1964-01-15 - Not So Distant Relations
Summary: Tommy stops in to check on Lorna, Wanda stops in to check on Tommy.
Related: Lorna logs
Theme Song: Control, Hasley
tommy wanda lorna 


Knock, knock, knock.

After the events of the other night, Tommy once again finds himself at the Frost Academy. Deciding he should check on his cousin(?) after her little burst or power and encounter with Quentin Quire. So there he stands, outside the door to her dorm. Hands tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket, already tapping a foot. Patience is never his virtue, but sometimes, he knows, he has to wait. At least unless he wanted to blow up the lock, or something — but he's not that impatient. Not yet!

*

The door opens up without Lorna actually needing to get up. A click of the lock undoing itself, and the door swings open. There sat Lorna, on her bed, curled up with blankets and several books. Her hand was out stretched from where she'd open the door, and it settled back to her lap. "Hey Tommy," She offered, not getting up just yet as she spied the speedster from her position.

Brown hair tumbled around her shoulders, and she was still clearly in fuzzy pjs of green and puple plaid. She shut her book and settled it beside her on the bedspread.

"Were you really that bored that you felt the need to come visit?"

*

When the door opens by itself? Well, Tommy doesn't think too much of it — he just makes his way inside, moving over the nearest available seat and plopping down into it. "Well, I wasn't /that/ bored." Tommy replies, crinkling his nose slightly at that.

"But, y'know, with everything that went on yesterday.. I figured I'd come by and make sure that you're doing alright." the speedster tells her. Leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes for a couple moments. "You seemed pretty shaken up, so…"

*

Lorna averted her gaze, and shrugged, drawing her legs up close to her. "I just.. never mind. It's nothing. I'm just.. it's a sore subject is all. I've been getting teased a lot because of calling my dad, 'tata'. It's just.. It matters to me. He told me to that that was what he called his dad, before.. he lost him." She mumbled, settling her arms over her knees.

"And it's just.. I hate it when people tease me over it. Like I've been teased for having green hair, or for being short when I was a kid, but like.. this matters." She bit her lower lip.

"I dunno.."

*

Nope, clearly not good yet, and still in need of comforting. As Tommy's skillsets go, that isn't exactly in the center of his wheelhouse… but he knows at least well enough to try. So he moves to stand up from the chair, walks instead over to the bed and sits on the edge. Reaching out to rest a hand on Lorna's knee.

"Yeah, I get that… there's a lot of jerks out there." A quirk of a grin, "I should know, you're looking at one." Then he takes on a bit of a more serious expression, seeking out her eyes. "Which makes me uniquely qualified to give you advice in this sorta situation. When someone's picking on you… ignore 'em. They'll find an easier target eventually because they'll get bored, you know?"

A pause, and Tommy can't help but laugh at the thought alone. "At least, that's what someone like /you/ should do. You're one of the good ones, like my brother Billy. There's other ways of handling these things… kinda like you /did/ the other night, but those are best left to people like /me./" Because he makes no bones about it - he's no angel, and hasn't any great desire to be.

*

Lorna shifts, thankful for once that she wasn't talking to a telepath. Then things might get complicated. Still, she ventures a smile and shrugs weakly. "Thanks Tommy, I know what you mean. I just.." She wrinkled her nose.

"I got so angry, and I've been teased before. And I just.. I dunno." She shrugged again, leaning back against the wall. A hand rising up to rake through brown dyed locks.

"You know Miss Frost is a mutant right? She's a telepath." She bit her lower lip, considering Tommy again. "So she likely picked up something about you being different than others around here.."

*

Slip of paper in hand, Wanda uses this as her permission pass to enter Frost Institute. Not many students easily distinguish her from themselves, to be fair, given the similarities in age and apparent appearance. Nonetheless, she no more deserves to attend here than Harvard or ESU, on the simple grounds she is scarcely suited to an academic career. The matters of her studies deviate entirely from the business they put in textbooks under a psychic headmistress, and no doubt the formidable Emma Frost is someone she dearly enjoys avoiding. Gliding footsteps demarcating her arrival come in a halo of minor illusion, one that encourages the other girls to see and forget. Habit, a protective talent, no more.

