oo8. sort of open.

[forgodssake]

CHARACTERS: Charles Xavier and Nuala; Emma Swan; Captain Hook (Killian Jones); Severus Snape; Ilde Knox; Cassandra Anderson; Alex Summers; William Tsang; Claire Bennet; Nuala; Erik Lehnsherr; the Winter Soldier; others as they happen.
LOCATION: Medical bay; science department; level 5, holodeck, passenger quarters; media library; laundry facilities; oxygen gardens; level 14; others as they happen.
WARNINGS: Descriptions of body horror.
SUMMARY: Jump cycle thirty-five happens, and Charles continues to exist. Basically.
NOTES: Monthly catch all! This is only partially open because I'm not providing a fixed narrative thing to reply to. Hence, please let me know if you'd like to do anything, and I'll be happy to set up a thread (unless you feel ambitious).

Comments

medical bay.

[forgodssake]

It's barely twelve hours after the latest jump that sees Charles' return.

There is a shrine, a closed stasis pod, filled blue with an even bluer body suspended. Breathing apparatus covers half her face, and she looks-- diminished, unwell, malnourished. And longer for it, birdish wrists, jutting hipbones. Her ribcage pushes distorted and too big against muscle and flesh. It's hard to watch. It's hard to look at.

That isn't solely the reason that Charles turns sharp on a heel and walks away -- his momentum takes him to where he expects there to be medical staff on hand, after all, rather than just a retreat. He has questions. Maybe, just for a lark, there could be answers. His jaw is set tight as if wound on a spring, and he pays no attention to the marks he bears left over from last cycle's crisis.

Throughout the month, he will come back here.

[ ooc ; a medical character should feel free to accost him if you see this, otherwise i'm gonna ping some people and force their faces here. ]

[favouring]

"Charles?"

--Nuala pays attention, at the jump, to who does and does not come out with the rest of them. His sister is a distinctive face in the crowd, blue or otherwise, and she hadn't seen her; it could've meant nothing, shapeshifter that she was, but his lingering here tells her all she needs to know about trusting her instincts. They led her back here, in time to find him turning away from the pod that holds Raven in the state caused by recent sicknesses, not quite reaching out her hands to him.

They are on uneasy ground, still, she knows. Not so uneasy she wouldn't stop him, but not so sure that she is positive she won't be turned away when not needed.

[forgodssake]

Charles stops short, absorbed enough in his own fretting that he is surprised by even Nuala's appearance, although startle is kept to a minimum -- stiff in his shoulders, tension bundled in his fists. The sickness has past, but the transformation he'd suffered lingers; his skin looks like glass and thus looks like nothing, revealing flesh and muscle and bone beneath. His eyes seem too bright.

A breath is expelled, as if he'd been holding onto it, along with momentum. His hands go up as if he had expected to steer hers aside, but they both pull short of one another.

"Nuala," he echoes back at her. Christ, has a whole other cycle turned by since they last spoke?

[uncurse]

Finding Charles ranks strangely high on Emma’s priority list, given just how many people she has on the Tranquility from her world who should perhaps rank higher. With the jump only a few days past, she finds her way to the Medical Bay to search him out.

He wasn’t the only one to notice Raven’s condition.

“You look better,” Emma remarks from behind him, keeping her tone casual and even. With her hand stuffed into the pockets of her jacket, no one can see her fidgeting. She keeps a few deliberate feet between them, not wanting to encroach on what is indubitably a personal moment. If he’d rather not take visitors while he’s checking in on his sister, she doesn’t want to intrude.

On the other hand, he’s not the only one who’s had to watch someone remain encapsulated beyond the jump. Gold meant a great deal less to Emma than Raven meant to Charles, but the reassurance that he’d come out of it, she hopes, will prove equivalent enough.

in medbay proper or staring mournfully at raven whichever u prefer

[capsize]

Hook wants absolutely nothing to do with medical. He'd seen enough of it to last him a lifetime last month, but perhaps that's why he actually listens for once when he's told to check in post-jump. Better one pointless visit now than missing something important and being stuck here again later.

