Logs:Who By Water
| Who By Water | |
|---|---|
CNs: discussion and explicit description of antisemitic violence. description of gassing, cremation and preparation of bodies for cremation during the Holocaust. dentistry. suicidal ideation. | |
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2023-09-25 I will be your strength, if you let me. (after the ne'ilah attack.) |
| 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 and on one of the interior walls are doors to the bathroom and a walk-in closet. 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. Night has fallen -- the gates of Heaven and Xavier's School are both closed, have been closed for some time. Maybe that's why this guest is flying over them -- unsteady, if anyone was tracking the flight path, stuttering in odd ways -- and dropping from high above onto the balcony. Erik looks half a shade: his torn white clothes hang loose around him, the frayed sleeves and collars stained with blood, the leather of his shoes soiled with ash. His fingers and wrists are bare, now, though he is clutching something tight in his left fist. He raises one red-raw hand to knock against the glass, but that fist just falls once against it with a quiet thud. Without his helmet, there is a louder announcement of Erik's presence to the telepath inside -- screaming wordless agony, spilling around his collapsing defenses. Erik squeezes harder around the items in his fist, some edge there cutting sharp into his hand and drawing blood, briefly lowering the volume of Erik's psionic output. A surge of soothing warmth engulfs Erik well before Charles physically reaches the door to let him in. << Calm your mind, >> he urges gently as he draws his unexpected visitor inside. Charles is in his blue and gold dressing gown, riding a new(?) lightweight chair, its titanium frame spare and efficient. His tight grip on an armrest and the faint dilation his pupils speak the intensity of his worry, but across the carefully regulated telepathic link it's barely sensible beneath the steady comfort of his warmth. He rotates his chair, settles Erik's right hand on its back, and rolls slowly toward the bathroom with the other man in tow. He's not disguising his light mental palpating as he tries to suss out the extent of Erik's injuries beneath the blood and ash. << {Can you tell me what happened?} >> These thoughts come in Yiddish tinted with Charles's elusive American accented. Erik sways when Charles moves his hand, following automatically when the chair moves. Mentally he's falling, relieved, into the familiar warmth of mind-in-mind. It's not exactly calming his mind as Charles instructed, just tamping down the internal screaming from getting worse, but still. He clings to it. Somewhere else, Joshua has taken care of the most life-threatening issues -- but, somewhere else, Erik left before he could finish. There are ugly, bloody abrasions across his skin where sand and glass are still embedded, the worst wounds left on his hands and face. Charles can find the phantom pains from where Erik was injured, also, but also the recent memory of those wounds disappearing. << Nazis. >> Erik tries to pulls the right moments out for Charles in lieu of further words. Some of it is correct, and even in order -- the singing at Freaktown, the approach of Nazis with their taunts. The beginning of the attack. After that it begins to blur -- does the screaming ringing in his ears belong to the Jews running from Ne'ilah or the ones running in the glass-strewn streets of Nuremberg? Is the girl in his arms a stranger, bleeding but alive, or his daughter's half-charred broken corpse? In the streets of Warsaw Erik sees Wick once again reduce a man to less than ash -- -- and there it all shatters, Erik's memories and words and psyche, into white-hot agony. All that's left is the smell, the stench of burning bodies seeping once again into his skin his hair his clothes oh God will he ever be free of it? Will it ever wash away? What happened, Charles asks: "{Everything,}" Erik croaks out, voice breaking, "{again}." Somewhere in the midst of this explanation Charles stops breathing. His grip on the link between them tightens just a fraction of an instant too late to stop the horror that overflows his shields when he realizes Erik had been at a service. The image-sense-concepts of Joshua, Shane, Spencer, Avi, and Alma slip in and around and through this flood before he quiets and replaces it with more determined calm. << Should I send the X-Men? >> The question does not change when he touches the fading memory of Erik's tended wounds again, reassuring himself Joshua was already there and had made it through the violence well enough to heal. Charles flicks on the lights in his bathroom, and even at just a quarter strength it's brighter than it had been out in his bedroom with only sconce and table lamps lit. He pulls a first aid kit from a cabinet by the door and bids Erik sit on the teak shower bench so he can take a closer look at the abrasions that remain on his exposed skin. "{These need cleaning. Do you think you can tolerate...