Logs:Sweet Dreams Are Made of Cheese

Sweet Dreams Are Made of Cheese
Dramatis Personae Maya, Scott
In Absentia	2023-06-03 "That's the first thing I think of every time we misplace a bunch of kids, too."
Location <NYC> Harry's Hideaway - Salem Center
A cozy nook of a bar, Harry's has been run by the same grizzled proprietor for decades. The fare they serve is plain and typical bar food, but solid and well-prepared, and what the alcohol lacks in variety it makes up for in quality. Close proximity and long-developed relationships with the staff at Xavier's means they turn a blind eye to the mutants who frequent the bar. If this were the city, Friday Night would no doubt be hopping around here. It's not the city, and Salem Center has not suddenly transformed itself into having a bustling nightlife -- but there are plenty of regulars cozied up to the bar, a game of pool at the Lone Pool Table that is not "rowdy" but is turning -- no, nevermind, that is a congratulations hug and not a brewing fight; a fervid argument breaking out at one of the tables (over whether or not the town should or should not install a pickleball court -- where would it GO. Think of the NOISE. ... what even is PICKLEBALL you just MADE THAT UP. Opinions are growing heated.) In the back, Maya -- dressed springtime-bright in vivid pink kurta with elaborate gold detail stitching, bright pink and orange dupatta draped loosely over her shoulders, light blue jeans, sequined gold slippers -- has probably had Some Amount of drink already; a large mug of some lightly golden beer is on the table nearby her, along with a not-much-touched tray of onion rings with cheesey dipping sauce. She isn't drunk, but she's tipsy enough to be aware that she's tipsy, taking a gooood long time to line up her shot at the current dart game she is playing against Herself. She squints steadily at the board before tossing a dart, which thunks into the NUMBER eleven but not anywhere on its attendant pie slice. Score none for you, Maya. Scott is drinking Scotch (no, really) at another table nearby, his rumpled and tired apparel (red flannel, faded dark-wash jeans, scuffed boots) doing really very little to minimize his rumpled, tired look, mostly hidden behind the tinted lenses of his glasses. He has just the beginnings of a slouch in his posture, making it hard to tell at first whether he's watching this one-sided game of darts or staring down at the table, where he's idly, rhythmically rotating his glass on its beermat, a quarter-turn at a time. At least until he speaks, as if he's been here commenting on the game all along. "At least it's still on the board, that ought to count for something." (He does not suggest that it should be worth points.) "It counts!" Maya is whirling around on a heel, her next dart still in hand -- maybe not very reassuringly she is gesturing with it in Scott's direction before her eyes go wide and she drops her hand to her side. "It counts as a very clear gauge that I have not had enough beer yet." To that end, she is setting the dart back down and going to pick up her beer for a swig. "I'm not trying to be still drunk at graduation tomorrow but I might be lightly hoping to be still drunk at graduation tomorrow. Probably you -- have to actually talk to parents and all, right?" Her nose is wrinkling in deep sympathy. There's a tiny tightening in Scott's posture when Maya whirls on him, an upward twitch, but his expression doesn't budge; his hand just stills on his glass, the two tiny plastic straws bumping lightly against his index finger. His answering grunt is almost imperceptible, but he follows it with a heavy, "I contacted the parents already, wanted to see if any of them had heard from their kids." His index finger tilts the stir sticks one way, then ducks around them to tilt them back. "Anybody who was going to come right to the school to chew us out already has. Everybody else… well, now they know not to make the trip." His fingers tilt the stir sticks back out of the way; now he does go for a drink. Maya slumps down at her table, taking another long swallow of beer. Her expression has rumpled, worry-lines etching deeply into her round face. "And there hasn't been any --" She hesitates, glancing around them -- though there aren't really any people notably eavesdropping nearby she shifts herself over to Scott's table, dropping into a seat across from him instead. "I thought the Professor's --" Her hands are making a rough sort of helmet shape over her glossy crown braids. Telepath-ex-machina. "Could see, like, anywhere on Earth." Scott shakes his head, even as Maya cuts herself off -- there hasn't been any anything, apparently. He pulls his drink slightly closer to himself, though he's already taking up very little of the table, shifting uneasily in his barstool. "Been broken for years," he says regretfully. "That's