Jennie and Cece | Gettin' Organized

[x-barrier.livejournal.com]

Jennie and Cecilia talk about how they're coping with everything while they organize the medlab.

Everything was in a place, but nothing was in its place.

Such was the medlab as Cece inherited it when the world was stitched back together. She'd grown accustomed to the patterns laid out by Jean and Hank and Moira, and she was having a hard time adjusting to whatever she'd been presented with. Which is why she'd emptied two supply cabinets onto tables, determined to put things in drawers and shelves in a way made some logical sense.

After all, this was her medlab now, and the way she was feeling, control over anything sounded pretty good.

"So--" came a voice over her shoulder. Its owner was a recent occupant of the medlab, now miraculously healed. "Do you need help with this? Because back in the day this was... sort of my job," Jennie tossed her bangs out of her eyes.

"God, yes." Cecilia looked behind her from her spot in front of the cabinet, a bunch of stethoscopes draped over her left arm and a Diet Coke in her right. "You know how you always dream of how you'd do things if you only had the power?" She slid the stethoscopes onto the nearest counter, then turned to face Jennie. "Those dreams are stupid."

A beat, and then she smiled. "Hi."

"Hi," Jennie said, with a warm smile. She'd known Cece from brief interactions and monitoring of the journals in the year she'd flitted through the mansion like a ghost. This world-ending catastrophe had rattled something loose inside her, made her determines to actually live in this world and not be eaten by grief.

"So, if you want, I can--" she gestured. "I mean, you might have your own system now...?"

Cecilia shook her head, the exhaustion she felt evident on her face. "No system. That was the idea, but better in theory. I just want things in places where they make sense to go, unlike whatever it was Han—" She looked around quickly, suddenly worried prying ears would overhear her and in an instant, they'd be teleported back to the flaming inferno from which they'd been saved. "I just want things to make sense," she repeated after a second, her eyes meeting Jennie's.

"Sense I can do," Jennie cracked her knuckles. "Also color-coding. If you're into that sort of thing."

"Ooh, I am." Cecilia nodded, then gave the other woman a sheepish grin. "That was too excited right? I don't care. This is what I'm latching onto today. Color-coded supplies and charts in a logical order." She took a sip of her soda, raising one arm to her face while the stethoscopes slid off the other. "You don't really need to help though," she added after she swallowed, stepping back from everything for a second.

Jennie had already started pulling supplies from the shelves, feeling the weight and taking note of the shape and color, her mind sorting and categorizing even as chaos grew at her knees. But a chaos that she would right into order, perfect, controlled order.

"It's no big," Jennie said as boxes shifted shelves. "Like I said, I was doing this when I was 16 and first came to the mansion, some ten? Ten years ago. Jesus."

Cecilia groaned, moving a box of cotton balls so she could hop onto a nearby table. "God, when did we get old? It'll be 11 for me this summer, although, you know, really more like one-and-a-half."

"I remember you being mentioned," Jennie said, checking the expiration date on a box of ibuprofen, and making a face. "Back in the day. Mostly how much you were missed, since so many people kept breaking themselves," Jennie rolled her eyes. 'Though some I felt were on purpose."

"Wouldn't surprise me," she said knowingly. Cecilia opened the box she'd just moved, pulling out a cotton ball she started pulling it apart. "Kind worried there'll be a lot more of that now. Near-death experiences being what they are."

"There will always be that," Jennie said sagely. "Plus, the world that we've been given, while bright and shiny new seems to have some factory defects," she finished her dissection of the shelf and began shifting the boxes back, in a system of order that was both alphabetical and usage-necessary.

"Oh, you noticed too?" Cecilia watched Jennie work, impressed with her skills for sorting through chaos. Though, with what little she knew about the other woman's powers, maybe that made sense. "Mirrors at the dance studio not all they're cracked up to be?"

"I was referring to the fact that a bunch of people apparently died, a few weeks ago," Jennie said. "Mutant registration is being rammed through Congress, and my little 'problem' is still very much at large," she said, standing to reach a higher shelf. "Also, me in this universe shaved part of her head, which old me was too chickenshit to do. So there's that." The shelves were starting to regain their system of old, and the knot behind Jennie's shoulder blades untensed. While not cured, since OCD could never be cured, one blessing Xorn had granted her was that it seemed less like a disorder that made her unable to leave her room and more like a penchant for neatness.

"In some ways, I feel though, we're being apologized to. Do you feel that?"

"No." Cecilia suddenly felt a little callous, and so she tried to imagine what that apology from the universe might look like, even if it took a large leap of faith in karma she'd never had. "Okay," she conceded, "maybe. I have a dog that was my dead friend's. Not sure if that's an apology or a fuck you. Apparently I never broke ties with this place when I went out west, so I guess that's good, although who knows what it means?"

"It could have been worse," Jennie said, pressing her lips into a thin line. "We could have lost all our friends. Our home. Everything. We nearly did." And Jennie did sympathize with the grieving. The hurt and the shock that her friends at the mansion were going through at losing the people that they did, Jennie understood the loss could have been much more profound. If she had lost her friends and home a second time in two years, Jennie didn't want to think about what she would have done.

Probably jumped off a bridge.

"Well, sure, but it can always be worse," Cecilia pointed out. She believed it, too. At least Xorn had left her with one living relative, or so she thought. The doctor grabbed a box on the table and passed it down to Jennie. "We're alive. We have a home." She gave Jennie a resigned, sad smile. "We have each other. Doesn't make it any easier to stomach, though, does it?" What she hated the most was how powerless she felt sitting around as people wandered the halls like depressed zombies.

"Grief is a funny demon," Jennie took the box and adjusted it, "the only way to fight it is to go through it, as long as it takes. I think being around the familiar but having it be different at the same time can either hurt or help, depending. Plus everyone pretty much understands what everyone else is going through, so it's a little less lonely."

"So you're really doing okay?" Cecilia was impressed, to say the least. "I mean, I'm with you on the whole... have-to-go-forward, shit-could-be-worse thing, I am, but..." She shrugged, unsure exactly what she meant. "Guess I just want to make sure everyone's not just putting a face on, you included."

"I'm," Jennie paused, and sat back on her heels. "I'm at 'I don't know' right now," she said. "I've been so caught up in my own shit that this... this is like, a cherry on top of a shit sundae, you know? It's like, the world really really sucks, so bring it," Jennie's eyes gleamed. "I'll take it and fuck up whomever's dishing it out."

"Heh." Cece smiled. "That's good attitude. Bold. Very take no prisoners of you." She wasn't quite at that place, but she understood that feeling. "I'm more like, keep rolling with the punches and do the best you can do. Which sounds an awful lot like resignation, but, you know. Isn't. Because I say so."

"Enh, everything inside is still ticking, so that's what matters," Jennie said, sitting back to appraise her work.

"Exactly." Cecilia tipped her head back and drank the last of the Diet Coke out of the can. A drop slid onto her shirt, and she frowned. "Damn." Then she noticed how far Jennie had progressed in as much time as it had taken Cecilia to start this project in the first place. "Whoa," she said appreciatively, appraising Jennie. "Any chance you want your job back?"

Jennie burst out laughing. "On one hand, I have a dance studio to run. On the other, Dad didn't help me with my education this go round, so Mama's got some loans she needs to repay. Which means yes," Jennie looked up at her. "Shall we tackle the linens next?"

"God, yes." Cecilia grinned. "The linens, removed from their dysfunction. This is gonna blow Amelia's mind."