"Supportive"

Providing encouragement or emotional help.

French Translations

Répugnant. J'ai des normes: Disgusting. I have standards.

Anything in italics and underlined is in French.

"I need to borrow clothes from you," Marianne said; she hadn't quite burst in on Moira, but it was a near thing. It was only a last-minute decision that kept her from throwing the doors open as dramatically as the situation required.

Instead, she opened the door normally, walked in urgently, and Moira, who had been cleaning her gun, looked up at her in surprise.

"What for?" Moira asked, not setting aside the disassembled pieces she had in her hands and on her lap. She was sitting in an armchair by the window - she had chosen a room with large windows and plenty of natural sunlight, but a little smaller than the other rooms.

"Charles told me the only training clothes available are sets of sweatpants and sweatshirts," Marianne said, walking over to stand by the bench at the foot of Moira's bed. She wrinkled her nose, disgust filling her voice as she said, "I refuse to wear anything like that. The boys may be satisfied but I refuse."

Moira looked like she didn't know whether to be amused or not.

"I thought I would ask you and Raven, but I came to you first," Marianne continued, "since you're more likely to be in my size."

"I don't have much," Moira warned.

Marianne sighed. "I can wear the sweatpants. If you have any sort of appropriate shirt - a tank top, a t-shirt, anything, that would be fine. I just cannot bring myself to wear the sweatshirt with the pants. They're hideous. Répugnant. J'ai des normes."

Moira's lips twitched. "Yes, I can tell." She placed the pieces of her gun on the table next to her and stood up. "I travel light, normally," she said as she went to her bed, where her small suitcase was open and still packed. "It's what I'm trained for. I only bring necessities. So I have one or two shirts you could use, but try this one on first, make sure it fits."

She tossed a black tanktop to Marianne, who caught it with her powers before she took it in hand.

"Did you have to train much?" Marianne asked. She placed the shirt on the bed before she started undoing the buttons of her own shirt. Moira respectfully turned away. "To get to where you are in the CIA?"

"Yes." Moira sat on the bed, still averting her eyes. "I started out in the typing pools, so I had a lot of work to do before I could be considered ready for the field."

"Typing pools?" She repeated, unfamiliar with the term.

"Groups of secretaries. I spent years there, typing documents and letters and getting coffee, worked my way up the system, and eventually became an agent."

"It sounds hard," Marianne said, taking off her own shirt and reaching for Moira's. "Do you enjoy the work?"

"I love my work. Hate most of the people I work with."

"Men?" Marianne asked sympathetically.

Moira scoffed. "You got it. Ten years and my superiors still don't trust I know what I'm doing. Most of the agents I work with don't, either. At least they've stopped asking me to get them their coffee, though. You should have seen their faces when I brought in Charles the first time."

"There must have been someone you liked. Anyone?"

Moira was silent for a moment.

"Agent Platt was always nice to me," she said finally. "He was a good man."

There was no way to miss the sorrow in her voice, even as she tried to hide it. Marianne heard it in the way her voice seemed to waver at the use of 'was', saw it when Moira briefly looked down at her hands.

Marianne leaned against the bedpost. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I could have saved him. I was too late. I'm sorry, Moira." She could have saved so many people, but she hadn't.

Moira looked up. Her expression was steely, resolved. "The only person responsible is Shaw, and no one else," she said firmly. When Marianne said nothing, Moira turned and saw her wearing Moira's shirt. "How does it feel?"

Marianne looked down at herself. "It fits well, thank you."

"You can keep it if you want. You'll need an extra shirt."

Marianne blinked. "Oh, no-"

"You'll need an extra shirt, and I have others," Moira interrupted in a no-nonsense tone of voice. "All of the boys can swap or borrow. It's only fair."

"Alright, then," Marianne said, unsurely. Moira nodded, satisfied.

The two women were silent. Marianne glanced out the window across the landscape.

"Just wondering," Moira said suddenly, bringing Marianne's attention back to her, "how much self-defence do you know? Without using your powers. It's alright if you don't know anything," she added. "We're here to learn."

Marianne held her hand out and gave a so-so gesture. "I have a knife I can use, a little bit. I know the areas to hit. I have read books on self-defence but have never practiced on anyone."

"What books?" Moira asked, looking surprised.

"Old books. My store is mostly vintage, so I am not sure how effective anything would be these days, if methods have changed." She shrugged.

