ataraxionlogs | o14. quasi closed.

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o14. quasi closed.

CHARACTERS: Charles Xavier + Caprica "Natasi" Six + Garrett Hawke; and others.
LOCATION: Probably there are trees.
WARNINGS: TBA.
SUMMARY: The sad story how we became lonely two legged creatures.
NOTES: A series of pre-planned threads and a general catch all for October, so please, if you want to do something, shout at me!

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[ A lonely tongue of flame flickers low in a metal frame at the tent’s center. It spindles slow-burning resin into smoke, warming the tent walls into shades of orange. As lamps go, this one provides a comfortable amount of light and requires little in the way of maintenance.

Having Erik back around is good for these sorts of things.

He’s lounging in his corner with the knife handle he’s working hidden in his hands, shoulders bolstered against tatty bedding and the roll of his jumpsuit. Clean, shorn, shaven. Sawdust litters the floor at his elbow. After an hour or two he’ll sweep it into a tinderbox and go to sleep. This has become the routine.

Tonight, for the first time in a long time, he steals looks at Charles while he works.

His pile of sawdust is smaller than usual.

He wants to talk. ]

[ Sitting cross legged on bedding, bare foot and dressed down to clothes he could comfortably pass out in, Charles is in his own world, an additional mental pocket dimension enclosed within the exclusive universe created here by lamp light and tent walls.

He's managed to manifest a pair of silvery steel scissors, chosen for virtue of being a simple machine -- his fingers are slid into its loops and he tests the movement of the implement, now and then. This was about ten minutes ago, and despite his best efforts, he's been unable to manifest anything along with it, like something to cut, or anything of use and value. An improvement from a week ago, but nowhere near how it had been prior to the crash, and he's not sure what is more curious -- that it's weakened, or that it remains at all.

Anyway. He has some scissors now and nothing to do with them, so that's groovy. He uses the blunt edge to pick at the grit beneath a thumbnail before registering that he has Erik's attention, through no action of his own.

Charles glances over, an eyebrow crooking up.

Tired but too thoughtful for sleep, his routine follows on from Erik's naturally, or the other way around. Hunger seems a bit of a constant, and the shifting light throws into sharp relief where he's gotten thinner in the face, but a meal of tasteless reptile meat and seeds makes it an easy feeling to abide by. ]

[ Charles’ hunger makes his own harder to ignore, source accounted for and dials wound down to adjust for the added distraction. It’s a process he manages without much thought, hardship integrated into the white noise of his continued existence.

But he’s all the more aware in the lamplight, private discomfort dense behind his sternum.

He’d prefer that Charles looked less like shit.

He looks human again, himself, after a timely transfusion and a week’s worth of re-hydration. His good eye is clear, focus fluid, engaging contact with the sort of liquid steel confidence that dropped a stadium on the white house and occasionally sees him in a cape.

The tricky thing about nursing dragons back to health is that “getting better” means they go back to burning down villages and eating everyone’s livestock. ]

We couldn’t surrender.

[ This is a logical statement he makes unprompted into the privacy of their tent, unrelated to guilt or insecurity. ]

Edited 2015-10-05 09:03 (UTC)

[ Charles closes silvery scissors with the same negligent gentility as folding a fan, blandly ignoring internal assessment as to how much like shit he might indeed look, already feeling it. Conversely, he prefers Erik like this -- with his wits, livestock or no.

He sets his scissors aside. In a few minutes, they'll fade from reality, without his notice.

It's Erik that has his attention. ]

To Van Rijn, [ he fills in. If Erik is ready to talk, he will try to help pave the way. ]

[ She said she would come again, when the sun had risen. And whatever else Iezabel Sadonna has become, a liar she is not. The visitation is heralded by that distinct mindform, a nearly-static preservation of thought that mirrors her painstaking self-mummification. Upon closer examination, there is a certain layering to that mental structure, like a new edifice built on much older foundations. But both are rigid, both somber, together resembling more a carefully curated ruin than a space of active inhabitation

She's wearing her mask and gloves, less out of courtesy than a desire to go unnoticed while in this state. She's even gone so far as to weave a mnemonic misdirection about herself; weird as she may appear - though really, how much weirder is she than many of the other inhabitants of the camp - attention short of the properly questing tends to slide off of her. She leaves little impression beyond the sense that something has slipped by, a flicker caught in the corner of the eye, gone as soon as noticed, taken as a mistaken impression.

