Kyle and Dori, checking up

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

After getting an email from Angelo, Kyle goes to check up on Dori.



Angelo hadn't needed to explain past "Dori went feral." for Kyle to understand absolutely why he was being asked to talk to her. The further explanation just gave him more of an idea of what was going on. Fight or flight, and it looked like the newest member of the tree-loving set's switches were all set to 'fight' when cornered.

She wasn't hard to find - although Kyle imagined that if Dori wanted to, she could probably get further up into the trees than he could - and probably make her way through them faster. He liked climbing and was good at it, but she was practically made for it. Since the last thing he wanted to do was spook her, once he caught her scent, he approached from her level, coming across the branches casually and making more than enough noise to be heard. "Hey, kiddo. Got a sec?"

Doreen was laying down on the branch, her legs dangling and her chin resting on her hands. It seemed like a lazy position but it was actually really easy to get up and get moving if she needed to. Right now though, she didn't, as Monkey Joe was curled up on her back.

She heard Kyle before she saw him, and then smelled him coming too. That was still taking some getting used to. Being in a place where everything didn't smell like cars, smog, garbage and people sweat. Or in the case of her mom's house like cleaner and perfume, the liquor smell having gone after Dad had packed up.

"Yeah," she said, "I guess I do. I mean, I'm not supposed to be anywhere else, so I do have time," Doreen said. Though she wondered where that saying came from. It's not like you could put seconds in your pocket and hide them for later and hand them out when someone asked if you had any.

Kyle found a branch that would support his weight for more than a minute, and got comfortable, leaning against the trunk and absently using it to scratch a slightly itchy place on his shoulder. "You settling in okay? It's kind of a crazy place, and it can be kinda overwhelming sometimes." Even without the feralness, he'd have checked up on her, just maybe not quite so soon. At least no one had dragged out the demon stories yet.

"Yeah. It's neat. A friend of mine from back home - Julian - is here, so that's cool," Doreen said, looking more at the ground. Flipping out during the self-defense thing had left her pensive. She knew that had been the main reason she was here and not at home. But she hoped if she didn't have to think about some of the bad stuff that it just wouldn't happen anymore. Besides, home wasn't all bad things.

"I mean, I miss my mom and even my little brother, kind of, and Dad," not that he cared much for her, but she still missed him, "But it's cool. I like the trees. But Monkey Joe is making the natives restless so no one's talking just yet," she said, referring to the squirrels. Monkey Joe made a clicking sound that was the rough equivalent of 'not my fault.' It shouldn't have been so hard to make friends. "And Ness said claws are cool. I'm thinking about not filing down my toes anymore, but it scratches up the floor and pulls up the carpet when you go barefoot."

"You can dull 'em without filing them down all the way - and most of the floors are treated so they won't get scratched up too bad." Kyle pulled a foot up, and pointed at it. "Mr. Marko, he's the old groundskeeper, he had a hell of a time dealing with me and my claws, but it's pretty much all covered now. "I'm, uh, sure the squirrels'll come around eventually." They ran from him, but he also wasn't trying to make friends with them.

Kyle stretched the leg back out, and looked over at Dori. How the heck was he supposed to bring this kind of thing up without freaking the poor kid out. He raked a hand through his hair and decided that getting it done and over with was the best thing he could come up with. "Hey, Angelo mentioned that, you uh, had kind of a bad moment in self-defense the other day."

If she grew them out though she wouldn't be able to wear shoes. She liked shoes, sometimes. At least the floors here were treated, it was one reason to not bother with it anymore. It could take more than twenty minutes to get them down short enough. She moved a bit and Monkey Joe moved up to her shoulder so she could sit up straight. When Kyle mentioned that her tail drooped and she looked down at the ground.

"He did?" she said, "I said I was sorry, I really didn't mean for it to happen, but it kind of does and I hope he wasn't hurt too bad. I mean, I don't normally try to hurt people. My little brother says I normally just chew up all his stuff and..." she trailed off, "He's not mad, is he?" she asked. Mr. Espinosa hadn't seemed mad. But sometimes people could seem fine and still not be happy.

"He's not mad. He was worried." Kyle explained. "And he mentioned it to me cause, it's sort of a feral thing, and you're not the first person here to have flipped out like a ninja on someone." He shrugged a little with an entirely sheepish expression on his face. "You won't be the last either probably." Not with certain blue and winged mutants having temper problems right now.