}" He looks up at his extensive shower setup, from handheld spray heads to vertically mounted body jets to rainfall panels, but ultimately says, "{...a bath?}" Shane and Joshua were there around the attack, Erik's memories confirm -- before it began, there were two small sharks present, one tracing the lines of transliteration in a prayerbook while the other stands guard; afterwards, a dour-faced healer fixes Erik just enough that he can flee the wreckage of Freaktown's square. The others he thinks were not there, but then again, he had thought Jackson wasn't there, but -- wasn't he, in that awful sandstorm? Wasn't that him in that blinding light? Erik shakes his head, slow, to the question of sending more soldiers. << {It's ended,} >> he is certain, even with the last parts of the battle unprocessed, << {at least, for tonight.} >> He sits without complaint, turns over his right hand for Charles to inspect. His left is slower to loosen. His rings are there -- both of them, their surfaces blemished and cloudy -- as well as a gold dental crown still attached to part of a tooth, the jagged edges cutting into already abused skin. The crown seems to take Erik by surprise. He remembers the careful, controlled pull that ripped it out of the Nazi's mouth in the fight, remembers -- -- trying to pry a metal tooth out of its socket just a little faster, he needs the gold for bribes but there's hardly any time to get it out, the other prisoners in Max's work unit keep dragging more bodies from the showers and there are still so many in here left to burn, the crematorium stinks of burning flesh and this naked corpse (blue from the gas, eyes open still with fear) is staring up at him and the furnace is too hot the flames are too close too bright it's too 'hot' -- -- Erik closes his eyes, leaning harder in the calm and warmth Charles is projecting. Nods. Lifts his injured hands to the few buttons that survived on his shirt and begins to undo them. Charles frowns at "soldiers" but does not pursue it, this time. << {Extra hands might still help, if they wouldn't be unwelcome. I do want to be sensitive to -- } >> He sucks in a sharp breath, though it's hard to say whether in reaction to Surprise Tooth or the flashback it triggers. The enveloping warmth of his mind fluctuates briefly, then steadies, pressing a little harder in reassurance that he will not stray far. He goes to fetch a set of fluffy towels from the cabinet along with a pair of shallow glass bowls fashioned like lotus blossoms for Erik's personal items. A third such bowl he fills with salt from an apothecary jar and sets it in readiness beside the massive tub. A touchscreen comes to life beneath his fingers and he makes a selection that sets the water filling at a truly impressive rate. It takes longer for Erik to undress than he would like -- the scraps of fabric hanging off his suit impede him, as does the pain in his fingers. Shredded suit jacket first, the tiny prayerbook finally removed from its pocket and placed in one of the tiny bowls next to his; leather shoes next, their symbolism not nearly as amusing to him now as it was this morning; shirt, trousers. He reaches up for his yarmulke, but it's not there. This is both surprise and disappointment -- the missing tallis that should have been on his shoulders, less a surprise, but still an ache. He briefly considers just leaving his clothes in a neat pile -- -- "{Load all this up,}" the SS officer is saying, Max is surrounded by neatly folded dresses and coats on the ground while their owners scream on the other side of the heavy door -- -- takes the time to hang up each piece on the hooks, instead. This flashback comes with a shiver-hum of power, one that Erik is quick (but not as quick as he'd like, given Charles saw fit to have his bathtub made intelligent) to reel back. "{I'm sorry, old friend}," comes with a clarifying sense of embarrassment at this slip of control (of memory), "{I shouldn't --}" << ({have come here}) ({have been there}) ({need you}) >> Out loud he doesn't finish this sentence, covers his silence by sinking all the way into the tub, head held for a moment under the water's surface. Charles stills almost infinitesimally when Erik realizes his tallis is missing, and perhaps it's this and not some absurd prudishness that makes him avert his eyes while his ex-husband finishes undressing. On the far side of the large bathtub he transfers himself onto the seat carved into the wide brim -- this tub does not have a door, unlike the smaller one across the room -- and leans over to pour the salt in beneath the churn of the wide waterfall faucet. "{You need what you need.