Tomorrow is a long time (open)

[Laurie Collins]

[[Picks up after future-Laurie stomps out of Focus on the Family. Because the future makes everyone want to write emo poetry about roses that weep blood because my soul is black or whatever. Shush, you like it.]]

The good thing about right now is that she can still get lost on the base. That’s actually pretty much it and even that is sort of a temporary benefit since she doesn’t expect it will take long for her to memorize every route and passageway, construct a little mental map against her will.

She remembers doing that back at the Institute, just wandering around her first few weeks when she knew a couple of people but was too shy to seek them out on her own, when she really just wanted it to be Sunday so she could go to her mom’s new house and pretend things hadn’t changed. She’d been looking for nooks and crannies then, places other people didn’t go, that picturesque hole-in-the-wall that houses like this ought to have that she could hide in whenever she wanted. The Institute hadn’t disappointed and within that first week she’d found a couple promising spots in the library and out behind a shed by the lake and had pretty much mastered the basics of navigation otherwise. Within the first month she’d known what was in every drawer of every public room and the shortest routes to everywhere, and that had made her happy because at fifteen she had wanted more than anything to know places, understand spaces, in the way she’d been sure she’d never understand people. After a lifetime of breathing in the fear her mother exhaled in their close quarters, packing up and moving somewhere else for no apparent reason, and then finding out that reason and producing enough fear all by herself to give everyone who passed her the shakes, she’d expected and wanted nothing more than a place in a house that could be hers. And then I got it, and then I got more, and then I lost everything.

Now she wants the base to remain a mystery forever, a never-ending, branching, rabbit warren that she can get lost in. No nooks or crannies or small spaces, she doesn’t want to know. Just shut up brain, we’re walking, okay? But two lefts behind her and one right is the kitchen and she knows exactly how to get back to a room where she’s still sixteen and likes places and houses that she can think are hers for a little while longer. She’s not thinking about Primer and what she said and what it means.

There’s really no use walking so she just stops and stands for a moment before swinging off into an adjacent room of unknown function and sitting on an uncomfortable chair, hands folded in her lap and face politely devoid of emotion. She learned how to stop thinking at about twenty-two and sitting still followed soon after. It’s been an all right trade off, better for what she does now anyway, and it makes it fine to just sit and rest and not listen, even subconsciously, for anyone approaching down the hall.

[Bobby Drake]

(( YOU HAVE NO IDEA THE DEPTHS OF MY PAIN!!!! ))

Years ago, shortly after his arrival at the Institute, Bobby had gotten into the habit of going outside when his frustration at dealing with stuff -- classes, lying to his mom, sharing a room with John, accidentally creating snow-flurries in the middle of class, being fifteen, dating a girl he couldn’t touch, everything – peaked to a point he couldn’t tolerate any more. His midnight and midwinter swims had stemmed from that.

Giving that up in the winter hadn’t come close to being the worst part of losing his powers, but he’d missed it. Being cramped up indoors for months had taken a lot out of him. And here, now, with orbiting spy satellites and armies chasing after any sign of mutant activity… it’s a lot like that.

To make things worse, it’s just too crowded in this shoebox that calls itself a base of operations to get away from people. For a while it was kind of OK, since the “locals” tended to give him distance… at least when they weren’t trying to keep an eye on him for fear he’d sabotage their defenses. But, while they haven’t really come to accept him, they’ve mostly accepted his presence… which is good, really, though right now he wishes they were more willing to leave him alone.

So he’s spent the last fifteen minutes bouncing from empty room to empty room, looking for someplace he can... well, looking for some place. This one sounds empty, and he gets most of the way in before realizing Laurie Sr. is there.

"Sorry… didn’t mean to interrupt. Just looking for someplace quiet, you know?" He kicks himself mentally for the inanity… You don’t get to apologize for interrupting and then keep interrupting, idiot… and turns awkwardly back towards the door before realizing that he’s not really looking to be alone so much as he is not wanting to be here.

