xp_logs | Tuesday Afternoon, The Kitchen

x-polarisstar.livejournal.com posting in

Jean's in need of a cup of coffee and her quest leads her to Lorna's favorite room, the nearly finished kitchen. Lorna gives Jean coffee and a review of the last two years in her life. Featuring confessions of love toward kitchen appliances.

The kitchen refurbishing was, Jean felt, symbolic. She just wasn't sure of what. She had been gone and it had been destroyed - one of the innumerable changes that the school had gone through while she was... away. But, on the other hand, it was being rebuilt, reclaimed and, in a sense, returned from its symbolic 'death', just as she was.

It was thoughts like these that proved to Jean that she needed more caffeine in her system.

She'd been walking around the lab level and had poked her head in on Hank before coming back upstairs, which was when she'd passed the kitchen, had her odd little thought and turned to go in. Her own coffee maker was perfectly serviceable, of course, but it was all the way upstairs.

The coffee maker was pretty much the only appliance on the counter. Everything else was either on order or still in its box, waiting for the final touches on the kitchen to be completed. People had been whispering that Lorna was going to have a ribbon cutting ceremony. She'd given it serious thought. Lorna gave the beautiful stainless steel fridge a fond pat as she passed then since there was no one there to see a quick kiss. "Hello, beautiful."

Jean opened the door to this strange sight and lifted an eyebrow. "I get the feeling you're not talking to me? Although I'm not sure when you became quite so fond of household appliances."

Lorna glanced over at Jean and then hastily polished off her lipgloss from the fridge door. "Um, hi." She looked like a kid caught with her hand caught in the cookie jar, guilty but just slightly pleased with herself. "Looking for something in particular?"

Jean grinned. "Just coffee," she said. "I fear I was getting to philosophical for my own good and I suspect it is due to a lack of caffeine. How are you?"

"Caffeination cures a great many ills," Lorna agreed. "I'm good. Enjoying my kitchen as you can see." She hesitated then shrugged and grinned back, "Welcome home. I don't think you knew that I cooked, right?"

"Thank you," Jean said simply. "And no, I didn't. Well," she amended with a smile, "I had heard since coming back that you had taken a tyrannical sort of control over the kitchen at large, but there is a difference between hearing things and knowing things, and between knowing things and coming in to find you professing your love to the fridge."

"Tyrannical is such a strong term." Lorna protested, "It's a benevolent dictatorship based on the fact that they'd kill themselves otherwise. Plus I had to do something with the years of culinary school and hiding it was beginning to seem stupid." She moved quickly through the somewhat disordered kitchen and produced two mugs out of seemingly nowhere. "Cream or sugar?"

"Both, thank you." Jean pulled one of the kitchen stools out and settled onto it. "So then, how long have you been hiding this culinary background, Lorna? And what other, equally sordid secrets lie in your past?"

Lorna used a liberal hand with the cream and sugar in Jean's coffee but took hers black. "Well, I spent seven years studying with a master chef before I came here. As for the rest, that depends on what kind of secrets you want. The really scandalous ones or the just depressing ones." She set the coffees down on the counter and took the stool next to Jean.

"That," Jean said, taking up her coffee with a nod of thanks, "is quite a culinary secret to keep. And I tend to be interested in all forms of catching up, but as scandalous is frequently less painful, it should be saved for last. A balm to the distressed soul, as it were."

"It didn't seem like the kind of thing that worked with the life I wanted here. But old habits, ya know?" Lorna sipped her coffee, trying to organize her thoughts. "Okay, well, let's see then. In the past two years, I have been nearly burned to death, dropped to 89 lbs from anorexia and broke up with my boyfriend a few times, once because I reacted entirely wrong to some upsetting news and generally proved myself a selfish witch."

Jean nodded, her face serious. "But you're talking about these things, which I assume means you're at least trying to cope with them and, professionally speaking, you're looking well." She certainly did not have the frightening thinness of severe anorexia now, although now that she knew what to look for Jean could recognize some of the signs in what she remembered of Lorna's behavior.

"No, those are the things ones I'm working on fixing. Still haven't figured out how to tell the parents about the anorexia so it's a work in progress." Lorna sighed, giving only a brief thought to those things she wasn't going to tell Jean in her first week back. "On the less depressing side, I've got my very own leather uniform and silly codename. My boyfriend of 21 months is Scott's little brother, Alex. We applied to U of Hawaii for the fall."

"It takes a while," Jean said, nodding. "But I have faith in you, Lorna. I've always felt you had great potential. And congratulations on college, and the leathers." Her smile was genuine as she quietly shushed the part of her that was musing on when she would get her own leathers back. "What is your silly codename? And don't worry, they're always silly at first. The only excuse I've ever been able to come up with for 'Marvel Girl' was that it was the late eighties. It sounded much less stupid then."

