Logs:Manipulated Context

Manipulated Context
CN: Discussion/depictions of rape/incest/murder/familial abuse.
Dramatis Personae Charles, Joshua, Scott
In Absentia Lucien, Matt, Elie, Damien	2025-01-02 "You've put that together now." (immediately after dropping in on Scott.)
Location <XS> Xavier'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 -- all fitted with automatic openers -- 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, sort of screened-off by a recently added freshwater tropical aquarium. One of the interior walls are doors to the expansive bathroom and walk-in closets. Before the stone fireplace is a small table flanked with armchairs, and on the mantle above it beautiful blue and white Chinese vases frame Antonio Canova's Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss. Elegant glass doors open onto a balcony with a stunning view of the glittering lake nestled in the woods of the mansion's extensive grounds. The dreamy opening stretch of Giuseppe Tartini's sonata in G minor fills the space around Charles as he finishes breaking his fast in the reading nook. He's still in his plush burgundy dressing gown over his pajamas, with a soft Kinross tartan blanket thrown over his lap, where Greymalkin lies curled fast asleep. His head nods and weaves minutely in time to the music as he flicks through the pages of a manuscript on his laptop, tapping out notes here and there, his psionic presence a formless halo of comfort difficult to tease apart from the physical warmth in the room and the scent of Earl Grey tea mingled with the subtle ubiquitous whiff of Santal. -- crash. Directly into Charles's morning serenity -- did he want company, he's getting so much company. Joshua (smelling strongly of tequila in his Xavier's hoodie and OCCUPY LASSITER 2023 tee, clothing rumpled and black-flag-embroidered kippah pinned contrastingly neatly to his shaggy hair) is not literally crashing into the apartment, though it looks a near thing as wobbly on his feet as he is. His mind is another question -- the fuzz of alcohol is not, at all, helping to mellow his state of furious guilty turmoil. Mostly it is serving to jumble his thoughts even further. There's a thread of self-flagellation (deeply unusual, for him) << -- {the fuck did I not notice} -- >> spinning around and around a fractured confused timeline of his time at Prometheus, trying desperately to fit this with Elie's in some utterly irrational terror that somewhere at root he started this. Knotted up and through this, just pain, raw somatic memory clutching raspy at his throat (the tequila had been helping here and he is, now, suddenly acutely angry that it is no longer in his hand.) The jangling exhaustion of his two back-to-back shifts -- the one on his ambulance planned, the one in the Tessiers' posh townhome entirely by surprise -- is locked in amiable wrassle with the booze, jostling his thoughts still further out of place. His stricken sense of etiquette is surfacing too dim and too late to be of use; he can't even muster up the same futile apologies he'd offered Scott, instead just slumping against a wall while he turns toward Charles, his long face looking more glowery even than usual. << fuck fuck should have -- >> << {sleep he said sleep you don't listen} >> << telepath TELEPATH telepath >> -- this last alarm is jangling unhappily over some manner of thought hastily shoved down. Against this noisy backdrop, his, "-- G'morning, Professor," sounds absurdly, jarringly polite. Scott does literally crash, materializing in a sort of slumped stoop, like he was sitting down mere moments ago; he hits the floor almost immediately, with an out-loud, "Oof!" and an internal rapid stream of taking-stock consciousness, first just determining where they are, then << (I said sleep, he doesn't listen) >> (this is oddly, aggressively, aggravatedly fond), then, startlingly articulate against the backdrop of his mind (roiling harshly on the surface, disturbed and disgusted and furious in a way Charles is used to seeing filtered up through Scott's disciplined psionic shields, the individual swelling thoughts murky and confused and illegible in the way he instinctively tries to yank them back under the froth) -- << this is too much at once, I should -- >> and then he is saying, as he hoists himself uneasily onto his feet, puts one hand on Joshua's shoulder to steady (Joshua? himself?), his voice a little rough, "-- sorry. Sir. We need to talk to you." Charles flinches in time to a cascading trill in Tartini's sonata and the cascading X-Men in his room. His eyes linger long on Joshua before tracking aside to Scott, and for once his "Ah" comes out uncertain rather than knowing, but at least the vague warmth of his telepathic presence resumes in short order. "Good morning, gentleman. Please have a seat." There is only one empty recliner across the little table from Charles's (old) (shockingly low-tech) wheelchair, but both of his visitors would easily fit on the padded bench seat in the bay window itself. "Shall I have some beverages sent in?" As he speaks he is fretfully checking over each of the younger men for obvious signs of injury, his