ataraxionlogs | ( open ) show me how to lie

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( open ) show me how to lie

CHARACTERS: severus snape & a variety of people patient* enough to put up with his ass. (*maybe)
LOCATION: various.
WARNINGS: tba.
SUMMARY: open log for april.
NOTES: if you want to do something but can't think of an opener, feel free to send me a pm, i don't mind writing starters!

Maybe, Severus reflects as he stares down at his arm in the privacy of his small quarters, the whole department thing was a bad idea. SCI » 028 » 084. It inspires a kind of tired bitterness in him thinking about the advances muggles have made in science while wizardkind have hidden away and gotten very good at hovering in place. He remembers the American venture of Apollo 11, remembers the terror and wonder of it, nine years old and imagining if that's what these slow and dull creatures can do just think, just think, what's waiting for him in the world his mother comes from.

SCI. SEC. OPR. He imagines arrangements in three letters for other headings. For gravity management or temporal repair, for mysteries and healing. Science is such a lifeless word and here he is with it stamped next to another, older brand, both self-chosen in one way or another. Xenobiology is a joke and he knows it but his interest is real, and his determination is true - if he has to crowbar magic into this place with stubborn viciousness and arguments then so be it. He won't be trapped here otherwise and damn everyone who disbelieves or shrugs it off or rolls their eyes. They are incomplete people. They have to build machines to see just a fraction what he breathes and touches and manipulates. And he will not hide from them.

He works, both in the "safe" laboratory they've been shuffled to in accordance to security's fussing, and also up in the burned-out attic space of the forsaken genetics rooms. He senses the instability, but doesn't fear it. He cooks meals and occasionally tolerates company, he visits the gardens - for royalty or for his own version of hunting; he considers trying to plant things, has little aborted fantasies of potion-brewing, but doesn't go anywhere with it. He contemplates a dozen projects and, hell, maybe he'll do all of them. It's not like he's going anywhere anytime soon.

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[ Severus gives him a look. Does not ask Are we human beings?

He taps ash off the end of his cigarette. Eventually. ]

And in the defense of the rest of the ship... stood some cooperation, I see.

[ Risking his life to do a good deed is one thing. Etc. A lot of things are going unsaid in this conversation; I told you so is right behind his unspoken question from up there. He'd never say it aloud, how gauche. ]

[ And back to Charles' defense--

--much of what goes unsaid are not things he hasn't already told himself. There's a tip of his head in concession of this point. Silent, briefly, watching the continual ribbon of smoke lifting subtle off cigarette.

He sets chin in hand. ]

I didn't count on the mess. Cleaning it up further means helping the man who came very close to killing my friend, let alone many other innocents. I feel as though one has to try harder to be put in these situations, normally.

Two hundred variously capable people in close, dangerous quarters. [ Severus shrugs his shoulders. ] You'd have to try harder to get out of even lesser situations.

[ He doesn't blame Charles for anything, and isn't doing any real judging. This place is crazy. Xavier is proactive. Shit's going to happen. Severus has experienced a little of it himself even from his position standing out of the way of things. ]

Is your friend all right?

[ He assumes Erik. ]

[ He assumes correctly. ]

The door to his room suffered catastrophic damage. [ Tap-tap ash. ] I imagine he's still a bit put out. No physical harm done.

[ But there's a reserve in his voice that communicates more personal injury taken regarding that than he's letting on, but that's less to do with what lines of communication he has with Snape, or secrecy, and more to do with living in England for much of his life. ]

No other harm will be done for the next while, at least. But yes, that's how I've been. How have you been?

I hear that happens, when you're known to be close to people.

[ Them being targeted in your stead. Severus speaks as if it's an alien concept that he's only observed and-- it is. He wonders if Lucius were here, would they knit closer. Pushes it out of his mind. He wonders if he should hope nothing happens to Erik; he wonders what Erik's philosophical leanings are.

Anyway. ]

As ever. Warding Nuala's quarters in the gardens. I think I've accidentally signed myself up to teach someone sign language.

[ He takes a drag and gives Charles a look that's a little lighter, but a little wry, too. Not nearly as exciting? ]

[ Something in Snape's first statement gives Charles pause, communicated in the hesitant stop between lifting cigarette from the edge of the tin tea cup to his mouth, but completes its journey without comment.

They know quite a lot about one another, but not everything.

He breathes smoke out through his nostrils. ]

The princess spoke briefly of a-- I'm not entirely certain. An enemy, that moved her to practice telepathic defenses with me, as we're both rather terrible at it.

