Template:Featured Articles/12-2017

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Moment of Awesome - Laurie Collins/Wallflower : Laurie and Jennie Stavros talk about their lives and how sometimes it feels hard to fit.


"Oh I've been full roster for a while now," Jennie said, stretching out her arms. "They're making 'commander' noises at me again, which I am not sure I am ready for. No, it's the..." Jennie trailed off and looked at a space above Laurie's head. "The dance studio was Marnie's dream, and I was there to help her out. And now, I feel like I'm getting too far down the rabbit hole.Like I'm leading this double life, and it's all nice and safe and boring. But soon I'm going to have to tap out on one or the other, you know?"

“Remember when we were teenagers and I gave myself pneumonia trying to do too much?” Laurie mused with a grin before nodding at Jennie’s explanation. “I’ve had to make that choice a couple of times now, to varying degrees of success. What it comes down to is what parts of your life are the ones you can’t live without? Basically, it’s like that Walking Dead episode said. You’ve got to figure out what it is you want, and it can't be what you think other people want, or what you think you should want or even what you’d like to want. Once you figure that out, then it’s easier to choose what stays and what has to go.”

"Yeah, but what I want is no longer an option for me," Jennie looked at Laurie, and for a moment she just looked... tired. "It's just cobbling pieces together, and trying to leave the past in the past."

Laurie hesitated for a second, wanting to give Jennie a hug and tell her that it would be alright, but that was an easy way out. The truth was that it might not be; and saying else wise was just about making herself feel better, not Jennie.

“It’s hard to lose like that, and to still want the things that can’t be anymore,” Laurie responded carefully after a moment, trying to work out how to say ‘I’ll listen as long as you need’ without sounding twee. “I’m here whatever you need, or decide though; even if it’s just to take you out for the night and get you to sing stupid pop songs with me till we almost puke laughing.”

Jennie smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "I just ...ugh. I miss what I had, but what I had got a lot of people I cared about killed. How can I miss that, when it mean that it harmed so many people?"

Dating Doug had been a benefit in a lot of senses, especially in helping with Laurie’s often obliviousness to other people’s emotions and expressions. Doug was good at judging her moods before even she was aware of them, which helped any number of situations. But human questions were still hard, specifically because they were human and thus messy. They were unlike the structure of a virus – or the mere biology of the human or mutant body. There were so many variables, and so much that could be wrong or could even be right given only an inflection of a word, or the arch of an eyebrow.

“When you were back there, doing what you were doing, were you happy?” Laurie asked, gaze focused fully on Jennie now, hands resting in her lap as she gave full attention to the question. “I mean, did you feel needed in what you were doing? Did you feel like you had a home?”

"Honestly? Yes. And no offense to Xavier's, but in some ways it felt like more of a home than this place did. I wasn't a teenage fuckup or Vegas trailer trash. I was just another misfit toy, that had a job to do. That solved problems, occasionally thumbed our noses at the establishment, and solved mysteries." Jennie adjusted a cup of pens on the desk, twitching the pens into place. "I had a place in the world where I fit. And now I don't. Just a square peg in a bunch of round holes."

“Then maybe you need to make your own place?” Laurie noted, but it wasn’t an unkind question. “Xavier’s is not always the best place for everyone, and while it can be home – it doesn’t have to be the only home, or even the main home of everyone here. It might not be the same as the place you miss – and believe me, no matter the pain, it’s okay to miss a place where you were happy, where you had a home – but you can certainly look into doing something similar here. The X-men certainly don’t have to be the place you stay just because that’s where you were before you left.”