Welcome to Gaia! ::

It sounded so dramatic: lighthouse, duties, midnight. She didn't want to go, not because she was an early sleeper (what a laughable concept), but because it meant directly confronting Lex. Alone. And while Stormy had trouble picturing him as the kind to take revenge, the rash waves of vengeance earlier gave her a renewed and probably healthier wariness of people and what they were capable of; after all, look at what she had done. The shame hadn't left.

< < You will have to face him eventually, > > Thane put in. She sighed, rubbed her face, and got ready.

Stormy arrived at the lighthouse a few minutes after midnight, consciously remembering to make noise so as not to appear like she was sneaking (her personal training often made her look like she was skulking quietly about). Her hands were jammed into her coat pockets, her nerves rising with every step. Thane reminded her again that if anything were to happen, she did have the skills to get away--and the power if cornered.

"Hey," Stormy greeted him quietly.

She nodded politely because she didn't know what to say past that. This was Lex's initiation and idea, not hers, and she'd be making him lead the conversation because of it. It was a childish tactic, but Stormy couldn't help herself; the need for vengeance was gone, but that hadn't purged her of all her bitter feelings about what had happened.

That, and for once she didn't want to be the one apologizing first; she hadn't started this, he had.

Stormy remained standing and enjoyed being the taller one for once, eying him passively. It would either be a long shift or a short one, she figured.

Listening to his apology made her soften some, and for a moment she considered just letting it go. Grudges had never really been her thing, not before Nevada (and hers was a special case); even Jack's deal was a passing in and out, something she didn't usually think about unless forced. But Thane's soft hisses appealed to her base needs of feeling justified in her anger: Lex had to understand the extent of what it meant to mess with her. The appearance she gave to others was a mild-mannered, sentimental little girl, but that could not be what she projected if she wanted to make this right.

< < He is sorry only because he was attacked in retaliation. He expressed no such thing when he pricked you with that needle. Power is the only thing all living beings understand, and you must not yield simply because he is crawling back and pleading mercy. > >

And rather than argue that it still felt wrong regardless of the twisted intentions, Stormy went with it. There were few things in the world she had trouble forgiving, and the Lifer had the luck to hit one of them.

"Why'd you do it?" she asked.

"To prevent further damages to your person."

She didn't reply for a moment, her gaze unblinking. And then a sad, sad (patronizing?) smile appeared. If all she had to do was stick a needle in to fix it, she would have let him make her a pin cushion until it all went away. But medication didn't fix what she had, it only numbed it for a while; she didn't want to go that route again.

It wasn't that she didn't understand why Lex had done it, that part was obvious: she had come to the infirmary that day looking half-dead, partially emaciated, and irritable. A complete intervention might have been exactly what the doctor had ordered in his eyes. It was more that Stormy finally understood the kind of person he was: the sort of selfish that was meant to help rather than be self-centered, that was narrow-minded and stubborn but done out of concern, an odd sort of hero who wasn't completely just but felt justified. She was seeing Lex for who he was rather than just the charming facade, just like the glimpse she had recieved while cutting his hair.

Empathy was her weakness: the more Stormy mulled over the Lifer's probably reasonings, the less inclined she was to keep her grudge, regardless of what Thane's scathing remarks were about it. Her hands fidgeted in her pockets as the smile dimmed.

"Is that how you'll treat your patients as a therapist? Make them see the greater good even if they don't want it?"

"Not everyone," she said calmly, because Stormy felt this need to reinforce her belief that regardless of what Twitter was composed of, that wasn't everything a person could be. 140 characters or less couldn't even begin to capture a fraction of what a person was, and while obviously there were troubled individuals on Deus, who didn't incur some baggage after a while? Who didn't have some before coming? People coped with their life in different ways.

But maybe that wasn't to Lex's tastes.

Something in Stormy's expression flickered, a slight edge sharpening her words. "I'm not a child, Lex. If you want to be a therapist, then understand that you can't look at any of us like that or like pets if you want to do your job right." She didn't like that smile at all, nor the subtle way he seemed to be coming off almost self-righteous about it even. As if he knew better. Alarm bells were going off in her head, and again Thane reminded her that if it came to a fight--

It won't.

"There's also something fundamental that's missing in your logic: you can't help someone who doesn't want to change," Stormy continued, her gaze unblinking. "I've never called you cruel, Lex. I might call you stupid now, but never cruel. You're better than that line of thinking, you know it's not right to force things like that, no matter how bad it is." That's what she believed, at least.

"This isn't eating vegetables and potty training. These are people's hearts, minds, and souls you're working with." Her hands were out of her pockets now, arms crossed and coupled with a firm tone. "If you're going into this thinking that people need to be fixed and policed, then I think you should seriously reconsider your career goal."

She relaxed bit by bit, never quite completely but no longer defensively stiff as before. Lex was working it out on his own, so she gave him the solace of silence to do so. Neither of them looked at each other for a while.

(She kept wondering how close it had been to a repeat of Jack, a cycle of I know better and trust me versus I do, but you don't, and a spark of paranoia touched her heart, because what if he had spoken to Lex, what if an attempt to scope him out had merely opened doors, what if her request to not confront him about anything had been ignored? What if they were friends?)

Lex's voice broke her train of thought, and Stormy blinked back into reality and gazed at the man with a heavy weight in his features. She hesitated, watching, listening.

< < Do not give in. Words sound pretty but mean nothing against actions. > >

But she was Stormy. Grudges were not her forte, and she could only hold onto her anger as long as he was unrepentant; it wouldn't and couldn't match Nevada's now, nor did she want it to. Instead of revenge, all she could feel was sympathy and compassion as she always did when someone was down, and she reacted without a second thought.

With a soft expression, she closed the gap between them, moved behind Lex, and hugged him.

When it was obvious he wouldn't disrupt the hug, it grew tighter. After a few more breaths, Stormy lightly rested her chin on his shoulder, her eyes closed.

"What you did was wrong, but you aren't a bad person," she mumbled. "I forgive you, Mr. Lex. And I won't call you stupid. It's not stupid at all to want to help people." Stormy sighed. "I shouldn't've pushed Evan after you or given you those nasty twitter messages. It's no excuse, but I just . . . I wasn't myself that day."