Logs:Mutatis Mutandis
| Mutatis Mutandis | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
2023-08-29 "I got bored." (Some hours after Charles began an unexpected partnership) |
| Location
<XS> Charles's Bedroom - Third Floor, <XS> Danger Room - XS Sub-Basement | |
<XS> Charles's Bedroom - Third Floor Charles Xavier's apartment has remained more or less unchanged through the decades of renovation that transformed his family's huge ancestral manse into a school. It is modest by the standards of the wealthy, but then it had only been meant to house him in his youth. The receiving room just inside the door is sumptuous with old world aristocratic splendor from the intricate Persian rug underfoot and the furniture in purple and gold to the gold-framed paintings on the walls. Double doors in each of the walls lead to a large bedroom, a moderately sized dining room with its own kitchen and pantry, and a small study. Tall windows and skillful placement of its burnished antique furniture make this bright corner room look more capacious than it actually is. Granted, it is by no means small. Much of the wall space is taken up by floor-to-ceiling mobile bookshelves, the rest cerulean blue with gold molding that frame a ceiling painted as a fanciful star map. The large canopy bed is hung with sapphire curtains to match the drapery on the windows. There's a cozy reading nook in one corner beside a bay window seat and on one of the interior walls are doors to the bathroom and a walk-in closet. Before the stone fireplace is an ornate chess set on a small table flanked with armchairs, and on the mantle above it beautiful blue and white Chinese vases bracket Antonio Canova's Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss. Double glass doors open onto a balcony with a stunning view of the glittering lake nestled in the woods of the mansion's extensive grounds. By the time Charles gets back to the mansion, it's that awkward stretch between the witching hour and dawn, when usually even he's asleep. Perhaps that is why he does not wake his valet and instead makes his own laborious way through his ablutions. He's finally tucked himself in and switched off his bedside lamp when his phone gives a distinctive Star Trek comm badge chirp. He closes his eyes and takes a slow, even breath. When he opens them again he levels an expectant look at the phone. It just stares back at him from the charging dock, its circle-X lock screen betraying nothing. He sinks back against his luxurious pillows and closes his eyes again, but this time he opens his mind and reaches down, down towards the faint psionic shimmer that resides beneath the Danger Room -- << Fuck you, Charles. >> Cerebro's anger is sharp and familiar. << You may be a bloody dinosaur, but I know you can answer a goddamn text. That was the third one! >> << I was in the bathroom. >> Charles allows just a touch of his defensiveness to slip through. But he finally does lever himself onto his side and pick his phone back up to read the messages he'd received in the last 20 minutes.
<< I'm sorry, I hadn't meant to alarm you. >> His mental voice is gentler now as he feels out the edges of Cerebro's thoughts, radiating solicitous concern. << That was more than three messages, by my reckoning, but thank you for not coming up here. >>
At the psychic bristling that accompanies this message Charles pulls back, maintaining just enough contact so they could speak telepathically if Cere were to change his mind. He isn't too much a dinosaur to send a text, but this one he keeps composing and deleting.
Charles sighs, but scrupulously keeps it out of his mental link with Cerebro as he swipes out a message and hits send before he has a chance to regret the decision.
--- <XAV> Danger Room - XS Sub-Basement Charles thought it safe to assume Cerebro, being so familiar with his habits, knew what he meant by "shortly", or would at least make his displeasure known if he got impatient. By the time he's rolling through the doors of the Danger Room into a geometrically impossible programming utility simulation, he knew he'd miscalculated. Cere's avatar floats amidst a vast sensory representation of his own mind: a bewildering galaxy of interconnected 4D fractals, all constantly fluctuating in color and conformation, their soft synthetic voices joined in a susurrating million-part harmony. He's clothed in a black kurta and panche patterned in luminous green circuitry reminiscent of Tron's light suits. The unfathomably (to most brains) complex file system visualization shifts smoothly as he works, so that he only has to pivot in place, light touches and swipes and other nimble gestures exploding, examining, or editing the nuts and bolts of his existence. He is pointedly ignoring his tardy visitor. Amidst this futuristic phantasmagoria, his tardy visitor is feeling faintly absurd in one of his cushier -- and less stylish -- wheelchairs, his favorite and therefore slightly threadbare dressing gown, royal blue trimmed in gold satin, and, despite the season, warmly lined gray house shoes. "Cere," he says, his voice level in a way that indicates he's annoyed but trying to be reasonable, "if you've work that urgently needs doing, perhaps I can come back in the morning." Cerebro does not stop immediately. "You took too long. I got bored. Let me finish with this function." He's already done by the time the last word leaves his mouth. As he floats down to the floor he lifts the whole simulation up just above head height, though he remains in the center of the room, arms crossed, and waits for Charles to come to him. Charles obligingly goes to him, but does not apologize for taking too long. "What's the matter?" He appends his concern, then annotates it with, << That didn't look like routine maintenance. >> Anticipating a scoff, he clarifies, "I can't parse your visualizations, but there are