In stark contrast to his last visit, this one's quick and painless, and he's on his way out within fifteen minutes. He's in the process of grabbing his coat off the bed he'd carelessly tossed it onto when he glances up just in time to catch a familiar face, and his reaction's mixed enough to give him pause. Speaking to Charles had been something of a train wreck, last time. It hadn't been so long ago by the ship's terms, but Hook's still managed to put a year and some weeks on the clock in the meantime.

Secrets had seemed very important then. Now they've lost some meaning, been traded in for others, and the thing that ends up filtering through the rest of it is that Charles is important to Emma. Before he'd read that as a threat; now it's a point in Charles' favor. Besides everything else, the man looks different. He's still tightly drawn and pale, but it's all been pushed to extremes, enough to merit interest — maybe even sympathy, as loathe as Hook would be to admit it outright.

He almost leaves without saying a word anyway, but after a hesitant glance towards the door he diverts his path to catch Charles' attention.

"All right, mate."

It's an echo of last time, partly intentional. Unlike last time, however, he isn't digging. It's honest, concern made light by easy nonchalance.

science department. severus snape.

[forgodssake]

And when he leaves the medical bay, he does not return to level fourteen.

It is only briefly tempting, too, but ultimately, it's the laboratories he settles in, as if not quite ready to break up the gravitational pull of duty that had bound him here for the last fortnight. His hand skims along a long line of silver countertop as he approaches a work station, sitting down, and tucking tangled fingers under his jaw just to stare at thin air for a while.

Eventually, he starts to work. His typing is slow, but almost silent against the smooth touchscreen surface, and at least now, with the foreign nanites disappeared from his system, nothing simply fails to work. Written notes are resting at his elbow, and previously transcribed files hover open on a nearby screen. The light from monitors shines through the strange quality his skin has taken on -- translucent, showing up the blurry underworkings of muscle and bone and vein and artery, going from ruddy to greyly shadowed to stark white detail depending on where you look. His hands are that of a skeleton's through a layer of distorted glass.

But he feels well, despite this. More alert than he's felt in a long time, in a way that connotes health as opposed to blind panic. His typing quickens. He considers making tea.

[darkart]

The only upside to having spent this entire crisis preventing a magically over-powered assassin having an unstable episode from reaching the rest of the passengers is that Severus has been able to, blessedly, have an almost complete break from other people. He watched the network and considered leaving self-imposed (near)isolation, but ultimately, he knows there's nothing he could have contributed. Scathing condemnations of science would have made him feel better, but would not have actually helped anything.

"You pulled through," is what he says at the door, taking in the incongruous sight of Charles looking like that - his more modern hair and dress, not his hands, in this instance - and being back at work.

Honestly, Severus wasn't sure if everyone would.

xenogen.

[hedoniste]

There's a sort of knock - not on the door, just a rap of knuckles against the open doorframe, announcing Ilde's presence in it. She's got a sheaf of folders tucked under one arm, and an inquiring look on her face: "Knock, knock, anybody useful home?"

[forgodssake]

"Questionable."

The man that lists back in his seat to cast a look for the door mmmight be recognisable, but there are various factors that might make this less so. Not the least of which being Ilde's own time warp in tandem with his, the fact that they've never met, and that he is physically a very changed person since the last time he showed his face on the network. A shaggy hair cut, a development of beard, and recent skin mutations all achieve this affect.

And he has on sunglasses to disguise the horror show that are his eyes. But most people know that he's Professor Xavier, so maybe she does too. "You have paper."

level 5, holodeck. cassandra anderson.

[forgodssake]

They made it. Another jump.

And to be very honest, Charles still does not particularly want to drink, but what he does want to do is keep this sense of continuity, like perhaps he can be a functional human being and keep promises and find people for purposes beyond what he needs from them in that moment. So he returns to his room on level fourteen, and he digs up the bottle of as yet unopened Dewar's he'd been bestowed by powers that be when he had first returned from his ten year non-absence, and he goes to find Cassandra Anderson.

The holodeck on level five is unoccupied, and Charles has picked the setting. It is a favoured one, of the short list of favourites that he has -- they are in the middle of a lake that is frozen white, spanning beyond the dimensions of the holodeck itself, circled in black and white forest, with a sky that is marbled grey, on the cusp of snowing. It would be possible to set the temperature to a brisk wintry level, but it is instead kept comfortable.

