Morgan & Laurie | Late Saturday night/Sunday morning

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After being freed of the plane Morgan makes good on her promise to check in with Laurie who is woken at midnight.

It was truly saying something that her cell phone was in her hand and pressing the call button as Vanessa walked out of the airport. What it was saying, well, she dared not consider that. In truth it meant that someone had meant enough to her for her to check in the moment she'd landed. The fact that it wasn't one of the men she considered her family was startling. The very idea that anyone else mattered that much was entirely foreign to the woman who, for now, wore the face and body of a young, black woman. You couldn't very well stroll into the eastern, war-torn areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo looking like an outsider. It was begging to be a target. Especially when the target was vividly blue.

Laurie started awake, reaching for her cellphone that lay beside her on a coffee table in the sun room before she'd even thought about it. "Yes?" she asked, still slightly groggy sounding.

"Should I ask what time it is there or just assume you're still up to your inappropriate napping escapades?" She realized the voice would be unfamiliar to Laurie, but the way she spoke was very familiar. Vanessa didn't tell Laurie who it was in part as an experiment to see if she could figure it out anyway.

Laurie frowned as she heard the accent, wondering who would be calling her from that part of the world, then she grinned. "Vanessa?" she asked, relieved that the older woman had made it to wherever she was going safely. "It isn't Vanessa isn't it? Or should I call you Morgan when you're doing your mutant thing?"

It was one of the few times the woman had grinned at hearing someone from that part of the world use that name for her. Adrienne didn't dare use it after she'd been told it was off limits in so many words. No one else but Remy seemed to know it. Except Laurie. "Technically I'd be neither. At the moment I'd be Prisca but she's going to change once I find someone suitable." By suitable, of course, Vanessa meant someone less likely to get raped or attacked. Killing people as well as she would made it hard to blend in after that. Either that or there'd be too many and she'd end up dead. "Though, technically, I'm also going to the only people who ever really use that name so you may as well."

"I figured it was appropriate, what with you acting less and less like Morgan lately. Where are you, anyhow? And why did you leave so quickly?" Laurie asked after a moment, she was still feeling exhausted most of the time, but was slowly renewing her strength. The coughing was getting less and less frequent and the scary weakness had begun to subside.

All in all, another couple of weeks and the doctors seemed to think she'd be right as rain.

"The Democratic Republic of the Congo." There was an almost bored tone to accompany the name. It was so damn long and trying so hard to sound legitimate. Too bad the fighting in the country had killed more people than any other conflict since World War II. What a statistic to own. "I left quickly because a conversation I have with people who are here will finalize or completely change a decision I need to make on an offer which will eventually expire. Waiting wasn't preferable or particularly useful. I'd planned to come for months, so really I'm actually overdue. Only unlike months ago I plan to leave the country to go back to the mansion once I've accomplished my mission, so to speak." Vanessa squinted into the morning sunlight, flagged down a taxi and told the driver to take her to the train station. She didn't speak French, the country's official language, but the driver understood her Swahili just fine.

"So you're not leaving for good?" Laurie asked, a portion of the worry she'd been feeling in her voice. She knew Morgan had never really said that her plans for leaving had been scrapped but Laurie had hoped that the older woman would find something in the mansion to make her stay. "I wasn't sure."

"That's what is on the line, actually." Vanessa lounged in the back of the taxi, head falling backward onto the seat. She was exhausted from the airports and restlessness of being stuck on an airplane. "The short version is that Remy LeBeau offered me a job at Snow Valley. I need to decide whether or not I take it. I also need to decide whether or not I want to return to Mag Ealga. They're family and I miss both them and being busy, but I'm not entirely sure I'm still the kind of person to do all the work we tend to do. A lot has changed over the past six and a half months. Either I remain a teacher, I take LeBeau's offer or I return to my old life. This trip will determine which path I choose."

Laurie knew enough of the people at Snow Valley to not have a problem should Morgan take up Remy's offer, even if the man himself gave her the raging willies. If Amanda trusted him enough to put her life in his hands, then so did Laurie. But as much as she was sure Mag Ealga did care about, and maybe even love her friend, she couldn't say she was happy with the idea of the shape-changer returning to the life of a mercenary. She didn't know a lot about Morgan's previous life, and even if she had, she wouldn't have felt qualified to have any kind of opinion on it.

"I'd be lying if I didn't say I hoped you decided to remain a teacher." Laurie noted, leaning her head back on her chair. "But Amanda and the others would make sure you did okay at Snow Valley. Am I ever going to get to meet these Mag Ealga folks, by the way? Think I should see them if you're going to go back to them. You know, let them know they have to take care of you, make sure you eat your greens, that sort of thing."

The last was said with a teasing air, and Laurie was only half serious. She did want to meet the people Morgan considered family, but that was more due to curiosity then any particular fear for her friend.

