ataraxionlogs | o13. quasi closed.

[ After a week's worth of constant rain, the ground is thick with water, and mud clings to Hawke's boots as he slows his trek. His back is turned to the hulking shadow of the beached ship, and he feels oddly small as he navigates through the wide paths defined by massive trees of impossible size. He is seeking privacy, but not secrecy.

Memory is something that is returning not exactly as knowledge, but instinct. Sleeping on the ground is familiar enough, even if he wakes with the memory of quilted sheets and velvet hangings, or wool-spun blankets and rough-hewn bedframe. He remembers a life that feels segmented, diverse, coming together piece-meal by the way of senses and muscle-memory and a sort of shadowy guilt and grief, rising from a fire he can't find, just yet. But that's not why he is here.

Well. No. He is here because of fire, but of a practical, non-metaphorical sort.

Hawke gives a cursory glance over his shoulder before he raises his hands. It feels strange, like his hands are empty when they shouldn't be, but he can't for the life of him think of what should specifically be there -- heavy, leather-wrapped, a staticky tingle of energy, the dense weight of steel -- so no matter. After a moment of self-searching, he closes his fists, and taps into that strange instinct he's been prodding at since he woke up naked and slimey a month ago.

Fire. It streams down his arms, elbow to fingertips, with the same fluidity of water, immediately hot and dense, but giving off nothing in the way of smoke. It doesn't burn his skin, his hair, his clothing, but he can feel its heat, sweat prickling off his brow, running in streaks through the thin film of dirt on his face.

With a grunt, he-- throws it, is the only suitable descriptor. The fire flames as one, sluicing off his arms and hands, arcing into the open air, hitting the trunk of a tree where it. Goes out, more or less, steam rising off damp wood, blackened scorch marks sporadic and smoking. ]

Edited 2015-09-05 08:37 (UTC)

[ Fenris doesn't witness the assault. He's too far away, standing beneath a tree, considering not whether he can climb it, because he's strong and light and barefoot and obviously he can, but whether he cares enough to bother.

The cat--his cat, he thinks, or a cat he might have cared about, based on one of the handful of memories he's scattered memories he's recovered, his mind less a holey tapestry that needs filling than a scattering of stars he's doing his best to make into constellations--the cat stares down at him from its perch overhead, regal and disinterested in his gravelly attempts at coos.

Fenris has almost decided definitively to let it stay here and be eaten when a roaring sound and something akin to a collision, but not quite, startles them both. Fenris turns toward the source. The cat jumps down from its branch and uses the side of his face, claws-out, as a springboard for its sprint back toward the camp.

He is going to eat it himself. Later. First he picks his way through the undergrowth, weaving through trees, until he emerges alongside one with a blackened wound and a likely culprit nearby.

There is no judgment in the way his eyebrows raise when he looks from the tree to the man. He doesn't know that it's magic rather than, perhaps, a very small flamethrower, but even if he did--that's a constellation he hasn't drawn yet. ]

Did the tree insult your honor?

It looked at me funny.

[ Hawke says this without glance up, his study turned down to his own hands as if still not quite sure why they aren't blackened to the bone or at least maybe peeling or blistered. No flamethrowers, not even tiny ones.

He looks past his shoulder, then, gaze fixing. A chord of familiarity, but more for the sharp tips of Fenris' ears and the blunt slope of his nose than anything personal.

An elf.

This just in: apparently he knows about elves. ]

Or rather, I thought it might make a better target than a person. I'm-- [ His hands sort of pantomime weighing up of words. ] --practicing.

[ Fenris looks back at the tree, scanning bark until pareidolia kicks in and reveals a face--a funny one, necessarily, but almost certainly not one the man also saw--and he's smiling a little when his focus swivels back, but he doesn't explain why. ]

I'd say that depends on the person.

[ His voice is a wry scrape, devoid of malice, with no particular person--deranged blondes or purring magisters--in mind, or else he wouldn't be so careless about stepping forward for a closer look at the man's unmarked hands. Not too close, not close enough for the magic in his brands to stir, but that's not caution. Only manners. ]

[ There's a slight laugh. The start of one. ]

I lack the knowledge about my personal history to be that particular.

[ He spreads his hand, and with the soft sound fire ordinarily makes as it burns air, a hovering ball of flame appears above his palm, throwing warm orange about in queasy illumination. There's a quirk of humour nested subtle in the corner of his mouth, before he under-arm throws this last conjuration, hand out to guide it towards its arc -- not exactly where Fenris was looking, but in the midst of the blackened wood he's created all the same. ]

What I know is, I can do that. Scenic rolling hills, other bits and pieces of polite, boring countryside. Lots of things on fire, probably not my fault, despite all appearances.

