Logs:'Til your good is better and your better is best.

'Til your good is better and your better is best.
Dramatis Personae Catriona, Sarah
In Absentia	2019-11-11 "Are you a mutant?"
Location Evolve Cafe
Catriona pushes the door to Evolve open and tries not to look startled by the people inside. It's a mutant cafe. That's the entire reason she's here. Of course there are mutants here. And it's not like she hasn't seen mutants before... though not before she moved to New York. Middleburg isn't exactly a friendly, welcoming place for them. Or anyone, except horses. Still, she clutches her purse strap in a grip so tight it almost makes her hand spasm, and sort of edges around the outside of the room, trying not to be noticed. She's going to have to talk to someone sometime-- how else will she find her brother?-- but. But maybe not today. Maybe today she'll just get used to it. She edges up to the counter and orders potato soup and a tea- nice warm food, comforting food. There's a table off in the corner so she takes her things there and sits with her back against the wall, head down, breathing. As much as the newcomer obviously wants to avoid attention, it's hard for Sarah to not track her around the room. Her nervousness is capital L loud. Sarah is at least polite about it. She keeps her head down over the empty journal she's working on turning into a weekly planner and watches the new girl from the corner of her eye with equal hints amusement and concern. It's a nervousness she recognizes. A few moments after Catriona sits down, Sarah gathers up her things into her bag, grabs her plate with a half eaten sandwich, and heads to the corner table. "Hey," she greets with a friendly smile. Sarah has her colors on in full force today: jeans covered in various rose, heart, and Hello Kitty patches, sunshine yellow converse, a sweatshirt that's been tie-dyed pastel rainbow. "Do you mind if I join you?" Catriona kind of does mind, but she's not about to tell the other woman that and anyway she looks kind of nice? Maybe? So she dredges up a smile from somewhere, even though she thinks it's her fake company smile, the one that Mom made her put on whenever they had people to impress. With any luck her new companion won't notice. "Hi," she says. "No, I don't mind. Um. I'm Catriona." She resists the urge to pull the hood of her gray sweatshirt over her head. Next to this brightly-colored butterfly of a woman, she feels like a drab moth. You like it that way,* she reminds herself sharply. "Oh, that's pretty! I'm just Sarah." Taking the seat across from Catriona, Sarah nudges her bag under her chair with her feet. "Are you new to the city?" She's pretty sure she can guess the answer, but it's always best to be polite. "Thanks," Catriona says, and smiles, this one a little more real than before. "It's nice to meet you, Sarah. Yes, I'm new. I go to NYU. Freshman year." She could say more about that, probably, like about neuroscience and her goals, but it would sound like bragging, and Dad always says no one likes a braggart. "You look like you've been here a while," she says. "Um. Do you go to this cafe a lot? Are you a mutant?" "Awesome, congrats on the college thing!" Sarah brightens, ready to sing Evolve's praises for all the world to hear (first and foremost starting with the food) before the second question knocks the wind out of her sails. She leans back in her seat with a frown, perplexed and insulted. "That's not really a question you ask someone," she answers after a long moment. "For a lot of reasons." "Oh," Catriona says, in a small voice. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. I just don't know how..." How is she going to find anyone if she can't ask things? But she isn't going to be her mother, and push on anyway, and she isn't going to be her father, and get mad. "I'm really sorry. Um." She looks down at her potato soup and pokes at it with her spoon, but she's lost her appetite. "I'm sorry," she says, again, for lack of anything else. Sarah is quiet again, squinting in thought. "Well. It's not okay, but just don't--a lot of people aren't gonna be nice about it," she says eventually. "A lot of people aren't gonna be nice about you being here either, if I'm being honest. But at least you apologized." "Oh," she says again, in an even smaller voice. Well, now she feels stupid. Not that she didn't feel stupid before. "Okay. I'll just... finish up and not come back, I guess." She rubs at her eyes; she will not cry. Her roommate calls it acting on her white woman privilege and she doesn't quite understand what that means, but she knows she shouldn't cry here. And maybe Sarah won't mind if she asks it better, differently. "Are there..." She stops and takes a sip of tea. The urge to cry settles a bit. "If I wanted to find somebody. Who's a mutant. Where do I look?" Sarah can't tell if the twinge she feels is guilt or pity. She doesn't want to make anyone feel bad, but she isn't going to lie either. There is, at least, a hint of kindness to her tone when she answers with, "I don't know. But if you want to give me your number or something, I could ask around." Catriona blinks. That's... nobody gets mad at her and then offers to do her a favor. She always has to apologize a million times to Mom and Dad, and even her friends have