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Post by x on Aug 14, 2014 16:46:51 GMT
“You spent your childhood protecting a girl you knew little about. You speak of wanting to help others with you teachings,” she pointed out. “It’s not something you have to live up to: you already are. The cards agreed—the hierophant. I am only agreeing with what it told me. I can see that man in your future, the one who will let his past shape but not control his life.”
The way Magda put it, he could understand how she’d come to that conclusion. At the same time, however, the times when he felt as though he could barely keep Raven safe seemed far too numerous. He didn’t need his telepathy to see that she detested having to go around as anything other than what she was, but he had no clue as to how he could improve the situation for her.
“Well, that certainly is a flattering perspective,” he responded, keeping his tone light. “Thank you for that.”
He shifted in his seat before deciding to switch topics. “Though, I am a bit curious: how did you begin card reading? Did someone teach it to you, or did you learn on your own?”
How complicated was it to learn? On the surface it seemed simple enough, but the amount and sort of concentration Magda had put into the reading implied that there was no small amount of skill that went into it.
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Post by x on Aug 13, 2014 16:17:26 GMT
“And they are accepting of your powers?”
Charles shrugged again. “Platt, at the very least, is in total awe of my telepathy. Moira’s not as easily impressed, but she hasn’t tried to keep me out of her mind, so I’d count that as a victory.”
Though, he didn’t exactly need their approval. Even if he did, there wasn’t much stopping him from simply reaching into their minds and forcing them to accept his mutation. It was much more convenient when they simply went along with it, though; planting thoughts and feelings and ideas, though great fun, could be exhausting depending on what exactly he was aiming to achieve.
“I imagine you have seen any minds with your exceptional abilities,” Erik responded in kind, and Charles preened a bit at the praise. Exceptional wasn’t the most common word he heard with regards to his telepathy. “So I take your words as quite the compliment. I also have to say that you’re the first person to say that to me.”
Something they had in common, then. And what a shame, really. Clearly, the world had no idea what true beauty was when it occurred.
“As you should,” he said with a grin. “I may have encountered many minds, but none have even come close to the brilliance of yours.”
“Why are you with the CIA?”
“They sought me out,” Charles said. “Well, Moira sought me out, to be precise. She’d witnessed an exchange between Shaw and a U.S. military official before a teleporter took him across the U.S. in the span of a few minutes. Obviously, her superiors didn’t believe a word of it, so she located an expert on genetic mutation.”
She had come to him following his defense, tracked him down to a local pub and sparked his interest with her memories of Emma Frost and her diamond shell, of the teleporter and his demonic appearance. Really, in the face of that, Shaw could spend the rest of his life as a drooling idiot, for all Charles cared. Frost and the teleporter—and now the bloke who could create tornadoes—were Charles’s primary focus.
“I went along with her once I looked insider her mind and found her memories of Shaw’s henchmen. I’ve spent my life alone, adrift in a sea of ordinary humans. When the opportunity to encounter others like me presented itself, I would have been a fool not to take it.”
Charles knew of Erik’s suicide mission. He knew what Shaw had put him through as a child (and really, the man had aged remarkably well, which was something that would require further investigation) and had felt every moment of Erik’s agony. And such motivation for the sake of a human, even if it was Erik’s own mother. He had no idea how to connect with that; his own mother had been distant at best and completely absent at worst. The staff had cared more about him. Had someone killed the maid because he’d been unable to tap into his powers, would he have responded as Erik had? It was difficult to say; Charles had been a very different person in 1944.
“Didn’t expect you, though,” he admitted.
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Nov 15, 2014 22:58:48 GMT
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Post by x on Aug 13, 2014 15:29:19 GMT
“Thanks for seein’ me,” Rogue said as she let herself in. “Ah didn’t know where else ah could go.”
An obvious lie, of course, but Charles didn’t comment on it. If she’d chosen not to employ her alternate option, there was most certainly a reason. Most likely, it had everything to do with the fact that she couldn’t touch anyone without fear of hurting the person in question. He wouldn’t begrudge her a lie if it let her feel as though she had some choice in the matter.
“Mind if ah sit down?”
“By all means,” he said, gesturing to one of the chairs.