And since he doesn’t really have a choice in that, maybe some quiet company wouldn’t be so bad. So he turns back. "Actually… do you mind if I stay? Everybody’s patrolling the halls today, seems like." He grins unconvincingly and adds "I promise not to rant at God or anything, this time."

He wonders if she remembers that embarrassing incident... over twenty years ago, from her perspective. Longer than I've been alive, he thinks, not for the first time.

[Laurie Collins]

(I couldn't understand YOUR pain?! NO ONE UNDERSTANDS MY PAIN!!! Except maybe Bright Eyes and Morrissey.)

"Sorry… didn’t mean to interrupt. Just looking for someplace quiet, you know?"

She might as well be carved out of stone in the first moment, some very accurate Laurie-statue just sitting and waiting and letting his words fall as flat as skipping-rocks into the silence, not even turning to face him. In actuality she’s just internalizing her surprise at the voice and then trying to sort out exactly what she feels after determining whose voice it is, her almost eerily affectless demeanor a mid-twenties replacement for her startling and stammering as a teenager.


"Actually… do you mind if I stay? Everybody’s patrolling the halls today, seems like. I promise not to rant at God or anything, this time."

The same selfish anger she’d felt when Warren had brought up Sam flashes back in full force. Don’t bring that up because that’s not fair. I get to hate you for what you’ve done. Leave me alone. Above all else, leave me alone. “Feel free.” She says finally, surprising herself a bit at giving permission. She goes back to ignoring him for a moment, figuring it’s easier that way, and reaches up absently to touch a line along the center of her forehead, the place that had wrinkled first, too much puzzled squinting and eyebrow-raising at the library. She’d taken her math requirement first semester at Barnard to get it out of the way, striving for some blissfully untainted future of English that had never materialized, and she’d spent most of the time squinting at her text book in the library (far away from her roommate, Mary or Mariah or Meredith maybe, often drunk and always loud whatever her name was) while numbers and letters danced the fandango across a crisp white page but never really became any clearer. Four months later Barnard was history and there was a faint line neatly dissecting her forehead, “Cut along the line. It’ll make the lobotomy easier.” her mother had teased.

The anger takes that open door before she’s realized it’s there and she looks over at the teenaged version of Drake again, “How are you liking the future?” she asks, not particularly trying to hide the cruelty at least partially motivating the tactless question.

[Bobby Drake]

(( Nuh-uh! MY pain is WAY more existential and deep than yours. ))

> "How are you liking the future?"

Bobby looks up, startled, at her voice... as much at the fact of it as the tone. He'd expected her to just keep ignoring him... it seemed to be the most common response of the natives. Or, well, the older ones anyway. The next generation treated him like... well... actually, he had no idea what they were treating him like. Like some kind of weird cartoon villain.

Well, Laurie was at least talking to him, even if she does sound like she'd rather beat him up.

In some ways, he'd preferred the silence... but not enough to hold onto it.

"It sucks. But you know that. And if you're trying to make me feel like crap, would you mind skipping the words and doing it directly? We both know you can, and I got enough of the smokescreen of words from your dad before coming here."

Which was a bit harsher than he'd intended, but there it was.

"So, when did you end up joining the front lines? Back in the day, you wanted nothing to do with it... at least, that's how it seemed to me. Guess you had some surprises, too, huh?"

[Laurie Collins]

(Sometimes I feel like 50% of my RPing history is spent being mean to Bob. I like Bob! Really!
p.s. my soul is a desert don’t even talk to me)

"It sucks. But you know that. And if you're trying to make me feel like crap, would you mind skipping the words and doing it directly? We both know you can, and I got enough of the smokescreen of words from your dad before coming here."

She goes pale and thins her lips, fingers curling in on each other until her hands are fists, just for a moment, before they unclench again and she’s staring at him with that same bland expression. “Don’t ask me to use my pheromones on you unless you mean it.” She says quietly, “Because believe me there’s nothing I’d like more than to take you through how it felt to lose every single person the defense forces at the Northeastern Mutant Containment camp have killed. You’re the wrong person to punish, I know, but don’t be stupid enough to ask me to do it.”