Lightly she turns and follows another route, angling into the personal rooms, and slips along until voices more than anything tip her off to whereabouts. How not to make this awkward, how not to… Hovering near the doorway to Lorna's room, she finally knocks.

*

"You just don't know if you want to be good? To be the kind of person that people push around and try to walk over like some kinda carpet?" Tommy assumes, leaning his head to the side. "I get that. I get that more than most people." he replies, frowning a bit at the thought.

The revelation about Emma? That brings a blink. "Didn't know that." Beat. "What's a telepath?" He's not exactly an /expert/ on powers by any means. Especially the kind that he hasn't encountered yet.

Eyes glance towards the door when he hears the knocking — then back towards Lorna. "Looks like you've got more company; popular girl. You wanna get it, or should I?"

*

A nod as Tommy speaks and she heaved another sigh, "Yeah, a doormat. I'd rather not be treated like a kid, or someone unable to stand up for herself. It's just.. it's hard. Gosh, a year ago, I was in denial about having mutant powers and living with my adopted parents in Upstate. Now I've gone from finding out I was adopted my whole life, meeting my biological father, training, getting into college and fighting off things with my powers. The other day I was able to deflect bullets mid-air. Tommy, before I could barely summon up my powers, now it just seems that they're what I reach for constantly." She groaned, burying her head against the blankets.

"Can you get that? I don't want to get up." She mumbled into the thick pile of blanket she had wrapped herself in.

*

The fact he just opens the door without staring through speaks so highly to arrogance and leisure. A school chock to the brim of mutants does lend some safety precautions to the average invader, but the moment he first opens the door, Tommy finds no one because Wanda lies flat to the wall at that moment. A few precious moments might pass before she slowly rolls to the side and presents herself, possibly too long by far for him, though her hand does come out to break the door's closing arc, if it happens. "Toma," she offers as her greeting, inflecting his name with her habitual Transian accent blended to Romany. "And Miss Dane?"

*

"Preachin' to the choir, Lorna. I don't live in slow motion anymore; not since the day I got my powers." Tommy replies, sounding pretty content about that particular fact. "But even before that I was… well." There's a pause. How much does he want to share? Talking isn't something he normally hesitates to do, but… Lorna possibly/probably being related does put a small filter on the things he'll talk /about./ Never know when word will spread.

"Let's put it this way. I was on a first name basis with all the officers at the local precinct." Pause. "And the county, too. I've never been the type to let anyone try to pick on me, and I'll /also/ make them regret it if they do. I think Quire saw that in me, which is why he went after you." Because honestly? Tommy would've been pretty content just to deck the guy.

Then she asks that he gets the door and he's /to/ the door in a heartbeat. Pulling it open to see… nothing? No one? Patience is far from his virtue, but rather than closing the door he's more akin to lean /out/ the doorframe to see who may have knocked. When Wanda's spotted? Eyebrows raise, and he takes a step back to allow her in. "Hey — I already told her, you know, about /us./" A hand is motioned around to gesture to them all. He figures she can fill in the blanks.

*

Lorna sat up as there's a pause for a beat when Tommy opens the door, and then Wanda is there. In her room. She kicks off the blankets, still in a fluffy flannel set of plaid green and purple pjs. Her hair its dyed brown that tumbled free of her shoulders. One side of the room was clearly denoted to her roommate, Illyana. All ice blues and otherwise plain and lacking decoration. By comparison? Lorna's side was a splash of color, magazine clippings, books stacked on top of the other. A riot of knick knacks and other mementos that one would expect of a rather upbeat childhood.

"Wanda? What are you.. I mean how'd.. er.. do you want a seat?" She was up, padding over in bare feet to drag over the chair from her desk before she settled back on her bed.

"Do you need something?"

