( open ) show me how to lie

[darkart]

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.

Comments

[darkart]

[ 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. ]

[forgodssake]

[ Except that the trick requiring him to kick someone out of his mind feels as though he's being asked to punch the fog until it goes away. His frustration flares bright and true through that same fabric of memory, before he sees Severus in that alcove.

There you are.

It's a generous pause, probably, but he goes after him all the same -- memory distorts, seems to wrap that point of intrusion in a bundle of senselessness, before the laboratory rears back up through perception, and Snape is sitting where he is, and Charles is sitting where he is, cup of cigarette as halfway between them.

The telepath has his hands gripping the edge of the table, but it lessens immediately. ]

Do you know what undergrads do for the most part of the academic career? Sit down. A truly unfortunate fortnight of recovery.

[ Not that he's rattled or anything. What he and Nuala have been doing was basically waltzing. ]

[darkart]

You seem to have survived.

[ Severus is exactly how he was before they began. To be fair-- if he'd had to really press hard, he'd be a little tired, maybe even frazzled. It's not his strong suit, and unlike most practitioners of Legilimency, Severus is gun-shy about ripping peoples minds open like paper wrapping. He's just never been as good at it as he is the opposite. ]

Was that anything like how you read people?

[forgodssake]

Certainly had worse.

[ But they've been over that. ]

A little. As with you, it helps if what I want to read is at least tangentially hinged to the thought of the moment, but very rarely do they ever even know I'm there.

[darkart]

[ He nods; he fully expects Charles is better at getting into other peoples heads than he is, and that he would be even if the wizard was particularly good at this. What Severus does is a spell, after all, and not whatever it is that makes up a mutant. ]

You need to compartmentalize. [ - is slightly unhealthy, but probably unsurprising, advice. ]

You try and get people out by creating noise, but that kind of chaos only leaves you more vulnerable to reacting in a hypersensitive way. It is a distraction for both parties. Silence is a stronger deterrent.

[forgodssake]

Even in the face of don't think about the spotty rhinoceros or whatever it is.

[ It's an interesting thing to consider -- his telepathy is characterised with emotion and impulsiveness and also frivolous use, and applying a more barren defensive strategy is at odds with the offense.

But then again, he can be and has been subtle too. ]

How do you compartmentalise?

[darkart]

[ He considers saying Very well. That much is already obvious, of course, and even though he's inclined to be flippant about most things concerning his private business, he's supposed to be helping. Teaching. That thing he does professionally. ]

I don't feel so much, anymore.

[ Severus feels. He feels passionately, painfully, deeply. Charles has seen this in his work and his irritability, his moments of being completely gentle to Princess Nuala in contrast with raking every third person who addresses him on the network over hot coals. He is a person and cannot turn his emotions off with anything short of a lobotomy.

But he keeps his distance like it's natural for him to do so. He says things like I hear that happens when you're known to be close to people without a trace of irony, and while he seems to read social cues as clearly as he might read a book, he often doesn't know what to do with them after. He watches other people and has no place with them, not even among his own kind.

It is perhaps not a goal to aspire to after all. ]

[forgodssake]

[ Perhaps not, and yet, it presents an intriguing method of defense for all that there is just no way that Charles could do as Snape does on a daily basis. He's dragged the makeshift ashtray to himself to fidget with, the edge of thumb nail skirting along metal rim. ]

I feel as though I wouldn't be able to do the things I have to, if I took it as far as that.

[ But there'd probably be a noticeable drop in terrorist threats. ]

[darkart]

There's a lot about it that's good.

[ A quiet admission - not an enticement. Surely everyone can imagine the appeal of infallible privacy, and the security of holding complete control over the most vital part of your own being. He doesn't have to explain. ]

But you don't have to do the things that I have to do.

[ He doesn't have to explain, either, that he's done something awful to himself.

(Sometimes Severus even recognizes it.) ]

[forgodssake]

Neither of us have to do any of those things, currently.

[ They are in space. Not just in space, but the space of a dimension that probably bears little resemblance to their own. His chin settles into hand, studying the other man a little. ]

I'd wondered. If your defense persisted always, or if you were specifically keeping guard in my presence.

[darkart]

[ Untrue.

Harry Potter is a goddamn horcrux.

Severus shrugs in a shallow motion. He's good at pretending like he doesn't actually care; sometimes it's true that he doesn't. Sometimes it's really not. ]

I am always specifically keeping guard.

[ Which is different than both of those things. ]

[forgodssake]

What happened when you weren't?

[ Charles is aware that that's a risky sort of question. Perhaps not his business. But he cannot read it, and so he lends voice to it.

Of course, it could also go nowhere. There's an apologetic smile nesting subtle in the corner of his mouth, for all that his gaze is interested. ]

[darkart]

There has been no such time.

