Tamara and Ororo - Backdated

[ax_storm]

Tamara gets her first girl crush.


Ororo could have been doing her reading in the library where she'd gotten the books, or in her room where Jean was the only one likely to disturb her. That had been the plan, too, but as she'd walked by the sun room and seen it empty, the plan had changed. She liked this room, and how much light it got.

The books on the table all had a common theme, plants. And local plants at that. One of them targeted traditionally medicinal plants, while a couple of others were about growing them. Ororo wanted a project that would make her feel closer to nature, since she missed the connection with her environment she'd felt in Kenya, and this was it. As she read, she took notes on what plants she might choose, and what she needed to do for them.

Preoccupied as she was, Tamara was already halfway into the room with her laptop before she realized someone was already here. She blinked in surprise, but then smiled. It was one of the new kids, the totally badass-looking girl with the mohawk. "Hey - mind if I join you?"

"Go ahead," Ororo replied, gesturing at the large table. It was a public space, after all.

"Thanks," Tamara replied, setting the laptop down not too far away from the other girl. "I've seen you around, and been meaning to say hello," she went on, flipping a chair around so she could straddle it, letting her wings settle in behind her. "I'm Tamara."

"Ororo," she replied, doing nothing to hide the way she was watching Tamara's wings as the other girl sat down. She focused back on her face with a smile. "Hello, Tamara."

"Ororo?" Tamara asked to make sure she'd said it right. She had zero problems with Ororo's interest in her wings, and she stretched them out briefly behind her, smiling at the other girl. "You like them?"

"They're striking," Ororo replied, which was a yes, no matter what it sounded like. Given her look, 'striking' could only be a good thing.

It was praise to Tamara (whether or not that had been the intent), and her lips tugged in a lopsided smile. "Thanks." She looked over Ororo's hair and outfit with an appreciative eye. "Gotta say, I love your look. Where are you from?"

Ororo paused, wondering whether to give the other girl the same answer she had given Warren. She did not feel any more from somewhere now than she had then, but she was a little too aware of the way 'I'm from the world' sounded like. "I'm half American, half Kenyan, and I grew up in Egypt," she settled on, since that both explained her accent, and her proficiency in English. "Cairo," she specified. "What about you?"

Tamara's eyebrows flicked upward in surprise, which turned into an impressed look. "Ohmygod, that sounds amazing." There were few things Tamara wanted more than to see the world. "I'm just from the middle of nowhere, California. I'd never been anywhere before coming here."

Ororo smiled. "And now you're in a school with teleporters."

Tamara grinned back at her. "Now I share a room with a teleporter," she corrected. Oh yeah, it was just as cool as it sounded. Well, except, "Except I have to be careful where I go because of these," she added, wings flapping once, puffing air gently over both girls. "They're kind of easy to spot, y'know?"

"Don't the image inducters work?" Ororo asked, mangling the word for not remembering it right.

"Inducers," Tamara offered, with a sympathetic smile (there was so much new language to learn around here, omg). "I don't like to hide them, but yeah, the inducers work. But it only hides them - doesn't stop people from walking into them." And then, because new mutant things were weird and thus totally relatable, she added, "And I have to change my face too, and that's super trippy anytime you catch your reflection."

"Why do you have to?" Ororo asked, confused.

"Because of my big video...?" Tamara was really, really hoping Ororo had seen it. "My face has been on the news, and if someone got a picture of me wingless, pretty sure they'd call it a hoax. Not the kind of publicity I'm aiming for."

"Your big video?" Ororo echoed, and shook her head, clearly no less confused.

Tamara huffed a sigh and pouted her lip. "My not-as-big-as-I-was-hoping video, I guess. Here." She flipped open the laptop, which already had the video up (more comment-section warfare, but she scrolled up to the video, pushing the computer toward the other girl. "A bunch of us were involved in this protest thing, so you should probably see this."

Ororo rarely spent much night on the internet, and she frowned at the news of students in a protest. That piece of news had not reached her while she was in the Kilimanjaro Valley, unsurprisingly. Her frown did not disappear as she watched the video, although it grew from confused to... something else. "I'm sorry that you went through that," Ororo told Tamara once the video ended. She was sorry for all of them.

"I'm not," Tamara replied, though her smile was tighter and didn't reach her eyes. "Better me than someone else. Assholes like that don't scare me."

"I'm sorry anyone has to go through it," Ororo replied quietly. Her quiet was in no way demure, although it might be taken as such. She'd seen too many ugly things to be timid about any of it, but it did not mean that her strength always had to be loud.