the first thing I think of every time we misplace a bunch of kids, too." This is said a little more matter-of-fact than is probably reassuring; Scott's lips press together, considering. "I give myself fifteen minutes to go, 'Why in God's name can't we fix Cerebro?' and then I try to figure out what I can do." "Every time?" Maya does not look matter-of-fact about this, her hand fluttering to her mouth. "I mean, interdimensional portals swallowing kids up, that's -- hard to avoid," she considers for a second, "probably, but. Do you think -- maybe we should have some sort of. Life skills courses for, um." Her hand is waggling vaguely in the air as she searches for her thought. "When to press a panic button? Running away from danger? Identifying danger?" Her brows lift. "Having superpowers without thinking you're invincible?" "When to not break the panic button," suggests Scott, his tone still very even. He starts rotating his drink again, quarter-turn by quarter-turn, staring ponderously at the liquid wavering in the glass. "They're smart kids. If they thought they were truly invincible, they wouldn't have made it back from the rift." He shakes his head, lets his hand drop back onto the table beside his glass. "I would have thought this group, of all people, would understand that having superpowers is dangerous." Maya's groan is quiet. She briefly presses her hand to her eye, other eye screwing up in a since. "That was terrible timing. Not that it was great the other times, but --" Her face is still slightly scrunched when she drops her hand and reaches for an onion ring, dipping it into the cheese. She nudges the try in Scott's direct in silent offer, and cups her hand beneath the slightly gooey cheese dip before crunching the snack down. "This group is still teenagers," she says with a rueful half-smile. "I think not having to worry about your own death is a whole part of the teenager experience -- oh gosh not that they're dead I just!" Flustered, she looks down at the table. Plucks a napkin from the dispenser to wipe grease from her fingertips. "We worry about it so they don't have to, right? Or. Shouldn't. Have to." Scott grimaces just slightly. "It would be nice if we could figure out a backup system that doesn't go down with the main network." He lifts the cheesy dip bowl out of the way, as if checking for a different dipping sauce hidden directly underneath it, then takes an onion ring and folds it melancholically into his mouth. Looks at Maya, implacably, and then just -- away. "Maybe that's the teenager experience," he agrees ruefully, "but it's not the mutant experience." "Is that true, though?" Maya sounds uncertain, not challenging. "I'm not saying our kids don't have it hard! They have dealt with -- more than any kids should. But -- most kids deal with more than any kids should, these days. Before I taught here..." Her teeth are briefly digging down against her lip, and her head shakes, slow. "Teaching human kids in the city there were kids who'd come to this country fleeing war, kids who's parents had been killed by police -- we didn't worry about power malfunctions but it didn't stop kids from shooting each other." Her hand squeezes around her beer glass, her mouth twisting to the side. "I think the world is pretty violent, and it's pretty violent to a lot of kids. I think part of what we do as their guardians, teachers, mentors -- it's give them a cushion. A place where the world feels safer for them than it ever really was. But like -- how to balance that with preparing them for its dangers? If there was like a Nobel Prize for teaching whoever cracked that code would get it easy." Scott readjusts himself in his barstool, propping his elbow on the table to take another sip of his drink as he listens. He's quiet for a moment after Maya finishes, too, still holding his glass by its rim, before he sets it carefully back on the beermat. "Yeah," he says, his voice rasping out like a gruff sigh. "Kids like ours, though, or kids like at your old schools -- refugees, gang members, I don't know -- I'd like to be able to tell them the world is better than that, but they know it's not, and they'll respect us a hell of a lot less for lying to them. There's no balancing act that can make a kid unsee a war." A moment, as he considers this, before he licks his lips self-consciously and adds, "But I already know I'm not winning that Nobel Prize." "Probably none of us are." Maya's laugh here is small, her smile slightly crooked. "But if it was anyone I think some of you who've been here since always should at least get a nomination. Is it true someone turned you all into birds once? I feel like that's not really where Logan disappeared off to this time but I can never be totally sure which rumors are true. -- I'm guessing probably not that one about the Professor and Magneto? But