<GA> Holland Farm - Hiawassee
One of many such family farms -- though fewer all the time -- in this little Appalachian town, the Hollands' 160-some rolling acres are divided about evenly between peach orchards and yearly rotations of crops. A burbling creek winds along one edge of the property, which extends up past the arable portions into steep, wooded mountainside. There are several acres of vegetable gardens nearest to the farmhouse, producing enough food to feed the family and often with excess to sell locally. The barn and pasture adjoining this are likewise mainly for the family's own use, with just a couple of dairy cows, a pair of horses, and plenty of chickens.
The farmhouse itself is a big rambling white affair with a generous wraparound porch, full of rustic charm even in its no-nonsense practicality. The furniture is sturdy and plain and well-cared for, the walls adorned with handmade crafts, children's artwork, and some of Jackson Holland's more whimsical original paintings. The kitchen is vast and airy and superbly organized, always redolent of rich home cooking and of the herbs hanging in bundles to dry.
The Hollands received their guests with impeccable hospitality, which Charles Xavier and his valet in turn received with gracious appreciation. Afterwards, Charles bade a somewhat skeptical Ashok to take his leisure for a couple of hours before setting off alone out for the extensive woods at the edge of the property, confident in a rugged motorized chair that has always handled the woodland paths of his own extensive grounds without much difficulty.
That was an hour ago.
Presumably finding one mind on a rural farm poses little challenge for the world's most powerful telepath. Getting there is another matter, all-terrain wheelchair notwithstanding. Perhaps Charles should have considered that he's been intimately familiar since childhood with his own extensive grounds, which are maintained by a groundskeeper scrupulously aware of accessibility, and are not in the mountains. Perhaps he did consider these things and pride won out, which would also explain why he hasn't called for his valet's assistance as he picks his way with great difficulty along the rough and progressively steep bridle paths.
By the time he finds his way to the creek he's looking a bit worse for wear, though at least the wide trails have spared his fine blue-gray tweeds. His psionic presence is at first barely distinguishable from the dappled September sunlight, but grows careful and measured to forewarn Jax -- perhaps unnecessarily -- of his approach.
Charles is greeted somewhat before he actually arrives by a lumbering mountain of shaggy tricolored fur; Skittles is a little slower than the day Charles first came to this farm near two decades ago to find an uncontrolled young photokinetic, but otherwise looks much the same -- wagging, bright eyed, far more nimble on the rocky uneven terrain than the rugged wheelchair can manage. Probably having the dog eagerly frisking under~~foot~~wheel does not help his progress.
Jax's noisy mind is certainly a clear enough beacon across the distance, though, no ambiguity about when Charles is getting closer. It's a jumble of sense-feel and shifting imagery rendered in a range of too-bright colors spanning ranges Charles's eyes have no capacity to see.
The breeze rustling cool against his skin ' a cityscape of New York fashioned out of sand and blowing away in a strong wind. The grounding feel of small rocks turning over warm and smooth in his palm ' Ryan's rich voice singing a song nobody else has yet heard. The fierce-hot power streaming through him ' the walls of Lassiter crumbling in -- and burying Dusk, Ion, Flicker, so many many others, crushed beneath the rubble. Water lapping cool at his skin ' an image of himself, now, fashioned out of sand and washing away with the tide.
He's noticed Charles' approach shortly before the psionic presence becomes concrete -- clear enough when his mind starts to fold in on itself, now (equally painful-bright) glimmer of erratically scintillating colors with less immediately intelligible meaning. Jax is posted up just above the creek, where a small tree has fallen some time ago across the water. He's dressed simply, loose old overalls rolled up above his knees, an ancient Rainbow Brite tee shirt, his boots and socks abandoned on a rock by the bank. He's just tossing a small flat stone with a quiet plunk into the water as Charles hoves near; his hand closes tight around the two stones remaining in his palm. "You far from home, sir." His voice is quiet, but then, the woods are quiet, too.