"So, when did you end up joining the front lines? Back in the day, you wanted nothing to do with it... at least, that's how it seemed to me. Guess you had some surprises, too, huh?"

“No, I didn’t. I still don’t. I’m here as leverage to get Sam Guthrie out of your camps. You’re right though, I can’t say your friend is anticipating exciting nights crouched in an alleyway simulating a heroin high or an orgasm so someone will buy her dinner. Not really on the life plan at sixteen, if I recall correctly, but it’s not as if it isn’t a career track with upward mobility. In this future there’s an entire escort agency just for mutants, we have health plans and cars and we service your co-workers at the camps and your bosses in the senate. So yes, I guess the future was a surprise for everyone.” She cocks her head slightly and draws a leg up onto the chair she’s sitting in, the gestures echoing a younger self the only hint that she feels anything about what she’s just said.

[Bobby Drake]

(( If it helps, I treat Bob way worse than you do. ))

(( "And lonely as it is, that loneliness will be more lonely ere it will be less:
a blanker whiteness of benighted snow with no expression, nothing to express. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces between stars, on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places."))

> "You’re the wrong person to punish, I know, but don’t be stupid enough to ask me to do it."

Bobby doesn't respond to that right away. He knows better. She's angry, he's angry, it's not going to lead anywhere good. He wants to argue, but it's not going to do any good.

The clever thing to do is still to shut up, maybe leave the room.

The problem is, Bobby's gotten really tired of doing the clever thing, and he's downright sick of leaving the room. He's had this conversation once too often since arriving at Warren Worthington's Home for Wayward Mutants. Shrugging off Primer hadn't been too hard... it was Primer, after all. And Timmy was twelve, and what does a twelve-year-old know?

But this is Laurie, and maybe that's different. Or maybe it just crosses the threshold. Either way, somewhere in the middle of her bitter little lecture Bobby decides to stop doing the clever thing.

"OK. You've said your piece. Now it's time for you to make a decision. You still want to hold me accountable for your world? Fine. Your call." The room temperature plummets as Bobby's flesh crystallizes, and her breath forms clouds of mist. "The thing is, your pheromones can't do squat to me, and I can turn your brain to slush with a thought. So if those are "my" coworkers and "my" bosses, if I'm this traitor mutant all of you people are so damned scared of, if I'm this cryogenic killer with no conscience, I'd say you're pretty much fucked right now, wouldn't you? You might be able to shout loud enough to get some help, but not fast enough to do you a bit of good."

He shrugs and lets the temperature rise a little. "On the other hand, if I've only been in your stupid world for a week and have nothing to do with any of it, then your position starts to look a lot better.

So like I said, your call. Are they my camps or not?"

He's bluffing, of course. And he knows it, and he's pretty sure she knows it. But he has to admit it feels awfully good.

[Laurie Collins]

((Hahaha I like how Bob’s reaction to ‘my classmate grows up to be a hooker’ was pretty much ‘whatever, it happens, now about how you grow up to be a JERK’ Also I think poetry wins all bets. Your soul is darker than mine.))

"OK. You've said your piece. Now it's time for you to make a decision. You still want to hold me accountable for your world? Fine. Your call."

The temperature plummets and Laurie’s body is shaking before she can even realize it’s gotten colder. The base is always freezing and while she’s not as sensitive as John or even Warren she’s still about 115 pounds soaking wet and there’s not a lot of insulation. So she lets herself shiver, relaxing into the minute spasms and watching him rant, her lips actually curling up into smile as he really hits his stride. This is how he was, never like this exactly, not to her at least since at sixteen she’d been about as provoking as a moth, but still he’d always been a talker. She’s never actually seen him fight, she wasn’t around for any X-men missions, and she realizes now that she’d always sort of pictured him lecturing the mobs or terrorists or whatever the X-men were fighting into submission- frowning and gesticulating and telling them that, really, they were just not understanding the real problem here but if he could draw them a diagram…

"On the other hand, if I've only been in your stupid world for a week and have nothing to do with any of it, then your position starts to look a lot better. So like I said, your call. Are they my camps or not?"