"Okay, yeah, agreed," Tamara said with a nod. "But that's why I made my video - to try and push back against all of that hate."

"Do you think it's helped?" Ororo asked honestly. From what she had experienced herself, hate was difficult to push back on. Now, this video might serve other purposes, although she wasn't entirely sure about it still. But she did not think that it would have changed the minds of any haters.

"I do," Tamara replied, more than a little defensive. "The news coverage was all 'dangers of mutants' - now at least our side is getting heard too."

"Do you think it will make the - haters," Ororo settled on, "rethink their position?" She was truly asking. She did not think so, but she did not know American society as well as someone who had grown up here.

Ah, Tamara understood a little better now, and relaxed a bit. "Oh no, of course not. They were always gonna hate us. But there are a lot of people who are just scared, or don't know what to make of us yet - those are the people we need on our side. And all they were seeing was the scariest bits of protest footage with zero context, and those crazy protestors getting treated like victims. I'm not saying it's a silver bullet, because it's not, but it's a start.

"...which is a whole rant that you totally didn't ask for," Tamara ended with a little wince. "Guess I've been holding that in for a while."

"I think I asked for it," Ororo assured her with a small smile. She had, after all, and she hadn't minded getting it.

Tamara smiled back, appreciating that Ororo said so. "So yeah, that's me in a nutshell anyway."

"The video?" Ororo asked, not sure what the 'that' referred to. The video, the rant, something else?

Tamara laughed, taking her computer back. "The video, the dragon wings, the rant..." Putting down the computer, she let her hand spark and then go up in flames. "There you go, the complete crash course in Tamara Kurtz.

"Sooooo that's me. Tell me about you."

"I'm not the kind of person who thinks anyone can be summed up that quickly?" Ororo replied with a smile. It had been too tempting a comeback to ignore. "But I like reading, and nature, and looking out for people. The smell of rain and the taste of lightning on the air. Sunlight and fog. A good dance and a long sleep." She shrugged. There was a lot more she could say, a lot more still she could keep leaving out.

Wow. Compared to Tamara, that was poetry. Her mouth was hanging open a little. "Wow. I like yours better."

Ororo smiled, then laughed. "What do you want to know?" She doubted she'd answered any of Tamara's unasked questions about her.

Tamara was totally having a girl-crush moment, omg, but she tried to put that aside. Smiling at Ororo, she decided, "What's your mutation? It's the required question, I promise to ask something better next."

"Weather control," Ororo answered simply.

Smirking, Tamara couldn't help saying, "She said casually, like that wasn't totally amazing." Ororo had a talent for mystery, Tamara could definitely give her that. She propped an elbow on the table to rest her chin in her hand, settling in to listen. "But okay, I promised, so: what was it like growing up in Cairo?"

Ororo shrugged at Tamara's first words. They could all do amazing things, after all. Then she took a second to think over her question. "Unconventional," she finally settled on as an appropriate adjective. "My parents died when I was young, so I grew up with a gang of street kids."

Surprise flickered over Tamara's face. "Wow, okay, yeah. Unconventional." Thoughts catching up to her mouth, she offered, "Sorry about your parents."

"Thank you," Ororo replied with a small nod. "What about growing up in the middle of nowhere, California, what was that like?"

"Boring," Tamara replied without hesitation. "Thought I'd be trapped there until I turned eighteen, but I was basically kicked out when my wings came in." Said wings lifted slightly, and she looked kind of proud about the whole thing. "Good riddance."

"Did the Professor come to you, too?" Ororo asked curiously.

"Yeah, right after I busted out of the hospital," Tamara said, not really thinking about the story there, more focused on how quickly he'd turned up. She'd figured the hospital had been looking for experts or something and he'd caught wind, but who knew?

"You had to bust out?" Ororo echoed, wondering if maybe she didn't understand the phrase right. Otherwise, it sounded... problematic, to say the least.

Tamara winced, thinking of Tommy, the scars on his arms. Okay, she needed a new phrase. "Not like, violently. Some people here had to do that, and from places that definitely weren't hospitals," she said quietly, hoping Ororo would pick up that Tamara didn't want to violate their privacy by saying who. "No, when my wings came in, I went to the hospital and the doctors there wanted to chop them off to make me 'normal'. I broke one of their machines, told my stepdad to get bent for trying to force me into it, and then left in a hospital gown," she ended, laughing a little. "Not my best look, but I like to think I pulled it off."

