Logs:Midnight Sun

Midnight Sun
Dramatis Personae Charles, Hive	2023-12-12 "{I am sorry that it took me so long.}" (some hours after family home evening.)
Location <XAV> Gardens - Xs Grounds
From indoor gardens to outdoor, though without the protective greenhouse glass the back gardens do not last all year round. Still, the gardens out here are well-tended and well-worth spending time in, as well. The paths wending through the beds of flowers and herbs and vegetables spread out through the school's back grounds, tended by students as a credit class. Benches offer seating and a small pond is home to koi and turtles, as well as a few frogs. At the far back edges of the garden, a droning buzzing marks a few stacked white boxes as beehives. One unquiet soul has been put to rest tonight, at least, but around this mansion there are often more to be found. It's grown late enough that it's mostly only the restless spirits still haunting the place. Despite the late night bite in the air, Hive has made his way out to the garden. He's tucked himself on a bench out near the quiet beehives, wrapped snug like the winterized hives though he's got two thick fleecey blankets in lieu of tar paper. Though the evening has been a pleasant one, with his visitors gone there's just a hungry ache left in their wake, endless shivering ripples fluttering out from his mind and then pulling back in without finding purchase. He has an actual paper sketchpad in his lap for once, though the clumsy sketch very slowly sprouting under his increasingly numb and shaking fingers does not yet bear much resemblance to the fanciful hivelike arcology blossoming in his mind. On one reflexive outward flutter Hive finds a questing presence that follows his retreat and wraps him in a kind of soothing warmth the blankets can't quite manage. It's several more minutes before Charles himself arrives, his psionic presence blossoming warmer with his physical approach. He's riding a heavy, comfortable powerchair, thickly cushioned and customized with hardpoints for various accessories such as trays and cup holders. He's not using either tonight, though he is bringing a hot beverage, sealed in a hammered steel thermos. He's wearing a thick burgundy velvet dressing gown, and has one of his ubiquitous Kinross tartan blankets tucked neatly over his lap. As he rolls to a stop beside the bench he folds Hive into his mind -- the intimacy of the link is nowhere near as profound or complete as hiving, though the experience isn't wholly unlike -- the warmth around them gaining new dimensions, but speaks aloud anyway. "I keep thinking you might start inviting Bryce and Dallen." There's no judgment or exhortation in his tone, his thoughts, or the abstract context he reflexively projects along with his spoken words even when it's entirely redundant -- just gentle curiosity twined with sympathy and tinted with his own sorrow. "But then they might start showing up at your door unprompted." In his mind the youngest Allred boys are decked out for mission work that is still many years in their future, clutching scriptures they very earnestly want to share. There's a flutter of ease that sighs through Hive's mind in a gentle ripple of leaves. The strained reach of his untethered roots calms, settling comfortably into the enveloping warmth of Charles' psionic presence. "He wants to." After only a momentary pause to riffle through his memories of DJ's emotions this evening -- slightly uncomfortable in their washed-out far less vivid flavor than he feels they should be -- he allows, "We want to." There's a grudging caliber to this admission, the youngest Allreds jarring loose too many memories of a much-younger Dawson in all his annoying-exhausting earnestness. His own uncertainty about where he fits into that family doesn't get a voice, though it does sit bright and noticeable up against DJ's. "Just no fucking idea how to even start explaining --" His sentence lapses into an inadequate shrug, filled in mental space by the bright-hot passion that makes up DJ's space in his mind, by the fierce steady warmth where Dawson (should be?) (is?). << Not sure the we're the kind of family the First Presidency had in mind, >> he's starting to think, but second guessing that with some vague sense of a Church history far more radical than its current incarnation. "Certainly the current First Presidency would not approve, but DJ doesn't answer to them," Charles points out levelly as he unscrews the cap of the thermos for a cup, filling it half-way with hot cocoa. All the while he's carefully slipping into the processes that control Hive's (shaky) (frozen) hands, using the motor output for his own (steady) (warm, for now) as reference to bolster his friend's compromised manual dexterity. A mere six months ago, this would have taken much more concentration to much less helpful ends, but Charles has learned a few things since then. A few. He passes the cup carefully to Hive, the half-conscious impression that he's kind of passing it to himself registers as faintly odd only because they are not hived. "Having that conversation with them could lay some groundwork to help them expand their conception of family." He's vaguely speculating that these children might be especially receptive to talking about what family means outside of that framed print on their dining room wall, and may need it especially, too. "And I'd wager they're not the only ones," he adds aloud. His light suffuses Hive's ineffable sense of his family with love and worry and a deep, complicated grief -- not just for Dawson, but for the abandoned corridors in the labyrinth of his own mind where Erik should be. Quieter than all of these is a kind of acceptance without words or even concepts. It just is. "{I am sorry,}" comes out low, in American-accented and excessively formal Thai, "{that it took me so long.