Unless, of course, you happen to be expecting her.

Ieza appears, a long shadow outside of Charles' ad hoc home, stooping to peer through eyeslits and tentflap. Short of her motions, the crunch of stone and squeak of mud under her boots, she's essentially silent. But her presence, a dense darkness crowned by a pale ovoid, is insistent. She looms, a swath of black in the bright midday sun. ]

[ Of course, Van Rijn. Erik remembers his address to the network as clearly as he does Raven in the shuttle on the way back, blood everywhere.

But that isn’t where his mind is at. His mind is here, with the cut of Charles’ face in the firelight, and the shamble of their tarp fort in the jungle’s shadow. The ghost of Christmas present. ]

It tried to stop us.

[ The living vacuum, clawing light in, tugging on optic nerves. ] The thing in the ship. [ ‘Moira.’ He doesn’t have the heart to jab at Charles’ government conquest, unease for the reference dense in his face. ]

It’s probably still alive.

Edited (rewrote cuz reasons) 2015-10-07 05:42 (UTC)

[ Charles starts to say something; doesn't. Which only serves to censor Erik from the words manifesting from lurch of bleak-- something that is too tired and constant to be fear, but comes close enough. We couldn't surrender, Erik had said.

His hands knot briefly amongst the bedding on either side of him. ]

It didn't jump away. It's weaker than it was.

[ A beat, then; ]

Out there. [ His head tips in a generalised direction. ] Did you feel it?

[ The first thing that notices her is the dog.

A somewhat skinny but not unhealthy animal, a black labrador in the early dawn days of its adulthood, lifting its head to direct a blast of noisy panting at the intruder. Something about her draws the sleepy dog up onto his paws, and issue one loud clap of a bark, while its tail wags uncertainly.

In the midst of that, Charles realises he isn't alone too, moments before her shadow filled the tent flap, and he struggles to his feet, joints creaky and protesting as he climbs out of where he was sitting crossed legged in his bedding.

Inside, it's comfortable enough for two. The fact that there are two places to sleep attest to that. Neither are for the dog, who is stayed when Charles rests a hand on his glossy black head. ]

Come in, [ Charles invites, a note of-- well, he expected this. It doesn't take a telepath. ] He's friendly.

[ Revenant though she may be at present, Ieza is not anathema to dogs- that much is clear from the animal's reaction. If anything she will be less interesting to the labrador than a warm bodied person, unless she's mistaken for a jerky chew. Ieza hesitates as the dog barks at her, though not because of any cynophobia. Quite the opposite, really. This is a living being, healthy and well developed. A creature of some size and complexity. Her lingering gaze might well be taken for what it is- the tacit question: is that for me?

But probably not, not considering the way Charles treats the dog. Disappointing, but hardly surprising. They kept hounds on her family's Lorith estate for the purposes of hunting, and though her own fairly feline inclinations prevented her from bonding with them, her cultural inclination is to view them as companions rather than chattel. Still...

Ieza folds herself into the tent, descending into a kneel on the unoccupied sleeping spot, trying her best not to eye the labrador hungrily. She knows she must be patient, and though patience is easier to sustain in her current state, the changes she has retained since her regression almost all stem from a desire to regain what she has lost.

She is, at least, patient enough to inquire- ] Your friend- he is well? Better now? [ -before addressing her own wishes, the real reason why she is here. It also serves to remind Charles, just in case his memory or sense of indebtedness are fleeting things. Ieza is relying on both. ]

The humid continental climate of New York State is lovely this time of year; enough of a breeze that the moisture suspended in the air doesn't cling or clog in a tangible way. Sunlight highlights the turrets of the mansion roof and skates off the lake in fragmented shimmers, limns the trees, deepens their variable palettes and textures into a limitless depth of green. The balcony railing is warm under Charles' hands.

There is subtle wrongness here or there: too many weeds tangled around the School plaque up front; his own two feet planted, standing on his own power. Somewhere behind him, his pupils are shouting and talking, and soon, Hank will come out to them, calling, reprimand a poor fit for his growly voice and self-effacing demeanor. Yet there is no babble of secondhand thoughts rolling like a brook through his mind, or pain to interrupt it. It's pleasant, though. Convincing. He might not bother to question it, were it not for another presence shadowing his sleeping mind, picking out the details, gently courting him to lucidity.