There were certain dynamics that came with one’s position during a conversation: standing usually lent itself to strength, to hostility, to a certain probability of confrontation.
“Ah know things are rough and ah haven’t actually done much to contribute around here,” she continued. “Ah wanna start to help around here, in any way ah can. It might even help me get comfortable with mah skin? Ah dunno. It was a thought. What do ya think?”
“I think that, for the moment, you are a student and your primary focus should be, as always, your education,” he offered, his voice as gentle as he could make it. “However, there is something to be said for a bit of additional responsibility—especially at your age. And I do agree; perhaps the sense of accomplishment would help you to gain more confidence in yourself, which may in turn help you increase your control of your abilities.”
There had to be a way for Rogue to once again be able to touch the world around her. Perhaps her abilities were tied directly to her emotional state: in times of emotional distress, her powers would act almost of their own volition. If such was indeed the case, then doing everything possible to increase her self-confidence and make her as comfortable in her own skin as they could manage would only help her in the long run.
“Was there anything in particular you wanted to get involved with?”
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Post by x on Aug 13, 2014 14:15:31 GMT
“That is a lot of weight to carry for a child,” Magda replied, taking his hands in hers, pulling them from the tea cup.
He could sense when the realization dawned on her, of what he’d meant when he’d answered her question. It was all he could do to keep well-aged shame from making its presence known in his expression. Logically, he knew there was nothing in his past that he had to be ashamed of; he’d worked with what he had, and really, he had been so lucky compared to what seemed to be something of the standard for mutant children throughout the world.
“The villains in my past were at least expected to be evil,” she commented, her hands still on his. “I am sorry that yours was disguised as someone who should have been a protector. There is no more evil than someone who would hurt a child.”
Charles agreed, without restraint. Children were proof that the world would go on; they were the future of humankind—and mutantkind, now—and were meant to be treated as precious. That they weren’t, human and mutant children alike, was incredibly disheartening.
“They say that it’s supposed to make you stronger,” Magda continued, “but I’ve never felt stronger from pointless violence. I’ve only ever felt more afraid. I think yours made you kinder. You’re the protector, now.”
He wouldn’t say the same; what had made him determined to atone for the pain of his past had been a combination of Raven and his telepathy. When one could see into someone’s mind, see all of that person’s fears and hopes and dreams, the best and the worst, it was enough to spark even a miniscule bit of hope. Raven, no doubt, had been his turning point: he made a promise to keep her safe, to take care of her and make it so that she never had to steal or be afraid again. If she’d hadn’t woken him, if he hadn’t encountered her, would he still be the sort of person Magda thought him to be?
“Protector, hm?” Charles offered a weak smile at that. “Well, I’m not sure what sort of protector I’ll be, but it’s certainly a moniker I’d like to be worthy of.”
He was only one man, after all; there was only so much he could do, telepath or not.
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Post by x on Aug 13, 2014 12:19:34 GMT
“That’s enough,” Erik snapped, and Charles resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
Erik never had been any good at taking orders—he had the same propensity to take orders as a surly house cat. The only time Erik ever followed orders, as far as Charles was aware, was when those orders served his own interests.
Still, the slaughter had ceased, and that was enough for him. It had to be; he may have been back at full strength, but he was still seated in a primarily metal wheelchair and an irritated Erik tended to act without thinking. At least he saw fit to continue dragging Charles along—give credit where it was due and all that—even though he made a point of putting as much space between them as he dared.
A niggling bit of worry cut through his agitation. The Magda he remembered had been so very kind; she’d held his hand and offered him a comforting smile when their discussion had turned towards his family. He had hoped, after that encounter, that she’d contact him again—but she never had. What had happened to her to make her so willing to kill? He thought about simply going through her head to find out, but immediately rejected it; he wasn’t yet in the right state of mind to go rummaging about in the heads of people he cared about—the risk that he’d accidentally do some damage was too high.
When they reached the roof, Erik immediately got into the helicopter. Charles huffed and closed the distance himself, grabbing at whatever he could in order to lift himself into the helicopter. It was a bit more of a challenge than getting himself in and out of bed, but he managed, hefting himself up and into the copter before getting into one of the passenger seats. It would be Erik’s call if they left the chair or brought it with. At the moment, all Charles wanted was to go home, down a bottle of ibuprofen, and sleep for a week.
