Log [Alison, Lorna] - Meet me halfway...

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Monday, mid-afternoon. Lorna drops by for a surprise visit, one which Alison doesn't mind in the least, considering there's a noticeable lack of 'I hate you' involved. Nothing is really spoken about, but it's a start.



Today was her first entire day of freedom. She was going to spend most of it in her room of course, the white noise generators currently off at that. She was making do with only the suit and the earplugs, the hood pulled up, the miniature sound baffle Forge had rigged up affixed to her wrist - just in case. The movie projector had been left in the medlab for when she had to go back tonight. She'd made another attempt at reading the book she'd been paging through the night before in the medlab, but it was hard to concentrate on reading just now, so she'd given up. Meditation was something she was used to doing sitting down and though the bed was only a bit easier to deal with than a chair or the floor, she was giving it her best shot.

"I thought you'd probably have already had lunch. Or what the doctors are passing off as lunch in your case. Strictly speaking I don't approve of liquid diets." Lorna gave the door only the most cursory of knocks before letting herself in. She balanced a tray on one hand which she slid onto a table near the door before leaning against the wall. She gave Alison a once over, her bland expression concealing any reaction to what she saw. "Hi," she added, in a casual way.

Blink. The door has blinked light when it opened and that had registered on Alison's awareness for some reason. So she stared for a moment, eyes wide open and blinking now and then. Green hair. Still a bit too much on the skinny side despite the clothes she was wearing to try and hide her frame. Very green hair. Eyes too. Yep. Lorna. "Hi." Dead silence was very very bad right now. Damn it. Oh, right, liquid diets. To be explained. "Spent too long without eating. That's why."

"Oh, I get the medical reasoning. Just don't approve." Lorna tossed a spoon at Alison. "Semi-solids however, far superior." She picked up a small dish off the tray and held it out. "Custard?"

Eyes still a bit wide as the spoon landed on the bed neatly beside her, as though she was wondering if Lorna might not pop out of existence if she said the wrong thing, Alison nodded slowly. The protein mixes Hank had made tasted so very bad because her entire sense of taste was off to start with - or exacerbated, maybe. A side effect of the damage. Custard would either be very good, or very bad. And Lorna hadn't disappeared yet. "Yes, please?" She couldn’t help the faintly questioning tail end to her question, which of course went unheard.

Lorna crossed the room and gave Alison the small ramekin. "Can I sit down?" she gestured to the bed beside Alison. She still gave absolutely no sign of her intentions, certainly feeding people was a fairly neutral activity on her part.

A slow, careful nod greeted that. She wasn't hearing Lorna - though she remembered her voice well enough, suiting it in her mind to the words she was saying, as she'd been doing with everyone who had 'spoken' to her since they'd let her out of the medlab yesterday. "Okay." Holding the ramekin was uncomfortable and picking up the spoon was too, Alison carefully closing her fingers on it so that it wouldn't slip away, but she certainly wasn't about to admit that to Lorna. Not now.

Lorna sat down carefully next to Alison and clasped her hands together. "How is your first day of freedom?" It was the first sign of something other than simple politeness, just a touch of reaching out.

"Free." The word tapped out on the console that had been installed that morning, there when she arrived, seemed short on description, but did it ever mean a lot to Alison. "It's good. Very good." Deliriously good in fact, but there were only so many ways to say that too and Alison didn't feel like going on forever. She stared down at the custard for a moment, the ramekin illuminated by light and picked up the spoon again to sample it, very carefully so. Her eyes went wide at the taste.

"Is that a good reaction or a bad one?" Lorna asked, "It's a new recipe." She rubbed her hands together, showing just a bit of worry around the edges.

"Good!" The word was mumbled a touch though, Alison's eyes tearing up at the strength of the single small taste she'd had. She typed it out carefully for Lorna, taking a deep breath, eyes wide, and added "Very strong" afterwards. Ok, the custard was one of the things that registered as good. Very good, at that.

"Strong hmm? Guess I'll have to make you boring and bland things until you're back to normal." Lorna smiled, her polite mask back in place. The worry could be passed off as concern over the recipe. To anyone who didn't know her, anyway.

She wasn't missing a single word Lorna was saying. Possibly because there was a definite 'make sure she doesn't run off' sentiment going on. "It might take a while." She typed out the words almost cautiously - not an attempt at sympathy at all, but more of a need to make sure Lorna knew. Because that would involve staying in contact and Alison was really wondering if that meant Lorna had come to terms with her training Manuel. Or had just decided to ignore it entirely - either option suited her just fine, really.

