Tandy and Adrienne - Post-Funeral

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Adrienne takes Tandy out to eat and they discuss how to protect oneself from untoward things.

Tandy had disappeared from the large group of people that had gathered on the first floor of her home. They had come to mingle and pay their respects, but Tandy didn't want to hear any of it and walked up the stairs to the rest of the house. She avoided her parents bedroom all together, as that is where the crime had happened. The teenager walked to her bedroom and sat down on her bed looking around her room that she hadn't seen since the past summer. It all looked foreign to her and cold, bad memories and good memories.

Adrienne was really not pleased about hanging out in a house where there'd been a murder, what with the nature of her powers. She was keeping her hands clasped together behind her back, though, and seemed to be getting along pretty well. But then Tandy had disappeared and after a while, Adrienne figured she should go make sure she was alright. Still with her hands behind her back, she leaned against the doorjamb of Tandy's room. "Had enough, Starlet?" she asked hopefully. "Wanna get out of here for a while? Go get some real food or something?" Funeral food wasn't real, as far as she was concerned.

"Yes." She got up right away and fixed her makeup in the mirror. "Don't feel like mingling with people I never met."

"Good thing you're a teenager and not a business mogul," Adrienne tried to joke, jingling the keys to her rental car in her pocket and holding a hand out to Tandy. "Where do you wanna go?"

Tandy took her hand and headed back out the door, "No where around here. To many people knew my mother or father. But Cleveland is only like 30 minutes from here. Rather go there."

"Alright, but you're on navigating duty," Adrienne told her, digging the rental car's GPS out of her purse and handing it over. "I've never been to Cleveland."

"It is really boring there. But there is a couple of restaurants that I like there." She looked down at the GPS and entered in a general address to the downtown area as she got into the car. "There."

"Where did you program it for?" Adrienne asked as she started the car and pulled out of the driveway onto the street. "It better not be a steakhouse," she teased.

"No. Just to the downtown area. Thought maybe we can stay away from the house for hours, really don't want to go back there." Tandy took out her phone and quickly texted her uncle saying she would be back. "I better not make Uncle Mike worry."

"Oh. Yeah. I told him before I went up to find you that I was gonna take you out to eat," Adrienne said, sounding sheepish. "I don't think he likes me very much."

"Uncle Mike likes everyone, it is like in his job description or something." Tandy nodded to reconfirm what she just said. "I never heard of him hating anyone before."

"Did you have much of a Catholic upbringing?" Adrienne asked, raising an eyebrow curiously. "Because there's this thing Catholics do called Catholic guilt, where they don't particularly hate you, or even dislike you, but they make it very well-known how they feel about you through guilt, through what they don't say or do."

"I know my mother grew up Catholic but I never went to church. I do wear this rosemary..." Tandy pulled it out to show her, "And since living in New York I go to mass now. But never heard of Catholic guilt, but you should only feel guilty if you done something wrong."

"Wait, what?" Adrienne took her eyes off the road to give Tandy a look that said she worried if the girl had been hit in the head. "Did you just call it a rosemary?!" She couldn't tell if Tandy was joking or not, which unnerved her a little, because normally she could read people pretty well.

Tandy hit her head with her hand. "Rosary. Sorry. I was thinking of Rosemary's Baby and Rosemary blurted out...I know some people find it offensive to wear one, like it is jewelry But I think it can help protect me...from the demon. I don't know much about them..."

Adrienne giggled and let out an incredulous "why the hell were you thinking of Rosemary's Baby?" but forgot about it when Tandy mentioned that she wanted protection from the demon. "Well, I don't think anyone would find it offensive if you're wearing it for protection from a demon," she murmured. She tugged on her St. Barbara's medallion with a thumb to show to Tandy. "As long as you believe it'll help you, I don't think it matters what the thing is that you're wearing. Belief matters, y'know? I mean, as long as you don't substitute belief in a necklace for like, exercise and a healthy diet," she added with a half smirk. It was sort of a joke, but sort of serious, too, and she wasn't sure if she'd conveyed that properly. "I guess I mean you can't just sit back and wait for a necklace to fend off a demon for you; at the end of the day you might have to do it yourself, right?"

"I am not too worry about my health yet to think that some stones will make me feel better, or was it water?" The teenager looked over at Adrienne. "I know, I just don't know how to protect myself against things like that. Granted I do the whole New Mutant training group thingy but that is a control environment, it doesn't really teach us how to fend off the things that go bump in the night."

"Well, it's better than nothing," Adrienne pointed out, following the GPS onto the freeway. "Sweetie, nothing can really teach you how to fend off something like what happened to you," she sighed, figuring that was what Tandy wanted to fend off. "That was massively fucked up. And I hate to tell you this, but there's really no way you could have fully prepared for it. All you can do is take your training seriously, and take as much of it as you can, because even in a controlled environment it's going to help as much as possible. But other than that... all you can really do is have faith that if something like that happens, the people who care about you are going to raise hell and save your ass."

"I do. I just want to learn more, not just with my powers but outside of my powers. And I do want to know more about demons, just so I am prepared if she does show herself again." Tandy looked out the window and was silent for a long while before she finally said what had been bothering her, "I have been dreaming about her since I came back. And I don't know how to stop it."

"As someone who still has nightmares from things that happened when she was a child, lemme say with true commiseration that that sucks," Adrienne muttered sympathetically. "Maybe Mister Haller has some ideas on how to help; you should speak to him when we get back home." She didn't realize she'd said 'home' until after she'd said it, having meant to avoid connotations that the mansion was really Tandy's home now that her mother and stepfather had died, but couldn't take it back now. "I could go with you if you want," she offered, not wanting Tandy to think she had to tackle this alone.

"You have nightmares too?" Tandy asked, though she wasn't going to press the matters. Adrienne was an adult and her professor as well, though sometimes Tandy saw her as someone she could confide into when she had no where else to turn too. Being a teenager was tough, being a mutant teenager was even tougher. "If it is not too much trouble, maybe. You already done a lot for me, especially coming to Ohio."

"All the goddamned time," Adrienne answered in regards to the nightmares, Boston accent thick as memories were stirred up. "And don't worry about it. I don't want you to feel like you're... y'know. Alone or whatever."

Tandy smiled slightly at Adrienne, "Thanks. Seriously thanks. If you were not here I would probably be stuck at the house. Probably find my mothers old bottle of vodka that she hides in the top cabinets of the kitchen. Not that I would drink it or anything."

Adrienne gave her a sidelong glance. "I think I'm a little more nervous saying you won't drink it, because now I have to wonder what else you'd be doing with it."

"Nothing lets forget about it, eh? Oh look we are getting closer." Tandy sat up straight and pointed to the signs, "There is some good pizza joints."

Thinking she was being given the run-around, Adrienne narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Tandy's deflection. But then she remembered she wasn't the kid's mother, so she let it go. "Pizza it is," she said instead. "Remind me before we leave and I'll get some to bring back for your uncle, too."

"I am sure that will win you some kudos, if you really think he hates you."