Jean and Jennie: Night Shift

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Jean meets Jennie while on one of her first shifts at the Medlab.


Jennie didn't mind the work in the medlab, it was a nice change from her noisy dance studio. So many bright eye-ed, bushy tailed students, their expectations, and their angry parents. They caused her no end of love and despair. While she was always warm Jennie, smiling Jennie, she was also a stern teacher. And always at arm's length. She couldn't let herself get involved in their lives, even as they flitted and gossiped through her studio. Her partner in the Dance Studio, Marnie, adored them, but Jennie remained aloof. Mysterious.

In the medlab, the walls came down, and Jennie soothed herself with it's orderliness and cleanliness. Here, she could make the world familiar.

Cecilia had left Jean alone for her shift down in the medlab, or so she had thought. She said it was mostly large periods of absolute boredom. Jean could handle that. They'd obviously have the times when it all hell broke loose but this was not one of those times.

Entering the medlab, Jean was midway through pulling on her lab coat when she caught a glimpse of a woman cleaning.

"Oh, hey," Jean said with a smile.

"You must be Jennie."

Cecilia had given her a rundown of the medlab's "employees" and she was not purple, blonde, or redheaded like herself. Therefore, it logic dictated that it was probably Jennie Stavros. She didn't really have a medical degree, from what she heard, but she helped out. It made Jean, admittedly, curious as to why. But that was probably for another time.

To her credit, Jennie did not start at the voice. It was familiar but not, younger, less wise, more open. Jennie turned and offered the woman a sweet smile. "Hello! Jean, yes?"

Jean nodded. "That's me. Nice to meet you. I thought I was going to be the only one here for my shift," she said. Her sister thought she was crazy for taking on extra work on top of her fellowship. But it was all helping her learn.

"Definitely will help the inevitable boredom. I had brought my iPad to watch Netflix."

"Oh, I just help out," Jennie said with a dismissive wave. She was clad for comfort, yoga pants, raggedy red t-shirt and black hoodie. There was a faded Liverpool logo over her heart. "When I was a kid going to school here I got drafted to help out, and I used to keep it in order before I left for London. After all the chaos I volunteered to come back. Though the professor is being nice and paying me what he used to," she said with a smile. "How you settling in?"

Jean slipped her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. That was a good question.

"Still trying to get into the swing of things. Living with a bunch of people, ones that could potentially become my patients... It's a different world than I'm used to. But I'm getting there," she said with a shrug and a smile. It had its ups and downs. Sometimes people still looked at her strangely because she was new. It was a small oasis against the harshness of the world. Perhaps they were weary of outsiders.

"So what can I do to help?" she added, pulling her stethoscope out of her pocket to put on the counter.

Jennie made a face. "Keep me company? The system's sort of all in my brain and explaining it will take too much time," Jennie gestured at the cabinet, which was sorted alphabetically, then by size and color. "I take it you are one of our illustrious alumni as well? Before my time, of course," Jennie brushed her dark hair our of her eyes. Before Dr. Grey had always been such a large presence. Jennie was surprised to see they were nearly the same height, with Jennie having a more muscular build. Maybe it had always been that way. But Jennie, with years of practice, kept her emotions off her face, giving the new Dr. Grey nothing but warm friendliness.

"Not really," Jean admitted. "My powers manifested after an accident and Charles knew my father so he offered his help. But my dad didn't want me staying here because it was too dangerous so Charles tutored me while I lived with my parents." She studied the cabinet carefully, arching her eyebrows with approval.

"Then my dad got a job in London and we moved when I was sixteen. I...didn't cope very well, and I figured out I had telekinesis as well after destroying my room. Charles wanted me to come then but...the two of them had issues with one another. So as a compromise I went to Muir Island and he continued to tutor me via Cerebro and the occasional on site visit until I graduated high school. Or rather, I completed my GED." Muir Island wasn't exactly a high school with exactly one teenage girl there.

"After that I came back to the states to finish college and medical school. I always wanted to come here, though. It feels...welcoming."

"Oh! Where in London?" Jennie said, a hint of excitement creeping into her voice. "I had a flat in Croydon for a while, and then I was in Islington. You know, ballet stuff." Among other things. "If prompted, I can totally sing the Liverpool club song."

Jean laughed. "My dad will be thrilled. Technically he and my mother live in Oxford, since he teaches there. I just tell people London to make it easier for them on geography since there are so many different little hamlets," she said.

"So you do dance? I did some ballet as a child. Nothing extensive, but I enjoyed it."

"I-- well," Jennie shrugged, and then kicked off her slippers and with a breath gracefully slid upwards en pointe, before lowering herself. "I danced with the Royal London Ballet for a bit, nothing major, just the corps du ballet, but I'm far too built for anything like that now. I just teach at a studio in town with my Tisch classmate."

