multiversallogs | 'cause clever got me this far

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'cause clever got me this far

Who: Laura, Kiden & Remy
What: Laura drags home ~~a stray~~ her friend because it is unacceptable to eat garbage when there are people to help you, Kiden.
Where: Wanda and Remy's house, Abrogate Green
When: Shortly after this.
Notes: None.
Warnings: Probably some foul language.

"This is where I'm staying. It is the house of my..." Laura pauses, unsure what their relationship actually is. They're definitely not related, and she wouldn't know what familial title to ascribe to these people even if she wanted to use one. "Friend," she decides on eventually, with the expectation that Kiden will trust her judgment when it comes to people not being dangerous.

Laura's pretty good at telling who the dangerous people are.

She's taken Kiden from the alley she found her in here -- it's a long train ride from Chimer to Abrogate Green, clear on the other side of the city, but it gives them time to catch up. Well, it gives Kiden time to talk and Laura time to listen, because she has very little to say. She's not good at taking care of people, but she assumes Remy will know what to do about this. She trusts he'll be able to get her settled, because Laura doesn't blame Kiden one bit for not trusting the people at the Inn. She certainly didn't.

She opens the front door and enters with her. It occurs to her she ought to say something instead of just quietly sneaking through the door all the time -- she's been lead to believe that announcing one's presence is normal from the television -- at the Institute, she watched a lot of old sitcoms -- and the students themselves, who had a habit of bursting into rooms and immediately shouting at each other. So instead of hauling Kiden through the house until she could leap at Remy like some kind of terrible home-invading ninja (or your average cat), Laura calls out like a normal human being. "Remy."

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It's genuinely difficult to catch Remy at the house when he's not either a) asleep, b) with Wanda or b) actively wrangling some kind of high octane domestic near-disaster with the boys, but Laura's always had a sense for the timing of things. At present, he's out back in the garden, smoking and leisurely getting back to people over the cohort network, so he's within earshot when Laura calls for his attention.

(Which is a little weird.)

Remy - who is a big guy with weird eyes, which makes him look intimidating even when he's not trying to be so - makes no assumptions when he comes into the hall and sees Laura and her guest. (Though he remembers Alice.) He gives Kiden a look that's curious, but not suspicious.

To Laura: "Petite?"

When Laura pauses in her sentence, Kiden's mind works quickly and fills in the blank with another word that she really, really doesn't want to associate with Laura anymore--pimp. But friend is a nice word and it's one Kiden accepts with a nod (and a quiet sigh of relief that Laura's hearing can probably pick up.) She wonders who this friend is and what their story is. It can't be that bad of one if they have their own place here.

Just inside the door, Kiden glances around the place, taking in the signs and hints of this living space, not to mention potential escape routes. She's never really sure when they'll need one. Plural terminology there, as in her mind, it's her and Laura now. Though when this Remy guy comes into the the room, Kiden snaps her attention directly to him, eyes narrowed because while he looks familiar, she can't really place him, even with those eyes of his.

Laura is as relaxed as anyone has ever seen her, here. She's never completely comfortable anywhere, but she doesn't have that tension she normally does, like she expects to have to draw a weapon or flee at any moment. She still has an ear out for danger, but it's statistically unlikely anyone is going to try to attack this nondescript-looking house, and they'd be a damn fool for trying considering who lives in it.

"This is Kiden. She arrived several days ago. She has no money and nowhere to go." As usual, saying more than a few words at a time sounds like a struggle for her, let alone impressing upon him how important Kiden is to him -- Laura has no room for sentimentality, but her actions speak pretty clearly: she wouldn't have brought her here if it weren't so. She would have left her at the Inn or let her wander around to take care of herself. "She is my friend from... before." Before Paris, before Utopia, before Xavier's... pick one.

She turns to look at both of them, a little unsure. She's never had to introduce two strangers together before, at least, not when nobody's trying to kill anyone else. She's filled her being normal quota for the day, now everybody else gets to figure this out.