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Post by x on Aug 13, 2014 3:14:19 GMT
“I don’t know, ya know,” Lana answered. “It was just like...me. I felt me. I wasn’t thinking of glass or anything. Relief, and alone at the same moment.”
Charles nodded as she spoke. It made sense, considering her mutation focused almost exclusively on emotions. Concrete visualizations wouldn’t do her nearly as much good as more abstract ones would. Lana needed her shields to be built to withstand emotions; Charles could employ the illusion of glass because his mutation was more than just emotion. He had the inner workings of the mind to strengthen his walls.
“But yeah,” she continued on, rolling her shoulders, “a glass wall works. Let’s do that!”
She dove headfirst into visualization, even though she really hadn’t much clue as to how she should even begin. After a moment, she opened her eyes and fixed him with a curious look.
“So, like, I can’t make a box. Do I try to see it, or just think the words, or what am I doing here?”
He shifted in his chair again, repositioning himself so that he was resting his elbows on his knees, fingers laced.
“Your mutation deals almost exclusively in emotions, so, rather than focusing on the concrete aspect of a wall or a box, perhaps you should focus more on what you recall from yesterday,” he offered. “The relief, the relative silence, the emotional balance you want to achieve. Use those memories and try to calm your mind, first off.”
A shield was only as good as its sustainability, after all; if Lana couldn’t keep her mind calm—and therefore clear—then there was no shield she could create that would offer her the reprieve she needed.
“If you need, feel free to take a few deep breaths. You don’t need to rush it, either; take as much time as you need to separate yourself from the emotions around you.”
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Post by x on Aug 13, 2014 2:41:10 GMT
“I am not an idealist like you, Charles,” Erik began, his tone relatively neutral. “Even if we stop the threat of Trask, there will be others.”
Of course there would be. Men like Shaw and Trask would always exist; the goodness in people could not exist if there was not a corresponding evil to match it. Charles wouldn’t refute that, even agreed with it. Just as there would always be those who professed racist or anti-Semitic ideology, there would be those who would work against the integration and acceptance of mutantkind. However, that did not justify the extinction of every human just because a handful would seek to exterminate all mutants.
“It may be true that humans are also targeted because of these machines,” he admitted, and Charles glanced away. “However, the abundance of the suffering is still towards mutants. Because there is only one race that is still standing in the future.”
According to Logan, the only race still standing were the Sentinels. Charles had not seen Logan’s memories of the future—didn’t want to see them, didn’t want the images seared into his mind and haunting him for the rest of his days—but his imagination ran away with him: humans and mutants alike, bodies strewn throughout the streets, those who had survived being enslaved, everything Erik remembered from the Third Reich brought back with a vengeance. He shuddered.
“I wish I shared your optimism, my friend. For do you think I actually enjoy fighting this war? Do you think I enjoy killing humans? I do what is necessary.”
Enjoy wasn’t the word Charles would use; it was the word he wanted to use, certainly, as it made Erik much easier to hate, but it wasn’t the right word. If Erik truly enjoyed killing, Charles would have felt it that first night so long ago. He would have never aided Erik in his suicide mission against Shaw, and he never would have gotten in as deep as he had with the man. But the concept of necessity was where they differed. Erik viewed murder and violence as necessary—Charles viewed them as a hindrance at best, abhorrent at worst.
“To be able to live in a society where there is peace, void of persecution and oppression because of inevitable traits a person possesses would truly be a wonderful thing. But the world has never existed in such a way.”
No, it hadn’t, Charles silently conceded as he took a deep breath. Sharing the world was never humanity’s defining trait.
“I could do nothing during the Second World War,” Erik went on, “but I can do something during this war. I will not be idle while our brothers and sisters suffer. So until you can swear to me that Trask will be the last and that stopping the Sentinels from progressing will be the last act we need to take so that mutants can live in peace, I will not stop defending our kind. And I am sorry that you disagree with my methods. But I will not change them just because you hold the hope that humans can change. Hope is not something I can afford during these difficult and dangerous times for mutants.”
