Jean and Laurie log

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

After giving Nathan his lunch, Laurie has a talk with Jean



Laurie closed the door to Nate's room behind her and straightened her shoulders slightly, her face smoothing itself into a polite but friendly mask. Whatever she might feel within herself, she didn't have to make other people deal with that, at least not down here. She smiled at Domino as the other woman murmured something about going to find something to drink but didn't follow her, instead heading toward the other parts of Medlab.

Amelia had retired for the night - it wasn't that late, but Jean definitely owed her some extra free hours. The telepath was sitting in the main room, ostensibly working on some paperwork but actually waiting for the girl she'd heard come down. "Heya, Laurie," she said as the young woman stepped out of the hall, not looking up, the perfect picture of a busy doctor who hadn't had time since getting back to the school to get back in touch with everything that had happened. "How you doing?"

"Busy." Laurie replied with a twist of a smile. "I got a lot of reading done the last couple of days but I've still got at least a couple more textbooks to go through before college starts. That's not including the general classes I have to take for required stuff. Why they expect you to do all this stuff, I don't know."

Now Jean did look up, eyes assessing but with a little smile. "Got time to hang a bit?" she asked, waiving at one of the chairs. "You do know you don't have to read all the textbooks before class starts, right?"

"I know." Laurie said, but didn't say anything about slowing down. She knew what she was doing, and if she wanted to get top marks, and get into a top ranked medical school then she needed to work hard. "And sure, I've got time. What did you need?"

Laurie was practically radiating stress and Jean spared a thought to be thankful that Nate's head was too messed up for him to pick up on her from out here, and that Rachel was not down here for once. "Need, nothing. Was mostly just looking for some company - I think I'm in for a long, quiet night and got sort of behind the times while I was in Alaska."

"Company I can do." Laurie said with a smile, coming to sit down in the chair near Jean's desk. "How was Alaska? I didn't ask when you got back."

Opening a drawer Jean pulled out a bag of Oreos and winked at Laurie as she offered them to her. "Not as bad as it could have been," she said. "Scott's grandfather is going to be ok, and he and his father managed not to hit each other for the whole time they were in the same state, which is a new record for them. How were things here?"

"Don't really know, I only just got back myself." Laurie noted, taking an Oreo and dividing it in two before she nibbled away the inner filling. "I need to read back on the team list, seems like there's a lot that I missed."

"Oh?" Jean said, arching an eyebrow. "Can't have been anything big or they'd have called Scott and I." Picking up a cookie herself she seemed to turn her focus back to her paperwork as she said, "You were in Sri Lanka, right?" Her voice was casual but, despite the posture, her attention was completely centered on Laurie.

"Yes." Laurie replied, before biting into the Oreo in order to avoid saying anymore. She didn't want to talk about Sri Lanka, it was hard enough talking about it with Samson. "Scott and his Dad still don't get on then?"

And if that wasn't the world's least subtle evasion... But Jean accepted it, at least for the moment. "Did you not meet the pirate when he was here last year?" she asked, voice clearly amused as she looked up. "Chris would quite like for their relationship to be less... problematic. But you know Scott. Easy is not his thing."

"Considering some of the Danger room training sessions he's created." Laurie said, finishing the other part of her Oreo. "I can well believe that of Scott. Was there anything you needed doing now that I've actually got some focus beyond 'oh my gosh, college!'? I've been told I do a mean cupboard sorting. From the man himself, even. Marius was quite complimentary."

"That is a high compliment," Jean agreed, grinning now. "And we'll never turn away the help. Any free time you have and you want to pitch in, we'd love to see you. And you know, I don't think you have a thing to worry about as far as college is concerned; you're going to be fine." She meant that in so many ways...

"I don't want to be just fine." Laurie responded, fingers drumming against her knee. "Anyone can be just fine, I want to be the best."

"Which is a somewhat dangerous mindset," Jean said, voice gentle, even as her gaze sharpened slightly at the nervous motion. "There's always someone better than you at something. Most things, usually. Even when you become top of your specialized field, there will be people who are comparably good or better than you at some other aspect of it. Way of the world."

"You're right, of course." Laurie said with a twist of a smile, thoughts suddenly elsewhere, elsewhen. "But that doesn't mean you don't try. Whether what you're trying for is within reach or not. Stepping back, doing nothing, might as well just give up before you even begin."

Jean wasn't actively scanning Laurie, but she'd thinned out her shields until they were almost non-existent - she was going to have a hell of a headache by the time she got to bed, but she'd decided when Laurie came into the medlab to see Nate that checking on her was worth the pain and the questionable ethics, and the flickers she was catching definitely suggested it was. Propping her elbow on the table and resting her chin in her hand, Jean considered Laurie. "That's... a bit of an oversimplification," she said. "There's a difference between trying to extend your limits and increase your abilities versus pushing to achieve the unachievable. And, then too, there are times when doing nothing, as painful as it is, is the right choice. It's a different matter but... do you remember the riots in Prague?" Jean could be academic about it, although she knew at times the decision not to get involved, for all that it that been the right one, still haunted Scott.