Seated on the ground which only upon touch reveals itself not to be solid ice, Charles sets about pouring a generous helping of scotch into glasses, one for him, one for her. His skin still shows up anatomy it is meant to hide, having transformed all the way translucent since the first time they spoke during the sickness, but they are, at least, healthy, with changes slow to revert back to normal.

"What should we toast to?"

[mindtricks]

[ they've survived, and it seems as though the nanite extraction worked-- anderson doesn't feel better, exactly, but she doesn't feel worse and she trusts that the solution found was the correct one. ( the jump has left her feeling alone, empty in a way she knows isn't her own emotion but imposed on her. that makes it no less real, but it does make this more necessary, perhaps. )

he picks a setting on the holodeck that is winter, a frozen lake-- there's silence and a stark kind of beauty in the stillness and it's empty, too, in a way, but not with the negative connotation she attaches to the word when she thinks about the way she felt after the jump. they settle on the ground, and instead of answering his question, what she says when she takes the glass he's poured for her from translucent fingers is: ]

I've never seen a real frozen lake in winter.

media library. alex summers.

[forgodssake]

[ The best part of unpaid employment is that, barring disaster, you can pick your days off.

It is almost common knowledge that Charles Xavier attends this library in particular, now and then -- only common if you care enough to notice or ask, anyway, and easily found by chance if not. He isn't expecting company, this time, seated with his heels kicked up on the edge of a table, and idly trawling through the network on his comms device. He is dressed casual, in jeans with an ankle cut and waist height that is appropriate for the early seventies, as with the length of his shirt lapels and toe point of his shoes.

Next to him, a datapad is playing music. It sounds what he would probably thoughtlessly identify as 'oriental', orchestral, peaceful, and a little tinny from its tiny speakers and the vastness of the library. ]

[redhotsummers]

If this is what fashion has in store for me when I get back, maybe it's better I don't get back.

[Alex had been trying to find a few things, something to help Josias--with little luck. Stumbling upon Charles hadn't been part of the plan. He had remembered what Hank had told him--that he needed to try to be there for the telepath, whether he was wanted or not.

It just isn't that easy for Alex, but...well. Might as well try, now.]

dream;

[dogbane]

Sometimes it serves to be a teacup human, if by serving it means a shitty job no officer would ordinarily be expected to undertake personally. Ordinarily.

The tunnel walls press in claustraphobic on either side of him. There is no light inside, but a little sunlight bleeds through the implied surface to air, a dozen yards ahead, past the curving bulk of misshapen ceiling where the ingress narrows too deep for him to keep his inching crouch. The close, black meat of Vietnam breathes heavy mineral and rancid piss smells into the fabric of his uniform, his hair. It's cooler down here than the scorching jungle sun renders up-there, but it isn't. better.

There's a centipede walking along the wall nearby. The shiny segments of its carapace look like rosary beads or lacquered fingernails, shimmering along, wiggle wiggle.

The examination bed of the Tranquility's medbay is very far away.

"Prof--sir," and there's a voice behind him, a few feet from his ass; a look over his shoulder will show him a querulous face, dirt-streaked, helmet mushed down over a couple curls that have outgrown the last shave. Sean trying to be tactful is what lost him any number of girls before the war, but they are really supposed to be crawling right now; he has to try. "Uhh. Did you... find a Viet Cong?"

[forgodssake]

"No."

His voice sounds strange. Or rather, quite ordinary, but coming back to him in close quarters, with his breathing in between noisier than it should be. After a while, it feels as though you might as well be inhaling mud. How long have they been down here, anyway?

Ages, probably. Charles tracks the path of the centipede with a dim, removed fascination, both here and not here, before he remembers Sean behind him wondering why he has stalled and that it's probably not to take a good long look at his arse. The idea of having to crawl backwards the way they came makes his stomach clench.

"None of that, just--" Charles tries to get lower. The soles of his jungle boots inch back as knee scrapes along out behind him. His hand reaches out, searching the ground, as if it might tell him how many men have wriggled along on their bellies, like centipedes, for the sunlight. "Be a good lad and pull me back if I get wedged in place, will you?"

level 5. claire bennet.