Remy doesn't say anything until after Laura's done speaking; he waits patiently, attentively, and it doesn't take much to put together the gravity of her doing this for someone. The look he gives Laura is measuring - and understanding. While he doesn't know too much about her time before being swept up into the X-Men, it's enough to tell him that this is significant, and that Kiden is someone who probably needs help - not that he couldn't tell by looking at her. (Street kids, contrary to popular ignorant belief, do not all wander around barefoot and covered in mud; there's an edge to how she holds herself that he recognizes plain as day.)

"Kiden." He's not all obnoxious smiles when he greets her, though there's a friendliness there. He extends his hand, though he's not sure if she'll take it. "I'm Remy. You want dinner?"

Though wearing sneakers and not covered in mud, Kiden does carry the appearance of somebody who's spent more than one night on the street. She smells like it as well, but that's pretty much unsaid yet recognized. That stance she carries is also one of feeling distinctly mistrusting and a bit uncomfortable. Adults. Kiden could never trust any of them and the one that she did... well, they don't talk about Cameron anymore.

She doesn't accept his hand. In fact, she pulls her sleeves down past her wrists before nodding at his offer. "Yeah." Free food she'll accept no matter what, but underlying her words is another sentence: Is there a catch?

There usually is.

Laura nods, pleased for having this work out. She's not sure how long Kiden can stay here -- knowing Remy, forever, but she's not going to assume anything -- but that doesn't matter; she just needs a safe place to come back to. A safety net, only one she doesn't have to worry about being kicked out of after 90 days, or locked out of at a certain time of night, or filled with less-than-scrupulous staff. If not here, then Laura can find her somewhere else.

"Remy was an X-man," she tells Kiden, knowing that that won't mean much, because as of late the X-men have been a bag of dicks... then again, the general public doesn't know much about their internal affairs. "So was I." So -- they're both do-gooder types with a history of giving the homeless a home, is what that means.

She would add that Kiden is a mutant, but hesitates in case the other girl doesn't want to be outed like that. It's not entirely safe to be a mutant ("xenian," they call it) in Baedal, although not nearly as dangerous as it was back home. Laura trusts Remy but she respects that Kiden might not -- not yet, at least. Anyway, Remy will probably be able to tell soon enough. It's pretty unlikely that Laura would be able to get this close to anyone mundane.

That's fine - he doesn't appear bothered that she doesn't, but it'd have been rude not to offer (not... that his manners are impeccable, but he's not going to treat her like she's not a person deserving of equal respect and interaction, here).

"It's good to meet you, Kiden." And then he nods along with Laura, flashing the blonde-haired girl a smile as he does, and ushers them into the kitchen.

"Laura's got a good head on her shoulders, no? She's saved my ass a couple'o times now." He points at the kitchen table - and thankfully the kitchen itself is mostly clean, though there's some leftover glasses on the table and some dirty plates lingering guiltily in the sink. He scoops up the glasses on the table and... just deposits them in the sink with everything else, for later. Whatevs.

For now he's just going to get her fed and settled for a moment. Already-wary kids thrown into an insane environment like this don't need to be interrogated - in general, and especially right off the bat. He does assume Kiden is gifted in some way, yes, or at least someone who's been involved with less-than-typical dealings. But even so, being kidnapped to another dimension is pretty jarring. "You show up by yourself?"

Water glasses first. Then he's going to heat up some leftovers.

"She likes to do that a lot." There's a little sass in that sentence, but it's all in good humor and directed towards Laura. She notes the use of past tense in regards to Laura, Remy, and the X-Men and makes a mental note to ask later. She won't pry, but curiosity reigns supreme.

Kiden isn't judging the state of Remy's kitchen. It's a kitchen. It's a lot more than what she's had lately. Still, she glances around, taking in the homey feel of the place. It's not a cold empty house. No, there's something here. Love, maybe. Caring. Comfort. It's not just a house that's full of dysfunction 24/7 like her home used to be. It's something Kiden's missing.