It makes sense that this is where William comes to find him. This particular dream, where Charles once found himself frequently host to supplicants from all over the world.

Of course, William's a bit older. Twenty-six, maybe. Twenty-seven? Not a high schooler, at any rate, this young Asian-looking fellow who squeaks the glass door shut and makes sandal slapping sounds up until he draws even with Charles above the halcyon grandeur of the view. He's wearing a red T-shirt, for luck, and jeans that bell slightly at the bottoms, but it isn't yet the 70's; the tailoring is quite modest. "Wow," he says. He glances at Charles. "How do I enroll?"

Edited (whatever) 2015-10-08 02:48 (UTC)

So are we.

[ Matter-of-fact. There’s a desperation about their situation now that needn’t be manufactured by an eldritch deity. And here they are, squatting in proximity all the same.

Distrust bristles in his chops almost before Charles has finished the next question, dread for the idea clouding hazy at the back of his mind, dimming at his stare. The idle turning of the unfinished grip in his hands stalls out. He shakes his head just slightly -- ‘no.’ ]

Have you?

Edited (less agro) 2015-10-10 03:50 (UTC)

[ The track of her thoughts doesn't invite any particular tells from Charles, save for the way his fingers pinch light around the dog's ear, possessive. She detected something like love in Erik, and it would be a fair estimate to imagine the same in return, but Charles isn't going to feed his dog -- Lincoln -- to anyone.

Probably.

But he keeps his expression school, save for the interest sharper in his eyes. He sits opposite her, and keeps an arm slung about Lincoln, who leans into half-hug, panting contentedly, oblivious as to most things save for that this new place smells better than the last. ]

Much better, [ Charles volunteers. He beats her to the chase. ] And I hadn't forgotten what you said, last.

[ He isn't nervous, but he generally prefers to have mastery of the conversational field, and so queries-- ]

You're hungry now, aren't you.

Edited (more meta, why not) 2015-10-08 10:04 (UTC)

It was easier before I came here.

I thought that these little machines- these nanites- [ something she'd feel dubious about had they not been explained to her by someone whom she trusted implicitly, a trust extended based upon a misconception, but a trust not yet misused ] -I thought they had mended me.

The optimism of vitality, [ she says, dry in all senses. ] They only delayed the process. Drew it out. And I remember it too well, now. Living. Feeling. Learning.

[ And should Charles be seeking to know, the truth will trickle out here. The careful calculation she made before dragging Erik back to camp, the brief but very serious thought she'd given to devouring him so as to regain herself. The decision not to, based less on any ethical restraint than the knowledge that the crime would have consequences upon her return to what counts for society here.

And she most certainly would have done it anyways, had she the impression Erik truly wanted to die. His will to live, and the love Charles bears him, were the only things that stayed her hand. ]

I will kill hectares of forest to be able to learn again, to change. I would broaden the scar tenfold for just a month's extension of true life.

[ She parts her hands in an open gesture of appeal. ]

But I'd rather that not be necessary.

[ The pretense is that Fenris is only here for the dog. The dog knows him--perhaps, like his master, better than Fenris would think--and unlike his master, Fenris knows the dog back. And is willing to pet it.

But before long it's Hawke he's talking to. ]

He told me he thought--you [ the pauses are getting smaller, for what that's worth; Hawke, except with a beard; Hawke, except with his mouth on Fenris'-- ] were interested.

[ Donnic. Nostalgic story time started off as an interrogation only slightly more subtle than Cassandra's, but his guard has slipped steadily downward. He's rubbing one bare foot against Dog's proffered belly, and his brief glance up is very brief, but not hostile. ]

[ During the hottest, dampest hours of the afternoon, Remus usually pauses his attempts to manually labor his way out of feeling useless. He has limits, after all--he's ill, as they say, and the diet here isn't kind to already-skinny sick people, and it's bloody

fucking

hot.

He's too uncomfortable to sleep, even hiding in the shade of his tent, so when Charles walks by the opening he's awake and sprawled out across the ground on his stomach, hand outstretched, trying to wandlessly accio a bottle of water that's just out of reach.