[ He just means FRIENDS, Charles, jesus. ]

Morgoth. [ Reflective. Severus knows a little, but not enough. He'll need to seek out information soon, but he must be strategic about it. Quiet. ] .. Are you?

[ He's a little surprised to hear it - and of both of them, too. ]

[ Let the record show Charles was speculating over what Snape means by what he 'hears' about such things 'happening' and how he can't just telepathically plunder after context okay. Charles, too, means friends. Optimistically. ]

There wasn't very much call for it for either of us, where we come from. What's Morgoth, a name?

[ --is perhaps needlessly disparaging at someone named Severus. ]

[ Headtilt with faintly incredulous eyebrows. His name is rad, you nerd. ]

A name, I believe. Or a title that's become a name. I've heard him called Melkor, too. A great darkness.

[ Something that Severus is familiar with. And speaking (or not) of telepathic plundering - ] I learned to defend before I learned to attack. I'm not sure how much what I can do overlaps with what you can do.

[ But. ]

[ But.

Charles is quiet in thought, gaze drifting past Snape's head to regard the entrance way of the lab, then around them. Cigarette turns between his fingers. ]

That's rather what we're here to find out, isn't it? Partly, anyway. When I look into the minds of others, I hear and see thoughts as easily as one can hear or see anything else. I've always been able to do it, since I was a boy. There was really very little learning involved.

Save for some self-tutelage, of course.

And when I look into yours [ half a smile ] there is silence. Not an emptiness, perish the thought, professor, but the same sort of blanketing silence of fog. I think that must call to an overlap of kinds.

Edited 2014-04-13 09:06 (UTC)

[ His cigarette is a lost cause and so, he finally concedes the stopped end of it to their fake ashtray cup. ]

I've lived among those who do something like you do. I've convinced them I'm incapable of that fog.

[ Which. Sure is a thing. Severus isn't entirely sure how much he wants to admit to Charles, because admitting to being an Occlumens back home just meant people refused to trust him even more. ]

I don't believe we See the same way. But I could try and offer pointers, I suppose.

You could.

[ Charles disposes of his own cigarette. He doesn't offer up another, nor take one for himself -- there will be more disasters that necessitate them, in the future. More conversations that might need the ease of smoke. ]

[ Smoking is the most useless habit, both in individual and economic practice; they can't even cultivate it here, as tobacco is an unrepentant ravager of soil. They should both probably quit. ]

Ought you?

[ Presently, he means. So soon after nearly being blown up and being bothered by it enough to decide to hole up in his quarters for a few days. Having your head poked at isn't the most relaxing experience. ]

Is there any time but the present?

[ Charles takes the tea cup, setting it aside. He has a better read of people when he can read people, but that doesn't mean he's ignorant as to why Snape is asking. His manner is of pointed ignoring. ]

Go on, distract me. I have a bet with Nuala as to who can master it first.

Does that mean I should accept bribes for who to help more thoroughly?

[ Severus sets his communicator aside as he speaks, watching Charles. It probably seems like he's trying to detect any kind of exhaustion in the other man - eyes on his. ]

Don't think of anything embarrassing.

[ - is of course a trap and a bit of a psychic joke. You can't not immediately think of whatever someone prompts you to. Severus keeps watching. It's been a while since he blinked.

The air between them almost shimmers; brief. Barely. Like heat in the distance on a road, fata morgana. A trick of the light. Possibly. Severus slides a pen between his fingers and taps one end against the countertop, faint and absent. ]

I have cigarettes.

[ Tired, not exhausted -- idle hands and late nights. But eye contact back is certainly game.

And Charles absolutely does not think about that one time when he was incredibly hung over and someone had poured cooking grease all over the flight of stairs leading out of his room and moments later promptly fractured a tail-bone because Oxford plays rough that way--

--and he winces as the inevitable don't think about it trick offers up that one sparkling highlight in his academic career. A good humoured wince, at least. It could have been worse. ]

The princess is not so underhanded.

[ But Charles settles in place, back to keeping eye contact. He does as he has done with Nuala; he silently counts backwards in Russian, recites the periodic table, he concentrates on all senses and allows them to come in -- darting distraction after shimmery illusion is an easy break in mental white noise. ]

Edited 2014-04-14 11:37 (UTC)

The princess is extremely underhanded. [ Still he concedes, ] But she doesn't smoke.