"Yeah," she answers, not really willing to give details about the rest of them. It's not her place to tell their stories or anything about them, period. "Just me." And the letter to her mom marked return to sender in her back pocket.

The joke goes flying right over Laura's head; she still tends to take things pretty literally. She sits down at the table and looks expectantly at Kiden, so that she'll sit down, too. She's making as much of an effort as she can to keep this from being awkward.

She'll opt herself out of conversation as much as she possibly can -- they both understand that she's a woman of very few words.

Nothing about Remy telegraphs awkward. This is, in the grand scheme of things, a lot less weird than most events in his life. Leftovers, by the way, consists of stew that's seasoned - er - aggressively, look at who runs this house! and baked yams.

"Yeah, me too. Ain't home, that's for sure, but it could be worse." Like Mojo. Or Limbo. He dumps everything onto a pan on the stove to heat up. He looks up suddenly. "-You're not a vegetarian, are you?"

Billy already got to everything kosher. The adventures of Southern cooking with dietary restrictions have been interesting. Not impossible, no, but everyone else present eats utterly without discrimination. Important facts of this household.

Kiden wouldn't know what either one of those are and for her innocence, and what's left of it, may she never. She can already make herself her own little limbo--not to be confused with Limbo--and that's good enough for her.

"Nah." She can feel Laura's eyes burning a hole in her so Kiden quietly pulls out a chair and plops down into it in a way only a teenager can. Being vegetarian is stupid and wasteful for her. Imagine Kiden tossing all those burgers she'd find just because they were made of meat. If she didn't toss them for being in the trash, she's not going to toss them because they used to have a face.

Speaking of trash, Kiden suddenly stands back up to empty her pockets of the orange and bag of cherries she found earlier, placing them on the table. This is called dessert.

It's actually quite refreshing to be locked in an alternate dimension where everything isn't actively trying to kill you -- see also: re: Limbo. It is kind of like a vacation, albeit an impromptu one that never ends with some kind of obvious political unrest and danger...

So, every vacation for an X-man, then.

She glances at the fruit, then gives Remy a look that is as close to a shrug as she can manage. He can probably guess where that came from. Then she looks back at Kiden, her expression its usual unreadable poker face. ... Feel free to jump in conversationally anytime, Laura.

They're both so chatty! It's fun. Remy sticks the re-heated food on plates (two - he already ate but who knows what Laura's been up to this evening, and it's better if Kiden doesn't eat alone and end up feeling weird), and deposits that, silverware, napkins, and four-out-of-six cans of ... something, it's a non-earth fruit flavor, soda still attached to plastic rings on the table.

There.

Remy nabs one can of soda for himself and sits down, treating the scavenged fruit as normal (...for now, look, she can't go on doing that). "You're from New York?"

The fruit is normal, okay, no matter what Remy and Laura think. They just need to be washed off. A lot. Perhaps with bleach and acid. Or better yet, let's just throw it away when Kiden isn't looking.

"Yeah." And that's all Kiden replies with before she tucks into the food that tastes far too good to be real. She could be polite and wait for Laura to eat first, but she could also starve for the rest of her life if she follows Laura's lead. Table manners are not the most important thing to Kiden here, so there's some plate scraping and a burp or two to crack all the gabbing that's obviously going on here.

There's probably ice cream or something in the freezer, anyway, the fruit may very well end up mysteriously disappearing and be replaced by it. Kiden needs the calories.

Well, Laura's certainly not going to make small talk, and she's perfectly fine sitting there saying nothing and doing nothing while Kiden eats. She eats what's in front of her -- slower, because she's not starving -- as she knows better than to turn down food when she might not know when the next time she's going to have access to it is, and anyway she likes Remy's cooking.