Not expecting show and tell, Jean blinked, a slow grin slipping across her lips. "Wow, that's awesome. I....mostly got roped into it because my mother wanted me to do an after school activity and it was either that or basketball, being freakishly tall and all. It's amazing that you have the talent to take it that far. I've...been getting the 'what do you do for fun?' question a lot so I'd love to get back into it, as a hobby. I know I'll be incredibly rusty but...it did provide a bit of focus when I was having a hard time with my telepathy."

Losing yourself in the rhythm and the music as your body did the work,

"I do teach an adult class, you know," Jennie said with a wink. "If you wanted to sign up. I'm about to start a new quarter in March so if you want you can slip into a class," then she turned and adjusted a box just so. "For me, my mother was a dancer, so it runs in the family. I've been dancer since I was six, seriously since I was sixteen."

"I'll have to think about it. Since I volunteered to work in the medlab on top of my fellowship at a hospital in Manhattan most of my waking moments are spent wearing a lab coat and scrubs," she admitted, then paused, glancing down. She wore a pair of grey slacks and a simple forest green button up shirt.

"Well, except for here, where it's just the lab coat. Which is nice." Though it was still relatively nice to not have to worry about what to wear when all your scrubs were one color and you could buy multiples.

She stared down at Jennie's feet. "Was there ever a time when you didn't think about it? Dancing?" She knew the moment when she wanted to be in medicine for the rest of her life, but it wasn't born of pleasure. It was born out of need, of desire.

Jennie looked down at her ugly, broken feet and self-consciously covered one with the other, before sliding back on her slippers. "It--," and here Jennie frowned in concentration. "I hate to say this, but I did it because it was easy for me, I mean, a lot of hard work went into it, but it was as simple as unlocking a door and going to the next room, and unlocking the next door. My body is not a proper ballerina shape, I've got too much muscle and my breasts are too big, but I had the knack, you know?"

She turned from Jean, pulling down a box of tissues and turning it over in her hands. "I-- I maybe this is silly, but what I really like is helping people. Righting wrongs, triumphing over evil, that sort of crap. I've always had too much of a sense of what's fair and what's not, and there's a part of me that loves ...fixing things. Helping," Jennie shrugged. "And the dancing always seemed more like a selfish pursuit, even moreso because it's so easy for me."

A smile blossomed across Jean's face in understanding and recognition of a kindred spirit. "There's nothing wrong with that. You still get to do what you want to do...both...in dancing, and...helping people. I feel the same, though I've yet to find something that....brought me more joy than being a doctor."

She leaned against the counter, folding her arms. When she wasn't working with X-Corps she'd let medicine consume her, because if you wanted to learn how to heal a person it was simply what you had to do. And now that she was finally starting to settle down, and take a moment to look at her life, sometimes she wondered if she should add more.

"So what do you....are you a mutant as well? I know some people...like Adrienne...are human." It was nice to see that humans and mutants could work together, like Moira as well. It gave her a bit of hope.

"Did she?" Jennie said mildly. Jennie didn't know much about Adrienne, but if the woman wanted to tell Jean lies it was on her. "Nope, mutant through and through. That's another reason why I concentrated so much on dance, I'm a probability manipulator, I do both good and bad luck, so if I needed to grease the wheels on something I could. Though I don't like to."

Jean arched a brow curiously, with a bit more interest then she anticipated. "Really?" she said, detaching herself from the counter to take a step forward before she caught herself.

"I...work in mutant-related care a lot at my job so I've developed a fascination with certain subsets of abilities. I'm still discovering powers that I would imagine could happen but have never seen. I mostly worked with mutants who've had physical manifestations...webbed feet, lupine features....secretion of acidic bodily fluids through skin..." She squinted. "That was a tricky one trying to get him patched up."

She shook her head to dispel the memory. "So you can control it? Either one? How...does that work? Sometimes I wonder about my own powers...telekinesis, telepathy...all being rooted in the mind...It's all driven by psionic energy I suppose. But probability....I've only seen it in Wanda. But hers is geared toward generating chaos. It's harder to quantify. Telekinesis is simple...you move things via psionic energy, lines of force. Telepathy...you read minds, the energy likely works like a transceiver. But probability....It's...almost...paranormal in nature."

Resting her chin in her hand, she smiled. "It's...kind of freaking awesome. Can you show me? Do you mind?"

There was a small leap in Jennie's mind when Jean mentioned the acid, like an over-excited puppy that was promptly shushed. No, not him, quiet. Instead the younger woman tilted her head.