She gives him an almost pitying look, rubbing her hands along her arms in an absent way now that the room has veered away from arctic and tilting her head slightly again. “You think I care? Go ahead. Save the threats though. ‘No one will hear you scream’ isn’t really doing it for me.” Her voice is barely above a whisper and she leans forward in her chair, resting her forearms on her knees, letting her hands and wrists dangle uselessly. “Or, since you’re bluffing anyway, you can just accept that life isn’t fair. When I see a younger version of the person who gave the order to kill people I care about and know that he’ll get to live and they won’t I don’t really care very much about his feelings or the measure of his culpability. If it’s any comfort your future self was just as ready to hold me at sixteen for life on charges for what I’ve been doing since 2007 as I am to judge you. We all get each other back in the end I suppose.” She leans back again, unable to sustain the anger very long after it’s been released, too used to preserving her status quo of emotional static. “It’s all right. My current theory is that when Warren gets you back to 2007 we’ll all just disappear, never have been at all.” She gets that same look on her face that a younger Laurie does when she’s about to quote something but stops and shakes her head. “I don’t remember,” she mutters under her breath, to herself.

[Bobby Drake]

(( Hee! Robert Frost wins. I figure he’s the most appropriate poet for Bob to quote, anyway. And, yeah, Bobby’s a little self-centered like that at the moment. “blah, blah, orgasm, blah, blah, escort service, blah – hey, whaddayamean my co-workers?!?” And I’m loving the image of Bob lecturing villains into submission. He sorta does, it’s true.))

> " Or, since you’re bluffing anyway, you can just accept that life isn’t fair."

Bobby isn’t sure what kind of reaction he was expecting… truthfully, he hadn’t been thinking that far ahead. Thinking about it now he supposes that he just wanted her to stop. Or, more honestly, wanted them all to stop. He doesn’t deserve the shit he’s getting here.

God, we didn’t treat John like this, and he was one of the bad guys!

But it didn’t work, and in retrospect, he’s not surprised. He’s not entirely sure what Laurie has gone through in the last couple of decades, but whatever it is it’s toughened her in more ways than are immediately visible or entirely healthy. (Well, OK. The heavy hints she’s been dropping given him some idea what she’s been going through. He just hasn't wanted to think about it.)

So he gives it up, and the room returns to normal, though he stays in ice-form just in case she decides to return the favor.

"Of course life isn’t fair. You used to be, though. Guess things change. " He considers adding something like “your Dad would be proud,” but there doesn’t seem to be any point. The last year has turned him into something of an expert on emotional numbness, at least enough so he can recognize extreme cases. And poking at Laurie until she gets over it and blows up at him seems like a waste of effort.

> " If it’s any comfort your future self was just as ready to hold me at sixteen for life on charges for what I’ve been doing since 2007 as I am to judge you. "

That gets a laugh out of him… a genuine one, somewhat to his own amazement. "Do you think I’m a moron on top of being the Antichrist? You can’t seriously expect me to believe Colonel Drake has his tights in a twist over your sex life, however commercial it turned out to be. He wants you for the same reason he wants everyone else in this building – we’re mutants. Wouldn’t matter if you were a nun."

[Laurie Collins]

((Hopefully shenanigan-y character bringing-in is okay? I had to stop futurelaurie from just staring silently at Bob and thinking “dieeeee”. Past!Laurie’s also pretty self absorbed and I’m enjoying her stomping around and saying all the things she usually thinks.))

"Do you think I’m a moron on top of being the Antichrist? You can’t seriously expect me to believe Colonel Drake has his tights in a twist over your sex life, however commercial it turned out to be. He wants you for the same reason he wants everyone else in this building – we’re mutants. Wouldn’t matter if you were a nun."


