Nathan, Rora and a daisy chain

[x-borealis.livejournal.com]

Nathan comes outside to find Rora already there. They chat. She's less crazy than usual. Sometimes. Okay, I lied, she's still crazy. There're mentions of pleated skirts?


Fresh air had definitely been a good idea, Nathan thought, breathing deeply as he stepped out onto the porch. Nice day, too. Felt like fall. He wondered idly what kind of day it had been yesterday, amid all the fireworks.

Walking down the porch steps, his hands shoved in his pockets, he started to wander in the general direction of the boathouse, with the vague idea of knocking on Cain's door. Before leaving the house, he'd peeked in on Illyana, who seemed to be resting more or less comfortably, and Scott, who was thankfully dead to the world (and about damned time), so he figured he could indulge himself a little before he went back in and did his marking. Besides, he needed to move around a bit - sleeping for a day and a half had left him awfully stiff, even after a hot shower.

There was humming from down in one of the clearings, something that sounded vaguely like “Love Will Keep Us Together”. It wasn’t a gentle, nervous hum, more a bright and boisterous one with no care in the world of who heard. Possibly because it wasn’t terribly out of tune. The music seemed to be coming from the woman who was sprawled out in the grass, spread eagle, with a daisy chain in her hair.

Aurora had decided that as amusing as watching the children flounder for correct answers to her riddles was, it was getting tiresome and she preferred it if their heads stayed unexploded for today. Besides, she didn’t really loathe any of them, especially not that much. Thought they were idiots, sure, but no loathing, and only loathing, or a terrible mood, constituting head exploding. Or bad shoes. Aurora had a problem with bad shoes.

Nathan stopped, smiling a bit, and then altered his direction so that he came past her, rather than following the path to the boathouse. "Morning," he said, quietly but fairly cheerfully. Because he was cheerful, damn it. No one was dead, and everything could be sorted out if there were no dead bodies. It was one of his fundamental rules.

“Stop, cause I really love you, stop! I been thinking about you,” Rora sang as a reply, waving in hello. Her toes were bobbing along to the music, shoes been taken off long ago and possibly thrown into the woods. She could go find them later; it would be fun and possibly distracting. Patting the grass beside her, she gave him one of her brightest smiles.

"I'd sing back," Nathan said with a crooked smile, sitting down beside her as indicated, "but trust me, my singing voice is bad enough that you don't want to hear it."

Rora giggled, taking the daisy crown off her head to place it on his. He was entertaining so far and that deserved a gift. “That’s all right. It’s kind of you to make sure my ears don’t bleed.”

He had a daisy crown on his head. Okay, this was vaguely surreal - maybe she was still asleep? "I do try to be accommodating," he said wryly, adjusting the crown just a little. He'd go for the rakish look, if he had to. "I think you had the right idea," he went on, "coming out here. Much nicer than in there."

“I love your seasons here,” Rora informed him, very seriously with her hair spread out in lose tumbling curls and a flower still tucked behind her own ear. “Back home all the trees would be sleeping and there would be threats of snow. The animals are still talking here, arguing over who gets which nut and how to steal the fluffy bit from the rabbit. But then an owl eats them so it doesn’t matter. It’s beautiful.”

"It is beautiful here," Nathan agreed, his gaze drifting over their surroundings. He was still finding himself appreciating what he could see a little more than usual, after the week's misadventures. "I come from Alaska originally," he heard himself say, and had to wonder what he was doing. "Then I lived in New Mexico, in the desert, for a long time. It was an interesting contrast."

Aurora nodded thoughtfully at him, listening with such great intent that her eyes went frightfully wide. “I travel a lot. In the night, mostly, when people can’t tell me not to. That I’ll get hurt or forget or do bad things. But your Alaska is much like my Banff. It’s so lush, even when it’s not green. And there’s caribou! I miss the caribou. Deer just aren’t the same,” she answered when he paused, drawing pictures in the air with her hands. “I could never live in the dessert. My throat would close up and I’d die.”

"It is dry. But the sunrises and sunsets are more beautiful in the desert than anywhere else," Nathan said, remembering. "And it's more alive than it looks. Not lush, but you can find life in the strangest places..." Okay, now he was sounding like a loon.

“Well, I do like lizards,” Aurora admitted, as if that had anything to do with anything. She bit the inside of her mouth, looking up at the few clouds that were present. Really, Nathan is nothing loon-like in her head. He makes perfect sense to her.

"Did you meet the dragon?" Nathan asked. "Cute little thing..."

Aurora nodded, smiling brightly again. It was so easy to please her. “For a moment. I like dragons. Shiny.”

"If you'd asked me six months ago if I thought dragons were real, I'd have laughed." Nathan gave her that crooked smile again. "Shows you how much your view of the world can change, given the opportunity."

“I’m a demon elf!” Rora chirped at him, completely serious. It wasn’t true, not really, but it was an interesting thought, and she’d been told so enough times. “You learn to not take anything at face value. Anything is possible, even things that aren’t. Maybe some more disappointments, but you certainly don’t end up killing anything just because it’s has horns.”