“I understand why you do the things you do, Erik,” he admitted. “I understand your fears and your anger, my friend, I truly do. I will even admit that I share a great many of them. But I cannot condone violent response.” He swallowed and shifted in his seat.
“Mutants are not better than humans, and humans are not worse than mutants. We are all subject to the same fears, the same instincts, and we are all capable of great things. This is why we must face this next stage in evolution together: one gene is all that separates us. Nothing more or less than what’s always separated us.”
One day, those in positions of power would be mutants themselves, or they would have mutant children or grandchildren. The common people were full of those who wanted peace, who were willing to judge another on the content of their character rather than their genetics. Education was the key—educate the rising generation to tolerate and accept mutants, and soon enough, they would be taking positions of power and having children of their own. It was a ripple effect, something that would take time, but that was how humans worked. And really, they were capable of change in remarkably small periods of time.
"There is a common good," Charles added. "One that helps us overcome our fears, that makes us willing to take risks to help others. Not every human will condemn us, Erik, just as not every mutant will work towards the good of mutantkind."
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Nov 15, 2014 22:58:48 GMT
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Post by x on Aug 13, 2014 2:31:23 GMT
A gentle knock pulled Charles out of his thoughts.
“Professor? Would ya have a minute tah talk? If no, ah could come back later...”
Rogue, as she’d taken to calling herself. (Some students preferred their birth names, others insisted on forging new identities for themselves; each had their own reasoning, and Charles refrained from judging those reasons.) Charles shifted in his chair, pulling himself out of the half-slouch he still slipped into when he was absorbed in something—a habit that hadn’t changed in decades.
There remained a part of him that wanted to reach out and brush against her mind, if for no other reason than to assure himself that she was okay. While he allowed his mind to stretch out over the estate in a way not entirely without resemblance to a spider’s web, he had sworn off actively brushing against minds when he reopened the school.
“Of course, Rogue,” he answered, pulling away from his desk a bit as he waited for her to enter. “I most certainly have a moment or two to spare.”
She was projecting a bit, emotions standard to the loss of someone once held dear. It was more difficult for her, it seemed, as she didn’t feel as though she could seek physical comfort from the loved ones she still had left. Such was the nature of mutation; a double-bladed sword that could both help and hinder.
He guided his chair out from behind his desk; he'd never liked having barriers between himself and whomever he spoke to. It made the conversation rather uncomfortable, in his opinion.
“What can I do for you, my dear?”
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Post by x on Aug 12, 2014 20:01:43 GMT
“Would your family not have taken her in, if she made sure to appear normal?”
How much was he truly willing to trust Magda? She had given him every scrap of trust of which she capable, though he hadn’t really given her all that much of a choice to begin with, what with his telepathy plucking secrets from her mind without him realizing it. Magda didn’t have the powers necessary to return the favor, and so Charles was made painfully aware of the imbalance of power between the two of them. Balance needed to be restored, so he took a breath and offered her the truth of the matter.
“My stepfather and his son...well, they most certainly do not compare to some of the specters of your past, but they were far from kind," he confessed.
He gripped his teacup as tightly as he dared, reinforcing the walls he’d built up to hold back those memories.
“He would have taken Raven in, no doubt, but it would have been for all the wrong reasons. And I could not allow that.”
Kurt would have done horrible things to anyone with abilities like Raven’s—as far as he was concerned, Charles’s telepathy was a mere parlor trick compared to Raven’s ever-changing genetic structure. Her genes might hold the key to understanding mutation, and Kurt would have done anything to find out. Charles had known that as firmly as he’d known that the sun rose in the east.
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Post by x on Aug 12, 2014 16:42:51 GMT
“Not endless, Charles,” Erik countered, “for we know what the future entails. We know that the cycle ends in the extinction of mutants.”
Which was as much of a blow to Charles as Cuba had been, if not more. And yet, those Sentinels were only developed as a direct result of Raven killing Trask, of being captured herself. Fear begets hatred begets violence begets fear, and the wheel keeps on turning. They could stop it; they could keep the Sentinel program from ever getting off the ground if they could prevent Raven from giving the U.S. government a reason to actively move against mutantkind. If they could prevent any mutant from giving the government that incentive.