*

"I see. How does she enjoy being related?" The culmination of many strands of conversation capable of inciting palpable discomfort land so carelessly upon Wanda's lips at a murmur, the volume headed inwards probably straining Lorna's ears a little, but not greatly. She is included in the conversation by the lofted arc of sienna brows, the only marginal alteration to the young woman's golden features. Head tilted a degree, she whisks the dark cloud of her hair from the languid slope of her shoulder. Leather imparts its passing hiss, a sibilant farewell to that languid shifted veil.

The light shifts pass her, and the glimmer of a look darts to Illy's side of the room. "Do we expect to interrupt Miss Rasputina? I would be bad not to say hello to her and extend greetings. She is missed." Simply enough, one encounters all possibilities, all circles of greeting and farewell, by such sounds. Her clothing is entirely the same as always, red, black, and the feels of an odd metal around her neck along with at least six discreet knives concealed around her person to Lorna's senses. Truth, she goes no where unarmed.

"I can stand. I needed to tell you, Tommy, your pet is unhappy. He needs a larger box, and you need to feed him. Billy has not." Calm indeed rests with her.

*

"Well, aside from the initial disappointment of not being able to date me, she seems to have accepted it pretty well." …as well as one might expect, all things considered. Of course, the former statement was more for Tommy's ego than anything else — and the only rundown of /that/ event that he's willing to accept. Clear disappointment for the poor girl.

The comments on Illyana? Raise a brow. "Who?" …Tommy doesn't know Lorna's roommate despite having visited a couple times now. But then Wanda's talking about his 'pet' and Tommy blinks for a moment. Then it hits him. "I'll be a minute." Without waiting for an answer, he's gone.

*

A shrug, "I think she's in Limbo? I dunno. She's been gone more often than not when I'm around." She bit her lower lip, glancing between Wanda and Tommy with a raised brow as she snuggled back into her pile of blankets.

Then Tommy was speaking rapidly, as he was wont to do, and gone between one blink and the next, leaving Lorna alone with Wanda for the moment. "Uhm.. I really wasn't interested in dating him." She offered, and then shifted, propping her chin up with both hands.

"Wanda, how exactly do you think we're related? Like cousins, or something else entirely? Can your magic tell you that?" She arched brow, tugging the blankets up and around her shoulders.

*

"Too bad. When you see her, do let her know that I asked after her." Wanda's soft murmur intimates a degree of familiarity with the roommate Queen of Limbo, not to be surprising given that Illyana's other occasional domicile happens to be hers. Tommy's declaration before he bravely runs away does not raise her eyebrows much. "I think that is a test whether someone is family. Are they a young man and attempt to date you? Yes? Then they must be." The mirth is drier than a desert and hard to track, though there entirely if someone were to listen a little longer.

She eases her way through the room on a take no prisoners stride, only slightly limited for the casual academic surroundings. Buildings are buildings to her. Their treatment warrants very little difference for her. "We are close. By the spell they would be closer than my own children." Her gaze flickers slightly. "Which means a very close tie."

*

Somewhere off in the distance, there's a few less fish on assorted market stands, and a very intelligent shark made considerably happier by their sudden appearance in it's tank. A larger box? Well.. that'll take more time. To figure out exactly where to get one, for starters.

Either way, he's back soon enough, wiping his hands off in his shirt. "Man. Since when am /I/ supposed to be the responsible one, huh? That's always been /Billy's/ job. I'm gonna have to have a long talk with that kid…"

*

Lorna's brows furrowed and she shifted on her bed, the frame creaking as she moved. It took her far too long to get that Wanda was.. joking? Then she smiled weakly, the look fading however as Wanda explained that they were very closely related.

"Wait, what? Closer than you and your son? I don't get it? How is that possible? I mean you're clearly older than me.. I just.. is it time travel? Like with Tommy? Or is there something else?" She scratched her head, further questions breaking off as Tommy returned. She blinked, her head tilting to the side.

"Uhh what? I feel like I've missed something?"

