Forever home

Tommy broached the subject at dinner.  He laid all his reasons out ending finally with, “So she needs a home and we *are* registered foster parents.” He waited to see what they would say, although he already thought he knew.

“Dad? Do I have to share my room?” JJ asked.

“No, kiddo,” Kat laughed. “She’ll have her own room. I’ll turn the guest room into her room. I think I’ll let her pick the colors for the walls, though. She has probably never had a room to decorate.”

“At least not one that she remembers.”  Tommy said softly.  “I think I need to talk to Jaina and make some arrangements.”

–.

Jaina was sitting in science class, trying to concentrate. So far, it hadn't been a good day. Breakfast had started out fine, at least until Justice's face planted in her fourth bowl of cereal. Jaina thought it sucked. Justice had been through hell, didn’t the universe owe the kid some kind of break?

At school, the kids from Raven house discovered bigoted words had been spray painted on all their lockers.  Jaina had just stared at hers for a moment before opening it.  She was used to being called names.  The look on Clark’s face, though, when he’d seen the word on his made her want to kill someone.

Why his bothered her more she didn’t know. Okay, she knew, but she didn’t know what to do about it.  How do you tell someone you had a crush on them, when you didn’t know if you’d be around in a day or not?

She was running all this through her mind, and occasionally looked down at her bag which contained a failed history test. A test she had crammed for!  It was all just fucked up. She felt heat pressing at her temples. 

“Jaina?”  Dr. Oliver had come up to her desk, “Do you need a break?”

For a moment, she wondered why he had asked and then she looked down at her desk. It was smoking. She leapt to her feet and ran. A hall monitor tried to ask for a hall pass, but she shoved past calling over her shoulder. “Sorry! I need a power room break.”

When the school board had decided to let the Raven kids go to school, all of the schools in the area had been equipped with several rooms with S.H.I.E.L.D. technology. Jaina didn’t know how they worked, but in the rooms they couldn’t access their powers. They even worked on her, much to her surprise.

She ran into one of them, slammed the door, then locked it.  She sank down on the bench and buried her face in her hands. She’d almost lit the school up, which have probably meant being sent away again.  “Just breathe,” she whispered to herself as she fought against both her emotions and her powers.

“Are you alright?” Dr. Oliver asked when she returned twenty minutes later to get her bags.

“I’m just tired.”  Jaina glared at the burnt desk.  “It's hard, not losing control. Some days it's like the fire is the one in control, not me.”

“Maybe you just need to relax.”  He looked at her with a concerned expression.  “Tell you what, come to my place after school and I’ll teach you a relaxation technique that's always helped me. You can meet my wife, she wants to meet you.”

“Why?” Jaina was instantly defensive.

“You’d have to ask her.”  He shrugged.

Jaina bit her lip as she considered it. She wasn’t sure about going to a teacher’s house. Wasn’t sure he didn’t have anything nefarious planned. However, she really wanted to know a way to control her powers.  Speaking of powers, even if he did try anything, he’d just have to go up in a ball of flame. “I guess I could. I’d have to get permission first.”

Getting permission turned out to be easy. Mrs. Thunderstone seemed as if she had been expecting the call.  Jaina found herself riding to her teacher's house in his car.  

He lived way out of town.  “My son says we live in the middle of nowhere,” he joked. Jaina said nothing.

At first things went well; Jaina met Kat and JJ. She picked up the kata and Tommy taught her quickly. Tommy suspected Jaina had been at least a first degree black belt before her memory loss.

It went great until dinner. Kat had ordered Chinese. Jaina had loaded her plate with a little of each dish and had just taken a bite of the sweet and sour chicken when Tommy broached the subject he had invited her over to discuss. “Kat, JJ and I have been talking about you coming here to live.”

Jaina lowered her chopsticks, opened her mouth, then shut it.  Suddenly, she pushed away from the table, jumped to her feet and ran.  Tommy swore under his breath and went after her. He caught up with her outside. Much to his surprise, she was crying. “Jaina…”

She whirled on him. “Do you think this is funny? Trick the Inhuman into thinking you actually want her and then when she trusts you, you kick her to the curb! Well, I don’t think it's funny!  How many times do you people think you can trick me?”

“Jaina…”  Tommy tried again, “Come inside. Let’s talk.”

“Leave! Me! Alone!” She yelled before turning and running down the road.  Tommy considered going after her and driving her back. It was quite a walk from the Olivers' home to Raven house. He wasn’t sure she would take the ride, though.

Finally he went inside to call Mrs. Thunderstone.  The smell of smoke reached him and he saw Kat was spraying a fire extinguisher over the table.  Tommy stared at the table for a long time. It was a charred mess covered in burnt food and extinguisher foam.  Kat looked up at him. “Well… that didn’t go well.”

“No,” Tommy said. “No, it did not.”