}" "DJ doesn't answer to most anyone." There's a faint pride here, and regret as well, holding DJ's defiant radicalism up against the years of painful contortions Dawson went through to try and hammer himself into a shape that would fit into his strict church community. "We'll talk to them. It just..." Hive trails off, leaning gratefully into Charles's bolstering, taking the cup and holding it tight. The warmth seeps into his fingers, first, pleasant even before he's taken a sip. At first he doesn't answer the apology. His thoughts are a jumble that he can't quite fit to their proper emotions, and while he doesn't quite attempt shielding Charles from the tumult there's a vague inward rustling, leaves shifting like some very inadequate privacy screen. Behind their not-very-obscuring curtain the memories there twine tangled, his own and years of borrowed ones knotting together indiscriminately. The tendrils stretch -- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxto whitehot jags of pain where bullets have buried themselves in muscles already screaming for respite and to the determined sturdy bolstering that pushes them through (and through and through) until their people are safe xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxand to tired-aching muscles, the warm comfort of Charles' impressive bathtub mingling with fractured memories of burning children and of drowning in the cold Atlantic waters and to the warm light that shoulders those traumas and carries them back to their people xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx(and to another world altogether, to the gutwrenching sickening feeling of another mind dying in theirs and the frantic desperate attempts to peel away as many of their cluster as possible before the devastating end) xxxxxxxxxxto << The man who did this was his -- his...Dawson. >> and to << this does not seem wise >> and to building a desperate sheltering canopy around Charles' mind torn apart and to Cerebro's horror and guilt at being weaponized that way and to Charles' mind spilling borrowed nightmares across the hall and to -- "{You have no idea how often I've wondered -- if things would have ended differently, if we'd listened to you.}" The guilt under these words has mellowed over the years, just a quiet background color that Hive barely even notices, now. Charles does not make any effort to look at the memories Hive is only half-heartedly obscuring, but he doesn't look away, either. His breath hitches with painful longing at the memory of Erik when he'd last come to Charles for shelter, and his heart sinks with the same fear that's haunted him since Erik's disappearance. << (I should have done more) (I could have done more) (he needed me) >> His eyes slide shut and his mind tries to gather Hive closer but can't, really, between the shields he must maintain for safety and the inherent limits of his own power. He reminds himself not to reach for Hive's, and just clutches the thermos tighter, mindful not to disrupt the other man's grip on the cup. "{I don't know.}" When Charles opens his eyes again they are damp. "But I was cautioning you out of fear, and pushed you away when I should have looked past my own scars and seen you." This "you" is Hive -- in his singularity as well as their multitudes; who they are with Dawson, who they are with DJ and, more uncertain, who they all are, together. He's turning over << his Dawson >>, over and over. "I never thought to put it that way, and I never thought Dawson would hurt you the way Erik hurt me, either. But our powers make us more vulnerable than we seem -- to others or ourselves -- and I thought that yours in particular..." He shakes his head at the unsatisfactory words and changes tack. Charles has had a recurring dream since he manifested. He wakes up to a cacophony of thoughts, and cannot tell which ones are his own. He tries to build up shields, but doesn't know where they should go, whose mind he needs to keep out -- or keep in. He can't get out of bed, can't open his eyes, can't even move or think because there's just too much information for him to sort through and find the person who can do those things. "It was one of my worst nightmares as a lad, but it never actually happened to me until --" -- Cere's ghostly consciousness winks out, and where he had steered them with grace and ease through myriad minds in search of the missing child there is suddenly an impossible, agonizing crush of thoughts and Charles can't find his way back or even find himself -- And he stops the flashback before it can spin out, but Hive knows where it would go if he let it. He blinks away his tears, though the heartbreak remains. "As terrifying as that was for me, I reasoned it was a more present danger for you, and in some ways it is. But fear and arrogance blinded me to your strength." Here