Angel and Sooraya (Backdated)

[x-firestar.livejournal.com]

Sooraya visits Angel in the med lab. With nothing else to do, the redhead has had a lot of time to think. (Backdated to December 22).



Angel was in an argument with her phone. Specifically with the voice to text function. She'd been trying to text her mother, and quickly discovered that typing with her left hand wasn't working out.

But neither was voice to text.

"Oh you're stupid! - Oh sure, that one you get right!"

"You know, weren't you the one who told me that computers and other machines only do what you tell them to? So if it's calling you stupid, it's calling you that because you told him to." Sooraya leaned against the doorjamb, running her eyes once more over the cast on Angel's arm.

"And I am afraid to tell you so, but you still look like you had a run in with a few cars." The young Afghani made her way into the room, ignoring the bedside chair and perching on the edge of Angel's bed.

"Yeah well this one's defective," Angel said with a pout as she glared at the phone, tossing it onto the bedside table and sighing. Fine, she hadn't really wanted to talk to her mother about this anymore.

"Heh, well unfortunately I'm not Kyle or Logan with the crazy healing factor, so..." She lifted her arm the best she could, giving it a small wave and wincing, "this is gonna be around for a while."

"It will take a little while." Sooraya agreed with a nod. "How are you surviving so far? Not going stir crazy in bed yet?" The bedside table was cluttered with a few magazines, Angel's phone and some other odds and ends in an attempt to keep the redhead entertained, but it was not yet too messy.

"I'm bored." Angel sighed as she collapsed back against her pillows, wincing faintly. "I've been trying to teach myself to be left-handed, but it's not going very well." She held up the cast she'd tried to messily doodle on with a Sharpie. Writing on the plaster was hard enough. Writing on it with a hand you didn't usually use was basically a disaster.

"Have you contacted Doug? From all the report reading I have done, you can hardly be the first of the X-men to end up with this... problem? He might have some better software so you can at least use you laptop? Even Sarah might know." Sooraya shifted a bit, eying the drawing on Angel's cast. "And what in the world were you trying to make here? A porcupine?"

"All laptops have a voice to text program. Mine's just buried up in my wreck of a suite right now." Angel shrugged her good shoulder. "And it was a ferret," she added with a pout. She missed Slinky and Twinkie. They weren't allowed in the med lab. "I'm not left-handed." Or a drawing-type artist.

Her phone rang then, interrupting the conversation, and she grabbed it clumsily, sighing when she saw the caller ID. She killed the call and tossed it back onto the table.

"Someone you don't want to talk to?" Sooraya inquired, her eyebrow raised a little quizzically. "I can leave if you need some privacy."

"Oh, no, it's just my dad." Angel waved it off with the best shrug she could manage.

"Your dad? But...?" Sooraya frowned and she moved a little closer, her eyes narrowing further as Angel refused to meet her eyes. "Angel? What is going on?" Quickly she reached out, taking both of Angel's hands in her own, squeezing gently as in far the cast allowed.

"Nothing. Really." She tried to shrug it off again, but she knew Sooraya wasn't letting her get away with that. "He just...I told him and Mom I was withdrawing from school next semester, and he wants to talk about it and I just really don't." Her phone buzzed once - voicemail.

"Because of your injuries? Or..." When the buzz of the phone interrupted them again, she paused and hopped of the bed. Grabbing the phone of the table, she bent down and put it in her bag. Encountering a hard object with her hand, another idea occurred to her and she pulled out the soft hairbrush that she had generally tucked away in her bag.

"I have an idea. Why don't I brush your hair while you talk?" And maybe not having to look at Sooraya might make it easier to talk.

It probably wouldn't, Angel really didn't want to talk about it at all. But she wiggled up the best she could, adjusting herself so it would be easier for Sooraya to get to her hair. "Sure. That sounds great."

"Your ribs are gonna be aching if you stay twisted like this. This will take just a sec."Sooraya quickly pulled out another pillow and wiggled up behind Angel. Arranging the pillows against her legs just so in a way that Angel was supported, she started pulling the brush though Angel's hair with gently strokes. "Why do you want to take the semester of? Your injuries?"

"Yeah." She sighed as she leaned into the brush. "By the time I'm actually able to do things like drive myself to school. the semester will already be a month in. That's a month's worth of work to make up for five classes. Not to mention all of my classes I'm going to need both my hands for, their all design or photography. Can't exactly hold a camera with one hand, especially not the one I need for classes. I work in a dark room. Or work on a computer. And they're all upper level classes, so you figure homework every class, probably already halfway through working on a project by the time I get back, and just...that's a lot of stress." Angel knew her limits. And that was definitely pushing them.

"And if you don't do this semester, you can take the time to heal." Sooraya agreed after thinking on it a few moments. "Especially if you need two hands in all your classes, I think you are doing a good thing." She paused a moment to let that sink in, using that time to undo a snarl with her fingers.

"You think your dad is not going to agree with your choice?" She asked gently after she had resumed brushing with long gentle strokes, possible now that the snarl was out of the way.