Charles rolls to a stop briefly when Skittles comes up to greet him. "Well, it's good to see I'm not the only one aging so gracefully." He is indeed not looking so terribly much older himself than when they last met, and he is just as dutifully now scratching behind the dog's ears. At length he persuades Skittles by a slow shifting of pets to walk alongside him the rest of the way to where Jax is perched.
"I've been farther," he replies, admitting wordlessly that said reply came out more cryptic than he had really intended. "You are, too." The home in this is the Holland farmhouse (not so far away, really, though perhaps it seems so now to Charles), and also Ryan's rowhouse in Queens, and also Xavier Mansion. "I'm worried about you, Jackson. A lot of people are." There's no trace of accusation there, just a statement of fact that is sufficient in itself.
"Think the path back's a bit easier for me." Jax's fingers press in, slow, turning the stones over around each other with a quiet scrape. He's turning these thoughts of home over, two, one by one -- the mansion, the Queens house, even the farmhouse all eclipsed in his mind by a blaze of light that in its formless intensity may as well be a void. "Ryan's still got a ways left to go 'fore he's outta all this intensive rehab. Figured until that's through --" He lifts his shoulder in a small hitch. "... did you need somethin'?" sounds abruptly more uncertain, more worried. "Did somethin' happen back in New York?"
"I'm not the first Yankee to underestimate these mountains and I'm sure I won't be the last. I should have brought the chair B made me." Charles reflects that his concerns about the impropriety of turning up with a flashily weaponized mobility aid were probably outsized in this case, given the sharkpup's grandparents are well aware of her...design proclivities. "But unfortunately, yes. Someone's gone missing, and I fear we'll lose him without your help, however unfair that is to ask of you, now of all times."
There's a rapid fluctuation in Jax's mind, too bright to see the distinct shape of but limned with a stark taste of fear. "Ohno --" He's scrambling to his feet on the mossy log, already starting to make his way towards the bank. "Who's -- I can -- how -- it ain't one of the kids again, is it? Or..." Or just trails off as he clicks the stones in his palm together.
Charles does not try to see past Jax's light, but he points to that fluctuation, his own light a different frequency altogether. "Please tell me what happened there." His warmth is soft and conciliatory. "Because it's you, Jackson. You're not the only one I fear we might yet lose, but you are who I meant just now." His mouth presses into a grim line. "I came here to offer my apology and my assistance. I suspect you want neither, but if that reaction is what I think it is, then perhaps you need at least one of them."
Jax pauses where he's gone to sit, one sock in hand that he hasn't yet put back on. He isn't quite making a math lady meme face but his brows do scrunch, deep, as he works his way carefully through the allistic verbal chicanery Charles has just pulled on him. "-- I ain't missing," he finally hazards, a little more defensively than he probably intended to sound. "You found me fine." A glance towards the wheelchair, a small apologetic correction: "Near fine an' I know these woods better'n nearbout anyone." His toes curl down against the damp rock. "What I need your assistance for?" is less defensive but a good deal more cautious.
Charles bows his head. "My apologies," he says, though this is not the apology that brought him here. "I can dispense somewhat with the words, or dispense them more --" He stops, reconsiders, and starts again. "I mean that I am capable of communicating with very few words or no words at all. In fact, I prefer doing so if it is more intuitive for those I am communicating with." And he should be more proactive in offering to adapt in such ways rather than only deciding to do so when he notices someone struggling with the way he usually speaks.
"This is not a judgment but an observation: you have been avoiding your family and community, and as with 'missing' I don't just mean physically." He gestures at the woods around them, then drops his hand to Skittles's fluffy head again. "I suspect you are depressed, blame yourself for the harm that's come to those you love, and fear you will bring more. I believe I've been in..." He studies Jax's boots, brows furrowing faintly. "...a comparable situation, long ago. I do not know if I can help you, or if you'll allow me to try. But I do know that your family and community need you, and it seems very likely you also need us, even if not me in particular."
