Morgan and Adrienne

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

After this meeting, and this email sequence, Morgan and Adrienne have a confrontation in which Morgan expresses her newfound realization that Adrienne is not worthy of her time, and Adrienne expresses her newfound realization that she actually wants to be worthy of peoples' efforts to care about her.


Not wanting to deal with Morgan in front of Laurie, Adrienne had been stalking Morgan's door all evening, waiting for the blue woman to come out, hanging around like some sort of thief or other miscreant. Which sort of suited. She'd definitely felt like a miscreant lately. Normally, Adrienne's response to what had happened would have been to do nothing. But this was Morgan. The woman who'd said she wouldn't let Adrienne deal with her troubles on her own. Morgan had said she would drag Adrienne back if she tried to close herself off and be alone, that people couldn't survive alone. So why was Morgan reacting like this now? Why was she shutting Adrienne out?

When Morgan finally emerged from her suite, Adrienne fell into step behind her. "You can only avoid a person for so long when you live in the same house, even if that house is a masion," she pointed out, tone grave.

Morgan had spotted Adrienne immediately and her mouth had set into a thin, annoyed line. "Who needs to avoid when you can ignore?" Her voice didn't quite reach the flatness she wanted. There was that small note of agitation that was clear. Morgan walked briskly, counting on her long legs to eat up the distance quickly enough to hopefully force Adrienne to have to jog in order to keep up.


"Morgan, I'm sorry about the emails," she blurted out, hoping to stop Morgan so that they could talk face to face rather than Adrienne struggling to keep up with her. "I'm sorry I worried you over nothing."

"I'm not a fan of wasting my time, Miss Frost," she said as she kept walking. "I am particularly not a fan of wasting it for days on end only to find out it was wasted over someone who clearly wasn't worth the effort in the first place."


Wincing, Adrienne nearly stopped walking, but her feet kept moving. "It wasn't my intention to waste your time. I'm sorry about that. I was confused, I didn't know what was going on, and since I didn't know myself, I didn't want to tell you I didn't know and make you worry even more." A part of her wanted to ask whether Morgan really believed that she wasn't worth the effort, but the other part, the part that could still break, didn't want the confirmation.

Morgan's voice dropped but became both more serious and more intense. Her pace down the hall mirrored the change as she moved quicker but each step made less noise. "You were confused so you brought it up and then stopped talking? You mentioned the most embarrassing part of it and then shut up about the more trivial part of it? Since when do you bring things up when you don't want to talk about them in the first place? Unlike others I'm tailing neither you nor Manuel. I knew nothing of your bathrobe exploits until you hinted that there was something you weren't saying. Then you kept not saying what was, in essence, absolutely inconsequential."

Adrienne struggled to keep up, both literally and with the conversation. "I was going to say, and then I was embarrassed so I stopped talking. Because I knew you would tease me about it and I already felt bad enough. And throwing up after dinner was not the most embarrassing part," she said firmly. "That was the waking up with Manuel part. Look," she pleaded, "you know more than anyone here about my history- can't you understand? I was embarrassed that I'd let myself get so drunk I threw up all over everything in Manuel's room, including myself, and that I passed out on him and woke up in bed with him. I was embarrassed that I let myself get into a dangerous situation that I swore I would never let happen to me again. I couldn't say that to anyone. I'm sorry for that. And then things started spiraling, and LeBeau showed up and starts with the 'did you feel anything unnatural for you', 'did you go up to his room of your own choice' interrogation, and I got to thinking maybe Manuel had been trying to rape me until I'd passed out, and that scared the shit out of me, and I wanted to tell you but I didn't know for sure and I knew if I was wrong you would have gone after Manny for no reason which I didn't want unless I was sure he deserved it, and by the time I started to feel like I had a handle on what had really happened I'd worried you for so long that when the truth came out it was absolutely inconsequential! I'm sorry, Morgan!" She was on the verge of tears now, which she hated, and sniffled defiantly.


Morgan stopped and spun around to level her gave at the shorter woman. "Manuel wouldn't try to rape you. Maybe that's who he used to be and maybe you don't know him well enough to know that but I do. Did it ever occur to you that I might understand both him and the entire situation? I was a whore, I understand all about dangerous situations with men. I understand not wanting to admit to being that stupid. And I understand that it usually has nothing to do with you being stupid at all." She shook her head and turned back around, continuing down the hall. "Maybe if you'd considered saying something to me first LeBeau wouldn't have fucked with your head so easily in his attempt to 'protect' people."


"Maybe," Adrienne admitted, "but I'm still working on this whole leaning on people thing. It's not as easy as it seems. You understand that too, don't you? I should have talked to you about it, and I know that now. I was stupid. I thought I could handle what I was feeling on my own. But it was awful. You were right. You said that you need to get close to people and you can't survive alone and I know you want to ignore me, but I'm not walking away and if you don't stop walking away I'm going to tie you onto the bed until you realize that. I want to be worth the investment," she blurted out before she could censor herself, voice hitching.

Morgan sighed and finally slowed down. She was all but stopped, actually, seeming to wait for Adrienne to catch up. Her shoulders dropped a little, relaxing from what had been an unusually rigid position a moment ago. "Just because I understand doesn't mean I have to be patient." She almost told Adrienne that because the woman was not Manuel Morgan was not required to have patience and calm all the time whether or not she liked it. What Adrienne did or did not know about Manuel's powers Morgan didn't know, but she surely wasn't going to risk accidentally telling the woman more than Manuel wanted her to know. "What am I, Saint Lennox, patron saint of silly women?" There wasn't any wrath in her words, though. Mostly Morgan sounded tired.