"Eh. It's not that he doesn't agree." Angel tilted her head a bit. "I told him I got hurt - left out the specifics, obviously - and he understands, he just...I dunno. He wants to talk about it. I don't, really. And I think he's worried I won't go back. Which I totally will, I'm going to call the Registrar after New Year and work things out with them, I'll just finish up in the fall instead of this spring." Which was actually a bit depressing. She'd been so close...

"Of course you will go back to finish it! Why wouldn't you?" Carefully working out another snarl, she suggested: "Why don't you tell your dad you will talk about once you've recovered a little more. Things only happened a few days ago and it's logical you don't want to deal with this yet. And it's not like you could figure out any arrangements at school. Most of the people have already left for the Winter Break."

"Going back when you withdraw is supposed to be really difficult, from what I've heard." Angel sighed. "I dunno. I think he's just worried because I won't really tell him what happened and he's channeling that into something he can actually deal with."

Sooraya let out a low chuckle. "Normal people difficult or people-are-associated-with-Xavier difficult? There is a difference, you know." She gently kidded, still continuing to brush Angel's hair, even though the red locks were snarl free and gleaming again. "You need to focus on getting well. Your dad will be okay and so will things be for school. Try not worry."

"Normal people difficult," Angel said with a small laugh before sighing again. "Like I said, he's just worried and he's trying to do something about it. He doesn't like when something's wrong and there's nothing he can do about it, ya know?"

"I think nobody does." Sooraya finally discarded her brush and settled for gently carding her fingers through Angel's hair, hoping it would relax her a little more. Subtle tension was still humming in the redhead's shoulders. "Want me to call your dad, ask him to come over tomorrow or the day after for a bit?"

"Nah, I don't want him to see things like this." She waved a vague hand. "Unless one of the magic types knows an interior design spell and everything's fixed already," she added with a small smirk. "I don't really feel like explaining a demon invasion to him though."

"Yeah, that one would be a little hard to explain. And it's gonna take a while for things to be fixed. Lorna was muttering about buying new kitchen stuff, since some things came in close contact with the demons. I will drive you over for the holidays though if you want. One advantage of having a license." She winced as she shifted and almost sat on the bristles of the brush.

Reaching out with one hand to put the brush on the bedside table, her hand brushed a small cup. Looking over she frowned at the sight of the pills in the cup. "When do you need to take your painkillers?"

"He might not be around for the holidays. We were supposed to go to Seattle to visit family, I'm trying to convince him he doesn't need to cancel that." And not exactly succeeding, unfortunately.

At Sooraya's question, she made a face. "When I feel like I need them." Which she tried not to. It had been fun feeling the loopy high for a little while, but she didn't like it once she came back down.

"Might not be a bad idea to take them anyway and rest up a little." Sooraya gently urged her. "It would keep you from being bored..."

"Nah, I'm good." Angel put on a smile. "Besides, you're here! Nothing better to keep me from being bored than a friend, right?"

"As long as you promise to take them when you really start hurting." With those words Sooraya tried to tuck her inner worry wart away and quickly sought a different subject to talk about. "Any idea when you get your grades for your finals back?"

"Probably not until after the holidays," Angel said with a small shrug as she settled back against the bed. "Professors don't exactly wanna do grading when they've got families and stuff. Except for the crazy cat lady professor. I'll probably have that grade back by the end of the week."

"Cat lady professor? Sounds like there is a tale behind that?"

"My advanced photography professor." Angel snorted. "Every time we started something new, she'd show us an example from her own works. And it was always of a cat. 'Now this here,'" she put on a nasally voice in a poor impression, "'this is an example of how to manipulate lighting.' A picture of her cat. 'This is how to best manipulate angles.' Another cat. She showed us at least ten different cats. They were all hers."

Sooraya had to giggle. "Seriously? All cats? You know, she might just volunteer at a local cat shelter. Or did they all have names? Like Poekie, Nutters and Butterscotch." She tried to come up with some of the craziest cat names she had heard.

"Oh no, they were all hers," Angel said with a giggle. "She even told us so. She was proud of them. They were her precious babies."

"How do you think her babies would enjoy meeting your babies?" She had to smile at the picture of the ferrets chasing the cats around.

"Her babies can stay away from my babies," Angel said firmly - or mock firmly at least. "They'd have 'em for dinner."

"They'd have to catch them first. And that is not going to happen quickly." Sooraya kidded. "They are far better at hiding. Themselves and things. You still owe me a new chain for my necklace and two pairs of earrings."

"Two?" Angel groaned. "Those guys are costing me more and more money every day."

"Yep. The copper ones and now I am also missing the ones with the little blues stones..."

*****

Laurie had been doing the rounds of the med lab, making sure the rooms were clean and well-stocked, when she looked through the door and saw Sooraya and Angel curled together on the med-lab bed, sleeping peacefully together. She smiled at the two of them, it wasn't often she saw the sweet side of life in here, it was good to be reminded of it now.

Moving softly, she tucked a blanket around the two, and then closed the door behind her on the way out.