ataraxionlogs | what a dark mistake all my life has been [semi-closed]

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what a dark mistake all my life has been [semi-closed]

CHARACTERS: Rey and potentially-really-pissed-off Friends.
LOCATION: Deck 40, mostly.
WARNINGS: Yelling and cursing and possibly cuddles oh god the horror.
SUMMARY: Rey is terrible. The end.
NOTES: Catch-all log for pretty much anything that has happened after this post.
If anyone wants to do something else for later in the month in regards to the May subplot, I can whip up a super special awesome starter or whatev.
(P.S. I can go either way with action or prose, whichever you prefer!)

There's a somber pause when Rey clicks the communicator off.

She'll deal with the aftermath later. Right now, she just wants a moment of peace.

Thanks to her recon syndrome, those moments are all too rare, because she's alone in an abandoned room on the fortieth floor. Eventually she will leave, most likely take refuge in Sophie's quarters.

For the time being, she'd rather delay the inevitable as much as she possibly can.

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It's a good while before Rey traverses the halls again. After spending a month in a self-imposed exile to her previous living quarters, it all starts to feel so distant and alien. Everything feels oddly bigger and she much smaller, left dizzied by an overwhelming sense of lingering paranoia. It sticks to her even after recently shifting from solitude to Sophie's room so not to remain completely alone anymore. For some reason, she doesn't like being alone, thus she makes her hike to the labs a quick one.

The lift stops, but don't open. The tattoo on her arm doesn't offer the right credentials for entry into the department. She reaches into her pocket for her communicator, shooting Charles' device a simple text:

here.

Once she gains entry, her haggard appearance as a result of various factors is more perceptible in person than over the network, but that is likely no surprise to anyone.

It isn't, really. Charles is one of those people who visibly transform based on how horrible his life happens to be at any given moment, after so many years spent leading an existence that justified perfect partings and fresh ironing lines in his trousers and meticulous shaving. He is a scruffier version of his former self, and older, too, with silver veining subtle in his hair and peppered a little in inchoate beard growing gingery on his jaw.

But he smiles, too, ever subtle and quick, warmth in his waving Rey in, and leading her back to his office, hands tucking into slacks. He is dressed in greys and blues, officey and official.

"I see the lynch mob didn't rise after all. You should trust we wouldn't follow the directive of that smiley thing so easily, you know."

"I know, and I knew." The curt sarcasm she'd expressed over the network is absent, now that she's had some time to let things simmer. In truth, she doesn't resent Charles for falling out of contact with her. After all, it's not like she made much of an effort to reach out, either.

Besides, if things had gone the way she had planned, she'd have disappeared entirely, regardless of the psychological repercussions of doing so. Recon syndrome is some shit.

Even the way she carries herself is different now. Somewhat more relaxed from her stiff soldier-like posture. When she speaks, her words are more soft spoken in contrast to her usual distant self. The mask is down and she has no reason to hide.

"Wasn't worried about that happening so much as a friend was," she continues as she enters Charles' office. "He thought that it would make me a target. I felt that saying nothing would have only made things worse."

And despite what she had told Firo before, staying anonymous wasn't her style. Doing so would only have likely bred more suspicion and paranoia than trust, anyway.

There isn't an awful lot of opportunity to clutter up an office. No persist influx of personal effects, not much in the way of paper-based paperwork either. But there are some touches, like the mostly depleted, half a day old tea sitting by his keyboard, the ash tray on the other side, a brown leather jacket fitted over the back of his seat. There is, also, a light-weight wheelchair folded up and leaning against a wall, out of the way.

He takes a seat at his desk, not because this is an appointment, but it's comfortable and available, an identical seat opposite him over the other side of the desk.

"It's not bad that you put your hand up, took the mystery away. Last thing we needed was a witch hunt. I just suppose the error you made is such an abstract one. And god knows, they were warned."

His sympathy for the Dupers (as he can't help but call them in his head, with that acronym) is a little minimal.

Rey isn't so quick to get comfortable as soon as Charles does. Her attention flits around certain details around them. The ashtray reminding her how long it's been since she had a cigarette, after using up her last pack during her confinement. She isn't plagued with that addictive itch, but it's a mundane habit that's helped take her mind off things during the initial rough patches of her isolation, before things had gone from bad to worse.