“A better future,” he continued, throwing Charles’s own words back at him. “A better future for who? What future would that be, Charles? One where our kind suffers a genocide that wipes us out from the face of the earth? The cycle will end, that is inevitable. And it will either be with the victory for mutants, or humans. Which future would you prefer?”
No. Charles would not accept a zero-sum game. He couldn’t accept a future with genocide for either mutants or humans; there had to be another way, a third option where both humans and mutants could survive and live. He shook his head.
“A better future for all of us,” he answered. “Trask’s Sentinel program only gets the funding it needs because Raven’s actions in Paris will convince the U.S. government that we are the enemy. If we can stop her, if we can keep the government from ever getting that incentive, we’ll be one step closer to a future where the only possible end isn’t genocide for one group or the other!”
Erik would likely count anything that wasn’t directly in support of mutant superiority as a betrayal, as Charles siding with humans rather than mutants. If that was the case, then...there wasn’t much Charles could do to change that. Charles would forever be a traitor in Erik's eyes. A crushing blow, but if the only other alternative was to become a killer, Charles would survive it.
“Humans and mutants alike will suffer because of the Sentinels,” Charles pointed out. “From what Logan described, the Sentinels went from targeting mutants to targeting the humans whose children or grandchildren would be mutants as well. In that future, neither humans nor mutants win. We all suffer.”
And that was the point, wasn’t it? Humans and mutants had to coexist, had to find a way to work together, or everyone would suffer the consequences.
“The humans don’t need to be our enemies, Erik. We need each other, despite what you or they may currently believe. This constant back and forth, this ceaseless desire to exterminate the other out of preemptive fear, will only doom us all in the end.”
He looked up at Erik, taking a deep breath and daring himself to hope, for the first time in years, that maybe Erik could see what Charles saw. The budding cynic in him thought otherwise, but there was always a part of Charles that was willing to believe the best of Erik, no matter how hard he tried to smother it.
“Humans, mutants, it doesn’t matter. It won’t matter. If Trask gets his way, we all must pay the price,” Charles finished. “I chose a future in which none of us have to.”
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Post by x on Aug 12, 2014 12:38:31 GMT
My top 5 favorite songs, at the moment and in no particular order:
1. "Drück Die Eins" by Annett Louisan
2. "Sticks & Stones" by Jónsi
3. "Ninna Nonna" by Mariangela
4. "Radioactive in the Dark" mashup of Imagine Dragons and Fall Out Boy
5. "Calls Me Home" by Shannon LaBrie
Question: Realistically, how well do you think you'd do in a zombie apocalypse?
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Post by x on Aug 12, 2014 4:15:32 GMT
“It’s good that you use them to save her life. You should not feel bad about that,” she insisted. “I can see you wouldn’t have done that otherwise.”
She paused a moment, and Charles caught more memories of her time in the camps. Of children with mutant abilities taken and experimented on in ways that were both incredibly alien and horrifyingly familiar.
“You were a powerful child.”
Powerful. That was a word he’d become far too familiar with as a child. He’d used to have nightmares haunted by that word in a particular voice until he finally figured out how to ensure a dreamless sleep. Powerful. It was a double-edged sword, no matter how one grew up.
“Not many children would have been able to do the same.”
“Not many children have to do the same,” he pointed out.
The only other option had been to hide Raven away from the world entirely—something she would have resented a great deal more than simply hiding her natural form. If he had to forgo his own fledgling morality in order to secure his promise to her, then needs must.
“I don’t regret what I did, considering the alternative,” Charles confessed. “Though, I could have probably gotten away with not manipulating the staff, but the risk that they might accidentally slip up was too great for me to feel comfortable risking it.”
Kurt Marko had been many things, but an idiot was not one of them. If Charles hadn’t been thorough in his manipulation, Kurt would have caught on, and Raven would have been put in danger because of it. Kurt could experiment on Charles to his heart’s content, and Charles had been willing to put up with it so long as it was him and not Raven. All Raven had wanted was a safe home, food to eat, and a place to sleep. If it meant that Charles had to suffer a bit more discomfort than he might have otherwise tolerated, then that was a price he’d been willing to pay. Charles had promised her safety, after all.