}" The wordless psionic context behind this is soothing, matter-of-fact, not in the least dismissive. << {And I doubt if the Nazis were targeting you in particular,} >> he continues silently when Erik submerges. Aloud again when he surfaces, "{If you hadn't been there, it might well have gone worse.}" The flow of water has slowed to a pleasant burble. He turns to set the bowl aside farther along the brim where he's left the towels, but it slips from his hand and tumbles to the immaculate checkerboard marble floor. It's hard to tell whether he freezes before or after the high crystalline note of shattering glass, but freeze he does. Only for an instant. Then he breathes in, breathes out as the steadying warmth resumes where it had briefly stuttered. Breathes in, breathes out as he picks up the soft washcloth and dips it into the water. Breathes in, breathes out as he dabs at the grit lingering in Erik's wounds. "{I've told you time and time again,}" he says, his voice softer now, barely comprehensible above the white noise of the faucet, "{you are not a weapon. You are an elder, and that is far more powerful.}" Erik flinches at the crash of glass, small and instinctive. Somewhere at the edges of his mind, an intrusive flashback is unfurling, but between the telepathic bolstering and this gentle physical care Erik can breathe in -- breathe out -- let it wash through him without carrying him entirely into the past. There's a silent sense of question traveling along their link, in Erik's eyes as he looks up at his ex-husband. At least until Charles continues out loud. "{Charles, please. Not this again.}" His face stings -- from the slow trickle of tears or the salt water Charles is dabbing to his face, Erik can't tell. He's turning over might well have gone worse and rejecting it -- << (didn't even kill any of them) >> is an pained admission of failure, stacked as it is with an aerial view of the wreckage of Freaktown square, with concrete bouncing off a bubble and out of Erik's rage-narrowed vision. What kind of elder leads with this bloodlust? What worth does a weapon that cannot kill have? "{I am so tired of disappointing.}" Charles rinses the blood and grime from the washcloth and continues working his way down, tracing the line of Erik's jaw back to where his hair -- shockingly thick considering his age -- had shielded him to a point from the assault. << {Cere is updating me on the situation in Riverdale.} >> As if on cue, a segmented ball rolls into the bathroom, its intricate inner workings legible to Erik's power even though it's out of Erik's sightline on the floor beside the tub when it unrolls into a robotic pill bug and starts vacuuming up the fragments of glass. At the recollection of that battle Charles freezes again, his hand clenched tight around the washcloth where he's leaning on Erik's shoulder. "{I know you are hurting.}" His lips compress, his struggle to control his expression uncharacteristically visible, but his hands are steady when they resume. "{I want so badly to protect you and give you rest, but you need to hear this.}" The words of Hashkiveinu echo softly from a Charles standing on a promontory some forty years and five thousand miles away, reading a blessing at once familiar and not from the machzor in Erik's hands. Here, now, he dips Erik's hand into the water and presses the washcloth to the ragged cut in his palm. He cannot really soothe the sting of the salt water, but gently turns Erik's attention away from it and toward him. "I need you to hear this." Charles does not look up. He leans across Erik to take his other hand, eyes fixed on his work. "{You forged a sword for a man who took down Prometheus without killing.}" The warmth of his mind blossoms into Jax standing before the gates of Lassiter, garbed in black armor, Sunbeam bared in his hand to catch the light in an image now immortal and iconic. "{Your self-destructiveness hurts more than just you. Whatever you think of yourself, it means something to people -- ours and yours, whether they agree with your ways or not -- that you are still alive, still fighting, and still present. They don't need you to kill for them. They need you to live for them. Especially now.}" He swallows hard, and his hand closes around Erik's when he finally looks up into the older man's eyes. "{Jackson is dead.}" His voice breaks, but he doesn't break eye contact. "{The other survivors are in shock, and they are terrified, and they need you.}" His hand squeezes, hard. "{I will be your strength if you let me, but be strong. Fake it if you must. Show them how to survive.