Log: Yvette and Laurie

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Laurie and Yvette meet by the back steps and talk a little about how they've been getting on.



Laurie had once again taken up station on the back steps leading out into Xavier's back lawn, and then into the woods beyond. This time she'd made sure to keep herself a little to the side so people wouldn't trip over her in their coming and going, and unlike the main hallway stairs, these ones didn't see quite so much coming and going. It was with a tentative smile that she greeted Yvette as the younger woman mounted the first of the steps on her way upward.

"Hey," she said, never one for knowing how to start a conversation well, whether it were friendly or otherwise.

Yvette had been coming back from the woods, which was obvious from the dead leaves and grass clinging to her bodysuit, one stuck to her be-fuzzed scalp without her noticing. But she smiled when she saw her former roommate, eyes glowing softly. "Hello, Laurie."

"You up for company?" Laurie asked, smiling back a little more easily now.

"Of course, if you are." Yvette joined her friend on the steps. "I have not seen much of you since we got back."

"I've been in Medlab mostly, helping Jean with Mr North and making a general nuisance of myself otherwise," Laurie admitted.

She knew she didn't sound herself, she was too removed, but she couldn't seem to stop. She sighed and rubbed her face with her hand, she wished she could get more sleep then she was.

"Are you scared?" she asked finally, not sure whether she would need to explain.

"Scared?" Yvette paused, thinking the question over. To anyone else but one of the five who had been changed, she might have said something else, but this was Laurie. Mutate 42.

"Sometimes," she acknowledged. "When I dream, I see things, horrible things, and I do not know if they are true or it is just the nightmares. I wake up and my powers are all out of control and it feels like I will never calm down enough to make them stop." Even as she spoke, her skin was becoming rougher, her fingers and toes lengthening, and she had to stop to take a deep breath, willing the changes to stop. "It is the same, yes? For you?"

"I don't always remember my dreams," Laurie replied, unsure how to explain the feeling of dread that made sleeping so difficult at night. Having Eamon to hold her as she slept, helped more then she could really explain. A human touch to confirm she was really there, that she wouldn't get lost in the blank spaces if she stopped paying attention. "Although, my powers are weird now and they last so much longer then they did before. It's harder to tell how much to use, and when to use them."

"Which is scary by itself, yes? Especially if you had the control before," Yvette added for her, glowing eyes searching her friend's face. "And for you, especially. You do not like not having the full control over yourself."

"Yes," Laurie said, the admission drawn out of her like poison from a wound. She'd heard somewhere once that admitting things was half the battle, although she couldn't remember when, or where it had been. "We used to train together once, maybe we could work together again?"

"Of course, if you would like that." It was a strange reversal - Yvette seemed to have far more control now over her powers - at least until she lost her temper or her adrenaline was high - than Laurie did. "Ms. Frost has taught me a lot about mental control and being calm - would you like me to teach you what she has taught me?"

"I think it would help, the meditating I've been doing has only been helping so far," Laurie admitted with a wry smile. She'd helped people to train with meditation before but every time she tried it recently the large gaps in her memory just seemed to sit there, waiting for her. If Yvette could teach her anything new to help with that, it would be greatly appreciated. "Every time I get close to calm; it's like the fear is just there, waiting for me."

"Then you definitely could use the meditation partner," Yvette said with a sympathetic smile of her own. "Someone to face the fear with. Although, you might also want to talk to someone about it, someone who understands better than I do how the trauma does things to you."

"I will," Laurie promised, not really lying to her friend, just not being completely honest either. She would talk to someone eventually, she just hadn't figured out when yet, or who it would be. There were a lot of things she hadn't figured out yet, and sometimes it felt like the weight of that non-figured outness was only held back by her determined 'not thinking aboutness' and 'being perfectly fineness'. "What about you? Have you been talking to anyone?"

"Not yet," Yvette replied, with a self-conscious squirm. "I have been trying to get my powers under control enough so I do not destroy someone's chair while I am talking to them." And to be honest, while she was bothered by the thought of what she might have done while a mutate, she was also being imminently practical about the situation - she had been mind controlled and had no responsibility for what had been done by her body. It would be like blaming a gun for killing someone, not the person aiming and firing it. Then again, she didn't know what had been done. Perhaps it was better that way. "I suppose it is different for me. The way I came to the mansion... this is not the first time I have a stretch of time where I did not known exactly what happened."

"You don't have to just talk about the traumatic things," Laurie noted, knowing that she wasn't about to push Yvette about it, not when the other girl wasn't pushing her about her own trauma. "Sometimes it's just someone to talk to who you don't have to protect in any way."

Ironic, when in a way, Yvette had to protect everyone around her from her own powers. "I will remember that," she said instead, voice soft. "When the woods get too quiet."

"Are you really happy out there?" Laurie asked, not so much wanting to pry as simply wanting to keep speaking. She had no desire to sit here on the stairs by herself, and Jean-Phillipe was not in their suite. The only other place where people might be was the kitchen or the TV room and she didn't feel up to dealing with either food or television right now.

Yvette nodded, her eyes fixed on the not-so-distant trees. "It is safe for me there. I can relax and not worry about hurting anyone or anything. It is... freeing." She blinked, as if returning from somewhere else. "And you, Laurie? It is not the most comfortable place to sit, out here on the steps."

"Scott tripped over me when I was sitting on the main stairs," Laurie noted with a wry smile, hand going up to brush hair away only to realise that it wasn't there anymore at the last minute. She looked at it for a moment before placing both hands in her lap, as if clasping them together there would stop them from reminding her of things she no longer had. "I don't like silences anymore, or absences, I don't like to be alone at all right now."

Yvette knew the gesture - she'd done it herself a hundred times. "It is strange," she said, reflectively. "You are afraid to be alone, I am afraid to be around people. There is no way to know how things will happen, is there?"

"No," Laurie admitted, even as it hurt her to do so. She did not like to be so out of control, so helpless in the face of something that even now she could make no sense of. "I think that's what makes it so scary."

"Life is scary, Laurie," Yvette replied, although her voice softened. "But we are never alone, not truly. Not here. We have our friends and our family and our team. You have your boyfriend. There are always people here to help us when things happen that we can't control. To help us face the fear."

"I know," Laurie replied, her voice catching as tears traveled down her face. She wiped them away and gave a self-conscious shrug before she stood from the steps. "Sometimes, I just don't know how to reach out, that's all."

"With good friends, you will not need to. They know what happened to us, better than we do. They will not leave us to struggle alone." Yvette shrugged a little, wishing she had the outlet of tears that Laurie did. "Just let them in when they come."