With a look of blank confusion, Adrienne paused, trying to form an answer. What came out first was an amused snort. "Maybe?" she repeated, trying not to laugh. Morgan sounded so tired, the psychometrist didn't want to aggravate her. "But you said," she reminded Morgan quietly. "You said you weren't going to let me face things alone. You said you'd drag me back. And now you're giving up on me?" Her voice threatened to break again, but she carried on. "You said you fall down and without someone to catch you it takes longer getting up, and that people don't need to be strong if they've got someone who's strong to be there for them. That's what you told me. Was that all a lie? When I try to apologize for screwing up I get ignored and told I'm on my own now, that I'm not worth the effort?" She used her sleeve to wipe at the tears that had escaped, hating herself for all of this stupidity, the weakness she was showing.

"You also said you wanted to let the water catch you. You're so intent after all that lecture to let the water consume you, drag you down and leave you at the bottom of the ocean? I get sick of fighting for people who don't want to be fought for." She didn't clarify who these people were but it was obvious from the way she said it that it was a trend in her life. There were reasons, after all, that she'd never wanted to become attached to people here. There were reasons why she seemed to be reluctant to draw closer to people. Yet she found herself doing it despite her best intentions. Sometimes she wondered if it was herself she was sick of fighting for. "No one is worth the effort if in the end they don't give a shit about all the hell you're willing to go through just to try to protect them or make them happy or help them. Actually, a whole lot of people are never worth the effort. And you never wanted friends to begin with."

"I screwed up," she spat out, sounding pained. "I didn't mean it, about wanting to be dragged down. As soon as I wrote that I regretted it, but I couldn't take it back. And then I was afraid of this. Afraid of exactly this, that I'd let you down, so I didn't want you to find me and remind me that I'd failed again. You're right, I didn't want friends to begin with," she agreed. "I didn't want anyone to care, because I didn't want to let anyone down. But I failed at that too. I do give a shit about what I put you through. I wouldn't be here if I didn't! I'm not the same as I used to be. I thought I was the same, but this whole thing has been eating me up inside and now I realize that I'm not. I can't be the person who doesn't care anymore, because it fucking hurts too much. This fight between us, this stupid fucking fight hurts so much."

Without a word Morgan walked over to Adrienne and wiped a few tears off the other woman's cheek. The expression on her face had visibly softened. "People are going to start thinking I'm breaking up with you," she said softly. Sighing, her shoulders fully slouched, something that almost never happened with Morgan. "Look, I'm stubborn, you're stubborn we both fucked up so just call it even, yeah? It's what friends do so if we were ever really friends it shouldn't be that hard, should it? Besides, I'm such a fucking sucker for pretty girls crying." The last sentence quickly degenerated into a mumble and Morgan was shaking her head at herself. "It's like fucking kryptonite."


With a watery laugh, Adrienne bit her lip and enveloped Morgan in a grateful hug. "You didn't fuck up, Saint Lennox," she assured the other woman, "this one was all me. Thank you for not breaking up with me." She pulled back, somewhat reluctantly, and wiped her face. "Buy you a beer? The new chick at the mansion is working at Harry's and she owes me cuz I let her win a swim race a while back. See how your charity rubs off on me?"

"I disagree," she told Adrienne and pressed a chaste, friendly kiss on the tear-streaked cheek. "But I'm not going to argue it since I'm never going to win that one." Morgan wrinkled her nose a bit at the mention of the new chick. "The tall one who drunk calls her husband, is oversensitive and more hormonally moody than Manuel? There's got to be somewhere else to hang out." Even as she ditched the idea of Harry's the new chick Morgan slid an arm around Adrienne's shoulders and started to lead them down the stairs. The gesture was unmistakably protective but not aggressively so.

"That's the one, yes," Adrienne confirmed, settling comfortably against Morgan's arm. "Oh, come on, drunk dialing is a ton of fun when it's not me doing it. And she was oversensitive because Nate had just fired her from Elpis for murdering a copier or something." She waved off the topic of the new chick, however. She liked Lil well enough from the two times they'd met, but she wasn't willing to start a fight with Morgan over her, not after all they'd just been through. "Where do you want to go?"

"I don't drunk dial so I'll take your word for it. Something about 'estranged husband' is what got me, I think. I don't know and I don't want to know, though. She seems like drama waiting to happen and I've had my fill for the next year or so already, thanks." Between people and their maybe deaths and people and their maybe being taken advantage of's Morgan just wanted some calm for a while. "Anywhere else. Somewhere away. Somewhere quiet." She snorted. "I was nearly going to suggest Daniel take you out but Jean-Paul would never forgive me letting his not-boyfriend go out on dates with other people."


Ah, right. Morgan had interesting ethics when it came to relationships, Adrienne knew. She probably felt that there should be no such thing as an 'estranged husband', that people should make things work or break off cleanly. It made sense that Lil's relationship status would irk the blue woman. So Adrienne didn't push it. "No more drama," she assured her friend, resting her head on Morgan's shoulder as they walked. "No Jean-Paul drama. I don't hate the guy, so I don't really want to piss him off by taking out his boy. I'm just fine going out with you in the blue suit. Should we just get Driver to cruise around the city until we see somewhere we like?"

Vanessa gave her an affectionate kiss on the top of her head when it rested on the metamorph's shoulder. "Aye, blue suit it is. Too bad, though, Daniel's fun. He isn't getting out much lately." She sighed. "I'll have to fix that soon. But, aye, let's have Driver wander us about. Something will strike our fancy. Or it won't and we'll fall asleep in a pile in the car." Vanessa shrugged. "Whatever."


"That sounds very good to me," Adrienne agreed, smiling as she recognized Vanessa's accent taking over Morgan's. As they made their way out to the garage she nearly pulled away from the blue woman and put a length of distance between them, but in the end decided against it. There was only Driver to see, anyway. And it was nice to be leaning on someone for a little while.