Ororo listened to her story with a sympathetic frown, the truth of it reflected in her eyes. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, Tamara. Your wings are beautiful."

"Thanks," Tamara said, gratefully, "but it's nothing compared to some of the others, y'know? I got to drop the mic and walk out on my terms at least, and help materialized right when I needed it. So yeah, not complaining." That was important to her, she didn't tell the story to get pity points. "What about you, where'd the Professor find you?"

"In the Kilimanjaro Valley." Ororo glanced down, then back at Tamara. "Word was beginning to spread about what I could do, and we were attracting unwelcome attention. It was time to go."

Tamara nodded, understanding that. Safety was not guaranteed for out mutants anywhere. "Man, this place must be a huge change of pace for you," she said, thinking about it. She didn't know much about Kilimanjaro, aside from it being a mountain, but it was definitely worlds away from Mutant Mansion. "Did leaving suck?"

"I left some good people behind," Ororo replied, and thought of Ainet. "And a very good friend." It would have seemed odd to her to think of an old woman as her friend, before meeting Ainet, but now it was the most natural thing in the world. "But it was the right thing to do."

Tamara couldn't exactly relate, except that she'd probably feel the same if she had to leave here. "Guess it's hard to stay in touch from here."

"I hope to go and visit some time," Ororo admitted. She was not used to staying in touch with people in other ways than by seeing them, and anything less felt somewhat less real.

That made Tamara smile. "Have you met Clarice? She's my roommate. I bet she'd take you if you asked. She went to Antarctica once, just to see if she could."

Ororo's eyebrows raised at the news. That was quite a range. "That's... impressive. I'll have to talk to her."

"She's hard to miss," Tamara replied, always loving the opportunity to brag about her roomie. "Purple skin, pink hair?"

"I have seen her around," Ororo confirmed with an amused smile. It would be difficult not to notice her.

"Gorgeous, right?" Tamara beamed back at Ororo. "She's got a big family that she visits all the time, it's really cool."

"She is beautiful," Ororo confirmed, but her smile was perhaps more about her mutation allowing Tamara's roommate to visit her family. That was very, very nice.

Tamara's smile pretty much said 'so are you', but she didn't actually voice that. The fact that she'd thought it was kind of new, different, a surprise. After an unusual pause, she said, "Been meeting a lot of people?"

"There are a lot of people to meet," Ororo confirmed with an amused smile. "I still have a way to go."

"Honestly, me too," Tamara agreed, feeling a little dumb but trying to cover for it. "Especially with so many new people coming in lately. I mean, I love it - so many mutants, it's totally amazing."

"The Professor is building something special here," Ororo agreed, showing no sign of anything but complete belief in what she was saying.

"Well, he's assembling something that could be special," Tamara replied, smiling. "Pretty sure we're the ones building it."

Ororo smiled in appreciation. "You sound like him."

"Really?" Now that was a surprise, and Tamara had disbelief written all over her face. "Because I meant we'll build something, no matter what his plans for us are."

"You don't think that's what he wants?" Ororo asked, eyebrows arching slightly. "To offer us all the opportunity to build what we want?"

"I think that's the sales pitch, anyway," Tamara said with a shrug. "And that this can be a safe place for mutants, if we're willing to keep it that way." If blondes didn't keep inviting spies to parties. "But I'd be careful about drinking the Kool-aid, y'know?"

Ororo frowned in confusion. "Er. No." That was not a phrase she was familiar with.

Tamara blinked, did a quick rewind, then winced. "Right, uh, there was some cult and they all killed themselves by drinking Kool-aid, I guess?" Maybe that wasn't what she should be explaining, actually. "Y'know what, nevermind. It means be careful about buying in totally. ...better?"

"So you do not trust Professor Xavier?" Ororo inquired.

Tamara gave her a wry smile for that. "Mysterious old white guys with lots of money don't usually have anyone else's best interests at heart in this country." Or anywhere, but whatever. "Add in the psychic powers so he can know every little thing about us and how to use it? Yeah, no, 'trust' isn't what I'd call it."

"Trust can be difficult," Ororo acknowledged. "It always involves risk." This had been a risk worth taking, both Ainet and she had agreed. And Ororo trusted both of their instincts. But it saddened her, that some students (she doubted Tamara was the only one) would be here because they had no choice, despite thinking that Professor Xavier might use his telepathy against them. She saw this school as a place of hope. In Tamara, she mostly heard distrust.