Every now and then, it works. 'Works.' That would be the source of his blossoming black eye, and part of the source of the irritation in the gaze he aims up at Charles. ]

Setting aside the incredibly statistically unlikely approximations that we crash into something, [ he says. His imitation of Charles' accent could use a little work. ]

[ There'd been a stray cat in some temporary hovel numbering who even remembers in his younger Ferelden days, and they'd been there long enough to make a game of it. It was crooked tailed and hungry, but not so much that latter thing that it wouldn't run off at first sign of interaction, and what pieces of fish or fowl they left it only ever disappeared over night. Carver and Garrett would take turns at trying to catch it -- Carver would simply try to be the fastest, while Garrett spent a lot of dignity bent over and making kissy sounds.

Mabaris were a lot easier to understand.

But it had been Bethany that interfered, sitting patiently for a solid hour with cold shreds of chicken, unmoving even when the cat pushed its twitchy nose within reaching distance. After some unknown milestone passed, she was able to run her hand down its skinny spine. (They all had to move on before much more could come of that friendship.)

That doesn't mean valuable lessons couldn't be learned, if you were Garrett, and not Carver. Here, Hawke sits, feet up, cleaning his pauldron of grime and dirt and damp. Patient about it, while it's Dog that continues to be the incorrigible slut, belly up and kicky paws.

Listening, before that wrings from Garrett a crooked smile. ]

I wonder, [ he says. ] No, Donnic got all up in arms at me trying to use him as a go between for Aveline. It's a wonder they managed marriage -- like two blind people attempting a handshake.

Edited 2015-10-10 05:36 (UTC)

Reluctantly, Charles is giving in to the knowledge that this is a dream. Tiding out, with the debris of ugly context revealed, that he is not home, although he would like to forget about filthy jungles and not enough food and eldritch horrors for a little while longer. His hands curl their fingers around the balcony railing as if to anchor himself in.

He looks to William, and almost smiles.

"First, you need superpowers," he says.

He's dressed nicely. Nicer than he ever did on the Tranquility, which is a low bar. He only ever put on a full suit for network addresses or trying to get laid, and even that latter one, Johanna made fun, seemed more distracted about all the layers. Here, he is attempting neither, he's just casually in tailored grey, and depicted as old as he is, sleeping in a tent, with grey-speckled scruff. "Second, you're a decade too late."

Edited 2015-10-10 05:58 (UTC)

[ Charles stops when a Welsh tent makes a fairly poor impression of his own accent, looking back just enough to see where Remus is collapsed over within the over-warm depths. His stare, sharp with curiousity, recontextualises, softens.

Winces. ]

Bit of a mouthful when you say it out loud.

[ So summoned, he doubles back, peeling the flap of the tent away a little further. Crouches down enough to find the water bottle -- telepaths -- and roll it closer. ]

Not yet.

[ That isn't meant to come out as especially ominous, just contemplative. But his focus turns outward just as quickly, settling on Erik, feeling unease like the heat off a small radiator. There exists the instinct to assuage it, even if it's entirely empathetic.

Still-- ]

It tried to stop us, [ he repeats, with a quiet kind of insistence ] and for whatever that's worth, it couldn't. We won. No one's ever been able to say that before.

[ There is a tilt of his head, one that acknowledges the immediate present. Gaunt faces in fire light. He should make himself eat more lizards. ]

Edited (hmmm requires accuracy and more purple meta) 2015-10-10 13:14 (UTC)

Quite.

[ Alright. He hasn't had to think this way for something like two months, but he has had to, before. Vampires in need of living human blood and werewolves changing to monsters despite being out of sight of any moon and angels who were dying from being cut off from Heaven and demonic possession and the children infected with zombie diseases and so many things that had landed in his lap over the past year and a half. He is a scientist, one with an open mind by necessity.

One of these days, he won't be surprised if something fell out. ]

When the ship we all crawled out of was in the air, it had-- infrastructure. For a time, I was the department head of a science division called xenobiology and genetics. Myself and my colleagues converted it into more immediate usefulness, I suppose -- we realised that we all came from places with different rules. In my world, there are people with exceptional human ability, springing from mutation, that are able to do things others consider impossible. In another world, a secret society of magic users manipulate reality directly with magic wands and incantations.

We existed in a terrain with its own set of rules, impervious to our own means of comprehension, but we thought, if we worked together, pooled intellect and experience and speciality, we could create new solutions.