It was definitely time to mention a few things to the Doc though, Kyle thought. Once Doc Samson was less upset though, no need to give the guy more to worry about. "But I think Angelo wanted to make sure you knew there were people who'd done it too and come out okay."

"I'm not?" she asked, now looking over at Kyle and not down at the ground. Doreen looked perplexed at the statement that she wasn't. Of course, outside of Julian she hadn't known any other mutants back home and Julian wasn't like her at all in terms of what he could do. He moved things with his mind and she flipped out, chewed things and tried to claw off people's heads.

At least the tree jumping was fun and she could make lots of friends when they'd talk to her and she had Monkey Joe. "I'm just glad he's okay. Because I really didn't mean to hurt him. At my school back home I always had to try really hard not to hurt people no matter what they tried to do," and no one could understand just how hard it was to not 'go wild' when your tail was stuck in someone's locker. She felt bad and a bit stupid that it had been so easy to lose it when Mr. Espinosa hadn't let go in what was supposed to be just a self-defense class. "I mean.." she looked back down and Monkey Joe snuggled in close on her shoulder and did a cheek rub to try to cheer her up. "...I guess, I really didn't mean to do it. I'm really not the only one? Not you too?" she asked shyly, looking back up at Kyle.

"More than once. Fu... heck, I had to get tranqed for going after Sam's throat like, before they even got me here." Kyle explained with a shrug. "It comes with the feral thing, seems like all of us have a flip-out switch. Get angry or scared or cornered and you hit... uh, well, they call it fight or flight sometimes. Lots of adrenaline, and we've got more than most people."

Funny though, he thought, that it was as much the person as the power - he didn't go berserk like Logan did, but he had similar anger problems. Dori didn't seem like the type to have a temper, and Angelo had said she only flipped out when he had her cornered. "They're probably gonna want you to talk to Doc Samson, he's the psychologist on how to deal with it so you don't lose it as much. He's cool though. He's done a lot to keep me from going all looney-tunes."

"Oh," Doreen said, still getting cheek rubs from Monkey Joe, "I uh... don't really remember what I did. Is that normal?" she asked. When she got like that it was like a big blackout. "And Doctor Samon's nice? I haven't seen a psychologist before..." she said. She didn't think the social workers counted. "I really didn't mean to scratch Mr. Espinosa at all," she was still really upset about that.

Kyle hadn't been happy with the idea of seeing a psychologist, not even after a few months of seeing Doc Samson. It had taken a year, and some perspective. "He's pretty nice. And, I dunno, normal's kind of hard to come by here. I remember most of my grr-argh time, but that's me, and I'm ..." He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to figure out how to explain the whole of his history without giving poor Dori a class-eleven wiggins. "It's a long story." Which was a lame and pathetic cop-out of a explanation but the only thing he could think of.

"Oh," Doreen said, "Okay," she figured he didn't want to say anything else which she could understand completely. "Well, I guess if he's nice it's okay. I bet he's nicer than some of the social workers back home."

"If they're anything like the ones I had before moving here, yeah, by like a billion times." Okay, he'd been in jail, and hadn't been anything like cooperative, but they could've been nicer. Kyle was biased, but he knew it and admitted it, at least to himself. "And Angelo'll be fine, he knows you didn't meant to do anything."

Though, now that Kyle thought about it, maybe having someone around for a few classes who was feral, and who had a set of claws might be a good idea. If nothing else, it'd give them a third set of hands if she -did- have another freak out.

"I'm glad," Doreen said. And she was, that he was okay. It was like he said, she assumed, that he was hard to hurt. But it was still nerve racking. Every time it happened it was nerve racking. Doreen didn't think of herself as being super smart, she knew she wasn't, and it didn't take much in brain power to know that was why she was here.

At least she hadn't 'freaked out' as her brother called it anywhere else. Yet. Doreen sighed and Monkey Joe tilted his head one way like he was trying to get just what had his 'big sister' so morose.

"I don't want it to happen again."

"Yeah, it kinda sucks. But the best way you can prevent it is to talk to the Doc, and get a handle on why it happens." Kyle really wished he could just tell her it wouldn't happen again, but he wasn't going to bullshit the poor kid. "Once you know that, it'll be easier to avoid stuff that'll make you flip out, or learn how not to."

Doreen nodded once, "The I guess I'll hafta."