[ He offers out his hands a bit as Fenris approaches. Baking warmth from recent fire saps swiftly from the cooling air, and his flesh is unharmed. ]

Pointy ears, [ he adds. ] But I'm rather sure you'd have made an impression. We must be perfect strangers.

Edited 2015-09-17 07:25 (UTC)

[ It takes him a second. He's distracted by Hawke's hand--unmarked, unremarkable except perhaps for its size, but where it's closest to Fenris his white tattoos shift brighter, subtly, like a filmy surface reflecting faint light. He doesn't notice that at first, because that second he needed passes and the flattery sinks in.

His gaze darts up to Hawke's face, sharp-eyed but simultaneously softened by a single huff of involuntary laughter. ]

I doubt that.

[ There aren't many people, in the scheme of things. Several hundred--though perhaps there were more before the crash, lost now--and from what Fenris has seen, he's the only one who looks like this, branded and pointy-eared with the shock of white hair unearned by age. He doesn't resent that the same way he would if he remembered why, but he doesn't like it much, either.

And speaking of not resenting things: ]

Is it only fire?

Only fire, he says. Because flames bursting from my fingertips at will isn't impressive enough.

[ The teasing is broadly spoken and good natured, as if his focus hadn't darted towards the soft glow of illumination zithering up strange markings. Hawke turns back towards the blackened tree, seeing as it's primed for even more abuse, and with a glance that bids Fenris follow the short distance, he makes his way towards it.

Reaching out, fingers splayed, he concentrates. Not quite as easily as aforementioned flames, it takes a few seconds before it takes effect. The temperature around them drops by a handful of degrees, but surrounding his hands, the air grows even icier. Frost whites across charred black, in fern-like patterns. ]

That's about as deep as my bag of tricks goes, as far as I'm aware. Your turn.

Only fire, [ Fenris insists while following behind him, dry but unmistakably good-humored. It's a shame no one has the memories required to appreciate the rarity. The trade-off is that Fenris can instead appreciate the view of Hawke's broad shoulders, and, you know--

he was never shy.

He's equally unabashed about his interest in the crawl of ice spreading from Hawke's hands. (Buried somewhere even deeper than his memories of the Tranquility and of Kirkwall, there's his sister, knobkneed and gaptoothed, with electricity arcing between her fingers. He wasn't jealous. He wanted everything for her.) When Hawke lowers his hands Fenris presses one of his own to the bark, briefly, and leaves behind a much smaller melted hand print. ]

My turn? [ He looks down at his white-lined hand--not stupid, only stalling. It hurts. He's not so hardened against it at the moment. But he isn't an infant, either, and after a moment of consideration he curls his fingers into a fist and sends blue-white light flashing up as far as his elbow. When he holds his hand out to Hawke for inspection, it's translucent, only half here anymore. ]

I haven't tried setting it on fire.

[ It doesn't occur to Hawke that it hurts, but it may occur to him to ask, at some point in the near future. Right now, he only watches with interest as what he instinctively feels looks like magic in a distilled, pure form, illuminates ghostly along brown skin. He reaches out, hovering his palm an inch or two above Fenris' knuckles, and unbidden, white illuminates brighter again.

It feels odd. Like a spell already cast, lying latent in flesh. ]

Do you know what it is?

I do not.

[ A little distant, contemplative, looking down at his hand--their hands, Hawke's in the way. He cants his head and tips his chin out in warning (albeit not much of one) before he turns his palm up and lifts his hand through Hawke's. Into it. On his end, it feels like pushing through water: there's substance, but not resistance.

It's almost like holding hands. ]

Whatever it is, it seems to like you.

[ Because of the glowing. Don't take it personally. It's not that much like holding hands. ]

Ahh.

[ That comes out flat and unsettled, going still beneath his clothing; but then his white teeth show in a cut of a grin, distinct in the midst of all that beard. Only fire. Puts it into perspective, really. ]

Well, I like it back. [ His voice is warm with a curl of overt flirting -- less with the lyrium and more with the elf, honest -- but his hand pulls back, because no, it's not very much like holding hands.

He looks at his own palm. Wiggles his fingers. Still corporeal. ] I'd invite it out for a drink if we had more on tap than last week's rain water. There's something I remember, too -- beer. And how we don't have any.

And that I'm Garrett.