mind pressing at Scott's in reflexive hope of an explanation. "And breakfast, perhaps?" << more tequila >> Joshua is thinking immediately, together with a reflexive queasy roil at the mere suggestion of food. His weaving steadies under Scott's hand, though this is shortly obviated as he stumbles over and drops down into the side of the windowseat. There's another roil, less queasy but no less discomforted, at Charles's warm touch -- usually not a thing that bothers him, but today it stirs a sense of violation (which, in turn, stirs another pang of guilt -- << not his fault >>). He's trying to figure out where, exactly, to start this retelling, his mind bouncing from here to another planet entirely, Lucien's aggressive calm reassuring even across an entire dimension of horror. From there to the Danger Room, the sensefeel of Matt's power twined through his, his own threaded exhausted into Yet Another Explosive New Student at the start of Yet Another Explosive New Year. From there to Lucien's study, scrubbed clean of him and rearranged to another's whims and yet still viscerally, nauseatingly a terror. From there to -- "I was Elie." "Coffee," says Scott, his voice low -- he doesn't follow Joshua over to the windowseat yet, suddenly and absurdly trying to sort through whether there is anything he should do before he provides Charles with the information he's pressing for, mind still churning with misgivings, peaking and falling almost too fast to be registered, but that they are starting to blend into a pontillist landscape of mistrust -- mistrust (guilty), mistrust (relieved), mistrust with confusion or frustration or anger or watchful, anxious anticipation. Also somewhat absurdly, his first move is to cross to turn the music -- not off, just down. << (You met her,) >> Scott isn't actually intending to broadcast any of his thoughts, which are coming out far less careful and far more accusatory than is ever typical of him, << (she told you everything was fine, you told me everything was fine, you said the context --) >> and it's still loud through his mind even as he's trying to wrestle himself into proper use of English. Now he's going to sit by Joshua, dropping heavily down on the edge, his hands braced on his knees. "Matt and Lucien's mother," he clarifies, and then at least some part of his mind is relaxing into the familiarity of giving a report. "Her mutation. They were working out what it is, how it works, it's some sort of -- Joshua said 'manufactured complacency'." It's not easy to discern exactly what part of all this has furrowed Charles's brow, but the sense of his power cools as he shifts his shields to block them out. "Oh, that's what it does." He sounds very -- well, complacent about this. "Has this got something to do with Madame Tessier's arrest and release?" But even as he says this, his gaze bounces between Joshua and Scott, growing steadily less confident. << I remember, >> is to Scott alone, careful and touched with perplexity. << Lovely woman. And I remember some matters seemed odd when we discussed it last, but I've looked into it at length since and found all is well. >> His frown returns as he darts a glance at Joshua. << Clearly all is not well... >> "Complacency," he echoes, aloud, brows furrowing, "I suppose that does describe how I perceived Lucien's murder. Is he in danger?" He doesn't, at least, sound complacent about this possibility. "Yes." Joshua answers this immediately and instinctively, feels it down to his marrow. It takes some intent reflection before he amends to an uncertain lift of one shoulder. His mind, exhausted and booze-tinged as it is, is paging back muzzily over the last day. The long hours spent with the once-companionable, now-tainted feel of Matt's power coiled through his own. (The borrowed memory of the feeling, once-supportive, now visceral-terror, of that same power clamping down on (not)his-mind, slipping into intricate neuroelectric pathways to arrest (not)his-body in place on the futon.) The odd and oddly un-alarming realization that somewhere in the course of testing, he'd forgotten why this was such a big deal. (The visceral secondhand feeling of the odd struggle in Matt's biochemical signature, something clawing desperately for lucidity but snuffed away under a surreal blanket of acceptance.) Lucien's bruises healing under his fingers and his/not-his bruises forming under the vicious clench of Matt's. Ryan's voice rich and soulful, the holy or the broken hallelujah in the background not managing to drown out Elie's sickly-sweet imperatives. The prick of needle in their skin and the agonizing weight of another body against broken ribs and -- "Sorry," Joshua manages now -- he's gone slightly pale, his knuckles pressed queasily to his lips. "Her thing's insidious. S'not psionic, it --" << More like Luci's >> his mind is filling in automatically in what feels again like a betrayal. "... like Sera. Gets -- into your. Brain. Hers too. Probably." At 'lovely woman' Scott goes more rigid than his already very rigid baseline, fingers squeezing at his kneecaps, mind trying to clamp down at the alarm and mistrust still greedily scrabbling