"I don't really know most of the people at Snow Valley. I've worked with a number of them a time or two but Amanda, Jubilee and Bishop are the only ones I've ever bothered with on my own time. But the rest don't seem bad. They just aren't family. I'd be lying if I said it would be easy to leave the students. It won't be. It's part of the hardest bit of the decision. But you don't tell any of them I said that, Peaches. I know where you sleep." Vanessa sighed. Her legs bounced up and down as her feet bounced on the balls. She needed to get up and move. Go. Do. Run around in circles. All this sitting was driving her nuts.

"Aye, well, if I ever convince them to stop killing things long enough maybe I'll drag them there so you can lecture them. Except Mike, maybe. He might not be fit for being around children. He'll be trying to convince them all to experience prostitution for themselves. On the buying end, not the selling end. He really likes some Southeast Asian countries. And also Thailand. A lot." Poor Mike and his terminal love of whores.

"I'm assuming not the underage types or you'd have killed him." Laurie noted, but there was no doubt in her tone. If it was one thing she knew about Morgan, it was that she didn't stand for children being hurt if she could help it. "I'm thinking maybe he and I wouldn't see eye to eye on that particular subject. I may have gotten over some of my judgmental bits, but there's still things I wouldn't ever agree with."

It wasn't that she looked down on someone who found themselves in that position, it was just that she believed that instead of helping them continue it, you should probably be helping them find their way out of that. She specifically wasn't going to think about the people who did it because they liked it, she wasn't sure she was ready to go that far yet in her new found vow to give things and people a chance before passing judgment.

"I threatened to cut his balls off once when there was a fourteen-year-old," she told Laurie seriously. "He didn't think I meant it until he realized how sharp the blade was. Of course it was pressing against some very sensitive skin by that point. I think the girl thought I was having a jealous fit. I was still seventeen." She shrugged ot herself. Vanessa had a lot of rage in her at that point in her life. It had made her fairly effective when simply mowing people down was needed. She would kill without a care or worry about who it was or how many family members would be waiting only for them to never come home.

"Ea's most likely to show up to be lectured, anyway. You'd like him." Her words had a teasing note to them. That teasing continued as she said, "He's cute. And the youngest of them. Thom's sort of crotchety. He's the oldest, was in the military the longest, seen the worst of anything any of us have seen. But you'd like him. Good guy. All of 'em are. Mike's just got some desires I don't agree with." She wondered if she'd walk in to find him shoving some girl out the door who was just young enough to get him in danger with Vanessa. She hadn't actually said she was coming, just that she wanted to know where they were.

"I could ask Jean for some stuff to chemically castrate him if you like." Laurie noted, but she was only half serious. There were certain places her own morals stretched, and stopping someone from doing things that didn't specifically harm them didn't bother her all that much. "I'm not sure she'd actually give me anything, and even then it wouldn't last all that long but you wouldn't have to tell him that. I like the sound of Ea though, how young is young? And could lecturing consist of me taking him out to dinner?"

Vanessa snorted. It wasn't at all ladylike and it didn't go with the body she wore, but she would be dropping Prisca soon anyway. "Eamon's thirty-five in a couple months. I'm not sure really sure about taking him out to dinner." Her voice was lingering, as if Vanessa were thinking about it. She didn't actually know what Eamon's type was. None of them exactly dated, or had time to. Unless it was Mike but he didn't date either. Though, Eamon would likely do it just to do it. Because it would be fun as long as Laurie didn't end up with a raging crush on the guy. "You might be able to persuade him."

"Thirty five isn't that old, I'm nineteen this year, after all." Laurie protested, her grin stretching as she leaned back against her pillows, the phone pressed to her ear. "I should probably let you go, but thanks for calling and letting me know you're safe. I'd have worried, people go missing way to often at the moment."

"I'll be sure to let him know that my nearly-nineteen-year-old little sister wants to wine and dine my sixteen-years-older-than-her brother. He'll love it." He also might die laughing. All in all, it would be worth it to tell him. "No worries, Peaches. Wouldn't want you going grey on my account. I'll let you know when I'm heading back, alright?"

"Good, tell him I'll even pull out all the stops and not take him to McDonald's." Laurie said, amusement apparent. "And thanks, make sure you don't get yourself shot. I'd be completely miffed at you if you did."

She glanced at the alarm clock on her desk, noting that it had just hit midnight. She really should go back to sleep if she was going to ever get over this illness.

"He'll be charmed." The amusement in the borrowed voice matched Laurie's. "Maybe I'll tell him you can cook. He'll fall in hopelessly in love with you." She laughed and looked out the window of the taxi. The train station she was headed to that would take her on the last leg of her journey was quickly approaching.

"I'll try not to get shot. No promises. I'll come back alive, though. I'll give you that much. Go back to sleep, love. Talk to you in a few days."

"Night." Laurie said, and then pressed the off button on her cell-phone, and placed it back on her side table, already half asleep.