a glimpse of a forest once lush laid to waste, and even when all seems lost there are tender green leaves struggling out of the ruins of splintered trees toward his light. "His, too, I suppose." << (he would never) >> is not so much a conscious reply as a fierce and reflexive knowing. It's suffused with love and with fury; cherished gratitude for the care with which both Dawsons have treated their level of psionic intimacy and deep rage that Charles has not been afforded the same. "You had reason to fear." Charles's nightmare finds echoes in Hive's memories, in his manifesting and the drowning chaos that ensued. Months in a psych ward, confused and overwhelmed and without any conception of where he ends and everyone around him begins. The reflection skews over the years, and not because there's any less risk of Hive simply sublimating himself into those around him, but because that risk no longer seems terrifying -- not a loss of identity but an expanding of it. He sips again at the cocoa, focusing on its sweetness as a distraction from the psionic pull that is trying to stir, now. "I might stop being me. S'always a chance. But with him --" DJ, Dawson, in this particular context they are blending together into something more than either of them individually. "-- I know I'm safe being us." He's flicking a sidelong glance at Charles, at the tears glistening in the soft pathlight glow. The rest of the thoughts churning in his mind don't make it into words, as such. The parallels in these relationships, in the vulnerability the mental bond affords, in the freefall lack of boundaries that comes of opening yourself so wholly up to another person. In the love Charles has shared and the hurt he has suffered and the knowledge that comes with age and experience. In Hive's own strange perspective and what parts of it might translate -- in what strength Charles might derive from oneness as a state to practice and not to fear. The slow outward creep of Hive's roots is careful, a strong but cautious canopy that is faint echo of the one he spread protective over the school nearly a decade before. The years of Charles' warnings, of his and Dawson's defensive bristling, don't vanish but sink into the earth, nourishing the tenuous blossoming overhead. "Growing is a pretty vulnerable process." Charles does not voice the quiet ache that comes with this glimpse of Hive's early struggles, but it's familiar enough in both his reflexive wish he could have helped make sense of the nightmare and how that nightmare resonates with his own very different adolescence. "I was alone for twelve years before I found Erik, and he had been for longer. Neither of us had ever known anything like what we found in one another." Learning Erik's magnificent power from within and teaching him to wield it better in turn. Making space in the labyrinth of his own mind for Erik's memories, too painful to speak and too precious to forget. Waking beside Erik every day awed by his trust and soothed by his love, however awful the nightmares that came before. "We felt unstoppable together. We were going to build a world where our people wouldn't live in fear and isolation." His laughter is breathy and wan, but not devoid of humor. "We had no idea what we were getting into -- with the world or ourselves." He thinks of Hive/DJ(Dawson) at Lassiter, swift and sure in their harmony, though he does not dwell on it. "Erik was my sword once as I was his shield, but even at our best we could not match you. Maybe that's not all to do with the vagaries of our respective powers." Like a tangible thing his light riffles the canopy Hive is weaving over him, whispers gratitude and wonder for the care Hive is taking to shelter him with a power still shaky. He touches the echo of that shelter years past, a great forest standing guard over him -- and over poor Cere -- while his X-Men faced down the man who had almost killed him. He'd never actually seen that angle on Liberty Island before, even if he inferred something of it by Cere's abrupt and only performatively grudging change of heart about Hive. "{What you decide, you-and-them?}" he ventures in somewhat ungrammatical Thai, "{I am with you.}" His light gathers, less like a mist now and more like the sun shining through it onto banyan. His smile comes a little less faintly now as he guides the cup closer with Hive's hands and replenishes the cocoa in it. "I still have that dream, you know. It's not a nightmare anymore." Charles's memories trigger an unorganized spill of thoughts. How meeting under such traumatic and dehumanizing conditions had shaped their bond -- how being effectively at war through their entire relationship made their own fragility acutely present throughout. How he has no idea if their mistakes would look similar or more wildly different if they'd ever had room to dream and not just survive. (How he has no idea what that means about a future with DJ, and how that type of genocidal war never just leaves you.) How that world Charles once dreamed of might still be possible. Has to be possible. His carefully entwining tendrils grow stronger, deeper-rooted, under Charles's light. He doesn't say thanks. He doesn't say anything. At his next sip, cup steady in his hands, there's a warmth and comfort too deep to come from the rich cocoa alone that rolls vivid across their senses.