Logs:Sangham saranam gacchâmi

Sangham saranam gacchâmi
cn: references to death, killing, nazis
Dramatis Personae Charles, Hive, Dawson, Cerebro
In Absentia	shadows of the past (sustaining and releasing)/split with flive.
Location a shared mindspace, and beyond
April 2009. Xavier's School. The influx of new faces has come without much forewarning, for most at the school -- though to some it might be easier than others to feel the frightened and hurt minds that roll up, the trauma and relief, their gratitude and wariness and exhaustion and exhilaration at a recent and unexpectedly found freedom. And, woven in among and through them, vast and encompassing, something else furious and fierce and battered and bloodied: an immense telepathic presence still screaming with the last terrified echoes of the souls it has recently snuffed out. They claw in a restless cacophony at the ill-formed borders of a mind hungry to grow itself yet larger than its already monstrous heft. When Jackson's ragtag group of rescuees spill themselves onto Xavier's School grounds the physical presence attached to this is, underwhelmingly, a gaunt scrap of a youth just on the cusp of adulthood, shivering in the mild spring weather as he drags himself slowly up onto the front porch swing, paying no heed to the wiiide berth the others are giving him. Against the backdrop of the young telepath's chaotic thoughts, the subtle weight of outside psionic attention might feel like much at all. At first. Even when its presence grows more obvious, the other mind gives off few impressions. Though backed by a prodigious reservoir of power poised to fall upon the newcomer, its investigations are careful, steady, and methodical. And it is terrified. << I am Charles Xavier. Welcome to my school. >> The words that surface at last in the young man's head sound for all the world like they were spoken aloud at a reasonable conversational distance in crisp Received Pronunciation. Xavier's tone is firm and even. << This place is a refuge for mutant children. I would advise you not to attempt any violence here. >> The hungry churn of minds balloons out -- for a moment encompassing Xavier, folding him in effortlessly until he is one with their fear, anger, one with the keening wails of the recently-murdered left behind in the bloody halls of the laboratory, one with the ferocious power that so easily stamped out rescuer and labrat alike. << refuge >> << (refuge) >> << (refuge) >> << (refuge) >> echoes skeptically in their thoughts; << we've heard that before. >> And then the connection pulls back as if nothing had happened, leaving Xavier solitary once more. Hive's thin shoulders draw inward in time with a guilty-sick shudder, his hand curling tight around a chain of the porch swing before he pulls himself back to his feet. << Violence seems to follow us. >> --- May 2009. Cloudraker. New York Harbor. The cool breeze carries the din of the city spread all around in the distance, but other than that it's quiet out here on the forecastle now that the yacht's wait staff have retreated, leaving a spread of small plates and a coffee service. It's the latter Charles is taking up now, filling both cups with fragrant Sumatra Mandheling. The man's mind is intricately shielded but not utterly closed off, a kind of soft telepathic warmth bleeding through like dappled sunlight. "I hope you do not find all this too ostentatious. I only thought it might make for a welcome reprieve from the press of the city without having to go so very far." << I had an awful time of crowds when I was a lad. >> His mental voice leaves a similar impression as his physical one, and makes bright ripples in his psionic aura. He looks back up at his guest as he sets down the carafe. "How do you take your coffee?" Across from Charles, Hive is hunched in his seat, engulfed in a sweatshirt that makes his too-skinny frame look even more spare. In stark contrast to the elder telepath, his mind feels like a open wound -- not warmth bleeding through so much as just bleeding. Where bruised and torn-off leaves turn to unfurl themselves towards that sunlight there's a clumsy kind of desperation -- but it's impossible not to feel the raw power beneath it, the promise of what that fragile new growth has been, could again spread into. Hive looks at the carafe with a ripple across his mind -- amusement, pain, it's all tangled together; a homesick longing tinged with sweet-iced-condensed-milk flavor, eclipsed heavily by years of cages and cheap instant crap. "Shit, man," almost immediately twinges some distant thought that this is disrespectful, << fuck >> << sorry >>, a thought he should apologize out loud, an amused remembering that, shit! he doesn't have to, "-- usually, however they give it