InsaneJournal

Who: Laura and Cass
What: Laura moves back in, bonding.
When: Today, 3/22
Where: The Cass/Jubes/etc Condo.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, mainly for discussion of their canon.
Status: Complete!


There was something to be said for coming home again, even if that home had only arguably been one to begin with. And even if things had changed so drastically for a person that they didn’t even know how to feel about anything anymore. Laura knew how she was supposed to feel. Happy, warm - glad to see Cass again. If she dug deep enough she could find those feelings, but she was also nervous.

She was a vampire now, and Cass had already dealt with a lot this year. Would having an extra vampire around make her antsy? Laura clung to her suitcase and stood in Jubilee’s bedroom, staring around it. Cass was home, but she wasn’t sure how to even start up a conversation about this. The bedroom door was wide open, and Laura wondered if she should walk back through it, out of the condo, and just never come back.

Cass had known that Laura was coming home that day and she was looking forward to seeing her friend. Other people might have been uneasy around someone who was going through what Laura was, but unlike most people, Cass was fairly certain that if Laura tried to attack her, she could take her.

Cass had been at the gym and had gotten home just before Laura, but had been in the shower and hadn’t heard her come in. After getting out of the shower and putting on clean clothes, she headed towards the kitchen to make something to eat.

The sounds in the kitchen snapped Laura out of her own thoughts. She wasn't very hungry - she missed the time when she could eat real food - but grabbing a bottle of 'cola' would break the ice. Maybe. It would at least give Laura a reason to be in the same room with Cass. If it went badly, she could just beat a hasty retreat.

She set her bag down and headed to the kitchen, waving at Cass a bit hesitantly and opening the fridge, "Hey. How... are you?"

At the sound of Laura’s voice, Cass turned and smiled, happy to see the other girl, “Hey. I’m alright. How’re you?” She took a few steps towards Laura, but didn’t get too close just yet. With Jubilee, Cass knew how much control she had over her vampire nature, but Laura was still new and she didn’t want to give Laura any reason to be tempted to bite her. Then again, even if Laura tried, Cass was pretty sure that she could handle herself.

That wasn't really the greeting Laura had been expecting. Though she hadn't been sure what she was expecting, but Cass was being friendly - if understandably standoffish. A wave of relief washed over her so palpable she could actually feel it.

She stood there awkwardly in the kitchen for a few seconds as she dealt with that and her reaction to the blood pumping through her roommate's veins. Finally, she blinked and said, "You are not afraid of me?"

Cass shook her head, “No. You’re back here, which means that you and Jubilee obviously think that you’re ready to be around other people. If you were going to attack me, you would have done it when my back was turned and you didn’t do that.” She smiled at Laura, taking another step closer. “You wouldn’t be back if you didn’t think you were ready.” In the dreams, her father had taught her to read people and right now Cass wasn’t feeling anything hostile coming off Laura, so she was pretty sure that she was safe.

"You're right... That's actually very perceptive of you," Laura replied, with a nod. She smiled a bit, feeling generally more at ease with the knowledge that Cass was going to be okay with things. One of her hands reached into the fridge, and she pulled out one of the bottles that Jubilee had stocked in there.

"Do you want something out of here? A soda, or a beer." She wanted to be human, and hanging out with Cass couldn't be more human, she thought, "I think... I know that I'm not a danger to people. I think I may still be a danger to myself, but that isn't your problem."

Cass reached in after Laura and got a can of soda then let the fridge door close, “What do you mean?” She frowned slightly as she popped the top on the soda can, but didn’t drink it yet, “How’re you a danger to yourself?”

"Well..." Laura leaned against the counter and unscrewed the cap to her 'wolvie cola'. One of her hands opened the nearby utensil drawer and started fishing out a straw, "Vampires are killers by nature. My dream self was born and created to kill, too. Now I must fight two sets of instincts. Not because I want to kill you. But because it seems so easy to fall into... being that person. The killer, the girl who didn't even understand she was human."

Cass nodded, “I can understand that. In the dreams, my father trained me to be a killer. I was eight when I killed a man and after that, I ran away. I couldn’t stay and let him make me do that again.” She knew it wasn’t exactly the same situation, but it was similar and she hoped that if Laura knew part of what she had gone through in her dreams, it’d help in some way.

It did help, a little bit. Laura tilted her head to the side while she listened to Cass, then nodded her head a bit. Carefully, she held out one of her hands and pushed her claws out. They weren't that long, but they were covered in shiny metal that was obviously sharp, "I understand. I was... very young. I'm not sure how young, I don't remember. It was hard to keep track of the years. But they did things to me to make my healing come in, and then they put this metal on my claws. So they're smaller than they could be, they should be the length of my forearms but they aren't. After they did it, they had me kill my sensei."

After a pause, she added, "He was the only one that treated me like a human. I wanted to run away, I think. At that point. Or at least I began to realise that I wanted more than that life. It was smart of you to escape all of that."

Having seen Logan’s claws before, Cass barely flinched when Laura pushed her out as she listened to her friend, “It’s almost hard to believe that there are places where there are people who could do the things that were done to us in our dreams.” As weird as it was, it was kind of nice to have another person around who had an understanding of what it was like to basically be used as a weapon by someone who should have been protecting them, “We got the short end of the dream stick.”

"It is... We did..." Laura put her claw away, belatedly remembering that Cass was friends with Logan. That was almost too perfect. Between him and Jubilee, her friend had already dealt with everything that was frightening about her.

And Cass understood, more than Jubilee ever would. She bit on her lip a bit as she put her straw in her bottle, "But... I never imagined there would be a person who understood. In my world, the government was funding everything, I think. I hope that things like that do not happen anywhere in the waking world, but... I know that's probably naive."

Cass nodded, “I hope to god that there aren’t any parents out there like my father in the dreams. I couldn’t even imagine someone training their child to be a killer.” She took a sip of her soda, “But the good thing is that as crappy as the dreams have been for us both and as crappy as some stuff has been in real life since, we don’t have to let the dreams control us.”

"That's what Logan told me, too."

Laura took a sip off of her own drink, looking momentarily more thoughtful than before, "But I don't know how good I'll be at fighting it. When Jubilee turned me... I still feel... like it was for the best, because now I can be on the outside how I feel, on the inside. Sometimes. And I don't like that. I want to feel comfortable in my skin, but not because I've finally become a killer."

“But you don’t have to be a killer. You’re a vampire now, but there are other ways you can get blood.” Cass wasn’t judging anything Laura had done since becoming a vampire and she was sure that she knew all her options already, but Cass knew that there were other vampires on Valarnet who had figured out ways to deal with their vampirism without killing.

There were actually a lot of options. Laura knew that. Pam had driven that into her skull, Jubilee had, Logan had, even the other vampires on the net had. Laura nodded her head a bit, "There are. And... now that I am more in control of things, I'd rather use those other options. I don't have to be a killer. I don't have to become my dream self. But there are parts of me that wonder if I will, no matter how hard I fight it."

She shook her head, then, and put on a smile that she thought she might actually be feeling, "Having... friends that understand helps. I never needed friends before, but I do, now. And I'm glad that you're here."

Cass returned the smile and felt that it was alright to hug her friend now. Putting down her can of soda, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Laura, "I'm glad we're friends too." Cass knew how important having friends was while dealing with the crap from the dreams and knew that without the friends she had she never would have been able to get through some of the things she had.