Logs:Takes One to Know One

Takes One to Know One
Dramatis Personae Charles, Hive, Quentin
In Absentia	2024-05-10 << The young man already has a rapport with you. >>
Location <XAV> Headmaster's Office & brains
<XAV> Headmaster's Office A trip to the headmaster's office can be intimidating, but Charles does his best to make the experience more comfortable for his students. Today, he's come out from behind his desk and parked himself on the other side of the round side table from the comfortable armchair he offered Quentin. His usually formidable psychic defenses are relaxed toward Quentin specifically, the spill of his warm psionic presence comforting and the intricate workings of his shields faintly sensible to the young telepath. The masala chai they're sipping is splendid and fragrant, the soft strains of J.S. Bach's Prussian Fugue filling the quiet of the office's excellent (though not perfect) soundproofing. "...as I said in your debriefing with the other students," Charles has been explaining, conversationally, "I do not believe any of you meant to harm Mr. Summers, but extenuating circumstances do not negate the fact he was, nevertheless, harmed." He sets down his white porcelain teacup and saucer. "What I did not say in front of your compatriots was you also telepathically compelled Mr. Summers when you told him to get out of your way. I think it's altogether possible you did not recognize in the moment what you were doing, but either way I would like to discuss it further in service of avoiding --" Poke? It's not much, at first, but it presses bright and inquisitive up against Xavier's mind. If Quentin has been intimidated, it hasn't showed -- but then, his mind doesn't show much, an eerie and shifting reflection of a pair of students passing in the hall, a teacher adjusting their assignments for next week in a nearby office, thoughts borrowed and echoed across the surface of his mind. He's sitting calm and just a little slouched in the armchair, sipping at his tea. Head cocked, expression one of just-polite-enough interest, but his eyes have been just a little more keen somewhere around telepathically compelled. By discuss it further he's been sitting up a little straighter in his chair, and -- poke, again, clumsy in the attempt at pushing, an eagerly curious but half-formed << pick the tea back up pick the tea back up >> whose fierce but completely inexpert effort at compulsion might be well more than enough to push an unprepared classmate but certainly nowhere near enough to make a dent in Charles Xavier's formidable defenses. Charles arches one eyebrow, unamused. "Quentin, that is highly inappropriate. But I suppose it confirms you did not know what you were doing. I had my share of troubles with compelling others unawares, when I was a lad, and I'm confident I can teach you to recognize this facet of your power and control it so as not to --" Pokepokepoke. Is Quentin listening, probably not. His expression still reads Mostly Polite Attentiveness but his excited pushing, no more skilled than two seconds ago, is nevertheless more confident in its: << it's good tea drink the tea. >> Charles rubs his brows with one hand, exasperated. "Will you kindly stop that?" Quentin has picked up his tea, anyway. He's taking a slow drink through Charles' exasperation, his posture relaxing in the chair again. "Sure, yeah," comes a little too readily, given that the spoken words are accompanied with another, determined << one sip >> POKE. --- Maybe it's the tea that Charles is, at this moment, drinking, that dapples laughter bright and warm through their shifting canopy. In Hive's room there is a mug of coffee set on a coaster beside the project he is working on, faint holo-glow reflected in the glossy ceramic, but that drink is half-gone and mostly-cold. Somewhere across the wing, though, Charles's drink is still warm, and it's a small and slightly amused nudge that lifts it, takes a sip. Hive is slouching back in his seat as the rich warmth rolls over shared senses. His eyes are fixed on his work, stylus bobbing absently between his fingers, but his mind is riffling through these recent memories. For just the briefest instant he is flirting with the thought of apology, but it's just a passing impulse; what surfaces more concretely is: << You wanted to be a teacher. >> Charles lowers his cup to its saucer, his eyes focused somewhere past his curricula for the batch of private tutoring that has shaken out of those recent memories. The pleasant and pleasantly complex experience of the tea is laying another stone along that particular path, which might -- or might not -- be enclosed behind hedgerows when his labyrinth ceases to be the clearing around the stout braided banyan. In the strength of its spreading branches above and spreading roots below, the effort of maintaining his psionic shields is easier now than it usually is at the winding down of a long week. << I still do. Every once in a while I even fancy myself a decent one. >> Not today, though. Still, decent or otherwise, he has been teaching long enough to take difficulties with his pupils in stride. << You could take over his telepathic tutelage. >> There's an air of magnanimity to this offer. << The young man already has a rapport with you. >> << (rapport) >> rustles quick and sharp, a puff of breeze or a puff of laughter. It flutters at branches overhead and with it the leaves shift, baring memories of their own veined all through their undersides. On this one << (rapport) >> is ruffling the feeling of that bright psionic presence, standing out loud even among their millions-of-selves spread from one coast to another, confused and disoriented in a hospital ward. On another, the breeze turns over the long hours of intensive psionic coaching, helping the child sort one mind from another and learn to comfortably navigate this new-awakened sense. On another, the spike of fear and panic that called his attention back months later, the chaotic destruction when his telekinesis began fluctuating out of control and the invitation to Xavier's. On another, the first time they met face-to-face and Quentin's immediate haughty derision at Hive's clunky-abrasive psionic touch, so different than the deft and powerful mind he'd been from afar. << (rapport) >> here, kind of delighted in Hive's amusement: << Kid said Two Words to me and decided I'm a shit-tier teep. Thinks I only felt impressive the first time because he didn't understand