"I have to admit, I was stunned when I saw Alex's medical file. Thrilled, but stunned. S... Scott had believed he was gone, but I'm so glad he's gotten his brother back." The hesitation over Scott's name was brief but noticeable. "Do you know... do you know how that happened?" Really and truly, Jean wanted to hear the story from Scott - wanted to hear so many things from Scott - but she was Giving Him Space and her curiosity was burning. Lorna was too good a source to pass up.

"Polaris. It's not bad, as silly codenames go. Better than Dazzler though Alison will never hear me say it." Lorna grinned, "They tossed around Magnetrix for a while but I think that was just more to see if they could cause me a heart attack. I've been a full team member since last July." She shifted on her seat, tucking on leg under her. "Alex…right, well. You've read his medical files so you know about his control problems right? That up til recently he didn't have any?”

"Yes," Jean said, nodding slowly. "And the notes on his containment suite."

"Right, well, after the plane crash, you know that Scott's power was broken so they took the obvious mutant and sent him one way and the one they thought was a normal kid and sent him another. Alex ended up with a foster family until his power built up to the point where it just…blew up. Took out part of the house." She paused and with a sigh glossed over the next bit, "He ran to Hawaii and lived there for a while. Then two years ago in May he blew up again. This time it was a crowded beach. The Professor sent out a team to pick him up. Scott was leading the mission. I gather it was an emotional reunion."

"I... can imagine," Jean said. "That must have been... well, 'rough' doesn't even begin to cover it, I'm sure, but there's not really a better word." Jean paused, slowly putting together comments on Alex and Lorna's medical files with what Lorna had said previously. "Ah... And I take it that the burns you mentioned..." she trailed off, uncertain if it was something Lorna would be comfortable talking about.

Lorna nodded, unable to repress a small shudder. "Like I said, no control. I'm told I nearly died a bunch of times. Mostly I just remember it hurting a lot. I was in the medlab for well over a month." Her hand drifted up to her shoulder then fell again. "And it was a while before they told me he was gone. I was a wreck by the time he came back. I'd given up on thinking he would." There was pain in her voice, old and mostly healed but still there.

Jean nodded, willing to listen if Lorna wanted to talk it out, although fears that he might not come back were haunting her over her own Summers love.

But the younger woman just sighed and shook her head, smiling ruefully. "It's amazing how quickly you can ruin your life. If I hadn't had such awesome friends... Well, why dwell on what didn't happen, right? I'll try and stay more upbeat. What other mansion things should I tell you?"

Jean sipped her coffee, considering. "Well, given where we are... What happened here?" A hand gestured around the recovering kitchen. "Who's fault was all of this and just how badly did we treat them for what they did?"

"Alison. She let a bunch of cyborgs rip up my kitchen. I chased her around with a big carving knife and let her buy me a new one." Lorna gave the kitchen a satisfied little smirk, "I unfortunately wasn't here to defend the place which is just not fair considering.

Jean raised an eyebrow. Well, that was interesting. "I actually meant who was on the non-defending side," she clarified with a smile.

"The evil cyborgs? Who knows with mansion attacks. Hellfire, I think. At least one of them had orders to go after Alex." And clearly that was not something Lorna approved of.

Well that was not promising. "I would have thought that between having or having had a De la Rocha, a Shaw and Emma associated with the school at various times they would have learned to leave us alone. Alas, not, it seems."

"The De la Rocha is more trouble than he's worth," Lorna responded bitterly. "Shinobi was great but not his father's favorite kid, despite being his only kid and who sees Emma anymore?" She shifted again, pulling up her other leg so she was sitting cross-legged on the stool. "No, the Hellfire club has no love for us. We stole from their Kings and Queen and they seem to hold a grudge."

"That," said Jean firmly, "is just too bad for them. We don't take well with anyone messing with us and ours, now, do we?" Sighing, she finished off her coffee. "And I should probably get back to the medical files. Some of them are the size of small novels, and all of them must be reviewed."

Lorna nodded, her own coffee only half-finished. "Well, when you get tired of looking through them, come on back up and I'll make you dinner too. I would suggest the cliff's notes version of Nate's. Basically it just says 'sprained brain ended up in medlab again' like four hundred times."

Grinning, Jean nodded. "I'll take that under advisement, but given the similarity in powers it might be a good read, if only so I can avoid similar brain-spraining." She stood up. "I may take you up on the offer of dinner, but I promise to knock, first, so I don't interrupt you and the fridge."

"Thanks. The fridge is just a fling though. Mr. Coffee is my real one true love." Lorna laughed and tumbled lithely off the stool. "We're going to get married and have lots of little lattes."

"Well, just tell me where you register." Nodding, Jean headed out the door and back towards her rooms.