Angel, Sooraya, Yvette || Kidnapping and a Picnic

[x-firestar.livejournal.com]

It's intervention Jones-style. Angel takes Yvette and Sooraya off the grounds for some fun times and tough love.



It was just after seven in the morning, and Angel was smiling as she made her way down the hall, a picnic basket in hand. She probably looked a little crazy to anyone who passed her - who looked this happy that early in the morning? What they didn't realize was that Angel had been up since five and, in the last two hours, had downed about six cups of coffee. Or had it been seven? She had lost count.

Angel let herself into Sooraya's and Yvette's suite. Knocking probably would have been more polite, but it would have ruined her brilliant plan, and anyways she'd spent enough time here in the last month to earn the right to come and go as she pleased. She went to the middle of the living room, set the picnic basket down on the table, and turned to look at the two closed doors in front of her. "Up and at 'em, girls!" She called, clapping her hands together and grinning widely. "This is a kidnapping!"

Sooraya raised her head from her pillow and blinked sleepily at the alarm clock. She had just gone back to bed about an hour ago after Dawn and Morning Prayers and not stayed awake to recite the Qur'an or do voluntary prayers as her habit had become.

She crawled from under the covers and pulled her robe around her, quickly exiting her room for the living room. "Angel, what's going on?"

For her part, Yvette had also been sound asleep, and the sudden noise had resulted in an equally sudden powers flare that made her pillow stick to her face. Luckily, it had the same self-repairing cloth as her bodysuit, and once she peeled it off, the gashes disappeared.

Stumbling sleepily out, trying to rub her eyes past the protruding brow-armour, she grumped at the intruder. "What is all the noise? And who was being kidnapped?"

"Get dressed, my friends," Angel said happily, ignoring the looks she was receiving. She had been expecting those, after all. "We're making the great escape and getting off the grounds for the day. And before either of you protest, the only appropriate answers to this are, 'Yes,' 'Sounds great,' or 'Why Angel, where ever did you come up with such a brilliant idea?"

Sooraya just rubbed her eyes again and turned to get dressed. When her friend was in a mood like this, there was no stopping her. "Tomorrow morning, I am gonna get something extremely noisy and set it off at your door after Dawn Prayers. I am sure Maddie has something..." She muttered at her friend in passing.

"Go ahead!" Angel called after Sooraya. "Though I have to say, Lorna might not appreciate that so much."

Yvette sighed. "This is one of those times you will not take no for the answer, is it?" she asked rhetorically. "Then again, you never take no for the answer." She echoed Sooraya, heading back to her own room to get dressed. Pink Hello Kitty pyjamas were a fashion statement, just not one she wanted to project.

It was too bad Angel hadn't perfected an evil laugh for the occasion, she reflected as she watched her friends grumble their way back to their rooms to get dressed. At least they hadn't argued, which was actually a little surprising. Angel had been completely prepared for negative answers and a list of reasons why one or both of them didn't want to go. "You guys will thank me for this," she promised them happily. "Maybe not the early morning wake-up call, but the rest of it."

"Do I need to dress for any particular circumstances?" Sooraya poked her head back around the door after standing in front of her wardrobe for her few moments, having no idea what to wear.

Angel thought about this for a moment, remembering the weather forecast she'd seen earlier. "Um...we're going to be outside for most of the day, so lightly colored, comfortable clothes are probably recommended." Her own dress consisted of a light blue t-shirt, jean shorts that fell just above her knees, and a pair of flip-flops. But that wouldn't do Sooraya any good. "Oh, and something you feel comfortable sitting on the ground in."

That helped - Yvette appeared a moment or two later with a light sundress in pale green over her body suit and a large straw hat, lined with the self-repairing cloth. She didn't burn, but she did get overheated, so portable shade was a must. "I hope you are not going to use the full kidnapping thing and gas us or tie us up?" she remarked, with something closer to her usual good humour - despite her worry about where Angel was taking them. She trusted her friend to not put her in the middle of a crowd... mostly.

