Logs:Clawing Towards Utopia

Clawing Towards Utopia
Dramatis Personae Charles, Hank
In Absentia Erik, Scott, Polaris, Dawson	2022-05-29 << How much dignity can there be in fighting amongst ourselves? >>
Location <XS> Hank's Apartment - Third Floor
Though part of a wing left largely untouched by the renovations that transformed Xavier mansion into a school, these rooms are still visibly more modern than the rest of the venerable building. Much of the space is given over to an extensive and highly modular laboratory, which never looks the quite same way twice to any but the most frequent or oblivious visitors. In addition to a variety of scientific instruments, it has a powerful computer array that can operate independent of the school's network although it usually does not. There are interactive displays at each of the lab stations, as well as physical clipboards with equipment and material checklists as well as emergency safety information. Adjoining this is a decently sized studio with a huge bathroom almost half again its size. There is a sleeping loft accessible by ladder or a series of climbing bars that would be challenging for even reasonably athletic humans. The interior wall beneath it is one huge whiteboard, often covered in notes and equations despite the many screens -- holographic and otherwise -- of the computer console built into an impressively sized desk nearby. The tiny kitchenette tucked into one corner obviously does not see much use beyond the refrigerator, microwave, and an ancient George Foreman grill. If there was ever space allotted for a dining set, it has been co-opted by the canary yellow semicircular couch and an oversized matching armchair ringing a round coffee table. The television on the wall looks like an afterthought. Even in these small hours, the mansion is never wholly asleep, but this wing is quiet now, less likely to feature in teenaged hijinks. A gray mackerel tabby cat has been sprawled on the desk asleep for some time, taking up an impressive amount of space, but presently she twitches one ear and her eyes open to slits. It's few moments before she deigns to rise and stretch, and another few before she looks expectantly to the door -- the one to the hallway, not the laboratory. Outside that door presently is one Professor Charles Xavier, freshly bathed and wearing soft blue pajamas under an old, worn dressing gown in fiery Kinross tartan. He looks exhausted and he smells mostly like whisky and his favorite bergamot bath products. Mostly. In lieu of knocking his mind unfurls, careful and unobtrusive, wordlessly requesting entry. "Ah, good morning, you," Henry McCoy remarks absently, running one claw lightly through the cat's back fur with his left hand when she stands up. His right is clicking away at a large mechanical keyboard, customized to accommodate his large hands paws digits some ergonomic relief while trying to put his many racing competing Scientific Thoughts into Microsoft Word. He's dressed for bed, which is to say, hardly dressed at all -- widelegged black shorts and absurdly small glasses on blue fur and blue skin. Doesn't pause his train of thought at the request, just taps a button after giving Greymalkin her attention. The door swings open, letting the scents waft into the studio. It's those that finally stutter Hank's hand, with a wrinkle of feline snout and a reflexive upset in his mind that's more growl than anything else. He spins on his stool to face Charles at the door. << Stars and fucking garters. >> "I would ask what the blazes you were thinking, but by that stench I can already tell you were not." Charles rolls in on one of his more comfortable motorized chairs, showing neither surprise nor dismay at his reception. "I was not." Just like that. "He ambushed me, manic and drunk and wearing that blasted helmet. I was --" He lets the rest of the breath out and scrubs his face with one hand. "But yes, I should have stopped him the moment we -- the moment I could reach his mind." There's no defensiveness or indignation now; he just sounds tired and miserable. Greymalkin presses her ears back and jumps down to wind around Hank's legs before padding across to room to deposit herself unceremoniously in Charles's lap. He drops his hand absently to stroke her fur. << I dared to hope that, after seeing the dire peril our people are in, he'd finally come around and work with us. >> The thought is more than words, more than the loneliness behind them, but a kaleidoscope of senses and concepts encompassing the complicated