[ It hasn't rained in some days, which is an improvement of the constant raining over several days that had come just before. The sun is high and the air is sticky with moisture and insects and all that rainforest unpleasantness that Charles is not genetically pre-disposed towards handling well, and yet, after the torrential downpour, lying around in a state of ennui had gotten boring, even if the doctor had prescribed as such in the wake of concussion.

And besides. The flood of memories return -- not all, but enough -- has given him too much to think about to just sit about idly.

Sweat makes dark the standard-issue T-shirt down his spine and beneath his arms, and he's camp from the open mouth of the Tranquility towards the ramshackle set up where Medical supplies are being retrieved, but rather than wielding more bandages or first-aid kits, he has two heavy cannisters of solvent in each hand, which he sets down to similar eclectic supplies. As he orders these objects, he looks up, gaze zeroing in on a now doubly familiar figure amongst construction efforts, and he remains where he is, paused in his task and staring in clear conflict.

But soon, he approaches, boots sinking a little in rain-softened earth, too accustomed to the hard floors of the Tranquility that had become a constant over the six months he was there. Longer, he knows. He just can't remember. ]

[ It’s backbreaking labor, even for a man who needn’t always involve his back. In the worst of the day’s heat, work winds down to a crawl. Lengths of fresh split wood gleam damp in the sunlight, slow to dry in air thick enough to drown in.

Erik drops a fresh armload into a stack before he sinks to sit on the raised slats of a half-finished floor, built up on pylons to level out some two feet over the mud. A second load drops itself after the first, wood clattering, loud. The wire it was bound in drops after it.

The shade of a tree left standing at the floorplan’s near edge provides some shelter from the sun, and Erik draws himself into the band of its shadow. Most of the others have withdrawn to rest under more finished projects.

He’s stifling hard breaths through his nose, soaked through, sparks chasing at the edges of his vision. His struggle to stay conscious is made easier by the half-inch splinter he’s busy prying out of his palm.

He meets Charles’ approach with a glance past his own fingers. Charles looks like he wants to talk.

Lately Erik has had less and less that he wants to say. ]

Edited (mnrrrrghhh) 2015-09-06 06:22 (UTC)

[ Then we're definitely already off to a good start.

Charles doesn't need much excuse to leave Erik alone -- the limits of his own knowledge make for murky waters, something that feels close to a decade still hazy and unsettling, and god knows, it'd be easy to ruin some as yet unknown balance of civility by concealing too much, or sharing more than is appropriate for someone still lost. It'd be easier to plead the fifth, let him sort it out as everyone else must.

Easier, but not fair.

So he approaches, a little meandering, not as an affect but because it is hot and muggy and everyone is hungrier than they should be. There's a calculating look in blue eye, gaze up and down, coming to a halt. ]

Careful with that.

[ He means the splinter. He moves past Erik, towards where water is stored on hand for workers, kept from the recent rainfall. Which had been almost torturous as it was useful, in Charles' opinion. So much water, impossible to collect it all, and no promises as to when it would return. He fills a container with some, takes a sip for himself. ]

Antibiotics are a finite resource, until we find the elusive antibiotic jungle pinecone or similar, and you wouldn't want to break it.

[ Water is offered out with a stretch of his arm. ]

[ Appearances aside, Erik’s recognition is immediate, within the limited context of time since the crash. He thinks about Charles and his dream-prying prowess frequently. When he’s driving down reclaimed nails or cutting pipe or spinning copper into wire.

It’s distracting, he thinks. Borderline disconcerting. Who knows how many of the others can read minds.

So the white of his eye shows when he cranes to follow Charles past, jaw stiff with private irritation (and to a lesser degree, pain) when he settles back. ]

It’s coming, [ he says. A little pressure applied from underneath, a careful pick with his fingernails. They’re black. After an unsuccessful tug, he folds a nail over in his right hand, metal quickly taking on the shape of a rough pair of tweezers. He makes Charles hold the water while he works.

As for antibiotics: he’s already has blisters healing over into calluses, cuts and rakes and sheer luck enough not to have lost any fingers yet to uppity bacteria. ]

[ Charles holds out the water a little longer before withdrawing the immediate offer, settling down to sit beside him instead. He thinks, probably, that their nanites might still be functional, and wonders along the lines of whether that technology can work fast enough against the likes of septicaemia, but then, they don't know very much about nanites.

As far as he is aware.

It's an avoidant stream of thought, really. The real reason he's here niggles as keenly as the splinter that Erik is groping after in his paw. ]

You're a mutant.