Sooraya dug through her closet and finally chose a colorful gypsy skirt that fell loosely to her ankles, a matching shirt and a light cotton scarf to drape loosely around her head. Her hair was tied up in a bun in deference to the heat. "Okay, I am ready." Now that she was starting to wake up, she kinda liked the idea of a few hours away from the mansion with her friends.

"What did you have in mind, Angel?" she asked as she exited the room, still pinning her scarf in place. "Please tell me nothing too crazy...I think Dr. Grey would have my head..."

"Well I was gonna use the knock-out gas and rope if you guys argued too much with me," Angel said with a joking grin. Her expression paled a bit, however, at Sooraya's words. "I'm not quite crazy enough to provoke Dr. Grey, don't worry." She patted the picnic basket she'd spent the better part of the earlier morning preparing. "Just a fun quiet, little picnic at a nearby park. I've got enough food here to feed a small army, should keep us covered for a couple of hours."

"I do not think any of us would provoke Dr. Grey," Yvette agreed. "But more than that, we will make sure you do not over-do it." Again, was the unspoken addition there. "And a picnic sounds like a perfect idea." It really did - it was somewhere quiet where she didn't have to worry about her powers.

"A picnic sounds very nice. And we have good weather for it." Sooraya glanced out the window where the sun was streaming inside. "Were you driving, Angel?"

"Yup," Angel replied with a smile. "I scoped out this place yesterday, it's kind of a drive, but it's nice, I think you guys will like it. I already packed the car and everything, so we'll just toss the picnic basket in and we're good to go! You guys all set?"

"As ready as we will ever be," Yvette replied, smiling despite herself at her effervescent friend.

********

As Angel had warned, the park wasn't exactly close to the mansion. However, given the the ample amount of trees for shade, with small rays of sunshine peaking through clusters of leaves, and the soft, beautiful grass beneath their feet, Angel thought the distance (and having to spend almost forty minutes in the car with her) could be forgiven.

"Tada!" Angel sang as she led Yvette and Sooraya along, a backpack of blankets strapped to her back and the picnic basket swinging at her side. "Can I pick them, or can I pick them?" She didn't wait for an answer, deciding it was just implied that she'd chosen a nice park to go to. "There's a duck pond not far from here that was crawling with kids when I was looking around before, but seeing as how it's-" She checked her cell-phone real quick, "a little after eight in the morning, I think that might be a good place to set up and eat something breakfast like." Because believe it or not, she had at least acknowledged that she had dragged her friends out of bed and out of the mansion without feeding them. The picnic basket was a smorgasbord of foods for every meal from breakfast to supper, and all the snacks in between.

"Breakfast sounds good." Sooraya was still in the finishing stages of starting her day. When they arrived at the small pond, she looked around with a smile on her face. "It looks very peaceful here." She commented, grabbing the 'blanket backpack' and started arranging the blankets so they could all be comfortable.

"I have to admit, this was the very good idea," Yvette agreed, poking her tongue out at Angel. "Even with the very early wake up call. Much better than hiding up a tree in the woods." She took 'her' blanket -again, the self-repairing cloth - from Sooraya as she pulled it out of the backpack and set it up in a patch of shade near the basket. "Have we been that bad with the not taking care of ourselves?"

"I wouldn't call it bad," Angel said with a poorly suppressed grin. Despite the fact that it probably wasn't necessary - she didn't plan on going all flame-y any time soon - she snagged the flame-resistant blanket she'd packed and followed Yvette's example. "I mean, I'm sure there are people - probably people we know - who have taken worse care of themselves." They settled down on the blankets, and Angel began digging through the picnic basket, finding muffins, cereal, granola bars, and those little travel-size boxes of juice and setting them out for easy grabbing. "But hey, while we're on that subject..." Angel waited until the three of them had settled down on the blankets, then reached over and (not too hard; she didn't want to hurt her) smacked Sooraya's forehead with the palm of her hand.

"Ouch!" Sooraya's hand flew to her forehead. "Angel?!?!?" She eyed her friend a little suspiciously.

Angel's smile was gone now, replaced by an uncharacteristically (especially for the normally cheery redhead) serious expression. "We need to talk. And by talk I mean, 'I talk, you listen, then you promise this will never happen again.' What in the world were you thinking?! When did not taking care of yourself become a good coping method? Why? What happened to friends help each other? Landing yourself in MedLab because of exhaustion does not happen again, understood?

