InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Kiss the insane one! ;)"

Arla Lawrence (mathemafishian) wrote in age_of_miracles,
@ 2008-02-16 00:16:00

Entry tags:

mermaid, postman

Thread: Mermaid & Postman
Who: Arla Lawrence and David de Souza
When: Around midnight, moving into Saturday, February 16
Where: Xavier's School, Teacher Lounge
What: Arla for the most part is back to her normal behavior but that doesn't necessarily mean she's actually normal. However, instead of hiding in the pool she's pigging out on ice cream in front of the television, so... we might be making progress.

_______________

There was a lot to be said about Arla Lawrence in the last year. She'd gone revenge-crazy, taking her last birthday as a sign that she had to go after the people who'd killed the Morlocks. She'd gone against Remy's warnings and pursued the course until it became obsession, and obsession nearly got her killed. In fact, obsession led to Jack Bantock pumping a few gajillion volts through her body while holding her gills closed underwater and by rights it should have killed her. Instead, it left her with a twitchy right hand and a complete inability to write in anything other than nonsense mathematical formulas. She lost her place with the X-Men and then she lost her job, but more importantly she lost her sanity somewhere along the way.

Through sheer force of will she managed to get something back, cracking through her own mental codes in order to make some sense out of herself. She didn't know how it happened and couldn't explain it but she'd busted through what Xavier had done to try and help her and as far as most people were concerned, she was feeling just fine and dandy these days. She had her job back, her right hand was still twitchy, and she still had a bit of a problem with gin, but really, that was par for the course when it came to the eccentric mathematics professor at Xavier's School. She'd always been something of a bitch, and now she just had a little dose of crazy to go along with it.

She was rarely seen in the teacher's lounge these days, preferring to hole up and do her work in her room. She rarely socialized. However, Remy Lebeau had really gotten on her fucking nerves with a few things that he'd said and she wasn't in the mood to put up with him harping on her anymore. It wasn't that she was suddenly going to become some kind of socialite but she didn't have to be a recluse. And... well, it wasn't like she was looking to socialize tonight.

In fact, she was raiding the lounge freezer. Given that students weren't supposed to be in the teacher's lounge, the adults tended to hide the best things in there. This time, she happened upon a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream-----her favorite----and there wasn't any name scribbled on it in sharpie, which meant by all rules of public refrigerator etiquette, it was free for the taking. Right? Right.

After grabbing the pint and rummaging in a nearby drawer for a spoon, she plopped down on the sofa and switched on the small television. The glow from the television lit up the room and reflected in her glasses (which were crooked from her rolling over on them the other night----she hadn't been able to fix them properly). Deciding that this was an acceptable way to spend the late hours, she popped open the pint and dug in, flippers curling with delight when she tasted it.

Mint ice cream was good enough to almost make her give up gin. ...Almost.

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memoria_rasa
2008-02-18 12:24 am UTC (link)

The concept of socialization was one that David still found just a little bit strange. For years, when life had been normal, he'd been one of the guys you always found around the water cooler with light jokes and casual gossip. When everything had turned itself upside down, he'd bonded with a group of people who had become his entire life, and it didn't really count as 'being social' when every moment spent awake was spent in the company of the same people, when it was about staying alive and staying sane more than it was about exchanging pleasantries.

Now, here at Xavier's, David was having a hard time really understanding how the situation worked. Life was hardly 'normal', at least not in any definition he was used to - he was here helping mutant kids fight themselves, and helping a team of renegade superheros out of one of his old comic books fight injustice ... but they didn't hide in the darkness, they weren't scraping by. In fact, they had some pretty good perks - like the couches in the teacher's lounge - and the deli he'd found a few months back made pie almost as good as his Gran had.

Still, David wasn't entirely sure how one fit in, when you weren't at one extreme or the other, and so he tended to spend most of his evenings reading a book in his room not because he didn't want to interact with other people, but simply because he wasn't sure whether or not that would be appreciated. He was relatively new here, didn't want to step on anyone's toes - but there was only so long that he could advise children and adults alike to take a deep breath and do things that might be just a little bit frightening, before he had to suck it up and do it himself.

So he ended up in the teacher's lounge without really realizing it, ostensibly to retrieve a piece of that pie from the fridge, and wasn't terribly disappointed when the glow of the television revealed another person in the room. David didn't immediately speak to her, getting his pie and setting it going for thirty seconds in the little microwave nearby to warm it up before he actually turned to see who it was or what they were doing. And laughed at the sight of ice cream, a low, warm sound.

"Seems I'm not the only one with a sweet tooth," David commented, loudly enough to be heard over the television without breaking that Witching Hour feeling that hung in the air. He knew Arla in passing, the way he knew most people, but hadn't really spoken with her - if she wanted to simply ignore him, he'd give her the chance. "Somehow, that makes me feel better." The microwave beeped, and he set to finding himself a fork.

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mathemafishian
2008-02-18 12:46 am UTC (link)

Arla's eyes snapped up to fix on David, but otherwise she didn't move. She knew he lived in the basement with her, knew he was the guidance counselor, knew he was... well, no, that was all she knew. He'd been there six months or so and that was all she knew. Honestly, she hadn't been in a right state of mind to meet anyone new. She taught her classes, sure, but otherwise she kept to herself. She had a reputation for being a recluse and an alcoholic, for being completely batshit insane. Only recently was she starting to act a little bit like a normal human being again, and that started with being in a social area instead of her room or hiding for hours at the bottom of the indoor pool.

"Who are you."

Sure, she knew he lived there, she knew he lived across the hall, but... that wasn't really good enough and if her stare was any indication, she wasn't necessarily good at small talk these days. Her flippers, translucent in the glow from the television, curled slightly and she pulled her feet back, bringing her knees in toward her chest. Her jersey skirt was just a little too short (and, to anyone who was looking, her underwear was black with yellow polka dots), her sweatshirt just a little too big, and her hair was a mess of tangled orange curls. She adjusted her glasses, eyes looking massive behind the lenses. "You're the... new guy." 'New' being relative, but... she was out of the loop.