*

Her eyes narrow a fraction and Wanda's amber-gold eyes slip beneath the lushly lashed threshold towards Tommy at his speedy return. Fixing him the way a lepidopterist pins down a particularly rare species of butterfly, she asks, "Have you explained your connection to me yet, or only we are related?" Might as well accept on that front there could be an oddity, something worthy of wonder or terror. Slim fingers curl around the sash wrapped around her waist, toying with the charm-studded fringe that bears several luminous tokens.

The witch's lips blot together lightly and she considers the prospects before her. "I am older than you. We remember bits of the war, you do not. It would be, maybe, five years? Four? No more than that, such as I know. My twin and I are not from a normal, happy upbringing."

*

Tommy bobs his head once in response, "Yeah. I gave her the heads up on… pretty much everything, you know? The time travel, the Billy and I being your kids… she took it better than you might've expected. Even though she's still not /sure/ if the us and her thing is legit — I think it's just disappointment talking, though."

And having filled in his part of the story, he leaves it to the women to continue for the moment. Moving back to the chair that he'd claimed earlier. This could just get interesting…

*

A sigh followed, and she leaned forward, her hands threading through her hair. "I just.. sorry, but I get that you're older than me. That you and your brother went through things in the war. That You were old enough to remember things. And that Tommy and Billy are your sons.. and there's time travel involved and magic? I get that, I mean, geeze, Illyana is Queen of another dimension, and my tata is dating a Princess from a secret hiden kingdom of powered people. Really, I get these things.." She folded her arms.

"But what I don't get is how we can be closer in relation than you and Tommy. How that could be when.. when you're older than me. I mean, I'm eighteen. My father was in Auschwitz and when he escaped.. that's how I came about, and he was younger than I am now.. So I guess, what I mean, is I don't get where the pieces connect?"

*

"Thomas is my child from the future. The spell knows he is my line, my blood." Wanda traces the lower bow of her lips with her tongue, and then exhales, purging the remnants of thoughts and ideas stitched upon her mind in that simple action. Two definitive pushes lay her sleeves up towards her elbows, baring her black jersey shirt underneath, dusting her fingerless gloves at the buckled wrists. "His twin brother is also mine. This much we see with certainty. I know in my bones whom they are even when we did not know." Her lithe shoulders twinge, the dance of a disrupted bowstring pulled tight again, and the arrow volley of her answers are shot with accuracy.

"Your father comes from our people. A close tie. I believe he cannot be my mother's people; I know a little more of her. To be that close, he would be her brother, and her brothers' fates…" Trailing off leads to a chasm of silence cleaved deeper than Mariner Valley, a crack on the surface of her being that never can be expected to heal. Not fully, even if scar tissue fills in the walls. "Perhaps the other side. The spell was attracted to him. It had no reason. Multiple spells and meanings. I need several ways to check."

*

Lorna fidgeted, her brows pinched as she listened. "Yeah, see I don't get how that makes us closer related. My tata had no siblings. So we're not cousins.. At best it would be from my grandparents, one of their siblings. Right? So maybe someone related to either of them? That's all I can think of." She made a face.

"Can you test that spell, out again? With me? See if it tells you anything else? I mean can you ask it to be more specific? Do spells work like that?" She tilted her head to the side, blinking in thought.

*

Drawing upon the arcane energies inherently threaded through her being and those free in the ambient surroundings requires a moment of focus. To the unschooled, it simply looks instantaneous, a momentary flickering of her liquid amber gaze when she draws up the energy from within herself. They see nothing of the formation of a vessel or the correct intonation of words or the deliberate placement of her splayed fingers, all of hold their particular purpose in charging her mental image into reality. It merely seems that she reaches up to run her thumb around the rim of a concealed pendant, the perfect circle that stands out for the unusual alloys of its make on a chain of nearly pure silver.