telepathy but now that he Knows Everything, the student has surpassed the master. Think this one's all yours, friend. >> Unsaid, but felt strong in the twined roots that join them: << (you're a damn good teacher) >>, the shifting leaves holding the manymany lessons Hive took in from Charles over the years, the way he leaned on them, into them, to help the awakening telepath learn not to drown. Charles's indignation on Hive's behalf is mild and also amused, just a wind-blown shadow cast by the memory of Quentin's dismissal. << It is hard to uproot the fallacy of thinking strength is a single variable that can be meaningfully measured across different powers. >> Their roots twine around and connect memories grounded in the soil -- his near-fatal underestimation Nathaniel Essex's stolen telepathy, the humbling experience of meeting Siri Godfrey in all his adolescent arrogance, his eye-opening wonder at the sheer variety of psionics at Utopia. << After all that, I was still not prepared for you. >> The moment they first met -- Charles's uncomprehending shock and horror when he realized how effortlessly Hive sidestepped the psychic defenses he'd honed for decades -- glitters gemlike in the dappled sunlight. << You also knew enough to get by when I took you under wing, but you wanted to learn. >> Somewhere in or around or beneath this, the wordless sorrowful regret of << (you needed to learn) >> and the deeper worry of << (so does Quentin) >> held up against the boy's blithe condescension toward Charles's attempt to teach the very thing he was trying -- and failing -- to do. << (we all need to learn) >> This isn't referring to Quentin, now. One hanging-tendril root stretches down, roots itself quiet but pointed into a flagstone of Charles' labyrinth -- a much-younger Charles, largely ignoring the lecture his professor is giving, cocksure-glib when he dismisses his fiery lab partner's concerns about their project until the much-younger Moira puts him (and his careless work) in its place. Hive is leaning forward where he sits, making careful adjustments to his blueprints' measurements. << Most of (your)/(our) kids are annoying as hell. Feel like that's not really why this one exasperates you. >> Charles is about to protest that he would have given anything for a mentor in his younger days when another stone in the distance shimmers in resonance with his incipient thought. Across the gulf of a decade and a half, he's telling Hive before he starts training with the raid team, << But if some elder telepath had materialized to warn me against it in 1976, I'd not have heeded him, either. >> In the present, Charles graciously accepts the self-own with the distinct impression of Captain Picard face-palming. << Well, I hadn't gotten so very cocky yet, at his age. >> But this isn't particularly defensive, and comes with a whisper of gratitude to Hive and DJ for finding Quentin, the way he might have once, with Cerebro. << They are at an awkward time in their lives, and I had rather endure the aggravation than see any of them endure what I did. >> He types out another bullet point in his lesson plan for Quentin: - Permit student to attempt telepathic compulsion under close observation within mental partition as specified above << I suppose he will not much like being permitted anything. >> Charles takes another sip of his tea, pointedly. << Rapport or no, you do know him better. Have you any advice, beyond rudely suggesting he reminds me of myself? >> << If you'd had a better support network, you would have. Really, when you think about it, it's kinda your fault a lot of these lil punks aren't getting humbled like they should. >> That selfsame memory has been whispering in Hive's mind, lurking in readiness to brandish at Charles and the younger telepath is somewhat exaggeratedly huffing that Charles beat him to the punch. He's reaching for his own coffee as Charles sips the tea, but when he takes a cold sip he changes his mind about this and instead just enjoys Charles' from afar. << Kid's got passion. Think if you learn to steer it without him feeling like you are -- >> Here, for a second, their thoughts hitch; in Hive the swell is at once like and unlike grief, a strange void that he's felt far more keenly echoed through his social circles than in himself -- as much as those things can be separated for him. He sets aside the odd regret as he sets aside his cup, focusing a little more consciously on the rich taste of the tea. << ... finesse never really been my forte. >> << It's usually my fault, >> Charles allows, a bit reluctantly, << {but this one is solidly on you.} >> He had switched to French somewhat unconsciously for its more distinctive second-person plural, little though he needs it. He also does not need the nonverbal context he habitually adds to words whether spoken aloud or in thoughts. He does not even need words here, their selves entwined at once steady and fluid -- where the memory of Charles's admission on Cloudraker that sunny day long past has a vibrant depth more than the sum of their perspectives. << (beat you to it) (hoist with our own petard) (stop hitting yourself) >> The sun shining through these whimsies casts dancing shadows on the ground below of paths yet unwalked (again) in a distant refuge Hive is planning to take in Thailand. The idea that he'll miss Hive then doesn't fully materialize, though it might -- or might not -- later, when Charles is at least nominally Just Charles again. The swell of grief/not-grief for Lucien hitches on where that strange void began for Charles. His urgent call chez Tessier that fatal morning is laid out in flagstones ringed with moss and wildflowers until it takes an abrupt turn -- -- into smooth tessellated pavers, and it wasn't really so very urgent, after all. If his indifference to the circumstances of Lucien's death jars with how deeply he cherished their friendship, it doesn't register as important to any of them. In and through and around the oddly decontexualized memory weaves a thread of light that he follows to the bright ribbon of what he learned from and what he taught Lucien about steering people. << I've often accomplished by telepathy what I could do with finesse. Fortunately for young Quentin (for us all), I've learned a great deal lately on what I can accomplish with both. >> Charles sets down the teacup and picks up his stylus to add a new section to his lesson plan: Skillful Means: or, it Takes One to Know One