[ He pauses, there, absently scratching his dog's ribs. ]

I'll need a comprehensive description of what sustains you -- if 'life' suffices normally, then details as to what entails would be a start, and what makes 'life' important. There could be ways to find substitutes -- I have a colleague whose witchcraft is involved in blood-related magics, who was able to help sustain a passenger who suffered similar restrictions.

[ How he misses Severus Snape. ]

Edited 2015-10-10 11:13 (UTC)

[ If she yet lived, this conversation would bring her such joy. Her desire to live is driven by a wish to engage actively in just that sort of collaboration, to drink deep of the potential this world and its strange arrangement have to offer. She does not resent being here, being far from home; she resents being unable to take advantage of it.

As it is - as she is, at least right now - Ieza grits her teeth. This is not what she asked for. She requested a specific kind of assistance, a living offering, a material boon- not some motions about a compromise with the rules of the universe.

Also, she's already received this advice, albeit in fewer words and without her applying leverage, and already rather violently rejected it. And while she no longer has the wherewithal for quite the same degree of volatility, a mental rigor mortis has superseded emotionality. Hers is a double-bind, almost entirely of her own devising. It is difficult for her to change her ways, even as she insistently desires just that capacity. ]

Parsimonious translation- [ she answers, able at least to call up a response to the question, even if she lacks enthusiasm. ] It is a practice of the body remembering its previous state. It requires an equivalent concentration of complex vitality. One can't get something for nothing, not at this level of elaboration. [ Unless that fairly fundamental law has been suspended. And who knows, it might just. But she can't seem to get excited at the prospect. ] There are some specifics to the ceremony, but mostly it involves a kind of ritual sacrifice. [ Like most ritual, it is less what it is than what it means that grants it efficacy. ]

A horse would suffice for a fairly lengthy period of restoration. As would a fully grown human being.

[ Any chance he has some of those lying spare? ]

I could be of more help - be more flexible in my thinking - were my present condition ameliorated.

Edited (standards and practices) 2015-10-10 13:47 (UTC)

Bit stupid to say it at all, [ Remus counters. He is being ridiculous. He knows he's being ridiculous--perhaps telepathy might also catch the sense of removal, of watching himself be ridiculous and thinking perhaps he should not be--but he's not appeased by the bottle, even though he picks it up and opens it. His tone is light. ] When they catch up with us, they're probably not going to be very happy about what we've done to their ship.

"Hmm. Sorry about that." The apology seems to carry a cadence that goes deeper than the fact that William missed out on this otherdimensional educational experience. Something to do with the spoiled dream, probably. Or why he's here at all, insinuating himself into fine weather and architecture built to make a man feel powerful.

William turns. Backs up to the rail and boosts himself up to sit on it. This would be tremendously dangerous in real life; each story of the mansion is unusually tall, and they are a few stories up. Here, though, the wind plays with his hair and the edges of his lucky shirt, but is incapable of wounding him. He is as much in his element here as Charles is in the waking minds of people, some exceptionally stubborn, insane, or otherwise contrary psychic personages excepted. He looks at the Englishman and folds his hands together on his lap.

He says, "I have to ask you for a favor. I lost somebody, with recon syndrome, and I'm having a real bitch of a time trying to find him by myself."

[ It's true. They had help, but they won. Insofar as crashing into a jungle planet and surviving on seared lizard and jury rigged wiring constitutes winning.

He could pick further. Peel hope down to the core.

Instead he watches Charles, bare toes curled in what little warmth the lamp puts off. ]

Come here, [ he says.

u want sum fuk?? ]

[ Inviting himself to sit, he does, just inside the tent, with his back against the tight woven fabric of its insides. He has an arm slung around bent knee, but there is little else casual about him.

A drastic drop in diet has him thinner about the face, but so is true of them all. There's a newly healed head wound still visible at his hairline, and he hasn't washed the day's filth off his hands, nails sporting black crescents of dirt. ]

If I said it was statistically unlikely they would catch up with us, would you throw something at me?

[ He knows Remus' annoyance -- or worse -- is genuine, but still. ]

Edited (whoops) 2015-10-11 08:33 (UTC)

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o14. quasi closed.

TENT

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A Visitation

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chucky x!

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falls upon from the sky, screeching

twice

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