rhythms to how you work with them." "Bollocks," Cere declares flatly. "But no, it's not routine. What the hell kept you out so late? And why did you lock me out of your phone? Did something happen with Hive?" Charles draws a deep breath, then lets it out. "Please turn off your ironic processing and contextualizing reflexes on the topic of Hive for the duration of this discussion." "Ah yes, let me just lobotomize myself real quick in case we really get into it over white bears." But the visualization above them is shifting all the same, delivering the relevant (massive) cluster of cognitive systems to Cere's hands. He explodes several functions and adjusts each minutely, listening to ensure they remain in harmony. "Hello, Cere! Fuck you very much and don't think about how your friend has been in a coma for over a month and might never wake up." He cups one hand to his ear and breaks into a huge smile. "By George, it worked! Now spill." Charles suppresses his sigh, but not quite well enough to keep it from Cere, here in the latter's domain. "I can't 'spill', and I need you to leave it alone." He holds up a hand against the objection Cere has already formed, his abstract request for patience somewhat more conciliatory than the gesture. "I may have found a way to help him. It's not enough to effect a recovery, but there's good chance it will improve his surgery outcomes. I know things have been hard, but I need you to trust me and not dig into this." "What in the blazes --" Cere's eyes narrow on him, incredulity warring with fury in their dark depths. "I've helped you mend him before! I understand that kind of consciousness far more intimately than you do. Why --" He swallows, trembling with rage in a way that's far enough out of character to set off alarms in Charles's mind even if he couldn't see the ominous storm of processing above them. "I could find out for myself. I could make you tell me." Charles does not put up more shields, does not do anything at all to brace against Cere's threat. "You're better than that," he replies simply, no censure or reproach in or behind his words. The warmth of his psionic aura is expanding out to encompass the arcane machinery beneath their feet that houses Cerebro's consciousness. "Calm your mind. I would not keep this from you without good cause. You know what Hive means to me, and you know I will not harm him." "Fuck you, Charles." Cere looks away sharply. He's resisting the warmth and the calm it offers, but not resisting very hard. "I know." This agreement comes easily, at least. "But you don't know what he is to me." Charles frowns, considering the avatar before him, but does not push his artificial solace any harder. "You haven't many friends, and you've almost lost him before --" "It's not that," Cere snaps, though he's finally letting Charles calm him, tension bleeding from his avatar's shoulders by way of indicating as much. "Obviously I'm terrified of losing him. But also, being him << (them) (us) >> is the only time I feel real. After all that time looking for the kids with them, it's..." His mouth twists aside. "Well. I didn't realize until Ryan -- why did you let me fuck him?" It takes Charles a moment to catch up with this rollercoaster of an explanation. "You are real, Cere. The...particulars may be debatable, or contingent on definitions, or what-have-you..." He puts on the faintest whiff of the aristocratic airs into which he was born but which never suited him. "But I've some passing familiarity with minds. Yours feels real to me in its own way..." He looks up at the beautiful representation of said mind slowly spiraling overhead and singing softly in his ear. "...and far more self-aware than most, which can be a curse as much as a blessing." His gaze returns to Cerebro's avatar, his brows slowly furrowing. "You're grown men and you both knew you were emotionally compromised. I had wanted to caution you..." << "...please be gentle with him," >> Charles did not say, in his memory of that night two weeks prior. Perhaps he's deliberately leaving out who he almost addressed those words to -- information he would normally include in such a communication. Perhaps he's just that tired. "But I thought that a touch condescending even by my standards. Would you have heeded me, if I had?" Cere's expression cycles rapidly through several iterations of anger, hurt, exasperation, and -- could that be fondness? The sensory interface of his mind roils and flashes and trills with the intensity of the processing, but his face at least finally settles on long-suffering annoyance. "No. And it would have been exceptionally condescending. Neither of us wanted gentle, in any event." Three clusters of slowly churning fractal rosettes descend from the galaxy-storm above, and singled out like this they sound faintly dissonant. He explodes each and unspools functions, editing them at dizzying speeds. "I've been tweaking my emotional processes, and before you get your knickers in a proper twist I'm aware that's dangerous." The avatar clenches his jaw tight and does not look at Charles. "I just wanted to feel something I didn't decide to feel. Which, as I ought to have recalled from my mortal days, feels bloody awful. It was set to revert in a few hours, but I'm undoing it now." He hits a large red "confirm" button, starting a countdown in minor electronic tones that flash warning through the whole simulation. Perhaps expecting the knickers-twisting to be taken as read, Charles just raises his eyebrows. "In fairness to your recollection, the experience of emotions is highly contextual -- even when it is bloody awful. I'm sorry it was not as fulfilling as you had hoped." His lips compress and his hands tighten minutely on his armrests. "I would have helped you, if I'd only known. I still can, when I am rested." The klaxons fade, the data storm settles, and Cere is