ataraxionlogs | oo6. closedish.

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oo6. closedish.

CHARACTERS: Charles Xavier and Severus Snape; Remus Lupin; Emma Swan; Nuala; Rogue; Johanna Mason; Odessa Knutson; Erik Lehnsherr; Captain Hook (Killian Jones); Hank McCoy; Raven Darkholme; Cassandra Anderson, others as they happen.
LOCATION: Level fourteen, room one hundred; laundry facilities; bar on level fourteen; kitchen on level fourteen; the Gardens; media library; level twenty, room one-hundred and ninety two; others as they happen.
WARNINGS: TBA.
SUMMARY: Adjusting to being a different person is a struggle.
NOTES: This is only partially closed. I'm using this as a forum for people to poke him, as random run ins may happen as I tag out instead. Please let me know if you'd like to do anything, and I'll be happy to set up a thread (unless you're feel ambitious).

to ever spend my life sitting playing future games

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I wouldn't be surprised if it compelled him to check in, actually.

[ Charles head sinks against his hand, propped elbow on the bar, and he slides a glance over to where his glass had gone. He kind of controlled-collapses in that direction, hooking a finger at the rim to steer it back.

And Raven is here.

Immediately, something heavy settles inside his gut, but he does her the courtesy of largely ignoring it for the moment. ]

[Raven thunks a glass of her own down on the table. Eventually she's going to learn that things go horribly wrong when she tries to drink real liquor with fellow mutants, but she only has a sample size of one and a half so far so she's going to give herself sommmmme. Whisky. Is what appears to be in this bottle.]

My day's been great. Thanks, [she says, after the pour. She half expects her brother to intervene, is slow to take the cup for exactly that reason.] But I'm sorry I haven't been checking in. It's really good to see you.

[ He doesn't intervene. He barely seems to notice, for all that his gaze settles lazy on her glass, seeing through it.

But Charles looks up and sees her, shiny blue and lambent yellow and scattered irises. All points of conversation he could summon seem meaningless, burning questions from before turning into new ones that she couldn't possibly answer.

Oh, wait-- ]

What've you been up to?

[ Yeah, that one's still relevant. ]

[Raven is disconcerted. She almost expects to taste orange juice when she tips back her first swallow, and the fact that she doesn't feels like something of a disappointment, almost, sort of, like biting into an raisin cookie mistaken for chocolate chip. She sets her cup down again and squints at him.

Anderson had advised against judging, which seems right. She finds herself wishing there'd been a little more something that Anderson had advised to do.] Making friends, [she says.] I've been talking to Elizabeth-- um, the one who sort of flipped out on the network. And Hank, the Petrellis. Getting to know people, learning some about the ship.

I'm gonna talk to Bail Organa about making my volunteer work more structured. Maybe set up some kind of shift program, so more people can get on-board. [Abandoning her drink, she settles her scaly elbows down instead and fixes him with a very frank look.] You should come.

I'm on a sabbatical.

[ There's a mumbled quality to that, mostly because he's resting jaw in the palm of his hand, elbow set against bar. More frank than sassy, but more elusive than direct, his gaze tugging back down to unfinished drink without particular to desire to drink more from it after all.

Probably because she's given him trouble for it before. He remembers. His gaze also slides to her arm, the numbers marked there. Regardless of what he finds; ]

Erik can't be thrilled.

[Mystique's smile looks a little wry, not quite melancholy. If she's disappointed by his saBBATICAL she doesn't let it on, overly, very much, watching him.] Erik went through flight training with me. He doesn't seem to mind learning about the way the Tranquility works, and how to do stuff here. I guess I pitch it a certain way.

But it's not like he'd stop me if I really wanted to do it anyhow. [She still has a nice empty set where her department delineation would be, the black showing neatly against the blue of her scales, despite the low light of the bar.] Sabbaticals have ending dates. You showed me in the faculty handbook, when we talked about how your mom would've taken it. You doing something as outrageously low-class as 'having a job.'

[ Of course Erik did. News of camaraderie earns-- not much in the way of reaction, really. Everything external left to chance and habit with everything internal kept in hard, black glass. So is the aim. ]

In contrast to being outrageously high class, unemployed, and eccentric. I've been doing terrific, you'll be pleased to hear.

This is not terrific.

[Enough games!! Whether or not Raven is actually younger than her brother has never been the point, she spent many years enjoying the privileges that came with being a mini-Xavier in all but name, protected and cared for and taught many things. There comes a time for lizard-like girls to assert themselves, however, and she learned from the best about bossing people around.

She looks at him straight. Tries to sound reasonable.]

I know we didn't talk for a long time, the way you remember things, but I'm here now. I want to know why-- what's going on with you. And if I can help, I'm gonna try. If you're mad at me, [not to be self-aggrandizing (though maybe a little) (look) (little girls like butterflies need no excuse).] If this is something about what I did over there, I can take it.