[ The look he gives Charles is not aggressive, but it still holds a silent, steady challenge. As if he expects the other man to disbelieve but preemptively is unmoved by that lack of faith.

Severus is what he is. And if he's lying, no one will ever know. ]

[forgodssake]

[ The natural thing would be to disbelieve, once on a thread of assumption. If Charles does, he doesn't raise it in conversation -- there's a querying pinch at his brow, as if this has done little to assuage curiousity. ]

I suppose not everyone must learn the hard way, [ he says instead. ]

[darkart]

[ It's tempting to explain, but ultimately that temptation is hinged on his ego, and Severus knows better. It's good for Charles to assume he's just gifted at it, merely a paranoid, reclusive bastard who had Something Very Sad happen to make him repress himself.

Maybe the war really doesn't matter here but he can't--

he just can't.

So he doesn't. ]

I'm less altruistic than you are.

[ is a joke about Xavier's excellent luck concerning the people he tries to help by reading their minds. Severus is quite happy under the radar and locked away, tyvm. ]

[forgodssake]

[ That's cute that you think so and Xavier isn't simply biding his time.

And stung, somewhat, by his efforts where the Winter Soldier has been concerned. Where Erik is concerned.

But no one ever said that Charles learns the hard way. That he learns at all. ]

Who isn't, really.

[ Dryly stated. His smile is thin, consciously rueful. ]

[darkart]

[ He should be stung, because Severus is being a prick on purpose to try and get him to let it alone, but he also shouldn't be, because it's the mildest reaction he's going to get about that very altruism. No one is going to thank him for elbowing his way into their business and those people, those base, useless, muggle people, are always going to hate him for it. Even if it helps them. ]

Have I told you how the school I teach at decides which students go to which houses?

[forgodssake]

No.

[ For all that Charles has no idea what that means and why it's being referenced now. But he's good for following lines of conversation, when he hasn't his own bulldozing agenda.

So he says; ]

Tell me.

[darkart]

Every student is judged by a one-thousand-year-old talking hat.

[ Simmer in that for just a second. ]

It is capable of reading spirits, or souls, or hearts, or whatever you'd like to call it. It has a form of telepathy and may speak to a child in their own head, about their own character merits. Ever year at the beginning of term it sings a politically or socially topical song, content gleaned from our Headmaster permitting it to read the bloody newspaper over the summer.

[forgodssake]

[ Charles squints a little at this first part, but by now, he's well used to the casual mentions of ludicrous things for all that a...

...psychic, political, talking hat is absolutely stretching the bounds of acceptable lunacy. ]

That's quite the tradition. If you're making some sort of unflattering comparison--

[darkart]

You, [ this comes with a finger point ] Charles Xavier, would be stuck in front of the entire school's population for a quarter-hour while the damn thing went back and forth for ages over whether to stick you in the studious bookworm house or the brave idiot house.

[forgodssake]

[ That gets a laugh -- surprised, easily awarded, a vaguely abashed ruffle of fingers through his own hair. ]

I'm taking that as a compliment, even if it's not meant to be. I suppose I know where you wound up, though.

[ Obviously the studious bookworm house. :D ]

[darkart]

Please. [ A single word, deflecting a grave insult. ] I can hardly tolerate the populations of either. There are four houses.

Ravenclaw is your studious house. Gryffindor, alma mater of Sirius Black, contains the idiots. Hufflepuffs are shockingly not as absurd as they sound - polite and competent, generally the least offensive students. My house is Slytherin. The universally hated one full of ambitious, cutthroat bastards.

[forgodssake]

[ Studious is vaguely disparaging, Charles thinks. He rightly guesses that it's supposed to connote intellect if you're anyone but Severus Snape. Brave idiots is enough said. Hufflepuff given credit, ostensibly for being more or less out of the way.

And then there's Slytherin. ]

The naming conventions of your entire universe are absolutely delightful, I'll give you that. And yes, that does so sound like you.

[ It's a little joking. Sort of. ]

But isn't there a little of those things in everyone, I should think? Perhaps not everyone, but most. Or is it simply where one would feel most successful?

[darkart]

It's what happens when you let the Dark Ages holdover in titles. [ Dryly.

But also, ] Yes. It's about making sure students are comfortable. Boarding school - traumatic enough when you're young, it's easier when they end up around people they can get on with easier.

[ It is the most amazingly sterilized version possible, but Severus isn't in the mood to really get into anything, and frankly, he's not sure he'll ever be. No one will ever understand if the haven't lived it. Hogwarts is a culture onto itself, even their already small world. ]

It also dictates I have to be invested in far more sport matches than I'd like to be.

[ Entrenched in issues as it may be, it's still funny for him to imagine Charles VS The Hat, okay. ]