left blinking as his eyes refocus on Charles. He recovers rapidly, as evidenced by his characteristic scoff. "Don't be daft. It's one thing if I fry my own brain, I wouldn't risk --" His dark eyes go very wide and the interface overhead starts thrashing again, more violent than before. "Oh shit! Why the everloving fuck did I call you down here while I was experimenting with my --" He starts pacing rapidly. "And why did you come? I could have hurt you!" He stops as abruptly as he started. A breath he doesn't need shivers from a body he doesn't have. "I could have killed you." It's Charles's turn to blink, his exhausted mind still slow to follow Cere's dizzying changes of mood. "It was ill-advised," he says at last. His tone is gentle, but he relaxes his shields enough to let the lingering echoes of his alarm bleed through. "I might not have come inside if you'd told me first, and I rather would have preferred that, but you -- were not in your right mind. I can't speak to your reasons, but I imagine you were lonely and anxious and unsettled by your ah...experimentation." He guides his chair over to the avatar. "You didn't hurt me, and I think you're aware I'm not so easy to kill. We can find safer ways to adjust your emotional processing. I could monitor from outside and give you feedback." Cere stares up blankly at the elegant chaos of his mind made manifest. "Or, you know, I could just stop thinking about it. Like you asked me to do for whatever you're getting up to with Hive. I can just turn that off. I'm not even a person, for fuck's sake, I can turn any of this off." He looks back down at Charles but flings one hand at the visualization above them, which seems to flinch away from the gesture. "All this is just several billion processes telling themselves they're a person because an actual person programmed them to do that out of sheer bloody-mindedness. And he's been dead for decades!" He swallows, then swallows again, clenching his fists. "Real, virtual, simulated -- call it whatever you like. I'm only the wreckage of Siri Godfrey's failure to accept mortality." Charles reaches out and lays his hand on Cere's arm. "You didn't fail to accept mortality. You chose to defy it. I'm not as sure now about the meaning of 'person' as I once was, but there is a preponderance of evidence in how often you register as one to telepaths and empaths -- including Ryan, who I gather found you real enough. Now, as always, only you can decide who you are and what parts of your code to implement, but I held you in my mind while your body was dying and I have known you all the years since." He lets his hand drop back into his lap. "For what it's worth, you are still my Cere, in all the ways that matter to me." "Sex toys are 'real', too, but I'm glad he had a good time." Cerebro reaches for Charles when his hand falls away, though not far enough to make contact. "Shite time to have an existential crisis," he grumbles, as if this were a minor irritation, like running out of sugar or realizing one's socks are mismatched. "Start of term, end of Prometheus, fucking -- Hive." His voice doesn't break, but at a decent guess it might have, if he didn't have near-complete conscious control over his avatar. "You're exhausted, and you've got class in a few hours. You'll sleep better down here. I can keep you comfortable and block out the noise. Let me take care of you, for a change." Charles shakes his head, then lifts a hand to rub at his temple, at the ever-present headache he'd just aggravated with the movement. "There's no good time for an existential crisis, but we'll manage -- we always have." He clasps Cere's hand, this time, just when he'd aborted reaching for him. "I'll be fine." He sounds and feels very confident, without dismissing the weariness and heartbreak beneath that confidence. His hand squeezes gently. "I always am." Cere level a flat look at Charles, and there's a suggestion of protective vehemence when he pronounces his judgment: "Rubbish. Whoever or whatever I am, I know your mind too well to buy that." His hand is slack in Charles's until it's not, his grip suddenly desperate. "Kindly stop being the goddamned Father of Mutantkind for one fucking night and let me help." He doesn't say "please", but he doesn't need to and he knows it. The Danger Room is already rearranging itself into an opulent bedroom -- one Cere had occupied a few floors up, in the final days of his corporeal existence. It's since been converted to a computer lab, to his enduring amusement. Charles looks up, his face lined with worry. << (I'll stay) >> He doesn't say it in words, but he doesn't need to, either. His warmth speaks love and hurt and gratitude as he lets Cere lift him out of his chair and tuck him in. The bed is impossibly comfortable, illusory yet underpinned by Cere's formidable telekinesis, which he adjusts minutely to accommodate every twinge of overworked muscles and misfiring of abused nerves. Somewhere in the middle of this operation Cere's avatar has changed, though his pajamas are also vaguely Tron-esque in black and luminous green circuitry. "Don't grouse," he warns as he climbs in beside Charles. "You're sleeping inside me anyhow, you may as well get a cuddle in. You need this." "You make it sound so scandalous, but I suppose. So long as you don't get fresh with me." Charles's reply sounds prim, but there's nothing even remotely like "grousing" in his amusement and drowsiness and distant, ever-present longing. There's no reluctance, either, in the arm he curls around Cere's avatar or the warmth that settles into his mind. "Please. You're hot, but not quite hot enough to be worth the visions of your crazy ex I'd have to endure while you're ploughing me." Cere is grousing, but in a companionable sort of way. He tucks his head into the crook of Charles's neck. "Besides, you know I don't fuck white people." | |