[ ~~Harry.~~

Charles sets the water container on the unfinished flooring between them. ]

As am I. Which, you've grasped, but it's the word we used.

[ The inconvenient pain in Erik's hand is somehow what he keeps focusing on, in his undercurrent of empathy, as if his power feels at once stronger and more sensitive than it has in a long time. Pale eyes settle on Erik's progress as if tempted to interfere and help with steadier hands, because jesus. ]

Well, [ says Erik, flat affect channeled coarse along the pick of makeshift tweezers, ] don’t sugarcoat it.

[ “Mutant.”

Fleshy-headed monstrosities, right out of “The Twilight Zone.”

His displeasure is derailed by a late grasp after the title: he looks aside, searching, rolling back through his already murky recollection of what prompted him to think of it at all. Charles is privy to the process of him stirring up the bottom of his own brain, frustration turning in on itself, nose to tail. Steady heat and pressure that cools into resignation before it can become self-sustaining. The dissolution of context has worked a few small wonders for him, in that regard. It’s difficult to be angry about things he doesn’t remember.

It’s even more difficult to wind down when he isn’t sure of anything other the fact that he’s pants-shittingly furious, but so far those episodes have been few and far between.

Anyway.

He clips the end of his iron tweezers round the base of the splinter and draws 75% of it out. The 25% that remains behind sees him gritting his teeth. 1/8th an inch of agony twisting up the nerve endings just under his skin.

He flicks the larger piece aside. ]

Who’s ‘we.’

You misunderstand.

[ Patient. He remembers patience coming easier. ]

It's no insult, but in our world-- something to be proud of. Your ability to manipulate metal comes from a genetic mutation that sets you apart from the human race. And 'we' is you and I, and others like us. I explained it to you back then, too.

[ The words rattle out of Charles, a little brisk, but as precise as he can get them. He looks away from Erik fussing with his hand. This conversation feels not unlike picking at a splinter, too. He looks down at his own hands instead, dirt under his nails, a tan like starting to develop where he folds his sleeves midway up his forearms. Today's forecast: strong chance of freckles. ]

Erik Lehnsherr.

I can’t remember.

[ Low key irritation rubs rough edges into his voice. It’s not directed at Charles.

He isn’t all that sure he wants to remember, but the novelty of flying free and blind has long since weathered away. Ignorance is a chore.

So he’s listening. Jamming pieces down into place on Charles’ word. ]

Lehnsherr, [ he repeats, and likes the feel of it behind his teeth. ‘Erik,’ he’s already extrapolated. He’s been involved and around enough for someone to have remembered that much. He cuts a distinct figure, with one blind eye and an affinity for metal scrap. Speaking of, the tines of his tweezers have lengthened into slender needles, razor tips poised over his palm, glowing dull orange in the shade. ]

Are you a doctor?

[ It’d be nice if the timing was purely coincidental, but even in 99% ignorance, there’s a scalpel polish on the glance he pins up onto Charles when he asks, tension on an invisible wire. ]

I'm a professor.

[ He hopes, anyway. He was beginning a school and he knows time has passed, and besides, he wants to be precise. Charles can feel the edge of a glance scrape by him, keeping his own gaze away and down, but contained to this small conversational space they're occupying.

He brushes away a lurid yellow beetle off his thigh. ]

I studied genetic mutation in Oxford, and had hardly graduated before we met. You see, I knew what I was from a young age, and more or less made it my life's work to find out what that meant for me, and for others like me.

[ Now he looks, a slight smile glancing across his expression. A little mirthless. ]

You'll remember everything, in time, I think, but I could go on -- I know it's not ideal. I'm still-- there's still room for me to remember things. The past few years, I expect. [ A small conflict flurries almost imperceptible behind his expression before he adds; ] There's another one here. The, er, the blue woman. She's from our place and time too.

Mystique.

[ There’s convenience in his utter obliviousness -- easily manipulated, gaps too broad for him to extrapolate from more than he’s given. His hackles settle and smooth while he thinks back to his conversation with ‘the blue woman’ in the medical tent. He liked her scales. Likes her scales, and yellow eyes. His recollection, down to the whorls in her wrists peeped in sly aside, may be specific for Charles’ tastes.

But the act of remembering isn’t contentious in itself, and the thought that there might be an issue doesn’t occur to him.

A stabbing pain in his palm hooks his attention back down onto it, and after a beat taken to reorient himself, he’s back to digging, forceps needling. He’s less delicate than he could be, but he recalls high definition detail about Charles’ face too, and in the moment prefers torture to overthinking his level of investment in particular noses and scutes. ] If you’re a professor, [ he says, ] what does that make me.