like -- giant bees abducting the kids I'm on the fence about what to believe." She's maybe taking stock of what she just said, now, and admitting with a sheepish smile: "... okay, whatever dangers are out there vs. here, our kids definitely have it weirder." Scott grunts. "Weirder, that's one way to put it." But a slow smile is forcing its way, as if unbidden, across his lips. "Don't believe everything you read in the school paper. We're pretty sure we can rule out giant bees." The smile fades much more quickly than it surfaced, and he looks back down at his drink, mostly empty, and swirls the stir sticks with his finger, rattling the half-melted ice. "Wish I could just follow them myself." Maya hesitates here. Her fingers clench down hard against her glass, her smile faltering and then dropping away entirely. The hard tension that passes over her is considerably out of character from her usual demeanor, but it passes soon into a more determined resolution. She looks back up at Scott, leaning just slightly in with more hush in her voice when she says: "-- I can. I -- don't know if I should have done that already? It's not -- not. The last time I -- when my sister was missing, we ended up --" She bites at her lip but then forges ahead: "But I can walk to them. Maybe? Maybe. If they're dreaming and if I see it -- it's a lot of ifs." "I couldn't ask you to," says Scott, as if on automatic, but he cuts himself short so abruptly, his head tilting almost comically, that one can almost hear a voice-over narration saying: Could I? He adds uncertainly, as much to himself as to Maya, "You're not an X-Man, I can't ask you to…" he trails off. "If you could see their dreams," he says, after a moment, "then at least we'd know they're -- you know, asleep. Alive." Maya nibbles on another onion ring as Scott speaks, and she's nodding along. "If I can't see them," she offers -- soft and slow, "it doesn't necessarily mean --" Her mouth presses into a thin line. "It doesn't mean anything except they're not sleeping right then. Not dreaming right then. That's all it means." The firmness with which she says this sounds possibly like she's convincing herself -- pushing back a worry she's already been having. "I can set aside some nights. If I try looking all through the night I'm more likely to -- catch one of them dreaming." Her hesitation is small. "But if I do, what -- then? If you have no leads yet... I won't know where they are or what's happening with them without checking. Like, physically -- travelling." She pushes back her creeping discomfort here with another swallow of beer. "Right," says Scott, a little abashed, but, "It'd be more of a lead than giant bees." He swigs the melty ice bits of his drink. "That's how you ended up in the lab, isn't it?" he says. "If Spence couldn't just jump right back, then… I don't want to send you anywhere alone, anyway. You're not an X-Man, I can't…" This last is more to himself than to Maya; he still seems to be looking mostly at her, but behind the tinted lenses his eyes are darting side to side as he thinks. "In your experience -- is there anything real in dreams?" he says. Like a confession: "I never remember mine." "Yeah. They had my sister and when we couldn't contact her for a while I was so worried and -- well. I found her!" The small laugh that comes with this too-chipper finish is a little strained. "Walking out just turned out to be a little harder." Maya picks up one of the two remaining onion rings, gesturing Just In Case Scott wants the last. She's chewing hers over slowly as she considers this. "I remember your dreams," comes first, almost absently. "-- there's often something real in dreams, I think. But what that is can be really hard to tease out. Like maybe giant bees are just giant bees but maybe giant bees are symbolic -- that's probably a bad example if there were giant bees um, my point is, someone dreaming about being shipwrecked on Mars doesn't usually mean they're shipwrecked on Mars but --" Her brows scrunch. "At this school you can never really tell. I could -- keep some kind of log? If I see any of them. Maybe there'll be a pattern." Scott doesn't laugh along with Maya, but he does take the last onion ring; he chews it contemplatively as he listens. Nods. "So -- maybe clues, maybe not," he sums up. He takes a breath and lets it very slowly out before he says, "And even if it's all just giant bees and gibberish, it's something. Better than nothing. And even if it's nothing…" After a moment, he just finishes with, "If you see anything, then -- yes. Please. Anything at all." "Right. Right." Maya washes her onion ring down with the last of her beer. She doesn't quite manage another smile, but she's worked something hopeful back into her tone. "And if they're all dreaming about penguins, probably several people owe Nessie an apology."