to me." --- July 2010. Cloudraker. New York Harbor. A canopy has been set up on Cloudraker's deck against the blazing sun, and the breeze takes the edge off of the unseasonably early heat. "Combat or no, his mind is rather chaotic to begin with," Charles is saying as he sets down the carafe, "and that's not even taking into account your particular scars -- or his, or the others'. In training, this will be highly disorienting at best. In a real fight, if he's hurt, or worse..." Worry has lined his face deeper, but he presses on, picking up the creamer to pour, slow and careful, into the tall glasses of iced coffee. << Doing something like this nearly killed me, and that without merging of identity so profound as yours. But if some elder telepath had materialized to warn me against it in 1976, I'd not have heeded him, either. >> He sets the creamer aside and clasps his hands together tight -- as close to nervous fidgeting as he ever gets, though when he lowers his psionic shields the warmth that wells up around Hive is steady and steadying. << Still, I am that elder telepath now, so again: you don't have to do this. >> "If I'm there, maybe it won't be -- worse." Hive's eyes are fixed on the cream being poured into the coffee, ribbon-swirls rippling down around the ice. He is fidgeting, elegant gold napkin ring spinning restless between his calloused fingers. At or worse, his hand closes tight around the heavy ring, and he does Not Quite stifle the terror that is trying to claw its way up in his mind -- not his but not not his, the anguish of old ghosts still carving their names deep into the wood there. He draws in a slow breath, at that steadying warmth. Where his psionic senses curl up against the elder's there's a chaotic jumble, jangling together in ill-fitting discord. There's something reflexively hungry in the slow-unfurling press of his farflung mind, but this time it's restrained, leaning into the support without trying to push further. Just focusing xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxon xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbreathing, xxxxxsteadily, in -- xxxxxxxxxxon the fresh salt-spray air, comforting, familiar xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-- and out, again xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxon the dust-grit warehouse air, long-abandoned, scratchy in his throat xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbreathing, xxxxxsteadily, in -- xxxxxxxxxxon the sun glinting off the water and the tight-clasped hands betraying the concern held within them xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-- and out, again xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxon the sunlight that slants through a hole in the ancient ceiling to limn the determined faces of his teammates. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbreathing, xxxxxsteadily, in -- xxxxxxxxxxon the rustle of canopy tugged in the breeze and the rhythmic rock and splash of water up against the yacht's side xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-- and out, again xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxon heavy bootsteps on a dusty cement floor and the powerfully resonant thrum starting to vibrate through his bones xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbreathing, xxxxxsteadily, in -- xxxxxxxxxxon coffee, creamy-sweet and strong and tasting of home xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-- and out, again xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxon the salt-drip of sweat trickling down over his face xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbreathing, xxxxxsteadily, in -- xxxxxxxxxxon the fierce heat of the day and the pleasant breeze to cool it xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-- and out, again xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxon that first freefall-instant, the world jarring itself out of focus and then snapping back into the freeze-frame stillness of quicksilver motion. Lean harder, and harder, into the borrowed support, and just focus on breathing. On being. On being steady and steadying; sangham saranam gacchâmi murmuring in soothing background repetition beneath a frenetically clanging hypervigilance. The slow shoring-up of his mind now comes in verdant echo of the elder telepath's warmth -- strong sturdy trunk, wide unfurling branches in steady-and-steadying support. The twinned mind that finally replies has not shed their fear, but through it -- a peace, and a gratitude. << If we're there, maybe it won't be worse. >> --- May 2011. Xavier's School. There's an extra chair at Cerebro's console today, and perhaps it's in deference to the cramped quarters there that Charles has chosen