[ The metal is still warm, stink cloying like blood on the tongue. ]

Edited 2015-09-16 08:39 (UTC)

[ Confirmation as to names -- that particular name -- and the associated thoughts have Charles letting his focus wander off again. It doesn't invite anger or resentment, but something a little sad for things lost, where the heartache that had a decade to set in and become toxic isn't, at this moment, recalled.

The digging after splinters isn't better, but seems oddly appropriate.

He doesn't answer, at first, biting back the urge to say something pithy. He is aware of the ways he can manipulate the man sitting next to him, but he isn't here to shape a tool. He can do that even with Erik in full possession of his faculties, and doesn't like to do it then either. ]

It made you a friend. And you've wondered, too, why people here look at you in certain ways -- with reserve, perhaps distrust. That would be because you're also an arsehole.

Occasionally.

[ All the time. But Charles' standards are fairly low. ]

[ What sort of friend. The answer to the pressing question of why all these boners is precluded by Charles’ choice of words. Cloying interest muddles into defensive disapproval of the label. “Arsehole.”

A german shepherd bunch at his brow has humor in it, at least, when he fails to work his way through to any plausible sort of deniability.

The sideways look he angles up from his palm is unappreciative without achieving upset. ]

Better an arsehole than an academic.

[ Lazy reversal comes naturally; his look lingers long enough for him to reach for his water. Smug. The splinter is out -- he’s wiped it off along his trouser leg somewhere in between. ]

Mutually exclusive concepts, strictly.

[ There'd been a growing, if still subtle smile at the lack of defense, and it remains at rejoinder. Not unaware to the point of obtuse at the querying circling itself in Erik's mind. Not rushing to answer it, either. ]

We've been a lot of things to one another, [ he finally settles on, after he allows some silence to spool out while Erik accepts the water. ] Not all the time in perfect alignment, to say the least. But beyond all that, you're a great many things. Brilliant, among them, beyond the trappings of academia -- but I suppose what I wanted to convey also is what you're not, which is alone.

In ignorance of that or not.

[ The jungle is a lonely place, turns out. This isn't entirely selfless, this interaction, for Charles is not an entirely selfless person. ]

[ Erik drinks deep, one last long swallow broken off to better listen. What remains in the container, he nearly pours over his head, down the back of his neck and collar, where sweat has already sucked his shirt warm against his skin. After a beat he offers it back out instead.

Limited resources are more easily shared in the context of “this.” Whatever “this” is.

Charles will know he’s made up his mind to make do with the information he’s been given before he nods to acknowledge. No outward argument to evidence burrowing curiosity. He already feels better.

He’s also deeply confident in his long game. ]

Thank you, [ he says. And, with teeth peeled out white against scruff and grime in the afternoon light: ] What are you doing for dinner?

Blackening jungle newts over open flame, [ is dry, perfectly aware over the top of the water container he's lifted to drink from. ] Under the moonlight.

[ The contentment that seems to have settled behind Erik's face is enough for Charles. If he's eased something, then that's good enough, probably. He drinks long from lukewarm water, makes a bit of a face at it, sets down the now empty vessel between them. ]

You are, of course, welcome to join me.

[ He levers himself up to stand, seems to remember; ] Xavier. [ They'd done first names already. Maybe it will trigger some specific else thing, boners notwithstanding. ] Charles Xavier.

One morning, she rolls over on the rough triage cot that they've made up for her, and she remembers.

It's sudden as a knife in the shoulder. Her scales skitter without intent; for one bizarre and wholly uncharacteristic moment, her irises blink blue. She sits up suddenly, without the groan and squirm and easy assumption of slow and reluctant civilian mornings that the weeks have seen her do time and time again. Abrupt, this time, all the torque and pull in only the muscles of her belly, sinuous and strong. Strangely, sinuous and strong are what her mind trips on the next instant.

When she swings her foot off the cot and remembers what she'd forgotten, in the course of forgetting. There's a rattling instant where she blinks too hard and breathes shallow, thunder in her mind's ear, just as loud in the pitch and roll she sends out the open telepathy channel that she knows is somewhere, listening, out there.

Ch—arles—

Charles my leg———

she stares down at it, almost uncomprehending, at how soon after her armored shin the limb terminates. Her head intercuts this with a logical chronology: the trail of blood they left, dragging her out into the spaceship corridor; the flash-and-snap of Apparation, reality lurching out of perspective; coalescing in the belly of the shuttle only to find that the plasma-shattered mess of her foot had been left behind. Charles' face over the edge of her sickbed, and Dr. McCoy's behind the anesthetic mask. It makes sense. She's already lived it; she's already survived it. But it doesn't fucking make sense.