game of sociopolitical chess he's been playing -- and losing -- for the last three decades. "And Jean was, what, conveniently absent from her single purpose in accompanying you?" Hank sighs, pushing down a series of familiar spites -- jealousy of the delegation to GENUS, dull pain resurging at the scent of Magneto clinging to Charles' skin -- to note in careful scientific fashion the sentence Charles did not finish. Presses down too, with less success, the domino-cascade of frustrations that sentence evokes, the ache for a simpler time when his father-friend was not running back to the man that betrayed them over and over and over again. "Save your hope for people who deserve it." << He made his choice (he'll hurt you again) (he'll hurt us again) >> A rumbling growl forms in the back of his throat. "Is spoiling his spawn not enough, must you coddle the grown man, too?" "Jean and Scott badly needed a night out on town. I told them to go have fun, that I could take care of myself." Charles huffs a soft, humorless laugh. "It's not the first time fate has made me eat my words and I'm sure it won't be the last, but I wasn't coddling him, Hank." His voice is steady, but the hand on the armrest of his chair is trembling. He stills it by dropping both hands to cradle Greymalkin, who's purring contentedly. "I was terrified. The last time he was like that, he --" Though he presses his lips together tight, his crumbling shields cannot quite contain the creeping chill of << -- (hurt us) >> But then Erik had touched him and the world fell out from under them and he needed -- -- nothing, as Charles tightens his psychic defenses again. He draws a deep breath and lets it back out. "Suzanna bore Erik the child I never could, and that poor girl has been unknowingly caught in the wreckage of our lives ever since. We owe her a bit of spoiling." The cat smooshes her face into the crook of his arm and he hugs her tighter. << I fear (Erik) Magneto will draw her into his mad crusade. He's been hatching plans again. He's rebuilding the accursed machine that nearly (more than nearly) killed Rogue. >> Dry chalk scratches across the slate of Hank's thoughts, scribbling out cool and known resentment of his friends in the margins around the growing outline of Magneto's helm. Within it, loose word associations begin to form a web. A line between Lorna and Charles, chalkdust between both names and Suzanna. Charles to Jax to HAMMER to Government to Prometheus back to Lorna forms a neat but frantic circle, within which 'PROTECT THE STUDENTS' is written in jagged, thick letters, the end of the last S streaking across the black slate as though the writer had slipped on Charles' leaking feelings. Out loud, feline nostrils flare. << He is always planning. I suspect the machine will be the least of our worries if you cannot bring your... urges around him to heel. >> At the corner of the board, a note -- how did the machine work, the Beast wonders. In another corner -- complicated calculus of hindsight, wondering when in the last seven years he should have intervened, covering the ache of regret and resurgent pain with mathematics. << At least this time he has his sights set on someone grown. >> "We should --" and this comes with a flick of his wrist at a physical holographic display, pulling up schematics of the mansion, "-- up our security. Perhaps a curfew for next term, hm?" Charles's expression does not change appreciably. "That is abundantly clear, thank you." He turns away from Hank and rolls toward the whiteboard on the wall. "He caught me off guard, and he used me. It won't happen again." With a whisper of soft warmth he reaches into Hank's mental blackboard, replaces "Lorna" with "Polaris", then adds "SHIELD" to the circle. << It's gotten more complicated, though. >> He underlines the imperative. << My mind and the X-Men's might aren't enough anymore, if we ever were. >> He shakes his head and looks back at Hank. << What am I to tell the children about registration when I cannot bring myself to do what the law demands? And Erik is out there accelerating the very persecution he claims to fight. >> His fingers sink into Greymalkin's scruff, and the cat purrs louder. In their minds he drops an asterisk next to Hank's note and links it to some ideas he's been nursing, some of them for years, about the novel particle accelerator the Brotherhood had deployed at Liberty Island. “Hm.” It’s not clear whether this is to the addendums to his mental landscape or doubtful response to Charles’ promise. A little