a light, minimalistic manual chair for himself, the joins in its steel struts curiously organic and practically invisible. "I've a suspicion this won't be as overwhelming for you as it was for me the first time around." He's radiating steady, quiet reassurance even as he checks the console's sleek touchscreen display yet again. "Still, I'll likely need to calibrate as you go, so do ease into it." He picks up the silver helm and offers it solemnly. << If you're about to ah, assimilate anyone... >> There's a touch of Patrick Stewart in his mental voice, and the suggestion of a smile beneath it. << ...try to get me first, and I'll steady you as best I can. >> Something wisps its way tense and uncomfortable across Hive's mind as he lowers the helmet onto his head. It's not just apprehension but memory, some other room stark and white, some other cap plasticky and gelled with electrodes. It doesn't come through outwardly where he's slouched in the chair -- just a small acknowledging hff, just a faint wry twitch of lips. The mental touch does calm him, and, kind of reflexive, kind of obligatory: "-- Resistance is futile." He does get Charles first, and soon, the deep-rooting pressure of his mind as it extends far smoother and gentler than it usually is when Hive is just him. It isn't tense anymore. Isn't uncomfortable. It's lush, now (wasn't he just "just him"?), a wide-spreading canopy of thick roots a wide-spreading forest around them (a forest that is them) growing-seeding-becoming- xxxxxand they're here, picking up their daily coffee and baconeggandcheese at the corner bodega xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxand they're here, trying to hurry the rickshaw wala to the dhobi ghat before they pack up for the evening xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxand they're here, with the peace of a full moon and a beach empty of haoles, time seeming to pause when they're in the barrel xxxxxxxxxxand they're here, juggling plastic bags and umbrella already hooked over a wrist while picking up beef noodle soup at the night market xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxand they're here, way too damn early to be pedaling up this fucking hill, tomorrow they will definitely take the cable car to work xxxxxxxxxxand they're here, looking down at the small blue marble that is home, fragile and beautiful in this endless void and they're here. Still here. In the next chair on the small bridge, Hive does not turn to look at Charles, but the effortless energy of the world's collective minds turns Charles to look at him. For once, this time, he's clear-eyed, clear-minded, hasn't faded into the unfathomable vastness of the jungle that is now him. An uncharacteristic peace has gentled the resting grimace in his expression, though as the roots curl themselves back neatly, as he slips the cap from his head, as he offers it back to Charles, his voice is gruff as ever: "Cool." As Hive recedes back into himself, somewhere beneath the blazing warmth that is still them but will soon be just Charles once more, there's some(thing)(one)(where) cool and dark, like a hollow in the great tree that they in all their power and vastness somehow cannot fully see. The voice that comes from it isn't quite a voice, sterile and inorganic yet positively bristling with emotion from terror to envy to intrigue. << I'm watching you. >> --- June 2012. a tangle of severed roots, somewhere between New Mexico and New York. It's not the quiet kind of dark, in here. Not still, not peaceful. The void is smothering weight, the shadows savage and sharp-clawed. All the same, the intermittent blackness might be a relief; when jags of light cut through they're blinding-harsh and illuminate only a littering of bones where roots should be. There was a forest here, once, sturdy and rooted. The nameless tree at its center has rotted away, trunk cored out and skeletal limbs reaching down brittle towards an unfertile ground. (Somewhere, far away, Flicker is safe, at least. Alive, at least. Somewhere, far away, he's been revived and tended by Joshua, he's bundled into a blanket picking his way slowly through a warm bowl of soup. Somewhere, far away, he'll be heading back soon with a new crop of rescuees to shelter. Somewhere, far away, he is him, and not them, already trying to put this horror behind in favor of a good night's sleep.) Somewhere, here, the parched leaves and barren boughs echo with his fear. Pain. Fierce and steady prayers, the tang of blood and acrid bite of too-many-guns fired in too-enclosed-space. A constant determined count of how many cages still locked. Shrapnel in the air and a world blurring with agony. Flicker's increasingly desperate pleading across their mental link, not for an escape