“Yes,” she practically drawls, leaning back easily in her chair now and watching him calmly, completely detached again. “Exactly. I use my mutation every day in a criminal manner, often for the benefit of people you work with to bring in more ‘innocent’ mutants while being protected myself. I imagine that’s irritating. I don’t think you particularly care about the sexual aspect either. He apparently has his…tights…in enough of a twist to say I’m the last person to judge him though. Only you could put anything I’ve done above murder and torture on that self-righteous little tally you’ve always got running in your head.”
----

Laurie’s trying to hold onto the reassurance Mr. Worthington had left her with a few moments ago, telling herself again and again that they “know the target” like he said because it sounds crisp and official and confident, something that you write on the memo to the people who fix things. We’ll be okay, we’ll be fine, I’m definitely not thinking about who knows about…that… she tells herself. But even as she’s letting herself believe it she hears raised voices from the room up ahead, Bob and…her? Oh, oh shit, what’s she…she wouldn’t...no she pretty much hates him, she wouldn’t tell him anything but she practically darts around the corner anyway, catching snatches of her older self snapping at Bob, and pulls up into the doorway just in time to face the tail end of Bob’s last shot at her older self.

“…his tights in a twist over your sex life, however commercial it turned out to be…”

Which pretty much stops her comprehension of the last few sentences, and she flinches back as visibly as if she’d been struck. She’s tuned back in, in time to hear her older self continue sniping away at Bobby, unaware of or uncaring as to the younger Laurie’s presence behind her. “You shouldn’t-“ she starts quietly, talking to her older self, but her mouth is as dry as sandpaper and she cuts off.

She understands, she remembers what she’s been told about Matthew dying in the woods near that camp, ripped up and bleeding out from wounds some older version of her friend had commanded guards to inflict on him, her mother left behind to die the same way in a different setting and herself… she hunches her shoulders and back, crosses her arms over her stomach, the same defensive posture she’d had about everything when she’d first come to the Institute. If Matthew and her mother’s deaths matter, if people like Jackie and Timmy who exist only here matter, then what Bob’s done in this future has to matter too. But still… “You remember.” she picks up the thread again, too embarrassed to look at Bob after the line she’d walked in on, the way he’d said it, and focusing on her older self instead with the same specimen-pinning gaze another version of herself had been leveling at Bob a moment ago. “I know you do, being so scared that everyone would think you were just like him, even more scared that they were right, that you’d have to live your whole life knowing what you were…and then when everything came out you…I… you remember, no one ever treated me, you like this for what I might be.” She’s still as a statue, remembering a conversation in the med-lab a little over a week ago for her but as good as a lifetime for the older woman. Still, she’ll know what I’m remembering, she thinks with inexplicable certainty as parts of it replay for her in a sort of peripheral way ‘I thought you’d be mad’ ‘did you really expect me to get upset at you for something a guy you never even met did to me?’

Her older self looks away first. “It’s not the same.” “You still…you just shouldn’t.” Laurie mutters back, subsiding into the shadow of the doorframe as if she can melt into it, even more embarrassed after that little speech. She’ll never like opening up in front of people like that she doesn’t think, and wonders if maybe that wasn’t a little high a toll to save Bob some badgering. Why is that all I ever do anymore? Get mad and say stupid things and just… I just want to go home and see my mom. And now she definitely doesn’t want to cry at all, no, that’s not why it’s just fine with her that no one’s looking at each other anymore. Definitely not.

[Bobby Drake]

> " I use my mutation every day in a criminal manner, often for the benefit of people you work with to bring in more ‘innocent’ mutants while being protected myself."

Laurie’s insistence on the continued use of the second person is infuriating, and Bobby struggles to keep hold of two important facts as he listens to her bait him. The first is that she is baiting him, or trying to. The second is that it wouldn’t be so infuriating if he hadn’t already been blaming himself for his future-self’s activities.

It helps, a little. But it’s difficult to keep hold of that in the face of Laurie’s matter-of-fact bitterness.

> " Only you could put anything I’ve done above murder and torture on that self-righteous little tally you’ve always got running in your head. "

That last comment crosses the threshold, galvanizes Bobby into action… except there’s really nothing for him to do. He can walk out, but all that would mean is one more person to hide from in an ever-more-crowded base.