to cool down for a while. "I would... really appreciate that," she says. "I'm looking for-" She swallows; even now, so far away from Mom and Dad, it's hard to get the words out. Mom slapped her when she asked. "I'm looking for my brother," she manages, at last. "And I was hoping somebody here would know him. Or that he'd be here." Sarah nods, pulling her phone out to hand it over the table. "I guess I can see why you would want to look here," she says, though it still sort of feels like expecting all mutants to know each other. "Do you know his name or what he looks like?" Catriona blushes and looks down at her tea. "Not... really," she says. "I... we're twins, you see, but Mom and Dad--" She doesn't want to say it, doesn't want to think her parents could do something like that, but they did and she has to face it sooner or later. "They sent him away. I have a picture though." She reaches into her purse and takes out her notebook. She doesn't use it, not really, but there's a few doodles and a few fake class notes so that if her parents ever look into it they'll get bored long before they find the picture. Catriona takes it out and slides it across the table to Sarah. It's blurry, and small, but it's possible to make out a baby between a pair of people in white coats. The baby is small, and a sort of light bluish color, and there's definitely a couple of tentacles. Biting her tongue before Catriona even has her notebook out, Sarah does her best to keep her expression neutral and frustration-free while she looks at the picture. What she can see. Her gaze flicks up to the other girl, trying to judge her age, before she looks down to the picture again. Eventually, she slides it back, still trying to figure out what the hell she's suppose to say to any of this. It's at least easy enough to shake her head, even if it is slow at first. "That's... This is..." Picking at the remains of her sandwich, Sarah focuses on rolling bits of bread into little balls. "Okay, so. What if he doesn't want to be found?" she asks haltingly. Catriona has been thinking about this, ever since she overheard her roommate telling someone else they don't have to forgive their family. Which seems like it should have been obvious, but she's never thought... she never thought family was something you could get away from and she's still chewing that over. And it will hurt, she knows, if her brother doesn't want to know her. She thinks it's not fair, that she had nothing to do with what happened, and that he owes her a chance to know him. But she also thinks that nothing's fair, that she never should have had her brother stolen and he never should have lost his life, and probably he doesn't owe her anything at all. She swallows. "I'll be hurt," she says, because she wants to be honest. "But it's fair. I just... want to know he's okay. And I want a chance to be his sister, if he'll let me, but if he won't, I want to know he's okay, and I'll go away and never try to find him again." Face twisting into a frown, Sarah shakes her head again. "I'm not talking about you," she huffs. Sliding the photo back to Catriona, she takes her phone back after, without any contact information. "The system messes up kids that are 'normal.'" The air quotes she makes have an air of annoyance to them. "If he's even in the city or--alive or... How is you going out there and saying 'So there is this blue guy with tentacles, have you seen him?', how is that making things safe or easy for him?" "But... but that's what I mean," Catriona says, distressed. Is she really going to do more harm than good? "He's my brother! You can't just throw somebody away and pretend they never existed, you have to... you have to help." But that's the problem, isn't it? She can't help him if she can't find him, and if Sarah is right, how can she go looking? She doesn't know anything, really. God. <<Stupid,>> she thinks fiercely. <<You're so stupid.>> "I don't even know what I'm supposed to do," she says, shrinking in on herself, looking down into the tea. "I'm sorry." Sarah rubs a hand over her eyes, trying to put her disquiet for the situation into words. "I understand wanting to help family," she says earnestly. "And you're right, people shouldn't just be thrown away and forgotten about if you can help them." Picking up the little balls of bread, she smushes them together between her fingers, focusing on her task instead of the girl across the table. "I don't know what you're supposed to be doing, either. I just know it's not this." "Okay," Catriona says, but her voice is so small she doesn't know if it even came out. She clears her throat and makes herself speak louder. "Okay. I'm going to... try to understand." She takes her photo back and tucks it back in her notebook. <<Stupid. Stupid. Can't you do anything right?>> Her roommate speaks up in her head again, and she adds, "Thank you for talking to me. And explaining to me. I'm going to do better." Because she has to, because he's her twin, and twins take care of each other, and Sarah would know better than her what that looks like. "I'm really grateful." "Better is the best thing we can do," Sarah tells her, pulling a smile from somewhere. It never hurts to be kind. She gathers her bag from under her chair, which is pushed in once she stands. "Good luck."