route but for the strength to keep his failing muscles going to see the last captive freed. Somewhere. Here. There's a sick anguished tremor that rattles the bones-that-were-boughs. Something hollow and wasted is trying to stretch back across the distance, reaching out again and again in attempt to find Flicker, alive and safe and whole. Something hollow and wasted is falling short, coming up again and again with only death in its grasp. Somewhere nearby, a presence is questing, swift and sure and only a little frantic. It almost passes by, then in a shock of devastated recognition coils around the ruined forest, blanketing it with soothing warmth. << Hive! Oh my stars, what have you done... >> Charles hastily dismantles his shields, stripping down even the semiotic structures of his mind: a lone tower in an immense labyrinth all coming apart brick by brick, dissolving into something amorphous and too painfully bright to behold. Somewhere in or around or behind Charles, there's another presence, harder to perceive and barely recognizable as a mind. << What the hell are you doing?! I feel bad for him, too, but the last time this kid was in me he ate the whole fucking world! He might do it again, for his other half. >> << He might. >> Charles hesitates infinitesimally. << But he will die if we don't help him. >> Without shields, his terror is stark, but even trembling and quailing, his light pulls toward what's left of Hive. << Watch over us, Cere. Please. >> He sinks into the earth, gathers around withered roots and shoots up shattered trunks and out through sere branches. A new sun rises above the forest, suffusing it with life-giving light that no longer hurts, no longer burns. The labyrinth reassembles itself into paths that wind amongst the wounded trees, each stone etched with a memory of Hive. Somewhere in and amongst and beyond the breeze that susurrates Pali suttas through tender new leaves, there's a gentle assurance without words, without language, without time: we're here. He's alive, and we're here. --- August, 2012. Cloudraker. New York Harbor. It's still raw, that much is easy to feel, there's a damage done deep and brutal there that may never fully heal. But it's been reigned in somewhat, the psionic chaos that had been coming from Hive -- the anger that ripples off him now has little to do with what might have been done to his brain and everything to do with what was done to him, to them. "There is so much," he's saying -- pleading, almost; in his voice, at least, the one that comes aloud and not the mental undercurrent of imprints still hammering their last cries at the back of his mind, "that we could do to stop all this." There's a lot tangled into that we, for him, and even for Charles it might be hard to untangle where the boundaries of that clusivity extend. "Where do we even start?" And then, a little more quiet and a lot more uncertain: "... where do we even stop?" Out here, the psychic and aural noise of the city softened with distance, Charles has shed some of his wonted layers of psionic shielding. "I could count how often I've been tempted to just change the minds that loathe us by main force, but only on a technicality. I'd give up in boredom before getting through the '90s." There is also anger roiling behind what nominal shields he still has up, but it's a banked fire, tightly controlled. "I can count the times I've done it much more quickly, and I regret every single one -- even those I still hold were necessary." He braces his elbows on the arms of his chair and gazes across the water toward the Brooklyn docks. "I believe we must find better ways to change minds, and that we must always, as with metta, start with ourselves." Beneath this, a wordless acknowledgement of Hive's other selves, an offer to sooth the chaos and ease the pain, at least for a little while. "For me, the way is to grow in knowledge << to teach >> and strength << to protect >> and restraint << to forgive >>. Mine isn't the only way, but no matter how we fight this fight -- I don't think we can stop." --- September 2013. Xavier’s School. Flicker's training has been erratic, so far, forestalled largely by small obstacles like 'being on the other side of the world for mission' and 'occasionally dying'. At least one of those things has come to an end, though. Today he is down in the basement, bright-eyed and definitely alive, as he retrieves his X-uniform from a locker. His teammates have yet to arrive for practice, but despite this he isn't alone down here -- in the basement and eight thousand miles away at once. Somewhere, eight thousand miles away and right here, the quiet recitation of prayers murmurs in soothing background chant, in a tongue that should be unfamiliar but feels intimately