"It's better than nothing. And the knife?"

Marianne pulled her switchblade out of her pocket and flipped it open. "Luckily I haven't needed to use it much."

"Do you always have that on you?" Moira asked, a grin slowly spreading across her face.

"Almost always," Marianne replied, smiling a little shyly. Moira wasn't shocked or appalled by her carrying a weapon. Marianne had mentioned it to women in her neighbourhood once or twice, years ago. She had received startled looks. "It's a precaution, for if I could not use my powers, or if I just needed a quick weapon."

"That's clever," Moira said, putting her hands on her hips. "Everyone should know how to defend themselves in an emergency, even people with powers like yours." She tilted her head. "I wonder if Erik knows anything about self-defence. Charles definitely doesn't."

"Definitely not," Marianne agreed with a little laugh. She may have softened up to him, but she couldn't deny Moira's statement. "And I can say that Sean does not either unless you count whatever he learned from schoolyard scraps."

"We'll just have to see, I suppose. Who knows, maybe someone will surprise me. You definitely did." Moira blinked and then quickly added, "And I mean that in a good way."

Marianne slipped her knife back into her pocket and nodded. "Of course." She knew she didn't look like the kind of woman who kept a weapon handy or knew how to defend herself. "Well, thank you for this shirt," she said, picking up her own shirt. "And you are alright with me keeping it?"

"It's totally fine," Moira said. "Besides, if everything everyone brought was destroyed, you'll need some extra clothes. So, you know," Moira glanced out the window, tapping her fingers against her hips, "if you need anything, feel free to come to me."

Marianne smiled. "Of course. Thank you, Moira." She turned to leave and made it to the door before Moira said her name.

"Was there anything of value to you destroyed in the explosion?" Moira asked. "I'm sure I can get the CIA to reimburse you for it."

The memory of the picture of her family burning and falling apart in her hands flashed through her mind.

"No," Marianne said. "No need to reimburse me, but thank you."

She paused. "Speaking of which," she said, "am I still going to be paid for all of this? Not that it's my priority anymore," she added, "but it is important to me."

Moira looked surprised. "Of course. We wouldn't forget that."

Marianne sighed. "Good, thank you, Moira." With a final smile and a small wave - Moira returned both, although a little shyly - Marianne left the agent's room-

-and nearly bumped into Raven, who apparently had been waiting outside the door.

"I heard from Charles you went to Moira for clothes," Raven said as soon as Marianne had registered her presence. "And I just wanted to let you know that if you needed anything, you could ask me, too. Moira, too, and I'll tell her that."

Marianne blinked. After she took in what Raven had said, she nodded. "That would be wonderful. Thank you, Raven."

Raven smiled. "No problem. We're the only girls, right? We should stick together." She laughed and turned her head, gesturing for Marianne to follow her down the hallway. Marianne followed with a laugh of her own. "Especially since the boys outnumber us and all. If Angel had stayed-"

Raven's smile faltered. Marianne quickly picked up where she had left off. "The boys still would have outnumbered us. Now there's just one less." She looked down at the shirt in her hands and absentmindedly began folding it. "I understand why she chose Shaw," she said. "I hate him, but Angel…"

Marianne trailed off. She hadn't known Angel for very long, but she remembered Angel's story, her past. She remembered the look on Angel's face when the guards had mocked them, the hurt that had been there; she remembered the final guard giving them up in exchange for the "normal people".

Angel had held a lot of hurt in her, Marianne had seen that. Being mocked and left to die by the people who were supposed to help them, the people they were meant to be saving by risking their own lives, wouldn't sit right with anybody. Marianne's jaw unconsciously clenched just remembering it.

"Yeah, I get it, too," Raven said quietly. "It still sucks, though."

Marianne put a hand on Raven's shoulder. "It does," she agreed. She missed Angel as much as Raven did. She wondered how the younger girl would have felt if she had come with them, had gotten the chance to be away from the CIA and their judging eyes and be here, with only others like her. Marianne wished Angel could have only gotten the chance.

Raven sighed. She looked tired.

Marianne frowned. "Are you feeling alright, sweetheart?"

Raven gave a noncommittal shrug. "It's been a long day." Then she blinked and looked at Marianne with a strange look on her face.

Marianne nodded slowly. Then she smiled. "I haven't chosen a room yet. Would you mind helping me? This is your home, after all. You know it better than me."

