It sounds like you have a strong negative association with this place. Who: Dani Moonstar and Emma Summers Where: Chez Summers/Moonstar What: chatting about how crappy their lives are When: 7/3 Warnings/Rating: PG-13, but trigger warnings for depression Status complete
Emma was still feeling very unusual. She wasn’t even sure what the problem actually was. She was just drifting through her days, her sense of connection with the world was gone. It spun on around her and she was in the middle of it all just trying to understand. Vaguely, she knew the feeling was familiar, but she didn’t know from when or where.
She was still in her pajamas at one pm when she went to the kitchen to make tea. Maybe a hot drink would help, though she wasn’t sure how. She knew Dani was in the house, so she would try her best to be conversational.
Wrex had very nicely given Dani the third and fourth off so that she could 'settle back into her house'. It was mostly a ruse, on her part. She didn't have that much to settle back in with, for one thing. Her unpacking had been finished the night before, for the most part.
Really, she just absolutely couldn't stand the idea of fourth of July, fireworks, the Ranch, Faiza, and Obi-wan happening all in one place. But she didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to, so that's why she'd been thinking about it all day.
With a long sigh, she headed down the stairs and into the kitchen. Maybe some coffee would help her head clear out. She waved at Emma as she fished around for a k-cup.
Emma waved back and started making her tea. She still felt empty and unhinged from the world, but she tried to push those feelings back. Dani needed help adjusting to her new life, and dealing with the guilt of her previous choices. “I’d say good morning, but you’ve probably been up since it was actually the morning.” Her voice wasn’t confident and commanding anymore, it was soft and she didn’t face Dani when she spoke.
It looked like they all needed help adjusting to their new lives, from where Dani was sitting. The Emma she knew wasn't about to take any comfort from her, though, and she wasn't sure exactly what to say. She didn't even know what all had happened to the woman, since she'd been ported away before Dani'd seen her.
"Good morning still works, god knows I've had my fair share of 1pm mornings." Dani's tone was a bit light, obviously trying to crack a joke at her own expense, "Let's see... donut shop coffee, that sounds good."
Coffee sounded really good. Emma sighed. Cravings were nice, at the moment. Sometimes it felt like those were the only emotions she could really feel beside terror and shame. “I’m blaming the baby, it does what it wants and I’m just its shell for now.” She smiled, but it was as hollow as her attempt at humor. “You’re not riding to work with Scott today?”
"Do you want some? I'm sure there's some tasty decaf in here that'd be way nicer than any cup of tea in the history of existence," Dani offered, fishing back through the various k-cup boxes. Her own coffee was already brewing. It hadn't taken long to figure the machine out.
She shook her head in response to the other question, "Wrex gave me the next two days off to settle in here."
“Wrex is a good person.” Emma said with a nod. “Decaf is adequate.” She pulled out the remains of the breakfast Nate had made that morning. “Do you want some cold pancakes?”
"I... think I'll pass," Dani replied, eyeing the pancakes. There were some things that just didn't really reheat the same way as they were, fresh, and pancakes were definitely among them.
She pulled out her own mug and placed it off to the side, then switched things out so that she could brew Emma something, "Wrex is a really good man. I owe him... my life. And just about everything else. It's overly generous of him to give me a few days, really, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth."
Emma shrugged and started the toaster oven. In her opinion pancakes reheated fine, but she wasn’t interested in arguing. That just meant more pancakes for her. “I’m glad you decided to stay here. This is your home, Dani, and neither Scott nor I would feel right if you weren’t here.”
"It's not really my house anymore. It doesn't feel like it, really. I know it should be, and maybe it will over time. It's stupid, maybe. But I actually feel like I'm the one that's intruding. I'm really just here because sleeping in my truck was making me cranky."
Dani held Emma's mug up, "Cream? Sugar?"
“We could leave, if you’re really bothered by it.” She took the coffee mug without any additions. “But any feelings of being unwelcome you have are purely internal. Even if you and Nate did argue, Scott and I are perfectly happy to have you stay.”
"I'm not going to kick you out of here. You've been living here for months. We've all lived in the same place all at once in other... places... so I'm sure we can make it work." Dani replied, while grabbing her mug. She hopped up onto the counter, one of her favorite places to sit, "And me and Nate like to argue. I respect him, he was like... my captain. We're not going to have problems."
She wrinkled her nose and added, "But... You're right. It's completely internal. And my discomfort here is... complicated. It's not just because you all are living here."
Emma nodded and put her cold pancakes into the toaster oven. “Do you want to talk about it? I have nothing but time, at the moment. I also have a few days off.” She hadn’t actually asked, but she assumed Nate had told her father a censored version of what happened.
Dani squinted down into her coffee mug, "I used to have nightmares in that bed. The one you sleep in. When the dreams first started, for a long time, I'd dream about the demon bear and wake up paralyzed completely. Then my powers kicked in while I was here and the entire house looked like London being attacked by reapers - Shepard's worst nightmare, basically, and Scott saw us all dead. He nearly blew his own head off with her gun. In this kitchen. Then I started having dreams about being strapped to something that sucked on my soul, which is really pretty fucking painful. And ... about a block from here, I was hit by a car and then had my femoral artery severed by a serial killer."
Her tone was very conversational, because honestly... that was only half of her problem and it was the stuff from her dreams, mostly, which she figured Emma could easily relate to. Dream crap, X-men crap, hell, most of the stuff she was recounting sounded like Tuesday at Xavier's.