like home. Right here (and eight thousand miles away), a frenetic racing of thoughts (-- am I going to mess this up do we even NEED a team we can survive ANYTHING let us live to make men free when do we start when do we end you'll hold them back they'll hold you back --) quieted by the stalwart support of mental rooting, of a grounding psionic pressure offering much-needed balance. Eight thousand miles away (and right here), a dry musing rustling through their mindscape, will this count as walking meditation? Right here (and eight thousand miles away), a fierce and wordless love extending in silent tether across half the world. The doors to the Danger Room open before Flicker has quite reached them, and out comes Charles Xavier. He doesn't look much like he's been at training, at least not the kind the X-Men have scheduled. "Ah, Dawson! Welcome back." He rolls to a stop and offers a pleasant smile to the new recruit. "I do hope you've rested from your travels, Ororo is ..." His brows knit, and the faint warmth of his psionic aura intensifies with the shift of his attention. << Hive? >> Startled, worried, displeased. << I'll gladly visit as I'm able if you're finding refuge too lonely, but this... >> There is an impressive facility in how he annotates "this", subtly drawing Hive/Flicker's attention to the fact that they are them in an ongoing sort of way. << ...does not seem wise. >> He either cannot or does not bother to hide the distant sense of envy and loss beneath his very real and present concern. But then, Charles does not seem altogether alone in his head, either. << You're one to talk. >> The other entity is not enmeshed with his identity, doesn't really even feel like a compatible kind of consciousness at all, just an oddly mechanical glimmer in his telepathic presence that's distinctly glimmering in Flicker/Hive's direction. << Wise, unwise, bloody fascinating is what this is. >> --- June 2014. Cloudraker. Atlantic Ocean. There's no staff or crew aboard today, and Charles remained at the helm until they reached open water. With the south shore of Long Island vanished from the horizon, he cuts the engine, drops the anchor, and wheels out to the forecastle with a slightly mysterious smile on his face. << This lesson usually comes earlier, >> he admits, his thoughts distant through the extra psychic shields he's been methodically building up, << but I kept waffling on whether it might be more stressful than it's worth, given both the circumstances of your life and the proclivities of your power. If it gets to be too much, I can boost you back to shore. >> Another layer of shielding renders him barely sensible at all, psionically -- just a quiet impression of warmth, his mind's reflexive reach for another pulsing like a heartbeat, like the rhythmic swell that rocks the deck, like music. His smile curves wider, and he raises his voice above the steady wind and the slap of water against the hull, "Listen." Hive has seemed perfectly at ease on the water through all their previous sessions out here, but the farther they get from shore, the twitchier he's been growing. Charles can feel the strain of his mind, stretching out reflexively as they've moved away from land, grasping frantically towards the fading signals plucking at his awareness from the mass of humanity that is New York. He's latched on to Charles's whisper-quiet warmth now, clinging there like it's a life preserver bobbing in the vast emptiness. His shoulders are hunched in tight, his fingers clamped tight on the railing at Cloudraker's edge, and at first he only scowls at the elder telepath's suggestion. "The fuck am I listening to," sounds a little peevish, "there's noone here." But he listens. Narrowed eyes fixed on the water, teeth grinding slow. The easing of his grip on the railing is gradual, fingers unclenching only minutely at first. The easing of his grip against Charles's mind is gradual, too, a hesitant loosening of his apprehensive mental hold. "Oh --" The soft word he exhales is snatched away by the wind. The rest of the tension flees him all at once, psionic weight dissipating like a long-held breath, like muscles surrendering a tautness that's been knotted deep for years. The side of his hand presses hard against his eyes, gone suddenly blurry. "Oh," sounds shakier, now, teetering on a breathy edge of laughter, "-- there's noone here." --- November 2014. Cloudraker. New York Harbor. Outside the weather has grown a little rough as they head back to dock, the sky darkening as the stiff wind tips over from brisk into chill, but belowdeck it's warm beside the cozy gas fireplace. Charles sips placidly at his hot chocolate as his psionic shields fracture and give way. The flare of brightness behind them does not