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Summary: Robyn and Tara chat for a bit, Rashmi joins in, Tara…is not a monster.
Date: March 23, 2010
Log Title Not A Monster
Rating: P
Xavier Mansion - Observation Deck
Glass windows surround the circular room giving a full view of the school grounds. Two telescopes sit in front of the window for students to looks at the stars. A few comfortable chairs and couches with a few tables are placed up here for students to relax. There's a door off to one of the sides that leads up to the attic above here.
Still recovering, Robyn's body was screaming at him sleep earlier. He wasn't able to make it from here to his dorm so he just collapsed on one of the couches up here and curled up and fell asleep. That was earlier this morning, now it's a bit after noon and he's in that half awake/half asleep state as he slowly wakes up. He doesn't want to open his eyes yet but he's aware of the sounds around him.
*Ding!* The elevator doors open, having come up from the ground floor, holding Tara within it. As always a slight increase in air pressure accompanies her entrance as she steps out of the elevator into the room proper. She stands there for a minute, extending her power to fill the room so she can get a good idea of the layout before backing off with it when she realizes she's not alone. "Hello," she says.
The slight chance in air pressure causes Robyn to stir and the voice cause him to open his eyes and sit up. "Oh…hey Tara." He says with a yawn. "Sorry, I must have feel asleep up here. Was too tired to go down stairs." He says getting comfortable so his injuries don't cause him too much pain. "How are you today?" Stupid question but hey, he just woke up.
Tara shrugs. "I'm doing okay. Just doing a bit of exploring trying to get a better layout of the mansion, that's all." She explains. Scowling she moves over to a chair opposite the boy. "You're injured. Stressing yourself out is just gonna make things worse, you know."
Robyn gives Tara a puzzled look, but of course, she can't see it. "What do you mean stressing myself out? I'm not." Which is a bit of a lie but then he thinks it's Jono stressing him out. "And I'm not injured, I'm recovering." He says with a bit of a joking edge to his voice. "I just get tired easy is all."
Tara knows all about recovering from injuries, having gotten a few herself from her gymnastics. "If you've exerted yourself to the point where you pass out on the couch up here, you're stressing yourself," she informs him matter-of-factly. "Dummy," she adds helpfully, her tone gentle but teasing.
"I was just tired, I thought stairs would be easier but…" Robyn just shrugs as he was up in the attic and the only way to get up their is stairs. "Feeling less pissed about last night?" As she seemed kind of grumpy about James. "And what was it James said to irritate you?"
"The usual," Tara says, her mood growing dark. She just wanted to forget about yesterday. "He was whining that he was on the gimp squad, and that he didn't want to be a part of a team who was all special olympics." She shrugs, turning her head away towards one of the windows. "That kind of thing."
"James can be a bit of a jerk, saying stuff before he thinks, but he's really not that bad." Robyn says but then for that comment he feels like he deserved to be on the ceiling. "So besides that, what do you think of it here so far? It really seems like you've had an eventful first week."
"That's what people keep telling me," says Tara with another shrug. "I don't know. It started off great, but everybody's treating me like I'm some kind of monster."
"You're not a monster Tara, you don't look like one. I mean I don't see a tail, or horns or some grotesque extra appendage, but on the other hand, I also think monsters are cool." Robyn says shifting so that he's more comfortable. "You have some people who are jerks, or seem like jerks at first, and others who are nice. Maybe it's just cause you're the new kid, but don't put too much on what James says, or if you meet Lucas, what he says."
Tara bounces out of her chair and gives Robyn a big hug, forgetting for a moment about his injuries. "Thank you," She says. "I think that's the nicest thing anybody's said to me since I got here." Or she just has short term memory. Take your pick. When she realizes that she's probably giving him some pain from her squeeze she backs off, "Oh, sorry!"
There are some 'I'm in pain' noises that comes from Robyn as he's given a big hug. "Ow Tara…thanks…ow.." He takes a few deep breaths as that just /hurt/. A hole in his side and a hole in his shoulder leave him pretty vunerable. "Mike and Rashmi have been pretty nice to you, from what I've seen, Tara. And you're also not the only one whose used their powers on another student though for me, it was kind of an accident."
*Ding!* The elevator opens to reveal Rashmi, still bundled but looking a fair bit better, just in time to see Tara let go of Robyn. "Hi—Robyn are you okay??" Hurrying over, she spares a moment to smile and nod her head to Tara once she gets close, before the subject of the discussion registers. "…Oh. Talking about yesterday, huh?"
Tara winces in sympathy as she backs off to her chair. "Geez," she says softly, "You're really bad off." Louder, "I know I messed up. But I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think I could control it and not hurt him. Physically." She blushes a bit when Rashmi enters the room and catches her in the middle of confessing her mistake.
"Yeah…hugs hurt right now." Robyn says to Rashmi trying to give a smile through the pain. "Yeah Tara, Jordan can phase now and he phased a couple of wooden rods in me, so I had some holes and wood merged with my body. They got the wood out but the holes are healing." Sounds…not to pleasant. "More just telling Tara that she's not a monster, but I will say one thing, the student I possed cause I was angry, I punched him after, got in trouble for it, which I deserved but now we're friends so…with James. You never know what will happen. Could be just a bad first impression."
Rashmi sighs quietly, shaking her head. "Honestly, Robyn," she says with a note of fondness to her voice. "You'd think you knew better than to get girls to hug you when you're still recovering…" Dropping into the cair next to the boy, she looks at Tara, tugging her braid over her shoulder to plop into her lap. "…Okay, I'm going to just assume that you've already been yelled at, punished, and all the other fun that comes with it… so. Did anyone tell you *why* you got in trouble, or…?"
