Packing Up the Pieces

Packing Up the Pieces

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Packing Up the Pieces
by Jen1703

Socks, bras, underwear.

Packing was always so tedious. It had never, ever been a fun task for Lorna Dane, even if she'd been packing for a dream vacation. And she was most definitely not packing for any kind of vacation, dream or otherwise.

More like a nightmare, actually. One from which she desperately wished she could wake.

She'd tried so hard to keep it a secret, and she felt her cheeks burning in embarrassment even now at the memory of everyone admitting they'd known all along. How humiliating. All she'd been trying to do was save face, to buy herself some time until her powers came back.

Because they would come back.

They had to come back. They were so much a part of who she was, so much a part of everything that was important in her life. To think they were gone forever… it was just inconceivable.

But until they did, Emma was right. Lorna didn't belong there anymore. She'd lost the part of herself that made her part of things.

Shoes, hair dryer, toiletries.

In retrospect, she knew she should have talked to someone, confided about her power loss. She'd endangered herself and the lives of her teammates by trying to keep it a secret.

No, former teammates, now.

Bobby… he would have understood. He'd been going through the same thing, and he'd seemed to be adjusting so well. Or, at least, he appeared to be handling it well. Sometimes it was difficult to tell what was the actual truth, and what was simply the truth Bobby wanted people to believe. So many people didn't bother looking beyond that almost always-present smile of his to see what lay beneath.

She'd looked. She knew. Not always, but she felt she had a better idea than many did.

Regardless, she should have talked to him. They could have mourned the loss of their powers together. It could have helped bring them even closer than they'd grown over the previous little while. But now…

Now he had other things to worry about. His powers had been restored, but… at what cost? Lorna shivered slightly, in spite of the warmth of the room, picturing Bobby, once again completely ice, with vicious, dagger-like spikes growing and disappearing and then re-growing, seemingly randomly, all over his body. Sure, he had his powers back, but what good were they without control? She ached to hug him, for both their sakes, but she couldn't. He would slice right through her without meaning to, and then he'd never be able to forgive himself.

She knew him too well, cared about him too much, to risk doing that to him.

Jeans, slacks, shorts, a handful of skirts that she hardly ever wore anymore.

There was no way she could have confided in Alex. She'd known damn well what he'd have said and done. She hadn't spent most of the last decade with him without learning how to anticipate his reactions. He would have looked at her exactly the way so many of the others had - full of sympathy, pity, disdain. He wouldn't have been able to understand. She wasn't sure he would have even tried.

But then again, he rarely seemed to understand her at all anymore. He hadn't for… well, for a very long time. Longer than she cared to admit, even to herself. Why she'd put up with it, she'd never really know. Lately, he hadn't even pretended. The whole wedding disaster had proven that beyond any shadow of a doubt.

She cringed, not really wanting to revisit that chapter in her life. Water under the bridge, and all that. She could do without remembering that she'd gone more than a little mad, that she'd tried to kill not only Annie, but the people who'd been her friends and family for years.

But she supposed being left at the altar could do that to a girl.

Right, enough about that. What was passed was the past, after all.

As she leaned over the small, black suitcase, packing up her life, Lorna tucked her hair behind her ears as it insisted on falling forward over her shoulders. It was still green, but only for the time being, she suspected. She was almost curious to see what color roots she'd develop - blond, brunette? Red, even? Maybe she'd resort to dyeing it green until her powers returned…

Dammit, she loved her hair. She knew it was terribly vain of her, but she loved her hair. For some women, hair was their crowning glory. For Lorna, it defined her. She'd never been Jean, the beautiful one, or Ororo, the Kenyan goddess. Not even Rogue, the pretty Southern belle. She'd been Polaris, the green-haired X-Man; Lorna, the girl with the pretty green hair. Surrounded by outstandingly beautiful women, her own beauty was only average. Her hair was what made her special, what made her stand out.

She needed her powers to return. For so many reasons.