Emma nodded. She hadn’t realized they’d all had such a hard time before she’d come into Scott’s life. Her heart ached, and in a way it was a pleasant break from the nothing she’d been feeling moments ago. “I can understand that. It sounds like you have a strong negative association with this place. I know others have left the city for far less.” It was only her positive associations that kept her here.
"And that's only the half of it. The other half of it is about a man, which is pretty typical of day to day life." Dani scrunched up her nose a bit. Obi-wan was still everywhere in this place. How many deep discussions had they had while she was sitting on this counter? She took another fortifying sip of her coffee and made a hand gesture, like she was trying to wave the thoughts in her head away. It wasn't really working.
"...When you think about it and go over all the evidence, there are so many strong reasons not to be here that I'm pretty amazed I had the intestinal fortitude to return."
Emma listened, mustering up as much sympathy as she could, and swallowing a few sharp words. She didn't have the energy to argue. "I could buy the house from you, if it truly bothers you that much." It would mean asking for Winston's help, but she could manage it. He'd give her a reasonable loan.
Dani glanced over at Emma, and shook her head, "I'm making a joke, Emma. It's crazy to return to a place like this, you have to admit that. But I'm not a coward. I'm a warrior, and I have to face all of this. I'm not selling the house to you, and I'm not running away from this."
Emma shrugged. It wasn’t as much a joke as Dani was playing it off to be, at least it didn’t seem that way, but she wasn’t bothered by Dani staying, either. “That’s a very mature decision.”
"Well they encourage you to make very mature decisions in rehab," Dani replied, wrinkling her nose a bit. But it'd been more than that. She'd made this decision on her own, "...You know. At first, that's what it was about, anyway. Just doing the program. But I hated myself. I couldn't live with it. I don't know how much you've dreamed, but I figure dream you understood that. Wanting to face your choices and be a different person, maybe a better one. I don't know. It sounds too fucking hallmark card to me, but that’s where it’s at right now for me."
“The thing about life, from what I’ve dreamed and what I’ve experienced, is that becoming a different person is inevitable.” That was pretty Hallmark card-y too, but that was where her own brain was at. “The only control we have is in our reactions, and making the choice to be better people.” She couldn’t say for sure that she was making the choices a better person would, and she didn’t think her dream self was either.
It was hard to tell under normal circumstances, really, and the x-men weren't facing circumstances that were normal by any definition of the term.
"Right. When those things happened, though, I let them shape me into a different person that I didn't want to be, instead of making the choice to be... better. And then I made the choice to run away, and the choice to drink myself into oblivion, which I thought would be harder to admit to someone like you."
"Why?" Emma asked. "Because of the dreams?" She was sick to death of being judged by people before she even met them. She longed for anonymity again. Annoyance was also nicer than feeling nothing.
"And you're Scott's wife. And Nate's mother. You're in a position of authority and respect, and it's harder to open up to people like that. Usually." Dani nodded, "But yes, the dream you and the dream me didn't get along. It was a conflict over something that I took personal. A few things, really. And that part doesn't need to bleed into real life as far as I care."
“I suppose it’s easier now because while I have some authority and some respect, I have recently been reminded how very limited my power is in this world, and how little the world cares if one more Frost child leaves the world unceremoniously.” She sipped her coffee, shrugging her shoulders. “In the dreams I made a habit of pissing people off, and it would be a lie to say I haven’t done so here as well. Perhaps you just caught me at a good time.”
"I caught you at a more vulnerable time," Dani said, her tone just slightly more gentle than before. She hopped down off the counter and fished herself out another k-cup. Coffee was one of few vices she had left, "You're very powerful, we all are in our way. But life finds a way of bringing us low anyway. We're both in a state we hate being in because of it, you don't have to pretend you're okay."
“Pretending I’m okay is really all I have left.” Emma shrugged one shoulder. “We all have our demons, and I have learned to deal with mine. This is all part of that process.”
"Well, alright. Do you want to continue to pretend we're okay while I head to the grocery store? I thought I'd cook some fajitas tonight. Scott liked them and I've been wanting to test out this no-beer recipe I've been working on." Dani thought getting out of the house would be good for both of them. It wasn't like she couldn't protect Emma if she had to.
She looked down at her pajamas. “It takes me about an hour to do my hair and makeup. If you have that kind of patience I suppose I could tolerate being out and about.” She stood up anyway, and put her cup in the sink. She needed to get dressed at some point today, now was as good a time as any.
Dani thought that Emma needed to get out. They probably both did, all things considered.
"I'll be down here when you're ready. I want to make a shopping list and check the stocks we have anyway."
“I think you’ll be unpleasantly surprised. I was trying to learn how to cook, but I only made one thing a week and I normally bought whatever the recipe called for the day of an attempt.” She had no idea what was in the cabinets.
"It's not so much a surprise if you warn me, Emma," Dani teased. She opened a drawer that used to contain things like pens, paper and etc, and was happy to discover that they were still there, "At least the paper is where I left it. We shouldn't need to buy a lot to get this dinner settled anyway."
“I think you’re underestimating how bad we are at stocking the kitchen.” She noted with a chuckle. Nate cooked, so she assumed they had some kind of food ingredients laying around. She made her way out of the kitchen and upstairs. That was going to be such a hassle with a new baby. She resolved to make Nate fetch her things when that time came.
The cabinets were in a pretty sad state, it was true, though not as sad a state as she'd worried. Dani made quick mental notes of what all she'd need for dinner that night and jotted a list down. If she could talk Emma into footing the bill she could have them stocked up for plenty of meals. Between her and Nate, she was pretty certain they could keep the house well fed without the need for too much takeout.
That would be pretty important once the baby came, she figured.