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Post by x on Aug 12, 2014 1:14:54 GMT
Charles needed a moment. He needed a moment in which he didn’t have to play the wise, old Professor, in which he didn’t need to remain calm and collected. Actually, he’d needed those moments depressingly often in his life. Especially with Erik’s never-ending, self-imposed mission to instigate war with humanity. The mission he’d been willing to sacrifice a terrified child for. The mission he’d tried to force Charles to complete, taking advantage of his enslavement.
But there was no time to indulge in his anger and rage; he had a school full of young mutants to think of. He had to swallow his anger, to shelve it in favor of their best interests. Erik’s decision at Alkali Lake was done; it couldn’t be changed, Erik would never regret it—“You should have killed me when you had the chance, Charles!”—and Charles had long ceased working on the hope that Erik would ever be anything but what he’d become. He would always hope—to do anything else would require admitting defeat and Charles would not admit defeat in this matter—but he could not rely on the hope that Erik would put the safety of his fellow mutant before the achievement of his goals.
If nothing else, he had made some progress with the President. It wasn’t peace, it wasn’t full acceptance, but it was something. It was a start, and if Charles was really, truly lucky, Erik would remain quiet enough that he wouldn’t strike a blow against the progression of mutant rights.
At least here, in his office with the homework of his students to keep him occupied (it was endlessly amusing the lengths some of them went to in order to attempt to pull the wool over his eyes and pretend they’d actually read the books he’d assigned), he could spend an evening willfully ignoring Erik and everything to do with him. He might even be able to come to terms with the hollowed-out space Jean had left in his regular mental sweep of the school.
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Post by x on Aug 11, 2014 18:57:51 GMT
Charles hadn’t honestly expected Erik to take the concept that he and Magda had a prior encounter as poorly as he had; he’d expected that Erik would have given their escape the same single-minded focus with which he approached just about everything else. Well, let it never be said that Erik wasn’t capable of surprising him.
(Though, really, the cold shoulder? It wasn’t as though Charles was privy to any information beyond what he’d witnessed in Erik’s own mind all those years ago in Miami.)
Erik created shields out of the bullets Magda had given him (and it was always bullets with him, wasn’t it?) which of course set off a chain reaction. The armed men standing between them and freedom began firing—rubber bullets, they really were ready for Erik, weren’t they—and Erik responded in kind with sharp shards sheared from his shields. Erik was quick to react, leaving no opportunity for Charles to intervene. A fresh surge of agitation coursed through him as he felt more minds blink out on his periphery.
Erik, for God’s sake, that’s enough!
Charles was still a bit out of it from the sedative, but it was no longer hindering his powers. The only thing it was hindering anymore was his restraint, and so, with the last bit of that thought, he forced through far more power than he’d intended.
“I don’t care if you aren’t in the mood for peace,” Charles snapped, “but I am not in the mood to sit back and watch you slaughter everyone in our way.”
If he had to feel just one more mind blink out of existence, Charles would not hold himself responsible for his actions. Instinct told him to render everyone who would hinder their escape unconscious, but with the fires raging behind him and Erik, to do that would be to condemn dozens to death. So, instead, he reached out across the facility and impressed upon everyone in the facility who was still alive to leave.
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Post by x on Aug 11, 2014 17:40:38 GMT
Touch-based telepathy was something that Charles knew logically existed—it wasn’t his limitation, however, as he didn’t even really need to be in the same building as someone in order to sense their mind or toy with it. But when Erik took his hand, Charles’s telepathy gave a jolt the likes of which he hadn’t really experienced before—odd, considering he was nowhere near touch-starved and had engaged in plenty of skin-to-skin contact with hundreds of other people, but none of it could compare. The entirety of Erik’s mind was open to Charles, whether the man realized it or not, but Erik was still such a mystery.
He gave his name to Platt and Moira, and Charles smiled as Erik’s mind evaluated the situation. Oh—how sweet, Erik didn’t want to risk outing Charles. This whole situation was getting rather dangerous; if Charles wasn’t careful, he was going to become far more invested in the other mutant than he’d ever intended. And investment could be a dangerous disadvantage with another telepath in the game.
“Thank you,” he said suddenly, as if he’d just realized that he’d been a precious few moments’ away from a watery grave. “For making me see reason.”