"Wanda trained me," her Wanda, anyway, "So it's a bit like that. I do... both sides of the coin. Everything has it's probabilities, it's maybes, I just sort of nudge them into reality," Jennie pointed at the coffee maker, and then with a flick of her wrist sent a white disk spiraling towards it. It hissed and gurgled, and possibility of it being primed and ready pushed it to life, and it began to drip coffee.

"Though if I pushed it, I could have it spit orange juice," Jennie said with a wry smile.

Jean closed the distance, crouching down to examine the coffee maker, as if she could see any residual effects, like glowing or something. But it looked perfectly fine. It took her a moment before she turned, glancing over her shoulder.

"I...what? Really?" she said, then jumped up, clenching her fist wistfully. "Man I'd like to know how that works. The scientist in me wants to test the crap out of that." She turned around, pausing, then flashed a sheepish grin. "I...get a little excited. Sorry," she added, looking for a nice, non-awkward segue.

"So uh...you do know Wanda? Me too. We've been friends for awhile."

Jennie smiled, trying not to miss the wiseness and warmth of the old Jean. It was like her, merely another twist of the coin, a zig where before there was a zag.

"She trained me since I was a wee 16-year-old," said Jennie. "Helped whip me into shape, and fed me. A lot, we energy manipulators love our food."

Jean nodded. "I've heard of that. Interesting to see it in this instance," she said. She saw something in her eyes, a flicker. It happened with some of the others. That hint of sadness. She'd seen it more often than not since she came here. And she didn't want to catch herself trying too hard to make them like her, or fit in, like she did with Adrienne.

Taking a seat at the desk where the charts were, Jean sat down her messenger bag. The clock on the wall marked the time. Tick. Tick. Tick.

"Anyway...." she said, not sure what to say.

Jennie waved a hand, feeling the other woman's uncomfortableness like a wave. "It's just weird, you know? There's so much history with me and Wanda, it's hard to describe. She's like, an older sister, you know? And I missed her... when she was away, and I was in London and crap happened. But now she's back. And I get to hug her and she's here, now, and that's what matters. The now."

In way, Jennie felt so much older than this Jean. A huge swath of pain that separated her from this woman. It wasn't just the remaking of this world, either. It was the crumbling of her old life and the losses that still haunted her, made her unable to connect closely with her students.

There was a broad, open face that she couldn't scrub from her memories no matter how hard she tried.

Oh Winston, you unbelievable dumbass. Look what you've done to me.

"Anyway, you want some coffee? I'm about to have my period so the universe is going to be a little whack, wanna see if that means there will be ice cream in the fridge?" And hopefully not bees.

"I..." Jean hesitated, then nodded. "Sure," she said. Her encounter with Adrienne was still fresh in her mind. Hadn't drank enough that night to forget it. That and the girl in the hallway, Topaz, who looked like she'd seen a ghost, who would have crawled out of her skin to get away from her. She didn't want to be the source of yet another person's misery, and wondered if it might be better to keep to herself.

"I don't want to leave the medlab unattended, though. We can do it another time."

"Oh no, I meant the fridge down here," Jennie padded over to the coffeemaker and opened up the the ancient minifridge it perched atop. "Let's see, old yogurt, yeech, orange juice, somebody's sandwich--Laurie and-- aha" Jennie popped up with a grin, bearing a pint of ice cream.

"Nothing will help the shift go faster than ice cream, caffeine and gossip," she set the pint in front of Jean. "Of which, I am one of the mansion's best."

Once upon a time a Jean had taken upon herself to comfort a shaken, frightened young girl. Many times. Now Jennie finally could repay the favor.

Falling silent while Jennie searched, Jean studied the label once it was placed in front of her. She finally glanced up. "Someone has good taste in ice cream," she said, managing a soft smile. She still wasn't quite sure what to think. She had given her an out, but she hadn't taken it.

"What kind of gossip? I don't know everyone yet so some of this stuff will probably not be relevant, sadly."

"Oh, you know," Jennie said breezily. "Usually it's who's sleeping with whom for how many cookies, who's relative is actually evil, who went and got themselves possessed again. I have two friends who are currently on a drunkabout in Australia, and I'm afraid we're going to have to hose the two of them down before we let them back in the mansion."

Jean quirked a brow, unable to help the faint grin that crept upon her lips. "That is pretty good gossip. Or it would be. Does the...possession thing happen a lot? I've heard it mentioned frequently and I'm starting to worry."

"Oh, not so very often. It's often quickly and swiftly corrected, evil is thoroughly punished. All that. Though the evil relative thing was becoming a running gag after a point," Jennie's eyes danced as she offered Jean a spoon.

Blinking, Jean took the spoon. Evil relatives....it made her think of Warren. Hopefully there wasn't a resurgence.

"Go on..."

And she was right. The shift passed quickly.