[forgodssake]

[ There is a knock at the door to Claire Bennet's room, and the increasingly familiar sound of blunt puppy claws scrabbling light against it shortly after.

On the other side is Charles Xavier and the two puppies he'd kidnapped for a couple of hours. One of them is still on his leash, which has wound around the back of the telepath's thighs by now in exuberant puppy style, while his sibling is half-asleep and flopped up against a leather-clad shoulder, bundled in close in the crook of Charles' arm, on account of dawdling.

This place probably shouldn't have dogs, really, but they've been taken on a romp through the Gardens and pissed out a remarkable amount of fluid that he hadn't imagined tiny puppies would be able to retain but there you go and seemed to not mind nor notice the fact that they are where they should not be.

Which was nice. Taking care of things that actually wanted to be taken care of, and needed to be. ]

[pushfall]

[ Slowly, she's been making her humble little abode a little more livable for puppies everywhere. Of course, puppy proofing on a spaceship has less to do with making sure that trashcans are covered with lids that don't topple off so easily when inquisitive noses try to nudge their way in and more to do with writing down very specific lists of how to proceed during jump time, what to do in case of disastrous emergency, and a list of people she can count on to make sure the animals don't starve whenever she gets something heroic albeit foolish in her head.

Which is often.

Regardless, she's happy to spend time with Izzie, alone, who is the calmer of the two canine factions and who also doesn't seem to particularly care for Claire. Not that she actively dislikes her or chews up her clothes and boots, but she seems altogether disinterested. Claire attributes it, still, to missing her original owners and trying to adjust to what's happening, and crosses where she's lounging on the bunk she doesn't use to open the door.

The scrabble of tiny toenails against the floor and door tells her who it is, never mind that she doesn't need an announcement, given the time. The door slides open, and Claire is fully equipped to fall all over herself in thanking him when she catches a full picture of what's in front of her: guy wrapped up in puppy's leash, same guy with a floppy puppy pressed into his shoulder. ]

Aww.

[ Sue her. ]

laundry facilities. severus snape.

[forgodssake]

He was meant to find it and read it, of course. He knew this as he opened the case file, abruptly accessible to him without any other discernible reason, and Severus isn't a man who makes those sorts of mistakes. So he read it, twice.

And then Charles didn't say anything.

For a little while, anyway.

Certainly not at work. This place isn't work, although there is a similar aesthetic -- glass and silver and smooth white floors. In the labs, even ungroomed and comparatively dated, a white coat means that Charles maintains an air of legitimacy, even if that legitimacy is possibly unstable. Out of the labs, and out of his white coat, physical differences from before remain plain -- perpetual scruffiness, and a more daring palette of colour in his wardrobe, more casual fabrics like denim and leather. (At least the air of neglectful unwashedness has been shed, since he first came back.) He is hard to miss, in this sterile environment.

And hasn't brought any laundry with him. "Hot pliers," he muses, out loud, when he spies the silhouette he'd been in search of.

[darkart]

Severus is smoking. He shouldn't be doing that in here, where it's supposed to be all about cleanliness and refreshing materials. He doesn't like the machines - no surprise there. He could certainly just charm the ones he's using to prevent theft or tampering and do something else while this happens, but part of him can't get over the nagging suspicion that something's going to go wrong. Even is mother had eschewed her machine for proper magical methods, most of the time. He's only had a few moments in life to regret not being better practiced in household spells.

"If you heat them up it distracts at first from the pain of having your nails torn out," he says, his deep voice mild and even-keeled. I've been expecting you, Professor Xavier. "But it burns after anyway."

He ashes his cigarette, an absent tap.

xenogen; nuala's office.

[favouring]

It's rarely difficult to find Nuala, generally either in her garden pavilion or nestled in her Xenogen office, the latter of which is increasingly less somewhere that she works and more somewhere that she uses as a private place to get on with her sewing and reading. She's had less and less to do with the actual work of the department over the past few months, although she remains available and perfectly willing to pick it up should she be required - she's content, much of the time, to allow her own distance from the rest of the ship to lengthen. Maybe those things aren't unrelated. She knows she ought to be more involved, that she should be more proactive, that she should pay more attention to what's going on around her--

She is so acutely frustrated by her own powerlessness, by what she perceives as so much pettiness, by feeling unable even to maintain the few bonds that she'd managed to prioritize here. Severus, at least, is a constant.