When Kiden's nearly polished everything off, she suggests, "It is late. You can use my room." It'll be like a slumber party! Which she's never had and does not actually know what it means except that the other girls at the school occasionally got really excited about sleeping in sleeping bags in the den and playing truth-or-dare for some reason, but.

She doesn't suggest a time limit for that offer. Kiden may well assume it will only be for a few days.

That Laura takes the initiative there, versus Remy having to broadly ask So is she staying in your room or on the sofa? speaks more than anything else to the fact that Kiden Is Laura's, she might as well write her name on her. That's good, he thinks. For both of them.

"You want a shower first? I just did laundry so we should actually have clean towels," he muses, thinking of... all the absurdity that goes on in this house like Do we really have clean anything, fuck... yes, probably. "...An' I'm pretty sure the bathroom on the second floor ain't destroyed."

"Where are you going to go?" Though Kiden's pretty sure Laura is implying that they can share space like the good old days, she's learned never to assume that Laura thinks like a normal person. Kiden's seventy-five percent sure Laura doesn't actually sleep any more than she just... blinks for a really long time, so giving Kiden her entire bedroom is something that's likely to actually happen. Though in her mind, there's a time limit for everything. Maybe for a couple of nights, tops. She doesn't know the limit of Remy's hospitality and quiet as it's kept, Kiden's already thinking of other homing options where she and Laura can go.

It's a very short list, by the way.

"I don't have anything," she confesses the obvious as she turns to Remy To wear, to change into, money, a family, so on and so forth.

Her making the offer says a lot about her feelings for him -- and by extension everyone else who lives here -- as well. If she didn't feel like she belonged here, if she didn't want to live here, she wouldn't have put it out there. She thinks of this as her home, too.

"Nowhere," she says. Not that she has nowhere else to go, but that she's not leaving, except maybe to prowl around outside for a couple hours, restless like she usually is. But she'll either share the bed or sleep on the couch, it makes no difference to her.

Pause. She knows what Kiden's saying, but Laura always goes for the practical first. "We can find you clothes." Is she helping? She's helping, right? Guess what she's gonna buy with that money she got from the Inn, by the way.

I don't have anything pulls at him in a way that'd get everybody who cares about people - cares about kids - and he watches her closely. "Yeah you do," he says quietly. She's got Laura, and by extension him, and Wanda, and everything that goes with that. (Not that he thinks he himself is some great resource, most of the time; there's plenty of people who'd rather drag every child he comes in contact away from Gambit, Redneck Cajun Criminal Womanizer Villain Extraordinaire, but this is what they've got to work with.)

"You can borrow some pjs and we figure the rest out in the morning, no?" He finishes the soda he's drinking, and pops the synthetic-aluminum tab off, a habit.

Remy stands up, and goes to clear away their dishes - he assumes Laura can march Kiden to where she needs to be without him looming over everyone's shoulders for a few minutes.

He's right. She does have Laura. Not quite in the frame of mind of thinking she has anything or anyone other than that here, Kiden nods anyway, hoping a hot bath can clear her mind. She's been dying for a shower even before she left New York, really. Her hair's greasy and her scalp itches something fierce and even her own odor is getting to her now full stomach.

Does she say thank you? Yes, she should. "Uh... thanks," Kiden mutters, suddenly feeling detached from the situation, and choosing to glance at Laura for the next step in this dance. How is Laura so comfortable about this guy when she isn't? Maybe Kiden just doesn't want to get to attached to the goodness in adults. It never lasts long. Look what happened with Cameron. And even though she didn't give Dr. Reyes much of a chance, Kiden didn't trust her enough to let things get that far anyway.

It'll be a while before she trust this weird-eyed guy to not stab her or Laura in the back.

Laura takes that as a cue that everything's settled and stands up. "I will show you the bathroom." That is the most seriously anyone has ever uttered that phrase, by the way.