Her murmured words build and lift in a liquid refrain of sounds, a measure of prose in another language. Then a globe appears between her cupped palms, exploding out of nothing, shining with a radiant lilac shade that increasingly brightens towards the top end of the spectrum. Red-shifted sparks bob around it, and the orb instantly shifts sideways to orbit around Tommy's head. "It recognizes the nearest person linked to me."

*

Lorna blinked again, shifting the blankets away as she made to get off her bed and move closer toward Wanda after a minute's hesitation. "Okay, closest to you? So, if I stand here, will that do anything?" She asked, barefeet stepping lightly on floor boards as she paused beside the scarlet clad woman. Her brows rising as she glanced from Wanda to the little magic ball of light.

"I mean, I'd really rather see if someone could do a lab test or something, but I guess weird magic orbs work as a good second for some idea. It'd be nicer if it could be more specific though." She grumbled, folding her arms.

*

"Bzzt, bzzt. Static interference." Tommy pipes up, moving to stand. "Here, I'll help too."

…aaaand he's off! Gone in less than the blink of an eye.

*

"I will not give my children's blood to some agency in a time when they do not even like mutants," says Wanda quietly. She flicks her fingers in the direction of the younger twin, representative of his set, and the incandescent orb follows him as he goes tearing off. It moves at the speed of near thought, smacking into the wall and venturing to a range, then it comes soaring back to land directly over Lorna's head some fifteen seconds or so afterwards. The sedate bumble-bob is familiar, fireflies or bumblebees in the summertime meadows common outside of New York.

This earns a slow blink. "It would not come back if there was not someone of our bloodline in here. There is. It would not go for Illyana even though we have other ties." She holds out her hand, shifting her fingers, adjusting strands, narrowing business. "Answer for your questions. I know the year, the date, the moment of my birth. The record was very good, timed very so. Cousins could be possible. Yes, but you also ignore something else. Your father had no siblings. So? He is with a woman who is not your mother. It may not be the first time."

*

Lorna reached up a hand to wave at the departed Tommy, and sighed. Then her focus shifted upwards to the floating bubble of magic, blinking repeatedly at it as it bobbed up and down merrily over her head. She reached up to poke at it, before Wanda held out her own hand and shifted things.

As Wanda mentioned cousins, distant cousins that is, and then something more, to siblings; her brows furrowed, her mouth parting as she blinked.

"Uhm, yeah he was, it's kind of why he doesn't even know my mother's name." That was another issue for her, one that she chose not to think too hard about.

"But Wanda, like I said, my tata.. He's like in his early thirties. I'm eighteen.. he was.. he was really young when he.. when I was born." She counted the math on her fingers. "And you're older than me by like four, five years? There's no way my tata was like ten.. Noo." She shook her head.

*

The light globe has no tangible surface, the ring of coruscating motes shivering in response to proximity. The haloing concentrates near Lorna's fingertip, gathered in a tiny extraterrestrial storm that burns all the brighter carmine against the dimmer surface separated by a hairsbreadth at most. It shines atop her.

"You have no idea what the Third Reich did in those camps, do you? No dignity came to anyone for age. They looked for things that matched the designs of their terrible experiments, Lorna." Her voice flat, Wanda gives no emotional inflection and the absence of it speaks volumes through the leaden crack of English spread between them. The usual melodies reaching the ears are absent, and her visage belongs to a statue, beautifully rendered, but absent the illumination emotions and expressivity would normal imply. Her hands rest in her lap, long fingers bridged. "The way the doctors and scientists performed those experiments was sick. I know more than you ever want about what Mengele did, and the criminals they tried in Nuremberg. Many they missed. Many Israel and America forgot for lack of papers. Papers Pietro and I read. He would sometimes read them so I was not … aware. Details become very precise. German is a language that loves to be precise. It has ways to be more precise than English, and this allows too much knowledge to ever be innocent again. Your father was special. Many women taken from my country were special, and my people were thought not human but full of dirty blood that held power. And they wanted to take it. To pick it like vegetables in a garden and mix it in ways unholy, like mixing a bean with a goat and trying to force something new on the world."