Oh, Erik was such an earnest person! His sincerity, his desire to keep secrets he wasn’t even sure were secrets, everything about him was relatively straightforward. Erik had one of the nicest minds Charles had ever come across, and the temptation to keep snuggled up against it was one Charles found himself unable to resist.
“What does the CIA want with Shaw?”
Charles shrugged, mentally imparting upon Moira and Platt that they were desperately needed elsewhere on the ship and that they should leave him and Erik alone.
“Officially,” he began after the two agents hastily excused themselves, “they want Shaw because he’s been implicated in delivering sensitive government documents into enemy hands. However, I really don’t care what the CIA wants with Shaw. They could want him for tax evasion and it wouldn’t make one bit of difference to me.”
Shaw wasn’t really Charles’s concern. He could be planning the President’s assassination and Charles wouldn’t honestly care beyond the affect such a plot’s success would have on traffic. No, Charles was more interested in the mutants: Emma Frost, the one who’d made those tornadoes, and whoever else Shaw had in his employ.
“Also, no need to worry about Platt and Moira,” Charles offered. “They aren’t mutants, but they do know about us and they are well aware of my telepathy.”
Moira, at least, would have words with him later about how he dismissed them when they returned to dry land. He hadn’t actually decided yet if sitting through the mock lecture would be worth it in the long run or if he should just nip it in the bud before she got herself too worked up about it.
“And you’re welcome. Though, it would have been a travesty for a mind as stunning as yours to go out like that.”
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Post by x on Aug 11, 2014 16:45:01 GMT
“You did the only thing you could do as a child,” she assured him, “to protect someone who needed your help to survive.”
There was a touch of fear, but nothing like when he had slipped up and used the wrong name. Not that he would have blamed her if she’d reacted with fear and suspicion—after all, it most certainly couldn’t be a comfort to be in the presence of one who could bend memories to his will at only nine years of age. Especially when that someone had had roughly sixteen years to refine his control and become even more powerful. That Magda wasn’t clamming up in fright was more of a relief than she could possibly realize.
“You can control memories?”
He nodded.
“It’s more a form of manipulation that out-right control,” he clarified, “as I cannot prevent a memory from forming—even severe inebriation doesn’t actually prevent memories from forming, they are just simply not stored—but I can fabricate memories and modify them.”
There was a fair bit more to it than that, but he was likely already pushing his luck just revealing what he had. Magda was a naturally cautious person, all but ruled by her fear, whether she realized it or not.
“However, it’s not something I wish to make a habit out of.”
But accidents happened. Both he and Raven were not incapable of making mistakes, of trusting the wrong people, and when such happened, the only remedy was to erase the incident from their minds and take great pains to never run into them again.
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Nov 15, 2014 22:58:48 GMT
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Post by x on Aug 11, 2014 13:50:49 GMT
“Aren’t we the losers of the mutant world,” Lana said. She meant it in a teasing sort of manner, a comment on the fact that their abilities were not something they could ever take a break from.
(In many ways, they were the mutants who couldn't win no matter which side came out victorious; Erik's helmet would give all of his followers clear signals that psionic mutants—telepaths, empaths, anyone like Lana and himself—were not to be trusted. Not that anyone ever trusted a telepath to begin with.)
“You gonna, like, think something naughty and make me block it out? Or I can make you feel something naughty,” she added, wiggling her fingers at him.
He laughed a bit at that. “Before I can expect you to block something out, Lana, I would prefer you have at least a basic grasp on shielding. We’ll focus on setting up your shields today, and then we can go from there.”
Charles shifted in his seat (he should probably talk to Hank and see if anything could be done about the ache caused by being constantly on his bum) and gestured to the chairs.
“If at any point, you’d like to sit down, feel free to do so. Creating a shield tends to be far more draining than actually maintaining it,” he explained. “Now, if you would be so kind as to think back to yesterday, when I put a shield in place around your mind. I tend to describe it as a glass wall, but I have heard of other visualizations employed when others create shields. It all depends on the one who will be maintaining the shield, really.”
For Charles, a glass wall made the most sense. He could still see the world, it wasn’t sound-proof, but it kept out the majority of sound. For Lana, the glass wall metaphor may not be as simple for her to maintain. She might prefer something more akin to a plastic ball or a window, or something else entirely. But if they wanted her to shield successfully, she had to pick her own metaphor.