"Oh, sure! Okay, so do you want to have a big room or a smaller one?"

The skip had returned to Raven's step as she led Marianne through the house, asking her different questions on her rooming preferences (did she want a room with big windows? A hard mattress or a soft one? A warmer room or a colder one?) until Raven finally brought her to a room on the second floor, just a bit down from the library. It was smaller than the other rooms, but still a lot larger than her room back home. The bed was more than big enough - four people could have fit on the mattress with some space still left. The windows let in shafts of natural light and gave her a broad view of the grounds. It was a very sparse room; although it had a dresser, a bookshelf, a bedside table, a plush armchair in front of the window and a vanity, none of it seemed used. There were nothing to show any signs that someone had ever lived in this room, no scratches on the floor to suggest any of the furniture had been moved since being placed, no old photographs on the dresser like the few in the other rooms Raven had showed her, not even a single book on the shelf or a hairbrush on the vanity.

"I think this was a spare guest room," Raven said, looking around the room herself. "You might be the first person to use this room, ever."

Marianne considered the room. It wasn't very welcoming, but it was better than her room at the CIA facility had been, and it was bigger than her room at home, so she could manage.

"Thank you for your help, Raven," she said.

"No problem." Raven gave her a big grin. "We're a team, right? We gotta do some team bonding stuff. We did stuff like that at my job, the manager was weirdly big on working together."

"What was your job?"

Her smile flickered. "I was a waitress."

"Very nice." Marianne examined the vanity, checking herself in the mirror. She smoothed several stray pieces of hair back into place, then tilted her head to the left and right, inspecting herself from both angles. She looked a little tired, but that was nothing new.

She heard Raven scoff. Marianne looked away from the mirror and turned back to the younger girl. "Is something wrong?"

Raven had wrapped her arms around herself. She was leaning against one of the bedposts, frowning at Marianne. "You don't have to make fun of me."

"I was not," Marianne said, a little confused. "Waitressing is a good job."

Raven rolled her eyes. "Yeah."

"Isn't it?"

"Not to the snobs at Oxford," Raven griped. "Not when my brother's got a PhD."

"Who cares about that?" Marianne asked, though she was beginning to understand.

"The snobs at Oxford," Raven repeated. She hugged herself a little tighter, Marianne noticed. "You're not worth anything unless you went to college."

"Well, then you and I would have been in the same boat," Marianne said with a shrug. Her comment had the desired effect - Raven immediately loosened her hold and stood up straight, staring at Marianne with newfound curiosity.

"You didn't go to college either?"

Marianne shook her head, chuckling. "No. I graduated from high school, that's all."

"Me too," Raven said, her grin returning. "But you own a store. I thought-"

"You don't need a college degree to own your own store. It may help, but I've managed." She struggled, but she managed. "My husband didn't go to college, either," she added before she could think better of it. "We managed together."

"Neither of you? How come?"

Marianne glanced down and started playing with her locket. She ran her thumbnail between the latch but didn't open it. "Things got in the way," she said finally, choosing her words carefully. More than a couple of things had gotten in the way.

"Like what?"

Marianne started to think of an answer when there was a knock on the door before Charles stuck his head in the room. He smiled at the sight of the two of them. "There you are! You've chosen a good room, Marianne."

"Raven helped me," she said. Charles smiled wider.

"Just so you're aware," Charles said, opening the door further and stepping in, "Moira, Erik and I are all on this floor as well. Just down that way. So if there's anything you need, feel free to come to us at any time. And… I believe Erik wants us to get started on some training."

When you meant for this to be longer but it was getting really long and wasn't finished yet so you decide to post the first half :/

Anyway, like I said I wanted this chapter to be longer, but it was getting pretty long and I wasn't close to finishing and I was getting antsy. So this chapter is mostly girl talk, just friendships starting out. The next chapter (which is what was making it so long in the first place) should be out soon, at least within a week or two.

Forget all of those fics where the OC and Moira don't get along. Moira and Marianne are going to be best friends. This is a Moira MacTaggert stan account only.

Hope you liked this chapter! Don't be shy, leave a comment, please. Let me know what you thought - if you liked it, why you liked it, whether or not you thought the characters were In Character (that's definitely important, so let me know your thoughts on that), your thoughts on what may come in the future? Anything. I appreciate all and any comments left on my stories.