Edited (i can't find the semicolon key) 2015-09-24 02:48 (UTC)

Raven.

He doesn't remember that he started calling her by her other name, or perhaps it's something differently excusable; the word comes with a small tide of relief and warmth and love, as if the name were shaped from these rather than a deliberate choice made. It crashes warm against the turmoil and the immediate vision of her abbreviated leg.

I'm coming, just a second--

It's scarcely a minute later when he arrives in person, ducking into the tent she's laid up in, never that far away when he can help it, not since he started remembering too. His feet are bare on packed earth, having not stopped to put on shoes after throwing on clothing, and he is uncombed and scruffier than he ordinarily wants to be. The still-healing split above his eye looks tender, but there is sharp energy contained behind the stare that seeks her out, lands, which tends to make him younger in affect than laugh lines and grey hairs would suggest.

He doesn't look at her foot -- he knows about her foot -- as he makes brisk strides over, his hand out, seeking contact more physical than wildly flung telepathy.

"I remember," she says unnecessarily, when his feet ramble across the crooked flooring. When he's in arm's reach, and she wraps a blue hand around his wrist, her breath crashing coarse and wet in and out of her like waves forcing a new cave into the raw belly of a cliff. Her face finds its way onto his shoulder, doesn't quite bury itself there whole but she hides her nose and her mouth and her eyes stop seeing for a few seconds, maybe, blinking hard and blurrily wet in the camp. The terrible grief for her foot, her understanding of those final few hours, is vivid inside of her and echoes around in the chamber of charles' memory.

But just as strong, if subtler by far, is the context and structure of the memories that have come back with that awful recollection. That there's someone to hold; that there was someone waiting for her, even as she had waited in the rain to return to herself. It's a very strange, nearly paradoxical turn of feeling. Having the most trusted parts of yourself butchered off your body, and only to find your center of gravity in the same swipe of brain chemistry. She remembers being much smaller in his arms. She also remembers, incidentally, that Raven isn't her name, but the lady doth not fucking protest.

She also remembers making some loud stipulations with regard to his use of telepathy, but instead she thinks, rather than says:

Are you back?

All the way, she means. She's seen it happens in stutters and starts for some, slower here than there.

The cot creaks beneath the added weight as Charles sits with her, gathering her into his arms in a way that can't be described as completely selfless. It's a lonely jungle.

But he holds her, anyway, feeling that grief of loss and mobility and realising sharply that he'd never considered hoping she'd never have to feel that herself, and here we are. His palm slides warmly over the dense slick of her red hair, braces at the nap of her neck.

Yes. Mostly. I don't remember what you're remembering.

His race to the final days before the crash -- because crash they did, terribly -- are slow going and murky, and he can see glimmers of context clues in Raven's mind. Another set of space ship angles and dimension, her red blood bright and streaking on the ground behind them, but different from the Tranquility.

He pulls back, studies her face. The wiry copper of his beard could use some trimming, by now, and there is a still-healing seam where his head had been split from his fall in the overturned medical bay.

"It's good to see you," he says.

Mystique's memory plays out like a short film strip that somebody took a razor to, copied in uneven segments, then taped back together, jolts stops, stutters, a lot of static and grain and half-remembered celluloid blotches. It's not a very interesting or informative flashback, comprised of at most sixty seconds of real data altogether, repetitive, impressionistic. She can't believe it happened.

But eventually, and in not too long, too, the notions burn themselves out, expended in a rush of adrenaline and frustration. Her head finds the hollow of his shoulder and she doesn't comment on the hand on her head, only thinks that it's familiar, somehow, maybe of how they used to be or even a time before that, a mother's touch and tactile reassurance, universal in that way to anybody that used to be a baby for which the most basic animal comforts were performed.

"Me too," she says, after a long time. He feels the tremble of something against the circle of his arms, a familiar visceral, crawling shift of texture. But when she looks up, she's still blue. Her eyes aren't dry, but she isn't crying, either. There's moisture on his shirt; a few dull squeezes worth of it, promising to dry into an indistinguishable granule or two in the fabric.

But then her expression sharpens. What should be gentle concern comes out razor-edged instead: "What the Hell happened to you?"

His eyebrows raise. This alone prompts him to realise what she's reacting to, without having to cheat.