"Suppose they were," she replies, still standing. Her two-fingered hand crosses over to grab her left shoulder. Briefly, she looks as though her mind is elsewhere completely.

Her eyes soon turn to Charles behind his desk, before finally settling herself down in the second chair.

"You mentioned something about knowing what it was like to be compelled. What did you mean by that?" Not to change the subject, but Rey would rather measure first where she stands before answering any further questions.

He did mention that, didn't he.

Which only briefly pauses Charles in his pursuit of retrieving a couple of cigarettes and a firestarter. He isn't certain the association is a positive one, but it seems polite to offer -- which he does, reaching over his desk. "It was back on Arima," he says. "A handful of us were driven-- compelled-- to return to the ship as well as drag people back with us, no matter the cost.

"In my case, the cost was an abuse of my power, and several lives." He isn't casual, talking about his indirect murder of incidental souls who got in the way at the wrong time, but a necessary sort of disassociation. It feels like a very long time ago, and also doesn't feel so much like himself. "A mob had formed, after myself and a friend tried to retrieve some of the Tranquility passengers during the hostage taking. We were cut off. The things I did to get back to the ship were things I would never do, given choice."

Having started on his own cigarette, a wisp of smoke tracks after a gesture of his hand. "Perhaps I could have put up a better resistance in the first place, but I was woefully underprepared."

There is no judgment on Rey's part when she listens. She's particularly impartial not only considering recent events, but her own history of not quite being in command of her actions. Both on the ship, and before that.

Like all things, she remembers Arima very clearly, and the events that transpired there. The murder and hostages, not so much. But she recalls the intense desire, the need to get back to the ship regardless of her wills and wants.

(Just as he said, it wants to keep them.)

"Supposedly, everyone on Arima is dead," Rey points out, though she knows that that isn't the point. It's the same problem she's been dealt with; what plagues her isn't so much the loss of life, but the loss of self and being robbed of one's own agency. "May not be much solace for what happened -- did feel that same compulsion back then as well -- but the ones you did manage to bring back wouldn't have survived otherwise, regardless of how you used your power."

She sort of sucks at this consolation thing. There you have it, Charles.

"But it's shit, not being in control." Eloquence, thy name is Rey.

It's likely very much why Charles feels he can tell her without needing to make elaborate expressions of emotion. He had cried both times he'd confessed to it prior, but now that regret is dried up, withered, and aches like scar tissue rather than an open wound.

The idea of everyone being dead does not comfort him, exactly, but she makes a good point. He had forced Emma through the twist of mind control. Maybe he saved her life.

The corner of his mouth turns up, a near smile, a little morbid.

"Rightly put," he agrees. "But it's interesting, the smiley thing's response to what you did. Perhaps you ought to start from the beginning."

By now, Rey herself has already gone over these events that recounting them, no matter how difficult, has gotten somehow easier. Less painful. Suppose she can thank Firo for helping her to endure the hard part, so she could go into this with minimal risk of breaking out the waterworks again.

She stops to consider Charles' suggestion. To start from the beginning. She clears her throat, still hoarse, still sore. But she's suffered far worse than this. "Well, you said that you didn't know about the creatures not attacking in the hallway, so. Suppose I should elaborate on that first.

"It wasn't just me they were ignoring. Am aware of at least three of us who weren't disturbed by them for the most part, but it seemed that they were more inclined to turn hostile if attacked first. As far as I could tell, the three of us who experienced this were from Shepard's reconnaissance."

That is: Her, Firo, and William. The latter having accompanied her into the secondary shuttle bay, making the trek infinitely more convenient when the only thing they had to fight was an acid spitting alien. However, she'd made an agreement with William not to discuss the events that transpired there -- more specifically his murdering of the young DUPRR. A much more straightforward criminal offense than hers, really. And hell if Rey is going to throw William under the bus for acting out in a way that she is equally guilty of.

"Wouldn't know for certain if there were others. If they joined in groups, it's possible that they could've been ignored as well and they simply didn't realize it."