for purchase, with a viscerally unpleasant feeling that these thoughts fighting back up, soft and slippery through the gaps between his fingers, cool and surprisingly strong. There's no verbal thought in response to Charles, just a blindly, defensively stubborn feeling of wrongness, not even countering him so much as trying to push the telepathic speech out of his mind entirely. Though this is making it a good deal harder to speak, he's trying stubbornly to remain verbal, more for Joshua's sake than his own; at that sharp-snapped answer Scott is slumping into the side of the windowseat to ask, "Lucien still with Matt?" He locks his elbows, then relaxes them again, his head lowered so that his gaze is drifting somewhere on the floor beyond Charles. His words are coming out ploddingly, one at a time. "She got at you, sir, the first time you went to see them, this whole time you've been... hnngh," he lets go of his knees to clasp his hands between his knees, looks at Joshua again, his eyebrows pressing down over his glasses. "He's still -- can you reverse it?" This is with a low, patient timbre familiar to both other men from years of dealing with volatile new mutants and their volatile new mutations, his mind almost managing to find its usual well-ordered quiet once he's pulled up the script. Despite his best efforts, Charles is clearly picking up the disorganized drift of Joshua's memories, because he too has gone ashen. His faded eyes fix on the younger man, momentarily unblinking. "You..." There's a fluctuation in his power, a reflex to gather both of the younger men into the sheltering warmth of his mind that he doesn't turn aside as smoothly as he probably meant to. "I could tell it was not psionic, but I had no notion what it was, and it never once occurred to me I ought perhaps to have at least worried about it. I'm not certain such a thing can be undone, though if it can I would be most appreciative. If you can't..." His lips press into a grim line. "I've picked apart many a misperception the slow way." He resists the urge to append any verbal thoughts to this, but Scott can feel the flush of the reassurance beneath it. He gives an abstract warning of incoming coffee, but neglects to point out the coffee service is being brought by two of the large mantis-shaped security drones -- one green, one blue. The insectoid robots leave their tray on the little table, and Charles wheels himself a little further forward to fix the coffee to his visitors' usual preferences, though there in an implicit invitation in his mind for requests along other lines. "Do you think he needs our help?" he's asking this of Joshua, now, as he massages his right temple in slow, rhythmic circles. "I have put it together that his death was in fact quite irregular and unacceptable, but that anyone else in her immediate presence might, with somewhat alarming ease, be lulled into believing it is neither." "Had to," Joshua mumbles, and Charles can easily pick up his uncertain shame here, as though bringing Lucien back from the dead was in itself an inexcusable violation of his trust. It's a thorny tangle that he has not quite worked through -- does implied consent end at death, with a power like this? How do you weigh someone's life against the certainty they would not want this knowledge of their final moments shared when you sure as fuck can't ask them. The more visceral, less ethical considerations -- the clutter of agonized memories seared deep into his nerves and memory from every person he has ever brought back, the vague uncertainty over how long it's shearing from his life each time -- register sort of distantly, an exhaustion that he'd more or less reconciled with long ago. The smell of the coffee seems to pull him a little bit more together. He doesn't take any, but he does sit up, some placebo of energy pushing away some of his weariness. His brain is kicking, intoxication and all, into some kind of deeply ingrained Work Clarity at Scott's questions, clicking over into an extremely practiced assessment mindset. Unfortunately his mental review of the past day just has him shaking his head. It's Halim's face that has surfaced in his mind, severe and dispassionate across a rickety table in a Village Lofts apartment. "Shit's been fucking them their whole lives. Undo them, you try to untangle --" His fingers flutter vaguely at his head. He's acutely aware of the contradictions in his mind here; some sick horror clinging to the thoughts of Lucien that he is trying to push down, some sick fury to Matt, and though surely both must have been impacted by her lifelong sway there's a difference in timbre in his mind that slips through despite his best efforts. Yesterday-memories, the way that Lucien's intricate neurochemistry habitually adjusts back towards its baseline at any violation, leaving him -- not quite immune but certainly less drawn along in Elie's wake. The dissonance between Matt, thinking this was normal because of the insidious brainwashing pulling at him, and Lucien, thinking it because the disregard for his autonomy had just become a baseline. "-- he's back at L'Entente." At a delay, he's remembering