"I was in a spaceship when it crashed," he says, the corner of his mouth going up. "When we all were dumped out of the pods. I'm surprised I didn't do worse for myself."

Charles keeps a loose hold at her arms, impervious to word razors. That twist of a smile fades, his expression hollowing out now that the sudden wave of gladness and reunion has properly receded. There's a glance to where her leg is, the one that isn't whole. "I'm sorry," he says. "Whatever happened."

He was there, apparently. He doesn't remember and it remains at a disconnect, but that encroaching, inevitable feeling of responsibility begins to sink in its hooks.

Mystique makes an ugggh noise, which means that she finds it somewhere inside herself to make an ugggh noise. It fizzles into an ungainly breath that has a hiccupy undercurrent to it. "Ha ha," she says. But it's better than thinking that someone had come at him; that those someones are still skulking around base camp. Her palm streaks over the suspicious shiny patch on her cheek and it goes dull, invisible against her scales. Her head stays up this time.

She doesn't try to break out of his arms just yet. The little distance that's accumulated between them is a matter of pragmatism than a sincere effort to escape or anything like that. Her yellow eyes fall along the front of his shirt, looking at how rumpled he is. Thin, too, but everybody is these days. The seed pods have been unfamiliar fare to everybody, and excessive besides.

Her armored palm winds up climbing his cheek. There's nothing decisive or clear about the gesture, her thumb finding the point of his chin, fingers twitching once, and then she pats his cheek a little, gentler than she's been wont in a very long time and not enough times to be especially awkward about it. "I talked to Erik a few days ago," she says, at length. For once, the subject of their friend-- his friend, now-- isn't packed with salt. "But I didn't know him."

A half-beat.

"I thought I was alone," she says. The way she says it is factual, as she always has been about her solitude, but he doesn't need to read her mind to know that this moment spins in an entirely different universe.

There's a crookedy smile for that little gesture, for further throwback. Malnutrition doesn't make people look younger as a general rule, but stupid expressions can and do.

It sobers and resolves at Mystique's next words. About Erik, at first, and a cast of guilt shades behind his eyes that sticks around at her next words. "It's been a fucking mess," sounds agreeable, commiserating, not all the way able to dismiss the fact he can't help but subsume her prior distress into his own sense of responsibility. "Looks like we're all sort of catching up with one another, at least."

It occurs to him to say something like 'don't you like it that way' but it sounds off, already, even unspoken. Mean-spirited, and irrelevant. He thought he didn't need anyone once too.

She knows that he's thinking about it, anyway. She's thinking about it too. She likes being on her own, self-reliant, independent, these words that put a positive and empowering spin! on aloneness. And somewhat uglier than that, she's never much been one to take care of anybody else. Even when they didn't have their legs, wracked by pain on the abandoned beaches of a warzone???

Solitude means not having to worry whether or not one is being selfish. It's hard to care about that right now, though. Guilt fogs over the pane of her head for a long moment, but not even dense enough, really, to hide her other thoughts from herself, never mind change the subject entirely. It's very brief, thin; a misting; but if Charles catches it, it's not a bad reminder that she is still miserably human and not so singular in her purpose that Raven isn't still scuffing her feet in there somewhere.

"I don't think he's okay," she says, at length. "But I think he's going to be." A yellow eye flickers up to meet his, briefly, permission granted more than anything. A memory wells up—

Erik's face, thin from hunger but gaunt from stress. He had been shaping metal in the air, his fingers stretched out, commanding an ability that he could not remember the beginning of, but still wields with impressive accuracy. Blue suits you, he had said. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It's like he'd been himself again, precisely how he had been. It escapes her, naturally, that she had been the way she was with him, too.

Edited (fix) 2015-10-05 02:13 (UTC)

Charles' expression changes, in a subtle way. Defense mounts at first, as if he'd rather not know, and its crumbling is a softening effect, eyes losing their focus and gaining it back again as the memory plays out like a vision fixed between them. By now, his hands have found one of hers, and his thumb slots between her knuckles, manipulating the bones in idle, painless fidget. He never had told her that, himself.

"Erik's good at that," he says. "Survival."

He's not show where she and he rank. They'd survived together, once. Perhaps she's good at it too, in ways that bring him discomfort to think about. "As are you," he concedes. "But I think we'll all be better off with each other. And we'll figure something out, with your leg. Can't allow you the excuse of lying about throughout all this excitement."