of both. A dotted line between SHIELD and HAMMER with a question mark over it. Polaris grudgingly allowed, with “Lorna Dane” added again in smaller letters underneath. A line from the line under STUDENTS, coming out of the board to attach to a swirl of names and faces — all young, not all current. Another rumble of displeasure rattles the mental lecture hall as faces float to the top — twins, blue and scaled; a child that’s all tentacle arms and jet-black skin; a skinny boy with a new eyepatch banging down his desk. << How different is it from what we’ve already told them? >> The addendums become files and slip away. “Hush, Malke,” Hank remarks, out loud out of long habit, to the cat, “I am trying to think.” << we cannot continue like this. >> This encompasses so much — the futility of the X-Mission, the scrutiny on the school, the dissent in their ranks. << We have to be bigger. Bolder. Earn our place among humanity. Show that we are not all like them (like him) (not all monsters) >> Charles slumps deeper into his chair. He leans on the question mark linking HAMMER to SHIELD, a wordless conceptual agreement. The images of the students draws out affection and frustration and helpless terror -- distant, so that it's hard to tell whether he meant these emotions as communication or if they'd simply slipped his shields again. Then, just a glimpse of guilt. "You're right, but -- it's quite different, for some." Perhaps it's reflexive, but he smooths his hand along Greymalkin's back, coaxing her to quiet down. << Go public? We've talked about this, it's too soon, humanity isn't ready. >> But this is missing his usual imperious certainty. << It'd go a lot worse if we're found out, and with HAMMER... >> Whatever furrows his brows here he keeps to himself. << It'd be nearly as bad as forcing the students to register. >> Dismissive: “Quite.” An undercurrent of unresolved, unexamined frustrations roll through the reply, muddled and twisted. Hank’s mind turns to the school, to the paramilitary operation in the basement. << Not the school. Not you. >> Here there is no room for argument — a very strong sense that Charles’ disguise must remain intact for now, for the safety of all the students (and for Hank.) << The team. Not public, not exactly, but — >> images of a man in a flying suit surrounded by robots rescuing civilians from Magneto morph into them, the X-men, holding the line between The Brotherhood and a frightened populace. << Magneto wants to spread fear. We can be the face of safety from him. If we are needed, maybe we can claw back some dignity. >> Charles is quiet for a moment. << The last thing I wanted was an army. >> But it doesn't sound like an argument. He looks down at the cat drowsing in his lap. << It's not much of a choice at all, is it? We can't just let them kill people, and I won't set the authorities on them. >> A glimpse of the mural above the spot Dawson was fatally wounded, a chill breath of grief. << So we risk our own to stop them. >> He regards Hank steadily. << I'm not so optimistic that we'll be well-received, but it must be done all the same. >> His face hardens as he turns slowly away. << How much dignity can there be in fighting amongst ourselves? >> << How much dignity do we have left to lose? >> Hank’s mental recreation of the mural is darker, faces adding over and over to the background: Dawson and Eli and Jax and Rogue and more and more and more of the fallen and hurt, ending with his friends from Utopia, long dead or scattered. << Someone must do what must be done — if not us, who? The team will understand. >> A small flicker of doubt, there, hastily shoved down. << They must. >> A small wrinkle of his nose before Hank stands up, walking behind Charles to place a heavy blue paw on his shoulders. “You are not doing this alone. You have us.” << (me) >> he means, but also Scott and Jean and Ororo — the vast majority of the X-men distinctly absent from this count. Charles does not answer the question, knows it's rhetorical yet is clearly mulling it over. He closes his eyes tight when Hank's remembrance of the fallen strays to Utopia. << I don't imagine many of them will be eager to hurt their former schoolmates or students, friends, or family, for that matter. >> His shoulder is tight under Hank's paw, his breathing slow and deliberate and even. << I only hope the Brothers will be as hesitant to use deadly force as my X-Men. >> He doesn't try to smile when he looks back at Hank, but some small measure of tension has eased from him. "No. Not alone."