to answer this, though not entirely sure where to put it in the world of Safe. The strange and surreal snippets of memory here -- strange ghoulish warriors flying over an otherworldly plain -- seem wildly disconnected with any of the rest, as does the ethereal-looking man he pictures trailing fingers lightly into a foamy spice-scented pool. "Matt's not there now, but --" Another shrug. That brief lull into organization is fragmenting back into an agitated stir, Scott suddenly and irrationally incensed by Charles's reassurance, Charles's level-headedness, Charles's articulation, Charles's calm, Charles's solicitousness, hands shaking where they're clasped. "You've put that together now," is uncharacteristically bitter, and he feels immediately guilty, wrenching somewhere much deeper and colder than the surface of his mind; behind his glasses he shuts his eyes, though the apologetic edge in his mind doesn't make its way to an apology, verbal or otherwise. He lifts his clasped hands to press his thumbs against his forehead, then drops them back down, takes the coffee and takes a hasty gulp. Scott is oddly and uncomfortably reassured that Lucien is at L'Entente -- the mental space they both occupy in his mind is cleanly harmonic, his own surreal flash of memories coming with a tinge of admiration and satisfaction, looking back over his shoulder as he and Joshua and Sera (was that everybody?) left Lucien behind at the pools, dispassionate analysis of Lucien against the ethereal backdrop of trees in otherworldly fog, against the gory whirlwind of a battlefield. He takes another long sip of coffee, rubs one hand over his mouth and chin. "Lucien is smart. He'll be careful," he says, finally. "What could we do? We have any way to counter this? You went in blind once already." Charles avails himself of some coffee in place of the tea that's grown cold in the meantime. When his mind reaches for Joshua it's slow, careful, and gentle -- the warmth in this contact more akin to the coffee in his cup than the sun streaming in through the window. He cannot know what any of this has been like for Joshua, not really, but he is no stranger to carrying other people's horrors inside him. He cannot take from Joshua the burden of the power he never wanted to borrow from a girl who never even wanted them herself, but he has techniques to offer, at least, if not wisdom for coping with the marks that it has left on him. << That, however, is a conversation for when you are sober and rested. >> His pale eyes flick from Scott to Joshua and then back at the exchange about L'Entente, but his expression betrays nothing of what he sees behind it. "Given your urgency in coming here," he says gently, "I wanted to be certain there wasn't something you felt imminently needed to be done. But I know that you are exhausted and such things are not always straightforward." He steeples his hands. "I had no thought that we should be wading into any fray with Elie Tessier uninvited. I hope that, armed with your insight, her sons may be in a better position to contend with her themselves, but we can follow up and offer our support in the effort. Later," he adds, firmly. The foreign bitterness in his team leader's voice pulls Joshua's eyes over to the other side of the bench. Lucien is juxtaposed, now, with the older man, in all their congruent and distinct rigidities, in all their congruent and distinct compassions. Elie, too, with the professor -- this mental Venn Diagram is much narrower in overlap, a thin slice in which he places both men, irreversibly shaped by a lifetime of mental meddling. "-- She doesn't know," he's beginning. Though this was dredged up again and emphasized as a tactical consideration, a potentially useful angle with which to tackle approaching her, the fact of it is churning sick within him. Though this threatens to domino another cascade of memory, Charles's gentle words stop this. << urgency >> rings awkwardly embarrassed. << usually a steadier drunk >> (<< usually not this drunk >>) << usually better in a crisis >> << fuck part of this is usual >>, and though he's collecting himself to try and stand he ultimately does not bother with this. He's reminding himself of the distant land of Scott's Room Ages Ago: << {right right right said sleep he said sleep} >> << This time I'll listen >> "Should've knocked," he mumbles, with a tone of apology, and vanishes. This leaves Scott awkwardly alone on the windowseat, head bowed at his coffee cup, still churning with discomfited frustration, << we can follow up >> and << offer our support >> swirling in obsessive echo back at Charles, where Scott is very certain of both his and Joshua's place in this 'we' and 'our' but still unsure where he should place the professor, whose just-declared support feels so much more tenuous for the older man's usual warmth and moral conviction, for Scott's usual faith and trust in it. He sit there for one long moment, the hard edge of guilt and apology growing sharper in his mind -- opens his mouth, closes it again, and then all he says is a mumbled, "'scuse me, sir," as he gets to his feet, still holding his coffee cup, and departs.