"I'm here, aren't I?" Tamara replied, shrugging. That required some level of trust. "It's his motives I don't trust. But there are people here I'd trust with my life." Tommy came to mind, and Shen and Clarice. Warren. "If things got ugly here, I'd go with them. And I'd tase the crap out of anyone who hurt them," she finished with a smirk. It was good to know where she stood on things like this.

"Loyalty is just as valuable as trust," Ororo remarked with a small smile. Something about Tamara's words did not sit right with her, but she could not pinpoint what, so she was moving on.

Tamara frowned thoughtfully as she considered that. "I guess? Don't really have much experience with loyalty it turns out." That had been part of the shock of having her wings come in. "Wait, so you trust the Professor, just like that? Why?" Just about anyone else she'd be judging for stupidity, but Ororo had a kind of... deliberateness (was that a word?) that made her actually curious.

"We had some long conversations before I agreed to come here," Ororo replied simply. "I believe we share the same vision for the future. My friend, Ainet, she trusted him as well. And she's a lot wiser than I am," she added with a very fond smile.

Huh. Well, fair enough, Tamara supposed. Not like she had room to criticize. Smiling a little ruefully, she confessed, "I didn't exactly make a real informed decision. He promised a safe place and medical care for my wings, and I just kinda said yes. I mean, my back was a bloody mess and I'd just been kicked out, but still."

That would be a difficult offer to turn down. Ororo nodded. "And then you met your people, and you wanted to stay anyway?"

"Sort of?" Tamara wouldn't have described them as 'her people', but she might from now on. Sounded good. "I mean, I'd have stayed anyway, for lack of better options - and no one's tried to dissect me yet, so that's a plus. But yeah, I can't imagine leaving without them now."

"No one's going to try and dissect you here," Ororo had to say, because that 'yet' was a very worrying thing to tack onto the end of that sentence. And she believed what she was saying. She did not see it as 'drinking the Kool-Aid'.

Tamara raised an eyebrow at her. "Uh, no offense, but how would you know that?"

"I don't," Ororo reminded her. "It's called trust."

And, well, some amount of logical reasoning. This set-up seemed to her like the worst way to go about dissecting a group of mutant kids. You wouldn't gather so many of them first, or give them room to grow stronger.

Tamara bit back a laugh, because she probably had that coming - but also because it wasn't much of an argument. "Right, that. Like I said, 'because he says so' doesn't do it for me, but I'll keep hoping."

"Even from a logical standpoint," Ororo pointed out. "This would be a very silly set-up for experimentation on mutants. Students have been bonding, growing stronger."

“Sure, but if I disappeared, no one outside this school would even know. Hell, he’s a crazy powerful telepath, maybe no one here would know either,” Tamara replied. “And maybe it’s not dissection, but he’s got a house full of teenagers with super powers - he’s got some kind of plan.” Possibly one she’d like, but when did that ever happen? She shrugged. “Doesn’t change that I have nowhere else to go, or that so far I like it here, but that doesn’t mean he gets to buy my trust.”

Ororo shrugged, unbothered. "Time will tell." She felt certain that Professor Xavier had a plan, yes; it would be irresponsible not to, at this stage. But she was looking forward to finding out about it.

“Yeah. No kidding,” Tamara agreed, managing half a smile. There was something surprisingly reassuring in the way Ororo talked about it all - way different than talking with Tommy, for example, though there were pretty obvious reasons for their views to be so different. “Okay, total topic switch — your hair, is that from your mutation?” she asked, grinning at Ororo. “Or you just like the bad-ass look?”

"It's always been white," Ororo replied, amused. She honestly did not know whether she came from a long line of mutants, or a long line of something else. Sorceresses, as Ainet had told her. "The mohawk is all me."

"Well it's all very cool, I totally dig it," Tamara replied. "A few of the others got their hair done as part of their mutation, but it's a mix of whether they were born with it or not."

"I noticed I wasn't the only one with white hair," Ororo confirmed.

"You'll have to give Tommy some tips on how to style his," Tamara replied with a little smirk.

Ororo chuckled. "Do I look like the stylist kind?" The mohawk was just about the more elaborate thing about her appearance, and it was a style that didn't require much beside regularly shaving the sides of her head.

"Inspiration's half the game," Tamara replied with a friendly little grin.

"Let him be inspired, then," Ororo concluded.

Tamara grinned at her. "I think I like you, Ororo."

That surprised a laugh out of Ororo. "Well. I've had worse first meetings."