a way Lorna's wrists ended up somewhere under Jim's chin. the young man smiled slightly and leaned to one side, keeping his arms steady so he could steer the kite with his whole body. Mindful of surprise-attacks, he made sure to keep the curve minor.

"Yeah, okay, I admit it: this is a lot less frightening than the roller-blading option would have been." He leaned back, and the kite tugged higher. "You know, I think this has some possibilities as a long-range weapon. Figures there's never a flyer around when you need one."

"We're supposed to be having fun here, Worky McWorkman." She flicked his ear. "Stop weaponizing our BFF bonding time. Are you going out with your girlie for your birthday?"

"Hey!" Jim tilted his head to the side in a vain attempt to trap the offending finger between his jaw and shoulder. It didn't work, but it was the thought that counted. "I hope so," he continued as he straightened out again. "If she can get away from the office, we will. If not, combined celebration on Saturday, assuming I survive prom. Which I notice you're bailing right in time for." He leaned to the side, sending the kite into another downward arc. "It's like your last one was traumatic or something . . ."

"I think if I get in two fist fights in the same year, they'll actually throw me out instead of being sorry to see me go. It's time to let someone else cause the big scene." She tugged on his other ear, and giggled to herself. "But yeah, I'm totally over the prom experience. They're 110 times less fun when you're chaperoning than when you're going yourself. For one thing, the music always sucks."

Jim made another ineffectual twitch to the other side. "Hey, leave the ear alone. Cyndi's been sticking unsterilized safety pins in it for years, and if it falls off now I'm holding you accountable. It will officially be the worst birthday ever, and All Your Fault." Jim unwound the spool a little more, mismatched eyes fixed on the kite. "You might want to lay off the fistfights in your new place. I'll come over to post bail, but don't expect me to be happy about it."

"Nope, now you've given me the perfect alibi. It wasn't me, it was gangrene." Lorna whistled cheerfully and went after his ear again. "If I get in any more fistfights, I promise to call my West Coast BFF first. I won't call you unless I also need someone crazier than me to stand next to in the line up."

"Somehow I don't think I'd be a good enough body-double for reasonable doubt," Jim said from his Y chromosome-possessing height of 6'4". The kite began to bob crazily as an elbow was employed to reinforce the defensive efforts. "Quititquititquitit -- don't make me pull over this kite."

"But it's so funny!" Lorna protested with a giggle. "And I'm not going to get to do this again for ages and ages and ages."

"And whose fault is that? Oh. Oh no. The kite. It's going down--"

"You did that on purpose!" Lorna accused as she grabbed the kite string from him, tugging it sharply to try to save the far off swatch of color from its precipitous dive.

"Did not." With Lorna's eyes now fixed on the kite, Jim took advantage of his now-free hands. A thin arm surreptitiously reached around her shoulders -- placing a hand in the precise range of an earlobe.

"I mean, it's not like I was doing this or anything--"

"Ah!" Lorna danced away, shaking her head, "Hey, no fair! Cheating! Lies! Trickery! Betrayal!" It was hard to keep up the indignant tirade when she was giggling as hard as she was.

"That?" he said, edging closer. "That's totally not cheating."

Occupied hands and divided attention had a tendency to decrease reaction time. Or, to put it another way, provide a valuable opportunity. Either way, there was only a meager amount of scuffling possible before Lorna could be snatched up and slung over her friend's shoulder.

"This is pretty close, though," Jim conceded as he solved the kicking problem with a deft armlock around Lorna's knees.

Lorna shrieked, wriggling ineffectively and swearing. "Don't you dare, Jim! I swear to God, I will shave your head! I'll give Davey fingerpaints! I'm going to tell your DAD!"

"Oh yeah, what? 'Mr. World's Preeminent Telepath with lots of better things to do, David's touching meeee!' Besides, I'm not doing anything." He paused just long enough to let her get some of her breath back . . .

"Besides this."

Then he took off across the lawn at a dead run.

Lorna screamed and had no other recourse but to hold on as he raced across the lawn. She knew what was coming and there was no way in hell she was letting him get away with this. If she could just concentrate for half a second, she'd be able to put a stop to this. Not that he was letting her.

"Justice sucks, doesn't it?" Jim gasped out between steps. "I'm keeping my end -- we're flying the kite together." Or he assumed that was what was happening. He was pretty sure he could still feel a faint drag back there, though for all he knew it could have just been the kite dragging in the grass. However, he was prepared to dismiss it as a technicality.

It was sad, he considered as he ran around the lawn with his best friend slung over one shoulder and a kite being mercilessly yanked overhead, but he honestly had started out the day reasonably sane.

"Horrible! Just horrible!" She was so throwing him into the lake for this one.

"Okay, okay." Finally, Jim slowed to a stop and released his friend. This was for reasons of mercy, and not at all because he was in danger of an imminent cardiac event. As soon as Lorna's feet touched the ground Jim sat down, then abandoned all pretense and allowed it to become a flat-out sprawl. Red-faced and his back in the grass, Jim rolled his head around to look at Lorna. "Okay," he panted, "vengeance is served now."

Lorna fisted her hands on her hips, judged his weight and how much she could lift, powers included and decided that he was safe from her lake-dunking wrath. "I think your response was an overkill. You're just trying to get in as many licks as you can before I go. I'm on to you, Jim."

"Too late." Jim let his heartrate slow to the point it was no longer threatening explosion. Lying on his back, he stared at the sky for a few moments, and when he turned his head back to Lorna the mismatched eyes had mellowed to blue. "I'll miss you, Sissy."

Lorna's face softened and she dropped to her knees next to him. "I'm going to miss you too, Davey. Now who's going to watch Meet the Robinsons with me? I wish I could take you with me." She held out her hand, indicating he should sit up for a hug.

The young alter now in command heaved himself to a sitting position and wrapped himself around Lorna in a hug that, given their disparate sizes, bordered on engulfment.

"You better call," Davey said, his face buried somewhere in her hair. The voice was plaintive, but there were no tears; what there had been had already been cried out.

"All the time," Lorna promised. "Except when I'm in class. They'll yell at me." She hugged back tightly, hearing her voice getting choked up. Christ, she hated crying. She swallowed hard and compromised on a sniffle. "Don't be too rotten. I'll send you cookies by post if you're good, okay?"

"Okay." Davey hugged Lorna tight, pressing the side of his head hard against her ear. And then, because some things didn't change regardless of how far away a friend was moving, or how long it would be until they next saw each other, he added, "But fudge would be better."