"And you." She turned on Yvette next. "Same deal. I can't slap you, but if you start spending too much time in the woods again, I swear I will find a stick and poke you until you come out. And if you shred that stick before you come out, I will find another stick. There is a never-ending supply of sticks all around the woods, and you know me, I can be very persistent when I want to be." To both Sooraya and Yvette, she said, "You guys have friends. Lean on them. Or lean on them more, at any rate. Don't hide, don't try to handle it on your own. Because we all know that never works out well."

Yvette blinked at the outburst, then slowly nodded. "You are right, Angel," she said at last. "I have been hiding. I told myself it was for the safety of everyone else but... it wasn't." She couldn't articulate what it had been, combined feelings of shame and guilt and anger pushing her to avoid people and thus avoid the truth of her changes. Across her face, the skin was hardening into ridges, protective armour plating over her cheekbones and brow ridges.

Sooraya quickly glanced back and forth between her friends, noting both the ire still in Angel's eyes and the changes on Yvette's face. "I am sorry, Angel. I know what I did was not the smartest thing to do. Next time..." Her voice trailed off... realizing there was a fair chance there was gonna be next time with the life they had chosen to lead. So instead she reached out with one arm, snagging Angel and pulling her into a gentle hug. Her other arm rested lightly on Yvette's arm.

"I am sorry as well," Yvette said softly, moving to place one gloved hand on Angel's back and shifting her arm so that the other was on Sooraya's knee. "The pact, yes? Whenever we are in trouble, we three talk to each other, yes?"

Hindsight was almost immediate. Angel hadn't exactly brought her friends out here to yell at them - she really had just wanted a nice, quiet day, just the three of them. "I'm sorry too," she said, returning Sooraya's hug with one arm and moving her free arm to rest lightly against Yvette's arm. "I didn't mean to flip out, believe it or not." A small smile pulled at her lips. "Talk to each other. I like the sound of that."

"You don't have to be sorry, Angel. You were right. We needed to talk." Sooraya got a slightly mischievous look in her eyes. "Besides, I think... maybe... Yvette and I should be relieved that you didn't start tossing fire balls at us. You can be kinda... fiery..."

Yvette groaned and giggled. "That was the terrible pun, Sooraya!" she mock-protested, leaning back from the hugging and lightly tossing a granola bar at her friend. "Just because Angel is the hot-head!"

Angel put a hand over her heart, pretending to be insulted. "I don't believe it," she said in a (very poor, very obvious) mock-dramatic voice. "Here I am showing real concern for my friends, and you two go and reduce me to a series of horrible puns about the fact that I'm a fire bug. That hurts more than you know - in fact, I would go as far as to say it burns."

"Oh, but we love you for who you are." Sooraya shot back. Then she leaned over to Yvette and mock-whispered: "You watch... She is going to be glowing like a firefly. It's good we're here in the morning..."

"And we are just like the moths to her flame, yes?" Yvette giggled some more. She really wasn't good at the poker face. Or puns, truth be told.

Angel puffed her cheeks out, pretending to pout. "Oh sure, make fun. You guys would be totally lost without me and you know it. You know what happens to moths when the flame disappears? They fly around aimlessly until they get squished or eaten by a bat." She held out one hand, curling her fingers and her thumb so they formed a C and moving them so that her hand looked like an opening and closing mouth, making "nom" noises for about two seconds before she dissolved into a fit of giggles.

"Ah, the poor moths. Maybe you should make sure that does not happen and feed them, firefly." Sooraya teased back, eyeing the food Angel had set out. Quickly she reached over and picked out on of her favorite juice flavors and one of the granola bars. Her stomach was still growing used to eating regularly again, so instead of eating larger portions a few times a day, she was on a schedule of small bits of food several times a day.

"Food sounds like the awesome idea," Yvette agreed, snagging a granola bar and juice box of her own. "To Angel," she toasted, holding up the box. "For reminding us of what is important."

Sooraya raised her own juice. "To Angel...And to being friends."