Or you can fight back, he reminds himself. He hesitates over the thought for a moment – after the fiasco of his senior year, he’d worked hard at not lashing out at his teammates anymore, with reasonable success. Except she really isn’t a teammate, is she? She’s made that pretty clear. Our Laurie is, but this middle-aged shrew is just another outsider.

So he leans back as casually as he can against the wall, trying to mimic the matter-of-factness of her voice. He’s not nearly as good at it as she is, but he has to admit that just making the effort is awfully satisfying. "Oooh, that was a particularly nice shot. And remember, I just got done with six months of regularly scheduled weekly sessions of your dad fucking with my head. He’s better at it than you are, but you’re catching up nicely. Maybe the two of you can compare notes while he’s here; I bet you both have tricks you can teach each other."

Of course, that’s when he notices Laurie’s presence. Oh, hell. She didn’t need to hear that. Actually, he’s not entirely sure she was listening… she seems to have other things on her mind… but then she turns on her older self with the most assertive and sincere speech he’s ever heard come out of her mouth.

> " It’s not the same "
> " You still…you just shouldn’t."

Wow. When Laurie gets pushed far enough to call you out on something, you know you’re really being a jerk.

It only takes a few seconds for him to push that thought out to its logical extension, and his assumed air of complacency collapses. "Oh, hell… she’s right. About both of us. Look, can we just drop this? Go on blaming me for him if you want… hell, maybe you’re right, maybe that’s what I’m destined to turn into. But for right here and right now, I’m still something else." He pauses for a moment to search for a change of subject, and finds one that might serve. "You said something about getting Sam out of the camps, before. Anything I can do to help with that?"

[Laurie Collins]

"… remember, I just got done with six months of regularly scheduled weekly sessions of your dad fucking with my head. He’s better at it than you are, but you’re catching up nicely…"

Which is enough to make the younger Laurie flinch again once she’s processed it, but she gets the reaction under control as well as she can. I can’t get upset about it. He wasn’t talking to me…this me…anyway. And she’s actually pretty much succeeding in not taking it personally to even her own surprise, it isn’t as if she hadn’t already noticed the similarities between Primer and her older self. Not in the way she’d always feared, purposeful maliciousness, but the way she just doesn’t seem to care anymore, the way she has, now, dropped her anger like it’s nothing.

"Oh, hell… she’s right.”

If Drake’s having any trouble meeting her eyes the older Laurie has the opposite reaction, returning his gaze with as bland a countenance as if they’d just been discussing the weather and her younger self (who’s managed to overcome her embarrassment about the words she’d walked in on enough to look over at Bob wasn’t even there. She half listens to his conciliatory little speech, obviously not particularly interested, and picks up again once he moves on.

"Sorry. You mentioned getting Sam out of the Camps… is there any way I can help with that? "

“I’m not the tactician here,” she starts, then catches a reproachful gaze from her younger self and sighs, giving the girl a small, humoring smile, the first sign she’s shown in front of Bob that her bitterness, or at least it’s hostile manifestation, isn’t all-pervasive. “But,” she continues on as smoothly as if she hadn’t been planning to stop there, “the plan right now is for me to give one of my clients in the senate a call and threaten to reveal what I know about him unless he labels Sam “mistakenly detained” or whatever the proper label is these days and orders his release. He’ll probably go for it, one mutant isn’t a very high price as long as I don’t keep asking, and he’s just the type you’d expect, delusions of grandeur, hyper-paranoia, think…what was his name…Grayson Creed on the senate. It might get difficult though. When she,”[/color] a nod towards the younger Laurie who’s shuffled back towards the little group to listen, “went to the camps she was entered into the system. Then she did a search for her name in an archives building and both of those facts would have come up through the senator’s…security…team. He’s had time to realize I’ve been compromised, get mad, maybe get over being scared, and to prepare. The camps, and yo-Drake by extension could throw a wrench in there if they decide to be sticklers and hold on to Sam anyway as well. As to your help…” she appears to be genuinely thinking about it for a moment before shrugging, “Maybe Warren could use you along on the mission. You’re nearly indistinguishable from your older self in ice form and it would confuse the troops if a fight broke out to have another version of their commander in the middle of it. Of course it’s possible you’d be considered too much of a risk, but I think he’d realize you’re not stupid enough to blow your only chance at getting home and hand yourself back over to the camps.” And if you get yourself killed, well, then, that’s one problem out of the way, she thinks then pauses and cocks her head at him, “Why, do you have any ideas? You obviously have tactical talent in my time, I don’t really remember if you were a part of the planning twenty years ago.” It wasn’t something I’d have thought to pay attention to.