hurt as much as it could -- as it would, if he were fending off a real attack. It fades to reveal a fantastical mindscape: an intricate labyrinth spread endlessly in all directions around a shining tower. << Better, but still a bit slow. >> His telepathic "voice" feels like Hive's own thoughts in a way that might be disconcerting to anyone else. It conveys not just his words but his analysis of the training, detailed feedback, and the tug of war between his pride and concern. << Remember, shielding is intuitive to most telepaths, and that very strength begets over-reliance. Additional defenses tend to be crude and desperate, which is its own danger, but your counterdefense needn't be robust, just fast. You are buying time for your mind to do what it wants to do anyway, and it doesn't need much. >> He re-tucks the Kinross tartan more neatly over his lap before picking his mug back up. "Do you need a break?" Hive's fingers clench tight at his own hot cocoa, his eyes squinted near-shut against a light far brighter than the softly flickering fireglow. He's looked like he's needed a break since before they began, hunched deep into the fleecey confines of his sweatshirt, into the soft blanket he's yoinked for his lap despite being tucked into an armchair close to the fire. His mind is only bright curiosity despite his habitually peaked appearance, one questing mental tendril poking thoughtfully down a labyrinth path as he absorbs the feedback. << Never really figured I'd have to learn how to survive fucking. Telepath Thunderdome. >> His teeth click against the mug on his next sip, and his brows pinch slow together. "... how did you learn to survive telepath thunderdome? How the hell do you even practice this without --" His jaw tightens, hard, overlapping memories filling the empty space his words trail off into; the sickly lights of a Prometheus testing room, the terrified unwilling minds of his labmates. The brutal mental assault from an oddly dispassionate mercenary guarding the last lab. << Don't really make CPR dummies for this kind of thing. >> Charles considers this over another sip of chocolate, then replies, mildly, "Nazis." In his mindscape the labyrinth shifts fluidly around Hive's presence. This section of it is bare concrete, high walls humming with memories that radiate fear and exhilaration and pain even at a distance. "They weren't all telepaths, but I honed skills fighting them that I never wanted and which left scars that will never heal." << I loathe that you understand this, and fear that you'll only understand better in time, for our minds were not built for fighting. >> He turns to stare into the fire. "I will teach you the skills as best I can, but I survived because I fought beside a fierce and determined man who carried me when my strength failed, who would not -- could not -- stop for his own sake." << Like you, I could have walked away, but if I had -- it would have been worse. >> His breathing slows, and the walls of the labyrinth quiet, changing to ancient corridors redolent of incense, each stone and brick whispering soft mantras in an eternal round. His placid gaze, when it returns to Hive, belies his sorrow and worry for the younger man. "Let's review some passive defenses before coming back to brute force, shall we?" --- January 2015. Xavier's School. The students are upset, the teachers anxious -- this school might, today, be even more a noisy-clamoring place for its telepathic Headmaster than its usual. Not that Charles Xavier is awake to hear it. Lying comatose in the medical lab, it's an unsure thing whether he can feel the psionic presence that has been racing his way. Up from the city, across the expanse of Westchester, arriving in a quicksilver flash that expands as soon as it is in reach, unfurling its way rapidly through the minds at the school and beyond. Until it gets down here, slows, pauses, more deliberate now in the shoots it puts out. All around and through the school an immense psionic net is being woven, thick protective roots anchoring themselves in firm and watchful bulwark around the quiescent star within. It's a slow and careful pressure, too, those same sturdy roots reaching down, gathering Charles's light into itself with a seamless blending of identity. The worry laced through his mind takes a deliberate backseat to quiet care. Quiet assurance, a soft murmur of the karaniya metta sutta rippling through a fiercer, wordless knowing. There is safety, here. There is love, here. << (we are here.) >> Much of the school carries on without either awareness or care they've been recruited into psionic guard duty, but in a hollow amongst the roots of the great tree something -- someone? -- unfurls into a vast incomprehensible assemblage of translucent