Xaviers!

"One hell of a swim." Shari jokes. Probably. "I just like how... I dunno... calm it is here? It's got that kinda serene atmosphere. Like a church, except you can see the stars. Well, some of them. Still better than from downtown, you can't see jack in the sky from there."

"It must be nice to have a serene place like this to go to."

"Well... I guess. It's cool and all, but I try not to get to attached to places. You make something like that special and next thing you know you're gonna want to hang around..."

"Is there something wrong with hanging around?"

"It just... I dunno. Always feels like people start expecting things and before you know it you're tied down and you couldn't really leave if you wanted to and then it's just a matter of time before you got full blown obligations and then you're fenced in and are never gonna see what else is out there... Easier to bail before that happens, I guess."

"But then you never meet anyone who really matters to you either," Natalie comments, though it doesn't sound like that's a deal breaker for her.

"People don't have to be forever to matter..." she says maybe a bit evasively. "And it wouldn't be fair to them cause one day I might just move on after all."

"I suppose," Natalie says, hopping up on the fence to sit and looking up at the sky.

"I guess it's just what I'm used to. As far back as I can remember I've always been on the move. Just feels right? Safer somehow." she says, balancing her way over to Natalie and plopping down next to her.

"I suppose it could be, but there's something to be said for having people to watch your back and that seems like it would be hard to do if you're always on the move."

"Only if you can't do it yourself." she says and her face scrunches up in concentration. Before her skin takes on a blue-ish tint and her head shifts into some kind of vaguely humanoid slug-head, complete with eyes sitting on stalks that turn to look at Natalie.

It's certainly obvious that Natalie wasn't expecting that, but she covers it with a laugh. "I suppose some of us are luckier in that regard than others."

"I mean... the people at the school are pretty cool. And not having to worry about food and stuff is also not too shabby." she jokes. Kinda.

"Was that a worry before?" Now she actually seems concerned.

"Sometimes... Okay, maybe a little more often than that. But I can take care of myself. I know this place cause, well, I slept here a couple times, right under the statue of that jolly fat guy." she says, pointing at the little alcove with the Buddha statue.

"That... that sucks" is all Natalie can think to say.

"I guess. The pity is what really sucks. Can't change shapes to accommodate that unless I just pretend I'm someone else entirely..." she says and it sounds vaguely like, well, not a threat, but like she's pointing out a contingency plan for this very situation.

That seems to confuse Natalie. She hops up off the fence and walks a little ways away, turning her back to Shari.

Shari just lies down on the railing, folding her hands behind her head that have, at this point, taken on a similar hue and skin as her head. She just stares up at the sky for a while, eye-stalks occasionally twisting to look over towards Natalie.

"People just... learn stuff about you and then they look at you differently. And there's no way to change that. Couple words and that'll always be what's on peoples' minds from there on out, you know? Only way to make that go away is to become someone else, but then what's the point anyway. I dunno... You tell people something like that and they suddenly act like they know you when I don't even know who the fuck I am."

Natalie hasn't turned around, but her arms are crossed. When she does speak, her tone is slightly offended, but she's trying to bury that. "And so you assume things about me. About what I'm thinking. Because it's easier than actually, you know, asking me. Easier to assume I'm an arsehole because I think that it sucks that someone, anyone, doesn't have a good roof over their head."

"No, what's easy is just not telling people anything, cause then I don't have to give a shit what they think." she says, which is probably the dumbest, most evasive way to try and explain herself.

"That's shite and you know it," Natalie says, turning slightly. In the shadows, it's hard to tell but it looks like she might actually be angry. "You still have to care about it, because you still have to manage their expectations. Only now, their expectations are built on lies or even just a lack of information. It's a nice thing to tell yourself you can just fade into the background, but don't pretend you don't still have to care what they think." She turns again, back to Shari again, and walks further away. It sounds like maybe she's softly counting.

She hops off the railing, eye-stalks pulling themselves back into her head as hair sprouts and she shifts back into a regular person.

"No it's not. I don't hafta tell people anything and if I do it's only cause I wanted to, not out of some stupid obligation. People can think what they want about me, it only matters when they know the truth but they got no automatic right to that at all."

"And when they don't know, they fill in the details themselves. And when they do, bad things frequently happen. But I guess since you don't really care to know anyone, you can just change who you are again and take off. Not everyone has that luxury."

That actually manages to shut Shari up. Both because she finally catches on to the fact that Natalie seems to be talking about herself and because she makes a good, if kind of painful point.

"You're right. I'm a coward. I don't care because I don't have to."

"I can't say I don't envy your ability. It must be nice to be able to just fade away." It's easy to tell, even from behind that she's hurriedly wiping at her eyes.

Shari looks like she's not entirely sure what to do and she ultimately just puts a hand on Natalie's back. "You wanna know the truth? Why I lie to people and don't tell them who I am and just bail once they got a certain idea about me into their heads?" she says quietly. "It's because I don't know who I am. And after a while of being one person to a bunch of people... it just gets too much. Because even when I try to be open it's still just a bunch of lies that I tell to myself."

Natalie noticeably, but involuntarily, flinches at the contact. "Absolutely nothing?"

"I know my name's Shari. At least I'm pretty sure about that. That's... about it. I don't even know what I really look like."

"That's awful. Is..." She seems to remember that Shari doesn't want pity and that shuts *her* up.

"And now you know. Just... try not to assume this sad-sack is who I 'really' am." she says, taking her hand off of Natalie's back to do the air-quotes and also because she seemed to be uncomfortable about it. "Cause if there's no real me then at least I get to decide who I am and it's usually not this..."

"So, you tell me who you are or who you want to be," Natalie says, seeming to collect herself at least a bit, "And I'll respect that. And if you decide you want to hunt down your past and there's something I can do to help, you let me know, yeah?"

"I am who I am." she shrugs. "Right now it doesn't really matter who I was, right?" she musters a stupid smirk.

"Right now? Probably not. But someday it might, so just making the offer," Natalie says, wiping at her eyes one last time.

Shari nods. "And I'm sorry about... you know... People can be pretty shitty sometimes."

Natalie tries to shrug it off, "What happened happened, not much I can do about it now. Someone that I thought was a friend screwed me over. It's not the first time it's happened to someone. Just still hurts sometime."

"Oh there's probably plenty you can do about it. It wouldn't change it, but it might make ya feel better. Might not be Haley levels of car-crashed-into-cube, but maybe that'd be for the better anyway."

As often happens when someone mentions something cool like that, Natalie begins immediately searching the XU internal student locations through her phone because *someone* had to have posted a picture of that. "Most of the things I could do to her would be pretty obvious, since she knows what I can do."

It takes a bit, because apparently it happened a while ago, but she does manage to find an image of a car that looked like fresh out of the crusher, if it wasn't for the almost finger-like indentations around it. Haley is tagged on it and there are numerous comments, swinging wildly from 'Awesome!' to 'Oh my godddd!' and straight up panic about mutants

"Well, as somebody once told me, if you decide you want to hunt down your past and there's something I can do to help, you let me know, yeah?"

Natalie actually smiles, "I'll remember that. So how did you know about Haley and the car?"