}" Erik's expression doesn't change, but he too stops breathing at this news. He looks away, up towards the ceiling, down at their hands, neither direction doing much to stop the slow-dawning horror. He's pulling out the memories of the fight again, clutching to the blanket of Charles's presence as he tries to see it clearly. There is the Nazi, laughing as he incinerates a mutant -- here are the burning pits piled high with Jews -- there are the shattering pieces of concrete, low below the inhuman screaming -- here are the desperate screams of his unit, their paltry grenades being met with SS machine fire -- there is a white-hot flare, just on the edge of consciousness -- Erik's grip tightens around Charles's hand, tears flowing freely down his face. Breathes out. Breathes in. Looks again. There is the Nazi, laughing, and here is Erik's blinding rage as he abandons the careful control he had been using in this fight for sheer power. There are the chunks of concrete he ripped from the street, and when he throws them there is no barrier between him and this monster from his nightmares until suddenly there is. He's already let go of the rebar, has already moved the bulk of his power to pull up the water main below. There, he's barely hearing the screaming as it blends with the screaming in his mind; there, he's barely seeing the blow of concrete to -- to -- << Jackson. >> There's a body in the centre of that flare. Erik's grip loosens. The realization is wordless across the link -- surely, watching, Charles can reach the same conclusion. Surely, so have their people. They don't need you to kill for them, they need you to live for them rings false with this new information, your self-destructiveness hurts more than just you takes on all too familiar context. Here is Ukraine and here is Auschwitz and here is Utopia; there and there and there and here, in Riverdale, is another child he's outlived, burnt and gone. << ({oh, God}) >> Charles does not pry the memories of the fight from Erik, but he eases the strain of their recollection and gives the older flashbacks somewhere soft to land. He guides them away from Erik's consciousness and toward in a corner of his own mind that lies under an eternal pall of ash, its labyrinthine walls crowned with barbed wire. The horrors do not fade when they slot into the history Charles holds in trust for Erik, but they grow more distant, less overwhelming. If it hurts him to take them on he gives no indication, the bolstering strength of his presence solid and unshakable like the tower distantly glimpsed in his mindscape. Still, he closes his eyes when the most recent of horrors coalesces into focus on the figure collapsing into a blaze of light. Closes his eyes, but does not look away, does not let go of Erik's hand, does not let go of Erik. He's so preoccupied with managing Erik's flashbacks that he's blindsided by --fighting the cold Atlantic for a remarkable stranger, holding onto a mind that feels like a live coal, but he's sure he could save him if only he could reach him -- No words, now. His thoughts come with the fluid ease of pure conception: whatever conclusions they've drawn, Erik's people are still hurting. However poor Erik's judgment in his rage, the Nazis killed Jax, and might have killed more if one or either of them had not been there. It helps no one to blame himself, but if Erik wants to take responsibility, then take it and look after those Jax died to protect. Very slowly, he opens his eyes and resumes his ministrations. Resumes his words, too, quiet and small, "{Don't forget, he was protecting you, too.}" The pill bug robot finishes vacuuming and lingers for a moment, then balls itself back up and rolls out the way it came. Charles relaxes almost imperceptibly, his gaze lingering on the threshold after the drone has gone as if half expecting it to come right back. << {You have endured so much on your own, I think it's easy for you to forget you don't have to go it alone.} >> The sense of Charles in Erik's mind brightens with a whisper of solace and determination and indefinable knowing: I will be your strength, if you let me. Into this swirl of guilt-grief-horror comes a sudden heavy all-at-once exhaustion. Erik is tired of his body and its hundred scars, tired of his mind and its thousand always-ready horrors, tired of burying friends and burning bodies and outliving children, tired of failing his people over and over and over again. Some part of his mind is not here, in this opulent bathtub, but being dragged under the crashing surf of some other saltwater. "{How much more,}" Erik murmurs, "{are we meant to endure?}" It's unclear who he means at first, his sense of us cycling through the many possibilities. Settles, eventually, on the feeling of Charles's hand clasped in his, now itself a memory when Charles resumes his work. Settles into the sense of Charles in his mind. If you let me, Erik knows, is an offer that he can easily reject. In that drowning part of Erik's mind, a familiar presence pulls him up for air, and he does not push it away. There, Charles's own words echo back across the years, infused with a younger Erik's awe and this ancient one's gratefulness -- "You're not alone." | |