It is not something anyone wants to comprehend. "There was no sense of honour there, and age meant nothing to them. Nothing. I have stolen their life under my own hands and they went down screaming, Lorna Dane, and they still never repented for abusing children. We were not human. The Roma were not human. The Polish were not human. The Transians were only in the way. And the day I stepped into that scientist's life to make due the blood debt of his work, do you know what he had to say? He was happy to see that his life's work had made something, and he had been trying in Argentina to make the same thing happen. Another had been trying in Kashmir. I stood in their room at the hospital. I stood in the lab. And I will carry the look in their eyes for all my life until my grave, because they did not see me as anything more than a very nice dog or a horse with wings. I was not anything. Your father, good man as he is, was probably the same, nothing but… but material. And I've been taking my vengeance for my adult years, so they cannot repeat their way. Never. Again."

*

Lorna tore her gaze away from the magically bobbing light as Wanda startd to speak. Her eyes going wide as she gaped at the other woman, for once, extremely happy that Tommy wasn't present to hear what Wanda was saying. She knew he didn't know. Otherwise why would he have called them cousins? He was as ignorant as she. So when Wanda started to speak of experiments, well, previous coversation regarding what the Nazis did, some of it started to click. And even then, it was in tangled snarls of unthought, things that her mind simply did not want to comprehend. Didn't want to think about.

Her life, the fact that she'd been abandoned, and adopted into a loving home here in the States? So far away from the war torn lands that her family had come from, from the horrors that they'd suffered? It sat queasy and noxious in her stomach and she blanched as Wanda continued.

She knew that her father's powers awakened while he had been a prisoner of the Nazis, he'd told her as much. Beyond that? He'd spared her the details.

A final shiver ran itself up her spine and she wrapped her arms around her middle. "So.. you're saying.. we're sisters.. because of something that the N-Nazis did.. because they did something to my father and to your mother and that.. that's how you and Pietro .. exist.. and… and that we're related that way?" Her brows pinched as she gazed up at Wanda, looking incredibly small in her fannel pajammas. Incredibly young.

*

"Pietro and I were never children. We had no shelter, no protection. Even if your father is only cousin or family far from ours, I know some of his pain. We were special but not special." Wanda continues to lean against the wall, the dirty secrets of the Third Reich echoing around them to every damning hammerstrike of her tongue. The nails of their legacy will last far longer than Skrulls and Kree on the present generation. Asgard can scar the collective psyche, but the fact remians, no alien inflicts wounds so damaging than what humanity turns against its own. "Thousands and thousands share our lives. Some went to the grave. Some went on to better lives. Some live locked up in cold, hard countries that want to forget, that want to live in a world beside the one they left. I am not trying to scare you or give you guilt. I do not blame you for living in a happy place with people who love you. Why would I blame or hate you had this?"

The pale cough of sound is utterly indistinguishable as a laugh, and moreover, it's not even nameable as such a thing. No one hears Wanda laugh except Pietro, and even her twin is probably more than aware how rare laughter is for her. "How can you hate what you do not know?" Goddamn right the world should be disturbed by her, the story told so many times over.

"I say maybe. Maybe he is related by parents and parents used to make us. Those people who wrote it, we have hunted for so long." Her shoulders shrug slightly. "Who decided. Who picked. We don't know. We so long thought our father dead. It would be better for him and us, yes, not to be reminded? We are the children of hell on earth. Who would want to see us, in our faces see their own shame and pain? It could be. My mother was… the things she endured were so great but she bore us. And she died. Violently she died because of me. I do not want your father to be the one who inherits that black legacy, that cost because he played a part with no choice. Maybe it is that way. Will I ever tell him? I doubt it. He does not need to know what happened to her and what he could not do, only that the hand of the hells reached out in a brown uniform and said 'Him.'"