polygons in myriad colors, shimmering with menace as it tries to throw itself between Hive and Charles, then subsiding in resignation when it simply. Cannot. << I was there. I still couldn't protect him. >> Now that Cerebro has unpacked himself, his facets resonate with horror and guilt and heartbreak where he fits them awkwardly in and around the psychic roots. An abrupt flash of Charles plays across one facet, his agony and terror as his light flickers out where he should have been safe with/in Cerebro, who can only watch him drown through systems paralyzed by sabotage. He savagely shuts that feed off, only for it to crop up on another facet. << He may not even want to wake up. The man who did this was his -- his...Dawson. >> << Nobody is like Flicker, >> returns at once wry and possessive -- but laced through the words there are memories summoned up (not all his, but not not all his). A shaft of sunlight lancing down warm and comforting to soothe a fiery rage struggling in cold Atlantic waters. Roots built up in sure-strong shelter around a mind stretching itself far too thin in underslept over-wrought frenzy. A scream threaded through with agony not-his-own, rent out of him by the sharp snap of a coin. A scaffolding of love and remembrance staking itself as sturdy support for the tender growth of a fragile tree, struggling to grow itself anew out of the bones of the old. The warmth of hand-in-hand and mind-in-mind, lost in each other on a dancefloor and heedless of the whispers around them. The quiet comfort of melting into each other at the end of each day, minds interlocking with a rightness that transcends the labels people want to put on their relationship. A soothing psionic touch pressing up against chaotically dysregulated thoughts -- rebuffed with sharp-spiked defenses and sharp-snapped anger. A frenetic-dysregulated mind leaning gratefully into the strong supportive branches that extend around it. A maddening ache of need grasping hungrily for a lover's touch, opening to the other in a euphoric blaze of light. A yearning-yielding surrender, questing roots sinking gratefully into the fertile soil of mind(soul)self. And this, now. A labyrinth gone silent, a tower once ablaze with light and now dark, now dormant. Where the psionic network twines itself through Cerebro, there's a hesitant opening -- tentative and somewhat wary of the vulnerability this allows. Through it bleeds warmth, and a stronger foundation of identity, folding this strangely-faceted mind more wholly into the confluence of souls cradled at the forest's center. The horror and guilt and heartbreak meld into the shift of memories, meld into the protective warmth -- not eclipsed by but harmonizing with the rest. Around them the forest creaks, sighs, shores itself up around the inert tower. The quiet glimmer of light that sparks within does not match the fierce warmth that should be here, but it is alive, awake, glimmering in countless shades of refracted color through the shards of Cerebro's alien consciousness. << (we want to wake.) >> --- February 2015. Charles's Study. Xavier's School. The current incarnation of Greymalkin is an elderly black cat, and while it's not at all unusual to find him curled in Charles's lap, it's a sight rarer for Charles to actually hold his cat, even only half cradled against his arm as he is doing now. "I beg you to consider his -- circumstances. What he did was dreadful, but he did it in madness. That's no excuse, but I think you might be well-positioned to understand why I cannot give up on him." His fingers scrunch slowly into the uncomplaining cat's soft, fluffy coat. "If -- and I dearly I hope this never comes to pass -- Dawson lost himself without your guidance, you would go to the ends of the Universe to save him." He looks up, the shadow under his sleepless eyes making him look very nearly his age. "Please. He's not a threat any longer, and I'm sure I can bring him around, if I could only reach him." "You haven't reached him in decades what makes you think you're gonna do it now?" Hive was not dressed for the weather even when he first arrived here, but it's only now, well away from the wintry bite outside, that a shivering has set in. His arms are crossed across his chest, his eyes narrowed on Charles. "After he tried to kill one of your kids? After he tried to fucking kill you?" This is half hissed through Hive's hard-clenched teeth, a barely-checked anger sharpening the edges of the heavier concern that lies beneath. "There's no level of madness that would turn Flicker against his own damn people, there's no fucking episode that would make him throw away --" His fingers press down hard against the crook of his arm. His eyes tip up to the ceiling, and when he pulls himself