"Mum talked about them a bit, and they had a lot of it on TV at the time." Laurie said, looking slightly uncomfortable at the question, the drumming of her fingers speeding up. She'd not payed a lot of attention at the time, more interested in what her friends had to say about the guy in her third period English class then world events. It had all been so far away, seemingly in another world and not anything she could really do anything about. Better then to simply ignore it, and get on with her day.

"The situation was getting worse and worse, but the Czech government had made it clear that anyone attempting to get involved, particularly any mutants, would be considered hostiles on sovereign soil. We knew people, innocents were in trouble, dying by the score. The X-Men could have attempted to go in; some thought we ought to have. Some probably still think we should have. Certainly we could have saved dozens, if not hundreds of people. And, in the process, risked starting a war. A time when the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, even when making that decision tears you up." Jean leaned back, face serious - she was lecturing, but it was something Laurie needed to hear, badly. "Similarly, there are times when your needs are going to outweigh those of your patients. Even if you never end up doing emergency rescue or trauma medicine in an ER you'll have classes which are going to bring up, time and time again, that your number one priority in an emergency situation is always your own safety. Applies to the X-Men as well. You can't help anyone if you get yourself into a situation you can't get out of."

"You don't think I don't know that?" Laurie said, wincing at the sudden loudness of her tone. "You don't think I don't see that I couldn't have done anything?" she continued, with a slightly softer tone. "Crystal probably thinks I hate her, and I don't but I can't...I can't forgive her yet. I can't tell her it's okay, that I'm not upset that she stopped me. And I hate that, I hate that I'm so angry that I can't make a friend feel better when they shouldn't feel bad in the first place."

"I think you do know it," Jean said, not reacting to the raised tone. "I think that's why you're angry. You don't like not being in control and, even when intellectually you know you can't do anything about a situation, emotionally you refuse to accept it, and it infuriates and terrifies you. I think that because it does the exact same thing to me, and it's something you have to learn how to deal with and work around - not ignore, not wish away but learn about yourself and come up with coping strategies. Or you end up sitting on a mountain for four months on the other side of the world from everything and everyone you love, just so you don't eviscerate people who threaten what control over situations you do have."

"Is that what happened to you?" Laurie asked, sitting back in her chair again as she forced herself to relax. Jean wasn't attacking her, and she shouldn't be reacting like she was.

The lowering tension in Laurie's body was a good sign, if only just the first step. Jean nodded and said, "Well, it was a little more complicated the way things involving telepathic trauma tend to be, but the Cliff's Notes version is yes, I was holding on, trying to control everything, but mostly myself, and losing the battle in a big way. And it was hardly the first, or even the most extreme incident that's happened around here. As Paige is want to point out, there are far too many type A people in this building - we tend to feed off each other." And the fact that Laurie was still reminding Jean disturbingly of Paige and her meltdown had definitely not escaped the red-head's notice.

"And did you do it alone?" Laurie asked, after a moment of taking in what Jean had said. It was not entirely what she wanted to hear, but she couldn't deny its truth either.

"I tried, and almost lost everything," Jean said, because at the heart of it, that had been what happened with Jane. "And then, because I'm a remarkably slow learner, I tried again more or less on my own. Charles knew what I was going through, and Scott, and when someone threatened that much too small support system I almost killed them."

She didn't want to ask for help, and yet she couldn't say she didn't already have it. Jennie, who had gotten her to Samson even though she didn't have to. Yvette, her mother. Jean herself, and Samson. She wasn't alone by any stretch of the imagination but going from knowing the help was there for the asking, and actually asking for it? She just didn't know, she really didn't, at least not right now, not this second.

"I'm getting help." she lied, or didn't exactly lie. She was, of a sorts, although probably not near the amount she really needed.

Jean just arched an eyebrow at the girl, although what she said was, "The thing is, I know you can't make somebody get help. If you're not ready to talk, or to listen, then all the therapy in the world isn't going to help, I know. But if you let it go too long and get too bad you end up with drugged coffee and medlab isolation rooms and Tibetan monasteries. I don't want to see you hurt like that, Laurie."

"It won't get that bad." Laurie promised, even though she wasn't entirely sure she was telling the truth in that either. How could she know? Anything could happen in the future, she wasn't a precog that she could tell for sure where the road would take her. "I won't let it."

Jean's eyes were sad as she looked at Laurie - she sounded just like Paige, just like Jean herself. "Sometimes it's one of those things that, the harder you hold on, the faster it slips through your fingers."