"Not really, no" answers Tara. "Other than the whole 'Powers are bad, mmmkay?' vibe that I get from everybody." She shakes her head, "I mean I get it that people were afraid I was gonna hurt him, and yeah I roughed somebody up and I knew I was gonna be punished for it which is okay because I deserve it but everybody seems to think I'm a monster or evil for liking what I can do and wanting to use my powers."
Honestly, Robyn doesn't have a great answer but he has what he thinks is an answer. "It's just they don't want use to use our powers on eachother. We're all training, and for some of us it is about control, for others it isn't. It's that we have to learn to stick together and if we use our powers against eachother what's to stop us from using them from someone out there. I think it's just more about self-control than anything." He's not chastising Tara, just saying what he thinks the reason might be. He then looks at Rashmi with a frown. "Oh yeah Rashmi, you know I'm all about getting the girls to hang all over me." Insert Much Sarcasim.
Rashmi nods quietly, sparing a moment to grin back at Robyn. "That's the big part, yeah… But there's also the part that has to do with timing… Okay. You came in, right as the school was being attacked, right? Well… I don't know if you realize…. but that wasn't supposed to happen ever. The adults have like a couple dozen kinds of security on the whole property just to make sure the kids are safe, you know? And what's worse? Everyone who attacked was *kidnapped,* Tara… They had their bodies and their minds messed with, pretty much permanently. Addison could fix their minds, but…" She sighs, lifting her shoulder in a little shrug. "Probably you had fun at the fight…. most of us didn't, but you like excitement. But what you *missed* was the last month or so of hell that… mmm… yeah, everyone in the kitchen went through. So… Try to keep in mind that we're all still really pretty raw, you know?"
Tara shifts uncomfortably in her chair as she feels like she's being talked down to again. "I guess," she concedes. "I don't know. We're mutants, though, right? We're supposed to be able to take care of ourselves. I don't like being treated like a delicate flower." Probably because she'd gotten enough of it from being blind all her life.
"I don't think anyone treating you like a delicate flower, I just think it's more that we're mutants, we're a danger weapon waiting to go off at any moment." At least that's what Robyn knows many people who aren't mutants think, like his mother. "But it's just tough cause we're mutants, we've got a permant target painted on our backs. But I'm really not in the mood to go around with whose right whose wrong right now, I just had a kind of…talk…with Jono." There's a slight clench of the jaw at that. "Why does he think he has to go through this alone? Seriously, he lets all of us lean on him, why can't he acknowledge that we aren't just kids." It might not be true but it's how Robyn feels.
Rashmi shrugs quietly, resting a hand on Robyn's leg. "All right, Robyn, I'll leave it alone. …Sorry, Tara, really… I guess the only thing that matters is whatever else, you've already got friends here, okay? I mean that." There's not a whole lot she can say to help Robyn, sadly, so she tries to let her presence be some sort of comfort.
Tara looks a little mollified at least. "Yeah, I guess your right." She sits back to think on what Robyn and Rashmi have told her. "How long have you two been here for," she asks curiously. Maybe her problem is that she has no real context with which to put these past events into perspective.
"Almost a year, actually a few weeks shy of a year. So I've had my powers for about that long." Robyn says as pretty much as soon as his powers manifested he was sent here. He leans light against Rashmi for a second and yawns. He's been tired a lot lately. "That's probably the best thing about this place, the friends. Oh and the never ending supply of clay."
Rashmi smiles gently, shifting a bit to let Robyn get more comfortable. "…Since just after Christmas, actually… But between all this madness, and the demon thing in January? I think I'd *love* a break full of just normal high school drama… And, yeah," she says wryly, "that's actually a break for me, these days…"
Suddenly Tara realizes something. "Wow. You guys were in the middle of the Demon thing, too? I'd heard about it, but I live… or I used to live out of the city so we never really got any of it." She leans forward curiously, "Was it as bad as they said it was?"
Robyn nods slowly as Tara asks her question. "Probably worse." Robyn says brushing some of his hair out of his face. "Both Rahsmi and I, our boyfriends were changed into Demons during that and a lot of our friends. It was…it sucked." Robyn says with a nod as he looks at Rashmi. "Yeah and you've been here since December, image being here since April last year." He teases.
Rashmi wrinkles her nose, nudging Robyn's leg. "Thanks, but I think I'll pass… Oh. Also, Tara, James was one of the kids that got changed. And none of them got to forget what happened, after they came back. And, honestly? That's how James and I started really being friends; he was kind of afraid no one would ever want to even *look* at him, after." She shrugs. "…I proved him wrong."
Tara purses her lips thoughtfully at Rashmi's words. However, her train of thought is derailed (again) when she catches on with something Robyn has said. "Wait, you have a /boyfriend/?" she asks him. "How cuuuuuuute!"
Maybe it's a good thing Tara's blind, she can't see Robyn turn quite an impressive shade of red. "Yeah..Jordan. He was one of the ones we were fighting the other night, but…he's back now." And that's a good thing. "I don't know how James and I became friends but we just started hanging out, I'm still surprised that Lucas and I managed to over come our differences." He says squeezing Rashmi's knee jokingly. "Okay but I think I'm gonna head to the dorms and get another nap in before I pass out up here again." Robyn wants to get to his own bed before he ends up taking a nap up here again. Rashmi gets a gentle hug and Tara gets a pat on the shoulder as the elevator dings for his departure.
Rashmi bobs her head as Robyn makes his way out. "Sleep well, okay? And stop getting hugged, it doesn't help any!" is her parting shot, as she settles down onto her chair with a quiet sigh, fiddling with the end of her long braid. "…I'm sorry you haven't had a great couple days, Tara. Really."