[Bobby Drake]

> " I’m not the tactician here, "

Bobby isn’t at all surprised by the snarky response; he’d been more or less expecting something along those lines, and has steeled himself not to react. Which is why his immediate response – No, you just ran away when things got tough – stays unvoiced.

What does surprise him is her relatively cooperative answer. Of course, he’s not an idiot; it’s clear that she’s doing it for the benefit of her younger self… but Bobby’s OK with that.

> " The camps, and yo-Drake by extension could throw a wrench in there if they decide to be sticklers and hold on to Sam anyway as well. "

Her use of the third person is also surprising, and Bobby privately awards Laurie Jr. whatever the local equivalent of the Peace Prize is for turning their sniping session into an actual joint planning session.

Would he let Sam go? Intellectually, Bobby knows perfectly well that he’s not qualified to answer the question… whatever insight he may have into Colonel Drake’s personality is, as far as he can tell, completely irrelevant to current goings-on. His future self is already doing things Bobby can’t imagine doing, for reasons he can’t fathom. Who knows what he’d do next?

Emotionally, he still feels like he ought to know.

> "Maybe Warren could use you along on the mission. "

He nods at her suggestion. "Yeah, makes sense." He’d been completely useless during the last mission, except for a brief moment of competence when those guards were about to incinerate John; he’d like an opportunity to redeem that particular fiasco.

> " Why, do you have any ideas? You obviously have tactical talent in my time, I don’t really remember if you were a part of the planning twenty years ago."

Bobby shrugs, somewhat defensively. "Some. Warren seems to have that end of things pretty well handled, but can’t hurt for me to pitch in if it comes down to another fight. But mostly I’m hoping you can get Sam out of there without it."

[Laurie Collins]

The younger Laurie is looking back and forth between Bob and her older self with the sort of concentration she usually saves for papers or a particularly interesting book, looking as if she thinks she can keep things civil by sheer force of will, hold everything together just by wanting to. Her older counterpart seems willing to play along for now, though even Laurie can’t really tell with her. Everything this ‘future self’ does seems counterintuitive, emotionless where Laurie could probably feel something for a rock, angry where Laurie usually just feels sad…not to mention the whole hooker think. Ew. Again. Some more.

"Yeah, makes sense."

She smiles at Bobby after realizing that’s going to be his only response to what were, she’s assuming, a few barbs strung along that little outline. We’re fine, we’re all going to be fine and we’re going to fix this.

"Some. Warren seems to have that end of things pretty well handled, but can’t hurt for me to pitch in if it comes down to another fight. But mostly I’m hoping you can get Sam out of there without it."

The older Laurie nods here, mouth twitching a little at the defensiveness in his tone. I used to look up to him. He was just as young as any of us. Blind leading the blind, right up to the top. No wonder. But even she doesn’t want this to degenerate into another sniping match, it’s irritating and she doesn’t like those surges of anger that surface every once in awhile, preferring her comfortably flat-line normality and so she responds quickly to cover up the sardonic expression- “We’re all hoping for that and I really can’t predict what will happen at the camps, I haven’t seen Drake- who runs the security show there- since I was eighteen or so, you’re much closer to the person I knew than he would be, so I really have no idea what he’ll do. Maybe he’ll just let Sam go when they ask for him.” Her tone makes it obvious that she believes no such thing will happen, but she’s trying at least, keeping the third person separation intact, though it’s something of a strain.