[ Legilimency is not telepathy. It is not mind-reading. Severus was correct in assuming they do not look into other minds the same way; the methods Charles uses to try and shake him off don't take quite the way he means them to. He's not reading a book. ]

Do you speak Russian?

[ Senses are fantastic things. They layer memory in realism. Severus hasn't blinked. The air between them twists as if it has a surface tension. Swims. ]

Hardly.

[ But codebreaking enough Russian minds in the past several months prior to intergalactic kidnapping leaves some behind. But Russia is also not something he wishes to think about. For someone who has led a charmed life, there is not much material available he especially wishes to fling to the front of his mind.

But Snape is not reading a book. The uncertainty as to what he is doing is felt, made manifest in words-- ]

What's it like?

Old, bigger than English, and very influence by a form of Slavonic that dates back to the ninth century.

[ ... Yes, Charles was totally asking about Russian. But Charles is - what, agitated? Looking for something else to focus on? ]

Why don't you like Russia?

[ Half a second after Severus finishes the question, Charles will find his vision swimming and shimmering beyond what his eyes can blink away and whatever his most forefront recollection is will be pulled up before him, unavoidable, insistent nostalgia. ]

What, politically?

[ --is very dry, but memory is quicker off the mark. Old. Cold. Wet. Grey sky, deep green forest, and a clearing. Russia, in his mind, is not so much a place as it is a situation. He is running past men struggling against razor wire that has apparently leapt off fencing to wrap around them in a coil of snakelike seizing. Less nostalgic, but a nagging memory, control of a situation slipped from his grasp, and people getting hurt.

Ahead, the estate, where Erik has disappeared.

Agitation in the way Charles shuts his eyes across from Snape, a line developing between brows, but keenly curious. ]

[ A dreary landscape. It's only familiar in theory, for Severus's own impression of Russia has been in the dead of winter and not nearly this manageable.

He is next to Charles, feet on the cold ground, just out of the corner of his eye, black-clad and out of place but not, like a crack in a mirror. ]

You could think of something else political if it'd help.

[ He is braced to stay inside the other man's mind, will side-step the reaction if he can. ]

[ There's a sort of cognitive startle as the memory is interrupted, and an active attempt if wrenching it away -- away from true politics, though there's a stumbling over the recollection of an ocean filled with warships -- to a...

...rugby field. Probably not Russia.

It's raining in the Parks. Boys of college age are engaged in sporting war. Charles is not among them, but he stands on the sidelines, partially out of his own memory. ]

They're practicing for the Varsity match, [ is for Snape's benefit. A second glance, and he feels moved to specify; ] Oxford and Cambridge? Intensely competitive.

[ But mental fingernails work at the edges of where he feels Snape in his mind, as if perhaps the disorientation of tone and emotive connection to disparate memories might distract. ]

[ It's well done. Putting him in a harmless memory. But Severus doesn't care about rugby and neither will anyone else that attacks Xavier's mind, so before he even finishes his explanation, he's left. Like a fish darting through a moving stream, Severus steps away. In his wake there is a disorienting current that persons not sensitive to psychic phenomenon may not feel, but Charles most certainly will.

Thoughts and memories and things Charles thought he forgot are looked into like store windowfronts on fast-forward until he (they) come to just minutes in the past with Severus saying Don't think of anything embarrassing and Charles wincing.

He decides he'll open that door. ]

Fucking--

[ Course swearing -- only in memory, of course, but his own voice rings clear right up to the high ceiling. It's early morning in the elegant dormitory, and Charles grasps at staircase railing from where he is awkwardly reclined on the wooden staircase, each step shiny with some oily substance that's apparently been the cause of this spill.

--my arse, [ is pure blustery disbelief and probably not actually attached to that first exclamation, but gets a hoot of a laugh from an onlooker above anyway. This Charles is the better part of a decade younger, even floppier than the one Snape knows, unaware he's only a memory as he rests his head back against a wooden step.

Somewhere, a more cognizant Charles is still catching up from the disorientating rush of memory, as if disarmed at how available they are, matching close the twin feelings of that against the older shock of cracking tailbone on wooden ledge. ]

[ Ow. ]

That looks like it hurt.

[ This time he doesn't speak. His voice is a part of the fabric of the unreality they're floating through. Severus is past the stairs, into the hallway below, leaning from an alcove and looking up past Charles at Charles.

He is about to move again. This, his pause seems to say, is a good moment to apply a figurative elbow to his face if he wants his mind back. ]

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