*

Lorna listened, with a careful ear and with a curling of her toes on the smoothly polished wooden floor boards. The dorm room was still light, still filled with warmth of her memories of her life. A happy one. One with comfort and love and light and laughter. Yet it felt colder to Lorna, even as Wanda leaned against wall rather than sit, her gaze followed the woman that may very well, through some twisted means, be her half sister at least. It was still, disconcerting to think about.

But the life Lorna had led gave her an ability to empathize, and care and be so open..

And when Wanda finished speaking, she was treading forward to wrap her arms around Wanda, if the woman allowed it, resting her head against Wanda's shoulder. Even if Wanda had struck close to home with assuring her that she wasn't to feel guilty, or fearful. It was hard to process.

"So we're related, and possibly sisters. Okay. Okay." She exhaled a shaky breath, but didn't move. "I'm.. I'm sorry for how.. but.. but I'm not sorry to have more family." She whispered, "And I know tata wouldn't be either. He lost everyone. So I think.. I think having a family will matter to him more than how it came about." She bit her lower lip. At least Wanda wouldn't be making fun of her for using the Polish term for dad. There was that at least.

"And… and if anyone tries to do stuff like that again, you have us to help you too."

*

Those knives shift around and the corset she wears makes for a crackly carapace around the brunette, making the hug a little less comfortable for a magnetokinetic. The girl at least rings with various bits of metal, and in future reference, it makes a useful basis to throw her at something! Preferably a Hydra agent. Chances are Wanda and Hydra will get along like a black hole and water. Into the black hole the water goes, and it's not going to be seen at all in the future.

Wanda accepts the hug from Lorna, however, which is better than the last time when she might have grown spikes and ran away hissing invectives all the way. Advantages.

"I have children, Lorna. That young man is my son." The voice eclipsed in rage changes when restored to its native register, even at a near whisper. "It is a son grown, one hurt by how he was raised, a damage I cannot take back. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. Nothing will harm him, even me. My cerhan, my star of stars, can ask my life. How do you think I give less to the ones who make me? If they lived I would owe them something, if it does not break my vows."

*

Lorna didn't seem off put by the metal, it hummed in her senses like a constant buzz. She always knew where the sharp and pointy things were. It simply was. And she arranged her arms with care around such to try to be as comfortable as possible for both herself and Wanda. But she certainly didn't loosen her grip.

"Yeah, I know, so I guess I should get to tease him and make him call me Auntie Lorna? I sorta want to, he deserves it for making those jokes about dating him." She wrinkled her nose up slightly.

"And I'll help you protect him and Billy both. Okay? Family. Odd and it really doesn't make any sense to anyone else, but trust me. That's what family is like. I had a normal one before, and when I say that there's things that didn't make sense to outsiders, there were. It's how family works." She leaned away after a gentle squeeze. Her green eyes lifting to consider Wanda, eyes tracing those cheekbones and mentally comparing them to the face she saw in the mirror every day.

"I mean, I know I'm really not much when compared to magic, but I'm here for you."

*

"You could ask him to call you many things. When he is rude, use it over him. He is apparently the sort to respond to that tone. The one we get when we want things a certain way." True, though Wanda doesn't know it, both Tommy and Billy are rather afraid of the aforementioned 'mom voice' and her capacity to inflict it upon the unprepared young men, tripping them up if not slowing them. At the speeds which Tommy moves, he might end up cutting a trough all the way to Caracas, but at least that counts as a halt!

The lightening of the conversation warrants a look from her and she nods, not about to argue about the matter. Lorna knows better than she does on matters of family outside of her own very small circle, twinned and no more. "Thank you. And silence yourself. Magic is not the answer to all. Opening our eyes, and seeing the world, experiencing it, matters."

*

A shrug, and Lorna drew back, making once more to settle on the plush bed of various blankets, books and brightly colored pillows. Not a single color or pattern matched and if one looked too long, they were sure to get a head ache. The younger woman patted the bed though, and beamed at Wanda.

"Hey, magic is totally cool. Like seriously. It's so out there." She held up a ring, one that Doctor Strange had sent her months ago to help with her focusing issues.