She moves without waiting to be sure Kiden is following her, just assumes that she will for a variety of reasons. She points out both the bathroom and which room is hers (theirs), in case she doesn't want to come hang out in the kitchen again when she's done. She'll bring her some spare pajamas as well, and a quiet word from Remy results in her taking her old clothes when she's busy and not paying attention. Hopefully she'll take the new ones she's bound to get (there are all kinds of stores open all night in Baedal, it having a significant nocturnal population; she could go tonight and get them while she's asleep, before she can protest) but at least her old ones will be clean. Clean clothes can mean a lot when you don't have a spare set and some quarters.

She and Remy will probably have a brief discussion, if not tonight then sometime soon -- he'll need to know about Kiden (and the others), what she's been through and where she's coming from, although Laura suspects he can guess about a lot of it. Someone should know, because the Institute failed mutant kids like Kiden and she deserves that kind of attention. She's had this conversation with him before, but he's from before that happened, which means there's some stuff she's going to have to admit to again. That's fine, it doesn't bother her, it's just odd.

With the air of someone who's familiar with what Kiden's reaction will probably be when she finds out her clothes have been nicked, Remy carefully goes through all the pockets, and leaves any potential finds (even bits of trash - you never know what's sentimental) in a plastic ziplock bag in Laura's room, while her clothes go straight into the washer.

He doesn't ask Laura if she's okay, or if she thinks Kiden is; they'll talk when this is less overwhelming and when it feels less like whispering outside of someone's bedroom and pretending they can't hear. He stops her once, as they go about arranging space, and tilts her chin up so he can look at her, and smiles a bit.

"Everybody'd be lucky to have a friend like you, Laura."

(And that fruit is getting chucked.)

Good move that he did that because as soon as Kiden steps out of the shower and notices that her former clothes are now MIA, she almost rips the house apart before she realizes that her precious few belongings--a lighter, rubber bands, a random key, a Metrocard, and the most important thing of all, her letter to her mom--is safely situated on Laura's bed.

Much calmer than she was just a few seconds ago, Kiden sits on the edge of the bed, pushing around the junk that litters the floor so she can toe the bare carpet. How'd she get from the little girl she used to be to the almost grown woman she is now? Kiden knows how. It's something she's figured out years ago, but sometimes she still can't believe it. And how she ended up in Baedal adds another fragment to a story she thought was already completed. Nothing will ever make sense ever again.

There's a pair of sweatpants with her name on them temporarily and Kiden pulls them (slipping the zip bag into one of the pockets) on to make her way back down to the kitchen so she can get those two things she left behind earlier. They better still be there.

Edited 2011-11-18 07:55 (UTC)

It surprises Laura every time how much Remy's approval means to her.

She nods instead of saying anything, not an agreement so much as an acknowledgement of what he's said. Curious, though. She assumes anyone would do this for their friends. She'll have to ask at some point, something she files away for later.

(Taking a bullet to the face is probably not something most people would do, no, Laura.)

Unfortunately for Kiden, the fruit is long gone. Having taken care of her stuff and decided she's going to pick Kiden up some extra clothes later tonight, Laura is sitting at the kitchen table again, eating ice cream, which looks ridiculously out of character for her. (It's funnier when she has a cone.) But Laura loves food, especially food with strong flavours. Sometimes sweet things are too much for her palate but everything in Baedal is made from real ingredients -- real sugar, not high fructus corn syrup, real fruit, not fruit flavourings, &etc -- and the difference is palpable. "Hi," she says, then glances at the ice cream box and the extra bowl she sets out, then back at Kiden.

With anybody else, Kiden would just stand there with a confused look on her face when Laura speaks strictly through looks and body language. But she can read her friend easily enough to get the message clearly that she says hi back and sits down across from Laura.

"Where'd you put my stuff?" Kiden doesn't ask this in a demanding tone. In fact, it's super casual as she reaches out and slides the ice cream box towards her. Fuck a bowl. All she needs is a spoon. And her stuff.

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'cause clever got me this far

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