Lorna was kept in place solely due to Alison's obvious worry about her leaving. "I know," she said airily, waving it off with a great deal more confidence than she felt. "That's what you get for trying to be a big damn hero all by yourself." She had neither forgiven nor forgotten but it was entirely out of her makeup to abandon a friend. Moving out had been for her sanity. Visiting Alison now was for the same.

She was, Alison could tell, doing what she did about the other things that troubled her - staying as far away from it as she could. Smiling a bit wanly, Alison nodded, accepting the reprisal before looking down at the custard again - both wanting to dare more or utterly lacking in appetite still at the same time. "Oops." Sorry wasn't going to be an answer though - Alison wasn't. Wishing things had gone otherwise, yes, but not sorry - if that had been the price needed to keep Miles safe, it wasn't that high, really.

"Oops indeed." Another spoon appeared out of seemingly nowhere and Lorna used it to steal a bite of custard. "There are easier ways of getting attention, you brat."

But maybe they could talk about it later, if it meant Lorna was going to start acknowledging her existence again, though she really wished it had taken something less drastic to do so. And maybe Lorna would pretend not to spot the tears starting to pool in her eyes because they were talking again, of a sorts, and that made Alison very, very happy. "I'll try not to do it again." The words were tapped out slowly, Alison not complaining in the least at Lorna's custard thieving ways.

"Good, because I'll have to kick your ass if you try." Lorna obligingly didn't notice the tears since they were both so carefully maintaining the polite fiction that this wasn't at all weird. "And it doesn't get you out of getting me a birthday present. None of this 'oh I've been stuck in the medlab' nonsense. You have minions, I know it."

An utterly blank look spread over her features, Alison staring at the console for a few moments. Time. Date. Year. Her eyes flicked back to the date and widened a touch. "Minions will feel the crack of the whip." That much time had passed. The realization left her reeling for a moment - there was still so much to go until she was better, and they had no idea how long that would take.

Alison's sudden distress was hard to ignore, very hard. Lorna dug her fingernails into her palms to prevent herself from pulling the other woman into her arms. She was a tactile person by nature and accustomed to touching those she was close to. But she could see the pain Alison thought she was hiding and so kept her hands to herself. "That's what I like to hear," she managed to say after a second or two. She was grateful Alison couldn't hear her voice shake.

"Any requests," Alison finally started running her fingers lightly over the console again, picking letters carefully, "or should I just let my imagination go wild?" Old running jokes would either be utterly safe and acceptable, or not. Only one way to find out.

Lorna shivered and relaxed her hands by sheer force of will. "Surprise me. Though no making me play hide and seek for it this year." She shook her finger, mock sternly at Alison. "For one thing, there's a lot less challenge in it these days."

"Lower metal content for the container," Alison smiled, almost serenely, flashes of pain radiating from her fingertips for each letter that appeared. "What, you thought I wasn't ready for that happening?" The banter was safe and easy and felt frighteningly good.

"Hmm," Lorna pondered telling her that at this point Alison wasn't a low enough metal content to not set off ripples in the EM fields then shrugged, "I have great faith in your ability to continually out-think me. I'm just a chef after all." She stole more custard to punctuate her point.

Ah hah. Another of those 'I know something you don't' lines. At least the challenge would keep her blessedly busy. That was good. Very good. And she could ask Haroun for help. Might do him good to get away from the mansion and the cat dander he kept grumbling about too, at that. "Sure you are." But it did deserve a small bite from the custard of her own, eyes going a bit wide again.

"Am. Just a humble chef. With new recipes from France, Germany and the Czech Republic or possibly Slovakia. Where is Prague anyway?" Lorna pulled her legs onto the bed and tucked her arms around her knees.

Some of the words escaped Alison, the lip reading leaving her a bit at a loss on those, but Prague she knew - it was a fun word to say and she could practically hear it in her own mind as Lorna asked her question. "Capital of the Czech Republic," she gave Lorna a faint smile as she typed that, the one that was a dare to ask her more questions of the sort. Because Lorna settling down that way meant she was staying for a while, and Alison wasn't about to question her good fortune there.




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FYI ~ Silensy is a lazy wench. ;)

Did you think I wouldn't see that, brat? ;-P