A slightly disturbed twinge to his expression crosses by at mention-- well, not mention, thought of William, and it's out of sheer respect that he does not vindictively grab that thread of tangent and follow it down secretive path. If he is visiting her mind, he could well find out, regardless.

But he's listening to her, not her mind.

The recon crew, compelled to murder the Dupers. The monsters, giving them a clear path. A goal in abstraction, a means to an end. He sits back a little in his seat.

"Could you feel why you wanted them dead, under compulsion? A reason you used to justify to yourself, before you willed against it?"

(Oops. Sorry, William.)

"No," she retorts without uncertainty. "That's how-- how I knew. It's not the first time someone's used me the same way."

Much as she's loathed to that word -- (used) -- it's the most fitting way to put it. That she had, on several occasions, been forced to be a mere witness to the horrid actions of someone else's will. And it's the similar deep-seated familiarity of that violation which piloted her through those corridors with a mission that differed from the other recon members.

Then she remembers Joshua and Lina, and wanting to believe that their intentions were at least earnest. She also remembers Juri breaking the news; Joshua is dead. That still hasn't left her.

After a long moment, Rey continues. "It's only a theory, but... I think that the monsters came from the White Room, or they at least have something to do with the place. It would explain where they went when they retreated just before the last jump, and why they hadn't been outright hostile towards those of us who've been to the room."

Edited 2015-05-18 11:32 (UTC)

Charles nods. He has his thoughts, but they aren't substantiated, and he has more questions than he does statements and theories and conclusions.

"Then it sounds as though you must share more than a common goal. Even if the monsters were after the same thing, they must have known in a fundamental way that you shared it too, which implies a degree of emotional intellect, or deeper connection."

He reaches out a hand, taps ash from his cigarette into the tray.

"How do you get on and interact with the rest of the recon crew?"

"Seems that way," she muses. She hadn't really thought about being connected to those things, but thinking back on it now... it would make sense. In a way, it was like something was helping them reach their objective, while making it difficult for those who were more likely to save those people.

Rey blinks at Charles' question then. It only feels like it came out of left field for a few seconds.

"Well enough, considering who all is left." Rey shrugs. "Get on alright with William. Spent more time with Firo since the recon but, he was part of my team."

As if that was all the justification she needed, if she needed to justify it in the first place. Her feelings about Firo have definitely grown over time since their mission together, even coming to see him as family now.

She squints. "Why?"

Charles' nose wrinkles, thoughtful. He thinks of the compulsions. He thinks of the soldier, casually describing his strange connection forged with Felix Laurens, like it's nothing. Monsters running with, not against. These disparate puzzle pieces.

None of what she describes now, though, sounds out of the ordinary. Expected camaraderie.

"No real reason; just puzzling it all out, as best I can."

Truth be told Rey hadn't given much consideration to the bond she shared with the other recon members. How she felt when she was around Firo or William was something more than just companionship. It was a feeling she couldn't quite put into words for Charles, for anyone. What they all experienced in the White Room was beyond words.

She falls into a contemplative silence for a few seconds, glancing towards the wall before her eyes returned to Charles.

"You may not be entirely off the mark. Don't know how to say it, but whatever happened in that room changed us. Made us-- something."

Something may not have been the word she was looking for. It's on the tip of her tongue, but it's not surfacing from her subconscious.

Something. Charles doesn't know Rey's mind well enough to start jabbing psychic fingers into her brain to see what happens, at least not without permission--

"Perhaps it's worth my taking a look. You know, properly. Only if you'd like -- you've given me an illustrative idea of what you've been through already. Although I suppose it might also be worth getting a couple of you in the same room."

Her brows furrow at his suggestion.

"You mean directly?" Rey is no stranger to having someone poke around her head. Most of her "life experiences" were of false memories planted there deliberately by someone else. She can't say the same thing for anyone else, or even ask Firo to subject himself to that. William... perhaps. Maybe.

(Or not.)

"Suppose it would, if they're willing. I've got nothing to hide."

At least she doesn't try to mask that she's something of a monster.

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what a dark mistake all my life has been [semi-closed]

charles xavier | science department

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