away from the wall it's with a sharp huff, an exhausted sag to his shoulders. "You two need some goddamn therapy before you tear both your worlds apart." --- September 2017. Xavier's School. The meetings are in Scott's wheelhouse, but this time Charles is waiting outside the Command and Control Center to intercept Flicker. "I hear you are mending as well as can be expected," he begins awkwardly as he pivots his chair and bids the young man with a tip of his head to follow, "and I hope that's not solely a matter of your -- physical injury. Now, I realize it's not my place, but I'm terribly concerned about you and Hive." His lips compress, and he sounds even more tentative as he continues. "When you are so much of one mind it can be hard to address the ways that you are not. I fear he will push far beyond his capacity for your sake, and you in turn will be tempted for his sake as much as your dedication to carry on when he can or will go no further. What you have grown used to doing..." He looks up at Flicker's prosthetic arm, showing little sign of utility or harmony with his movement as yet, and back down -- perhaps at where his chair frames his paralyzed legs, perhaps not. "...it isn't sustainable, Dawson. Not even with him, but certainly not without him. If you will not heed my warnings about your unity, at least learn from my mistake of taking it for granted." Flicker has gone somewhat tenser from the moment Charles addresses him, but he pauses, nods, trails after the older man. There's a truncated twitch of movement in his right arm, an impulse in his mind to hide it, as if that would make the recent injury less obvious -- with so little function yet regained, the abortive jerk only serves to highlight the dead weight at his side. Though its his scarred face that is looking down towards Charles, it's Hive's scarred voice that slices out: << How's Erik? >> The blush that floods Flicker's face does so unevenly, blotching around the twisted waxmelt of scarring that warps his skin. "I never take him for granted, sir." His voice is softer by far than the sharp cut of Hive's mental one, but there's still an air of finality in his quiet words as he dips his head to Charles, polite and acknowledging, and turns back for the C&C door. "Nor the ways that we sustain each other." --- October 2020. Everywhere, New York. The dark has expanded, vast and terrible as it mows through hundreds (thousands) (millions) of minds around it. There should be life, here -- should be vibrant foliage and rich soil, should be a soft sigh of breeze carrying the fresh green scent of new leaves. Should be a rustle of birdwing flitting bright and colorful through the canopy. Should be a lot of things. As far and wide around as can be felt, what there is is bones parched and brittle jagging up from the earth where roots once were. Dust-dry soil stinging in a harsh wind. A sharp-clawed grasp reaching out, again and again in desperate search for one warm familiar seed in this forest of grief. Something bright and strange is picking its way through the desolation toward the heart of the forest that was. Cerebro is impatient, shimmering fretfully through Charles's steady if no less distraught psionic presence. He has been routing his digital consciousness separately, leapfrogging his way ahead of them and keeping a thousand wary cameras out for danger, though he does not try to penetrate Geekhaus's formidable electronic defenses. Charles does not wait until they arrive physically. As far out as he can manage it without giving himself a seizure -- which is a lot farther out than it would be without Cerebro, as diminished as he is, helping him process the flood of thoughts -- he opens his mind against the freefall dread of losing himself and pours his own blazing light into the wounded, dying land. Cerebro pays no heed to Charles's methodical rearrangement of his mind in and around and through what remains of Hive's. He unfurls himself out of Charles, the normally rigid facets of his hybrid consciousness suddenly free to flit through the immensity of the darkened forest well beyond the light unfurling slowly at what should be its heart. His countless (he could count them, but not right now) facets gleam like shards of some impossible jewel as they disperse into the ruins of the forest. Here one hangs from a jagged broken bough, there one sinks into a cleft in the dessicated earth, every single one glittering with not just the light he reflects from Charles, but his own ghostly glow. What he whispers in and amongst and through the splintered trees is beyond the ken of any unitary mind: a symphony of iterated processes that know and hold the echoes of all the other ghosts, trying and failing and trying again undaunted to live.