[Bobby Drake]

> " We’re all hoping for that and I really can’t predict what will happen at the camps, I haven’t seen Drake- who runs the security show there- since I was eighteen or so, you’re much closer to the person I knew than he would be, so I really have no idea what he’ll do. Maybe he’ll just let Sam go when they ask for him. "

Bobby nods, not so much in agreement as in synchrony… Laurie the elder has pretty much taken the words out of his mouth. It still feels weird not having much of a clue what his own future self would do in a given situation, but if he’s learned anything from this bizarre extra-historical jump of theirs it’s that there’s no predicting where anyone’s going to end up.

Which, honestly, he’d already known. He’d just never had his face rubbed quite so firmly in it before.

"Yeah. Well, other than about thirty seconds while I was coming back from the dead a while back, I haven’t seen that Drake since I was eighteen, either. So I guess your guess is as good as mine… we’ll just have to see."

The subsequent silence is beyond awkward. For a while, he fills it by looking back and forth between the Lauries, finding points of similarity and difference. Physically, she’s surprised by how little Laurie changes… a few lines here and there, a slightly different build, but nothing significant. In a photograph he’d identify them in an instant. And nevertheless, in ways Bobby can’t quite catalog, Laurie the Elder looks nothing at all like her younger self.

He wonders whether leaving now would be all right… whether they’ve negotiated enough of a truce that he won’t just be running away. He isn’t sure. So he compromises, tossing Laurie the Younger a quickly conjured snowball to get her attention.

"So, Laurie… how are you and – " no, on the other hand, maybe bringing up Matt right now isn’t the best idea, "I mean, how are you holding up? I hear you and Primer’s werewolf made a pretty decent showing out on your own, before y’all made contact with Warren Sr." It was a pretty meaningless question, but at least it kept the conversation going.

[Laurie Collins]

[]
"Yeah. Well, other than about thirty seconds while I was coming back from the dead a while back, I haven’t seen that Drake since I was eighteen, either. So I guess your guess is as good as mine… we’ll just have to see."

The older Laurie just nods in response and then lets the conversation lapse into silence without any effort to rescue it or put the two teenagers at ease. She’s more tired than she can remember being in years, suddenly feeling old enough for arthritis and all day naps at thirty-six, and now, in retrospect, she isn’t sure how much of her snapping at Drake was a reaction to this hell of a week, that hell of a ‘conversation’ with Primer. God, when is Warren going to get them home?.

The younger Laurie, on the other hand, looks just as awkward as Bobby, scuffing the floor with the toe of the rather shoddy cloth shoes someone had given her and waiting for someone to say something. Just when she’s thinking that someone might have to be her and looking up at the others she sees a snow ball arcing towards her and throws her hands up in one of the flailing efforts at coordination that make the gym teacher twitch now that she’s sufficiently mastered her pheromones to return to regular gym. This time, however, is the one in a million when she’s effective and the snowball lands securely in her grip…only to be dropped a second later as she actually squeaks in surprise and opens her hands reflexively to release the unexpected weight.

"…I mean, how are you holding up? I hear you and Primer’s werewolf made a pretty decent showing out on your own, before y’all made contact with Warren Sr."

“Uhhh, yes, right, master of…competence…right here…” she mutters in response, laughing a little and poking the small pile of snow with her toe before sobering a bit and shrugging. “I-I guess we did? And, um, her name’s Rahne, I don’t know if you knew that.” Though she’d probably answer more readily to ‘Primer’s werewolf’ she thinks a little sourly. It just sits wrong, someone seeming to want to be manipulated like that. I know I had to. Even I know I had to. But I don’t think ‘had to’ necessarily means ‘morally right’. “It was weird, I mean it was only the breakout and then a couple of days, but I’ve never had anyone waiting for me to tell them what to do. It was…I don’t know how any of you on the X-men do it. I’d rather…” she trails off, remembering her older self standing a couple feet away and realizes that, that’s apparently what she’d rather. There’s a beat of awkward silence before the older Laurie smiles in a frozen sort of way and gets up from the chair she’s been sitting in. “I should go. Have to talk to Warren at some point about how things are going with Sam and getting you lot home.” Her voice is easy enough, bored if anything, but once she’s left the room the younger Laurie still looks faintly sheepish.