"All I can do is mess with magnetic fields, and even then.. it'll be years before I'm as good as tata is." She exhaled a huff of a breath, "Also have to spend a fortune on hair dye." A pause and she perked up, sitting up on her knees.

"Oh! Wanda, can you help me with my hair? Like with magic? It's naturally green, and I have to dye it, but the brown washes out. It has something to do with the ions and my natural magnetic field not liking the other. If I don't dye it regularly, it turns green by the end of the week! It's a total bummer and kills my hair."

*

Ions. Whatever the hell ions are, it doesn't translate to English. "You give me your permission, that I can fix your hair? I can make it not green until you want it to be green again." Wanda inclines her head again, holding up a pinch of her own lustrous locks, a spill of sepia that shows countless fiery highlights beneath the surface. "My own sometimes is curled. I do not like it so. So I make it straight until I do not want it straight again."

She has no measure of what Dadneto's abilities are compared to her own, but she tips her head. "Do not be sure this is true. Talent answers need. You have need? You will grow. Do not stop trying. It is harder with my path. It is never mastered. I will always read, study, try. Learn. The number of books in the world do not teach me all there is to learn, and my beloved will always be better."

*

Lorna nodded, shifting on the bed until her legs hung free and kicked slightly with the movement. "Yeah, sure permission granted. I'd love to not have to use hair dye on it every other day. It's brutal. And it's only gotten this bad since I started using my powers all the time. When I was a kid it was just every few weeks." She wrinkled her nose. She'd fussed and fought having her hair dyed as a kid, but it had ultimately been the worth it to not be picked on.

"I guess if you dislike studying then that would be a pain, but I seriously wish there was a book on all the things I could do. I mean sure, I have tata, and he's had years to master it and learn what works or not.. but I would much rather have a manual." She tossed her hair over her shoulder and shrugged.

"So what do you gotta do to make it not turn green on me?"

*

ROLL: Wanda +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 84

*

A flick of her fingers creates a lazy coruscation of blissful incarnadine light around Wanda's fine-boned wrist. Dreamy curtains play across the distance separating them, floating according to some other halcyon melody as ethereal as it is hypnotic in the soothing depths. The beam builds into a circular glow and then strikes with rays soft as awakening on a winter morning.

The sensation tumbles over Lorna's scalp, a soft prickling that isn't uncomfortable, though it waxes and fulfills the shimmer of a waterfall or rain on her head. And nothing seems to change, only the light feel. "There," says the witch. "It will hold until you wish it not to. Then you need ask me. Or you shave your head totally."

*

A blink, and Lorna pats her hands over her hair, now magically dyed brown. How cool was that? She twisted a strand before her features after a pause, turning it over in the light and finding it no different than before. The tingling fading as quickly as it had appeared. She whistled, and then beamed a toothy grin at Wanda.

"That's so cool. Thanks! I don't think I plan on shaving my head any time soon, or can think of a reason why I'd want it green. It's kinda hard to blend in with everyone else if I'm walking around with hair the color of grass." She shrugged, and tossed her hair back over her shoulder.

"Now I can stop buying hair dye every week. It was burning through my savings from this past summer way too quickly."

*

"Because you have green hair, and it is part of you? I do not know. All your hair will be brown, and that is it." How easily she changes the face of reality, how cautious Wanda is otherwise to confess that. "It will be easier too when you are washing your hair. The colour will not come down and make cleaning hard. I should probably be home, though. It is time I ought to study." A sigh, then. Never escaping that, but at least Lorna can understand.

*

A bounce, and Lorna departed from her bed, throwing her arms around Wanda again in a quick hug before she stepped back and laughed. "Yes, Illyana will be happy that the bath isn't going to be stained anymore. Not that she cared too much, but still." She quirked another smile and dragged a hand through her hair.

"Take care Wanda, and you're welcome to stop in whenever you want. Standing invite. If you need me I'm around. And good luck on those studies. If you ever want, we can study together. I've got tons of school work to work on anyways."

*

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