"I'm figuring that out," Nathan said easily. "It's teaching me that I'm more flexible than I thought. Which is kind of amusing." He grinned. "Guess you can teach an old dog new tricks."

Aurora giggled at him, reaching over to fluff up his hair with her fingertips. “You are silly but not old. Paul is old. You are merely wise; with a touch of stupid that comes in from thinking you’re old and having to prove something. Or maybe you’re just a man, I really haven’t figured the difference out.”

"Probably the latter," he agreed placidly. "Men are naturally predisposed to be stupid." He tilted his head at her as she sprawled back on the grass. "You should meet my bird," he said thoughtfully. "You'd like Bella. She's large and blue and very talkative."

“I like birds. And dogs. And horses. And everything by that damned Hellcat, really. Sometimes they like me, if I stay still long enough and don’t think. They don’t like the patterns I give off. They’re smart like that.”

Nathan adjusted his daisy crown again as it slid downwards. "Well, I'll talk to Bella," he said firmly. "Tell her to behave. She's very intelligent. And has exceptional taste. You and she should get along just fine."

Rora smiled, almost shyly, and nodded. She had a way of ducking her head just right to make her seem a quarter of her age or a coy girl from the Orient, hiding behind her fan. “I’d like that. A lot, actually. I like blue.”

Nathan smiled back. "Then that's what we'll do." He tilted his head back, staring up at the blue sky. "I'm tempted to just stay out here," he said idly. "Not go back inside."

“You can stay out here forever. Why leave, especially when you have every reason to not to?” Rora replied in a rational tone, made low and coaxing by her rough, alto voice. This was where she belonged, in the grass, under the blue sky with a warm sun beaming down on her.

"A large number of responsibilities," he said, watching her with some fascination. Her mental signature wasn't like anything he'd ever experienced before. "All of which I took on freely, so this isn't actually me complaining... really. But it is tempting." A fainter smile tugged at his lips. "Out in the fresh air with a little distance between me and all those agitated young minds. I hate being a telepath sometimes. Most of the time."

“Understandably so. The people in that place are mental. I would know,” Rora said bluntly, looking over at Nate. The way she stared at him, it was if she was perfectly aware of what he was thinking about her, and her little smile only added to that fact. “And you have to live with them in your head, screaming about how life is just so darn unfair, shucks.”

"I'm more than a bit mental myself," Nathan confessed, that slight smile lingering. "So I fit in just fine. But yeah..." This time, the smile faded. "It gets a little loud sometimes."

Aurora laughed, patting his shoulder with a childish sort of ease, not worried in the least by the fact that they’d just met and wow how wrong does this look from inside. “You’re very brave, chere. And very kind. All restraining and a role model. I just like to tell people off.”

"I occasionally tell people off," Nathan protested lightly. "And throw them in the lake. Not that that ended well, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time..."

“Oh, I still win. I have the entire school ready to give me back my straight jacket and whisk me away to where ever I came from, and I only started opening my mouth yesterday. Does everyone hate everyone here? Little groups of friends who are all trying to kill each other? It’s like Catholic school but without pleated skirts,” Aurora rambled, heaving a sigh.

"There are... cliques," Nathan said contemplatively, after a moment. "Grudges. You put this number of teenagers in close contact day-in, day-out, then add the crises that seem to happen four or five times a week lately, and they all wind up so stressed that explosions are unavoidable."

Rora made a face, sticking out her tongue. “Someone needs to put them in a padded room and remind them that this place is a safe haven against people that are actually bad, or at least, unhinged and more than willing to kill them if given the chance. I’m so glad I don’t remember being a child.”

"I would have given my right arm to be a child here," Nathan murmured. "Or a teenager. But the kids tend to regard 'When I was your age...' stories very unkindly."

Continuing on her disgusted face, Rora made a disgusted noise. “I noticed. There seems to be this general air that they’ve all had the worst childhood possible. I’ve never wished on someone that I could just make them feel what I went through before yesterday. This place is going to be bad for me. If Paul weren’t here I’d just leave now before I screwed something up. Well. More so.”

"There's a lot of good here, too," Nathan said after a moment, softly. "This place saved my life. Gave me a new one, too." He smiled at her. "I've found the pros outweigh the cons. Unless, of course, you ask me mid-crisis, at which point I'm usually ready to run screaming into the woods or start killing things. But then, I never claimed to be consistent."

“I don’t need another life,” Rora said calmly, a strange sort of look coming over her features as something almost visibly trembled in her thoughts. “But, well. There’s a troubled little blonde girl downstairs that I’m rather fond of for reasons I have yet to understand. So I guess I can stay a little longer. You have work to do, though. And it looks like it’s going to rain tonight.”

Nathan nodded and rose. "Thank you for the daisies," he said with a smile, leaving the crown on. "You could always stop by later and meet Bella. She helps me mark. It's really very entertaining."

“I have to speak with the rain first,” Rora informed him with a childish authority, giving him a little wave and a smile. “I haven’t said hello in a while.” Nathan merely smiled in return, and made his way back up to the mansion.