Jax's shoulders are hunching in, his knees pulling up to his chest. He curls one arm around his shins; in his other hand, he's back to rolling the two smooth rocks in his palm. "I don't think nobody --" His teeth catch at a lip ring, wiggling it slowly. "I'd'a moved back here a decade an' more ago, if Prometheus weren't -- if I didn't have to --" There's a wisp of dark shadow starting to curl around him, twisting in slow coils around his arms before dissolving away. "I'm sorry you come all this way, sir," he finally says, eyes fixing down on the water where it splashes past the rock, "but I am home."
"I never said you weren't." Charles agrees, his voice surpassingly gentle. "And I think you'd have addressed what I did say if it were entirely off-base. It's understandable you should want some peace and quiet -- whether just for a while or ever after, à la Katniss Everdeen -- else there'd be a lot more people coming to harass you." His expression shutters for just an instant, but he blinks rapidly, draws a slow breath, and goes on. "But this reads more like despair to me than rest, and I'm all the more alarmed to find you're holding your family here at arm's length, too." He looks around again. "So to speak. I do not fault you and, at least to a point, I do understand."
He rolls up beside Jax, or as near as he dares to trust the stream bank beneath the chair's weight. "I am sorry, Jackson. You were right all along about Prometheus, but in my own despair I failed you, Dawson, and everyone who suffered in those cages. Whatever the cost, that burden should never have fallen to you, or to any child." His voice wavers but does not break, and where the warmth of his presence had been fading it steadies now, insistently and indefinably bright. "You don't have to tell me how to make amends, though I am listening if ever you should wish to. But we need you all the more now, I promise. Not just your skills or service or leadership, as valuable as those are. You."
"I'm --" Jax starts, but then just falls into quiet. His head bows, his eye squeezing tightly shut. At closer range there's a fierce heat radiating from him that the cool mountain breeze can't quite dispel. "I ain't real sure," he finally offers, softly, "what I am 'cept those things."
Charles is quiet for a moment, but not idle. The not-quite-brightness that's welled up around them flutters and comes to life. "You are your actions, yes." Flitting through the almost-light are memories of Jax through Charles's eyes, forever busy baking and teaching and caring and training. "But you are also how those actions change others." Now glimpses of the people -- schoolmates, children, coworkers, teammates -- he's inspired and loved and protected and grieved. "You are everything that you create and nurture and strive for and struggle with. But you are not static, or complete, or wholly your own, and there is so, so much more to you than anyone can perceive." All the things he's conjured assemble into an image stunning in dynamism and depth of every Jax he's ever known all at once.
"There isn't one right way to know who you are, but you can learn to see yourself in meaningful ways. It can be especially hard to see the ways you are needed when you usually see the picture with yourself in it." His portrait of Jax turns and walks away, leaving a shadow made up of his absence. From it Charles refracts memories of Jax's desk at the school littered with gifts from students, of Hank grumping at him over the Health & Human Development, of Scott staring past the advising spreadsheet, unable to summon words, of Hive's mind curling away from the desperate warmth he offers, of Matt slumped blank and listless across a chess game he's winning, of Ryan seeking comfort in his basement of all places, of his own string of unanswered texts.
"You are a beacon of hope for our people, and if you find it in yourself to lead someday I will support you any way that I can." The shadow-portrait dissolves into motes of light. "But I'm here about the little ways you're needed now. I do not think you realize how much solace and comfort your mere presence -- even from afar -- can bring those who love you. Even if all you have to offer them right now is pain, there is strength in hurting together."
There's a slow shift in Jax's mind -- for just a moment, the formless bright intensity is dimming to something less blinding, something more legible. All the memories, all the ideas, all the bright-brilliant images that Charles has been rendering, taken in and turned over in a careful examination. And then they're crumbling, washing away under a flood of blood and shadow that blots out everything else in its path. It's this, now, that remains, dark and churning in place of the previous harsh sunlight. "I've brung them enough pain for a lifetime and then some already, sir. There'll be other hopes." It's Ryan he's thinking of, here, of his fiery passion on stage and his fierce eloquence in the face of an endless sea of media trying to tear him down. "There'll be other comforts." This -- comes up short in his imagination, just a murky darkness that is rent through by even darker silhouettes of fluttering bats and jagged lightning.