“Since you will be maintaining the shield,” he continued, “the metaphor you employ must be something that comes naturally to you. So, think back to yesterday’s demonstration. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the shield?”
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Nov 15, 2014 22:58:48 GMT
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Post by x on Aug 10, 2014 22:55:57 GMT
“Depends,” Lana answered. “When it’s one or two, I can manage easy. That dining hall of yours—ain’t gonna happen. I can show you!”
She reached out to him, pausing only to give him a chance to stop her before curling her fingers around his thumb. So, not only was she aware of the emotions of others, but they then became her emotions, as well. Lana had little issue keeping her sense of self when she only had a few minds to contend with—it was the larger gatherings where she had trouble. Well then, that would be something they would have to work on slowly, exposing her larger and larger groups of people until she could manage despite the crowd.
Lana withdrew and Charles reoriented himself.
“I can tell what I got going on, but they’re still there. In the background. I can’t turn that off.”
“And that will be something that will never change, I’m afraid, no matter how good at shielding you become,” Charles said. “I’ve been shielding since I was a child and even I can’t block out everything. There will always be a low hum, a muffled roar, a little like hearing the ocean from a distance.”
It was something one simply became accustomed to, to the point where it was strange for that hum to be gone.
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Post by x on Aug 10, 2014 18:59:25 GMT
“I have a good feeling about you, Charles Xavier. Perhaps you will.”
“I certainly hope so,” he affirmed, taking a bite of his food. It was perhaps the best thing he’d tasted in years; take-out simply couldn’t compare. “This is delicious, Magda; well done!”
“How did your family take to you adopting your sister?” Magda asked, moving the conversation to what she probably hoped was a lighter topic. “Or did you two learn to outwit them? Does she attend school?”
Charles winced a bit, recalling Raven’s early days in the mansion. They had spent roughly a week trying to simply hide her from the servants and his stepfamily before realizing it would be an ultimately unsustainable and risky solution.
“At first, we just tried to keep her out of sight. It wasn’t as difficult as it would have been if her mutation was anything else, but it wasn’t easy enough for it to be a permanent solution.”
She could become anyone, but the staff all knew each other well. She couldn’t pose as a maid. They knew him well enough that they’d notice if he were acting strangely, so she couldn’t sneak abut as him. The only other solution had been one that went against Charles’s developing morality, but as it was for Raven’s sake, he’d gone through with it.
Part of him wanted to lie, terrified of how Magda would react when he told her the truth. But, she’d been honest with him, and it would have been terrible form for him to start lying to her now.
“I had to manipulate the memories of the staff and my stepfamily,” he admitted. “It took days for me to work Raven into the family history well enough to secure her place in the estate. It wasn’t something I enjoyed doing, but...it was the only other available option.”
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Post by x on Aug 10, 2014 18:20:02 GMT
“Yeah,” Lana agreed, her tone casual. She readied herself as though they were going to leave, and Charles nudged against her mind to see why. Apparently, Erik had seen fit to isolate her from others while he trained her. And he wore that ridiculous helmet, as well. And he—he used knives?! What the hell had Erik been thinking?!
“So whot you gonna do ta me? You got a helmet? Cause he needed one. Or you just gonna shield me out?”
“Lana, I sincerely apologize for what Erik has apparently seen fit to put you through. He’s a rather straightforward sort of person, and apparently incapable of realizing that training mutants with psionic abilities is nothing like training those with more physical abilities.”
Trying to train an empath while wearing that bloody helmet, of all the harebrained, half-baked schemes—no, Charles had no intention of continuing that pattern. He pushed himself back from his desk and around it to the more open area of the office.
“And no, I will not be requiring a helmet, nor will I shield you out,” he said as he made his way from the desk. “Not entirely, at least. I have put in place a few low-level shields around this room, just in case something where to happen. However, I’m sure you’ve sufficient enough control that they won’t be as necessary as caution fears.
“Now,” he said, waving her over to the more open part of the the room, “since our primary goal is to get you into proper shielding, we’ll begin with the basics. How good are you at separating your own emotions from those around you?”
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