But when Charles does come, as he'd agreed, she is all warmth at once--

Perhaps she hasn't done so badly, if he meant it when he said he would.

[forgodssake]

"Here."

Two ceramic mugs on offer, one held out. It won't be the nicest tea in the world -- the stuff as provided by the Tranquility is of a unique dreadfulness that reminds Xavier of long nights working on his PhD and remembering he'd made a cup about an hour ago, but perhaps that's the charm of it. The effects of his illness has gone, skin blushed full back to pigmentation in part thanks to wizard alternative medicine as much as the 'good' nanites, swimming through their water.

The white coat is nice, too. Very clean. Very official. Does something to take away from the constant look about Charles as though he's still recovering from a decade's long hangover. There is a glance between golden eye to golden eye, as if suspicious of the whitenoise fussery he can detect beneath quiet thoughts.

oxygen gardens

[sorrycharles]

[ Deep in the third level of the gardens, Erik has found a felled log low and dry enough to slouch on while he scrolls through the network.

A nearby stream provides ambient sound the way the absence of any wind to stir leaves cannot, light filtered soft and green through layered branches. Damselflies hum to and from the running water in electric shades of blue and yellow, hovering here and there in darting stops. Eventually one lands near enough for him to watch while it combs over its vast, pixelated eyes.

It looks very natural. Very real.

And it stills, wings poised, mouth parts slowing and stalling in place.

Erik looks at the damselfly. The damselfly looks at Erik.

After a moment, tension starts to stiffen up into the nape of his neck. ]

[forgodssake]

[ The Gardens are not Xavier's favourite place to be, and one can tell this by looking at him; distinctly uncomfortable in the stagnant feeling damp-warm, attempts to accommodate made with shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and collar left undone.

And yet, here he is.

Having stopped a little distance away from Erik, regarding the other man's slouched spine, the bare back of his neck that, from here, he can't tell whether is tense or not, but he can sense a mind winding taut. Hands lift, slide off glasses from his face that had been previously casting the jungle around him in dim, sepia tones. Folding them closed, around when he's decided that he's probably gone noticed. ]

You might have at least told me, [ is not a friendly hello, but it lacks in real accusation. Or belief that Erik would keep him informed of much of anything ever. ]

good morning level 14

[lostsoldier]

It’s early. There’s no sunrise on the Tranquility, but if there were, it would barely be peeking over the horizon when the soldier passes Charles’s door. He’s dressed in tank top and workout pants, shirt already clinging lightly to his back, combat boots clomping steadily through the halls on level fourteen, past cabin number ninety-nine, one hundred, one-oh-one, one-oh-two... one-oh-one, one hundred, where his rhythm slows to a stop. For a long moment, there’s no sound at all. He stands still and silent, considering. Weighing.

(Not thinking about the gaps in identical door frames that he’d stuffed full of thermite.)

He knocks twice.

Waits.

And if that goes unanswered, starts knocking again. Metal clangs against metal at an obnoxiously persistent, unrelenting pace, because surely that will provoke a positive response from its probably-not-asleep-anymore inhabitant. (Or hey, at least maybe it’ll get him moving.)

"Rise and shine," he calls through the door.

[forgodssake]

Oh my god this is how he dies.

Maybe not. Murderous intent is the kind of thing he can pick up quite easily, even in the throws of baffled half-asleepness, but the persistent clang of metal on metal is strange enough as telepathy scrabbles for purchase that honest fright shoves Charles all the way out of unconsciousness--

--then a voice. A voice with a mind attached.

There's a muttered what as he climbs over the side of his bed, the shuffle-sound of his approach following the automated sweep of door disappearing into the wall. His hand rests on where it went, balancing himself, looking uncombed and undressed save for sleep pants cut off above the knees, loose shirt.

"What," he repeats, for the soldier's benefit.