Charles nods. "There will be others -- all the more if they have your guidance. That does not mean you can be replaced, and it does not mean they need you any less now." The motes of light lingering in his psionic aura grow brighter again, though still as soft as the warmth that they swell to fill. "I don't believe it helps to argue over blame, even if the despair would let you hear it. But this much is true: you carried each other through the pain. You have been Ryan's strength, and he yours, and on and on." The light pulses with myriad colors in time to "See it Through", song and synaesthesia alike rendered faithfully. "You're not beholden to the lives you save, but you are not separate from them, either. If you push them away, you are all diminished."
"I gone from being a Catholic to almost a Jew, if there's some kinda Guilt Debate Team I'm going for a medal." A small shiver passes through Jax at the music, and there are echoes that ripple out into the air around him, a soft shiver of shifting colors that harmonize fluidly with the remembered echoes of Ryan's bright-toned synaesthetic sensing. "You been spending way too much time in Hive's brain, sir." Jax's answer comes a little slow, a little wry, after some time spent contemplating these words in quiet. He looks back down to the water and then sets his small stones down on the rock beside him. He picks up his boots, now, not bothering to put them on before he stands. "We should get. Way back don't get no easier after dark." It is getting easier right now, though; barely visible but certainly sensible to Charles, the deceptively casual flex of power that lays a firm and even path down over the mud and stones under Charles's rugged wheels.
"Lest you think I dodged that argument out of any profound psychological insight," Charles confesses, "I'm just awful at debate, even without the religious handicap." There's a hitch in the not-light scintillating with the music, and "See it Through" gains a voice. Or maybe several. The soft susurrus of the Karaniya Metta Sutta doesn't exactly harmonize with Ryan's power ballad, but buoys up its fierce swells and gentles the quiet measures in between. Charles takes a slow breath and nods again. "Perhaps. More likely I did not spend enough time in there, before. Maybe I would not have taken so long to make teshuvah if I had." He pivots his chair and follows Jax slowly back up the path, not trying to hide his relief to find it smoother or his gratitude for the effort that made it so. "Your light is rather more practical here than mine. Light or dark, I don't think it's ever easy, but I certainly prefer it with you than without."
Jax pulls in a slow breath, at the soft chanting that winds through the music. Something wrenches in his mind, an ache and a question that start to take the shape of Hive but splinters into pieces before fully forming. Instead, after shoving this half-thought roughly back down, he calls Skittles back to his side, curls his fingers down into the dog's shaggy fur. "Ryan thinks you come all this way for a hookup," he's saying in some distractable tangent off of Charles's last statement, offhanded and kind of amused. The path unfurls before them with what looks like ease but feels like a careful and continuous exertion. "Lotta maybes. Sometimes, returning is just --" He shakes his head, small. "-- a long process."
Charles arches an eyebrow sidelong at Jax. "I can't fathom what might have given him that notion." The fluttering of his aura tells on his attempts at fathoming it anyway. "My hooking-up days are long..." He trails off into a frown, lips compressing to conceal some other expression. "Nevermind that, I have ethical considerations for my employees -- and young people I'm trying to take under wing, for that matter." His voice is quiet, but stirs bright ripples in his light without ruffling the music he's still sharing through it. "All too many maybes and what-ifs and ought'ves. Somewhere between them, I got so lost in despair I built a school inside and called it hope." He gazes down the glimmering path Jax is laying ahead into the darkening wood. "You and Ryan reminded me what real hope looks like. I will return that kindness if you need it, however long it takes."
"He -- you --" Jax closes his mouth; he isn't looking at Charles but he doesn't need to, and Charles can feel the rapid flicker of dismissed replies that begin to surface. Can feel, too, that the faint flush that tints the air pink around Jax has nothing to do with the text messages -- he hasn't quite decided where to put his feelings, just yet, but they're wrapping that assertion of real hope close like a blanket. "When we get back in, I'm gonna explain you about some those emojis."