[ Alright, enough games, even if he was only just starting to get into it. Fixed stare is placidly received, because that is customarily the way he looks at people -- less needling, less prying for information as one might expect of a telepath, but worse still, a kind of open and kind receptiveness, as if you and all the thoughts rattling about in your head are liable to fall in.

Except now it's kind of hazy, and guarded. ]

I don't want you to take it. It's not even.

[ He stops, seeing past her. Puts her into a blurrier foreground. ]

Alex took one look at me and asked who died, decided everyone must have if I didn't want to talk about it, and Hank knows the school shut down and so obviously something terrible must have happened and he doesn't want to know anything, and you think you did something more than what already happened, and it's really.

It's not all like that. The world spins on, and I don't know where it's going anymore, and I don't-- I can't care. There's a war being fought in Southeast Asia that's a fucking nightmare, and it's been ten years, Raven.

[ That was a bit of a ramble, but he eventually lists to the point, looking at her. ]

I'm not mad at you, but you've finished with me. I made peace with that.

[ Lying. But it's the kind of lie that sounds pretty convincing, having convinced yourself of it already. ]

[For a long moment, Raven is too confused to be hurt. She gets stuck on all the words and the padded not-explanation and the extra background and setting information that framed the 'go away' to immediately recognize this for the 'go away' that it is. Implies. She searches his face for cues as to the real meaning of this. There is always another war, how does that change this?

How can it have changed them, up here, so completely?

Eventually, she reaches a conclusion. Draws herself up slightly, fingers on the counter a moment before the slip off, fall back, closing an uncertain fist at her side.] I wanna be mad at you right now, [she says.] Telling me I'm finished with you, when I'm standing right here. That's-- even when you're trying to let me be, you're telling me what I am, and it's--

[--probably why she stayed away, when they weren't trapped on a bizarre spaceship together. She lapses into only the briefest silence.] But I know you're just trying to protect yourself, [she presses on.] It could've been me who gained a decade's worth of memories this last Jump, and then it would've been me pushing you away right now. Whatever really happened back in the other world, whatever you didn't tell Hank or Alex, it looks like it hurt you. A lot. So this is me not mad. [It takes her saying so to decide that it's true. fINE. This doesn't have to be about her, really. She's okay. Worried is all, but decidedly okay.] And I'll back off.

But you do care. This isn't peace. [She waves her hands at him and his boozy cup and his excessive hair, the profound isolation of this particular corner of the Tranquility passenger area. Raven suspects Anderson will have said something along these lines to him already, but she tries anyway:] Whatever this is, it isn't working.

[ There is nothing that she's saying that is wrong, apparently, even when it directly contradicts the things he'd just laid claim to; no argument forms, no protest, or even the beginnings of contrary defense in his expression. Just listening.

Enduring, in a way. ]

I don't need your help, [ he decides, after some silence has lapsed. Falters. No, that doesn't work. Tries again. ] I don't want your help.

[ There is a second spent on seeming like he's not certain of that, entirely, but the next second of maintained eye contact seems convinced that its close enough to the truth to hold some conviction. ]

Well I'm gonna be here to give it to you when you change your mind. [She leans across the counter, on impulse. Lays one blue hand across his forearm. Wishes he would've laughed, earlier, amid the grimacing and backpedaling, but it's too late for that now. Charles is occupied with making up fallacies about what he needs and wants.]

Things are different now. You're different. I'm different. [She seems convinced that's close enough to the truth not to take it back immediately afterward, anyway. It doesn't matter if she arrived on the ship on the cusp of abandoning him on the beach. It's been months.] We can be different.

[ There's no dramatic flinch back as Raven touches him, no bridling, certainly no ability to shake her off, as if maybe the gentle fall of blue fingers and bright knuckles bore tonnes of pressure she doesn't even know about. His gaze claps over her hand when his own fails to do so

and looks up at her claim for having changed. He remembers, of course, that there had been a shift. An argument, and then something better. It's scary, how much he would like for them to be different. ]

I don't remember [ he says, quietly, deliberately ] being torn away from here. I know-- we know it doesn't work that way. But what I do know is this won't matter.

Before, I thought I could heal everything, here, with you and Erik, and I was wrong. I don't want to be wrong again, I've had enough of that, thanks.

[ Now he physically retracts, unsure exactly what it is he's proposing, like maybe they ought to avoid one another, try not to make eye contact when they pass each other in the corridors, but this isn't really about common sense. He's used to her being so far away that she still is when standing in front of him.

That within twenty-four hours, in the true timeline, beyond what he recalls, he's chasing her across the world, this is also very far away. ]

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