Mystique's expression flattens slightly at that last part. He hears a ghost of a protest in the back of her head, not that she likes to take advantage of her disability but at this offhanded joke that she might be. Even now, her control over the finer details of her muscle and bone is fairly complete. She doesn't tense up; her hand remains pliant in his hands. She knows that's not what he meant, so she rankles in silence for a few long seconds, has to pull the sentence apart and look at its parts separately.

"I'd like to figure something out."

But then the scales knife up between his fingers. He's felt her shift enough times to know that he doesn't have to worry that the peeling edges of changing cells aren't going to cut him. The spines look as they always have, needling high, overturning, blue on one side and pinkish-fair on the other. The shift roams up her arm, then her shoulder. Eclipses her head in a fairly thick fluff of blonde hair, pulling the tactile illusion of fabric over her toned shoulders.

By the time she's done, she's wearing a familiar outfit; turtleneck and skirt, the hem too high to hide her lost foot. It's a pale and fleeting distraction, but also a superpower. And one that allows him to give him the ghost of a smile. "Still got it."

Charles glances down at her hands, and then up midway around when her face transforms. It had, of course, been a joke. The punchline being that nothing can possibly qualify as excitement because it's so miserable and humid and muddy, rather than her own mobility, but there you go. The moment passes, and Charles doesn't try to recall it.

There is a sadness that doesn't go away just because he smiles crooked, and lifts a hand to touch her hair, rubbing a blonde lock between thumb and forefinger.

"That you do," he says. His hand falls. "Erik's not wrong, you know. About the blue."

"Hmm." There's a joke that's two shades too dirty for Mystique to be able to say in good conscience, a reference to the way that Charles used to flip his hands and twitch when he'd see her without a robe on over the scales. He might catch a flicker of it in her thoughts, the random firing of a synapse that hasn't caught on to the ALL SAD ALL THE TIME routine that she has favored lately. And maybe it's that lonely synapse that starts off the other, mellowing the way for sentiment to take root.

The instant's spike of near-laughter softens then, leaves her pretty blue eyes. "You're getting greedy," she points out, tapping a forefinger on the thin green veins inside his wrist. "I just hugged you for like ten minutes. I have a reputation to maintain, if you expect me to last until your big plans come to fruition."

This time, there isn't even the slightest wrinkle of distaste to her reference to his 'plans.' I mean she knows that they probably don't meet the dictionary definition of plans yet, but it's nice to be able to smooth out around the concept of 'working something out' without getting emotional about the imaginary insinuations or, worse, pernicious hope. Her smile is small, but it still makes her chubby cheek puff out against Charles' fingers in her hair.

"Right. Of course."

It would be just like the rawer version of himself to feel offended or precious or pervasively sad about push back, for all that it's perfectly in keeping with every iteration of Raven Darkholme he's come to know and grow up with. His hand pulls back, a line pinches at his brow as he studies her carefully for all of two seconds.

And then in surge forward, he plants a bristly kiss against her forehead, abruptly brotherly and deliberately obnoxious, hands on her shoulders lest she try to squirm out of it. Mwah.

"I'll find us some breakfast," he proposes, brightly, in the midst of getting to his feet.

It would be just like the old version of herself to consider this moment well-played. To have gotten what she wanted and pushed him away just as effectively. Instead, she only creases her face when the kiss squashes on her forehead, and there is a blue hand, mutant-strong, trapped unerringly around his elbow for a moment too long after he lets go of her shoulders. It's very silly. He's so silly. The silliness is a nice, if brief reprieve from her mourning state, however early in it that she thinks she is at the moment.

It takes her a conspicuous two, three seconds, and then he's standing on his own power, untethered. "I want extra lizard parts," she tells him, flopping back down on her blanket, with all the pretend emotions that flopping confers. She folds her pink hands on the belly of her tanktop. "Tell her you're feeding a gimp, that'll guilt them into it." She focuses her eyes on the tarp ceiling, the lacey fringing of leaf silhouettes through the tarp. A beat. And then she remembers enough to add:

"Thanks."

[ His memory had come back in stages. At first it was alright. He knew who he was, a more well-rounded identity springkicking off his education, his mutant ability. Early beginnings and early failures, and the knowledge that years of uncertainty still awaited his recollection, and he had an inkling it might be some years that were harder than the rest, because he had his disability, and a school to look after.

Eleven years, to be precise, and neither one of those things. And a decorative embellishment of further time on the Tranquility.

No one really noticed when his work restoring his makeshift laboratory stalled. No one really noticed that the past three days were ones of acute suffering, sleepless nights of pain rolling into hazy days of intermittent sleep. Three days, which is rather Biblical, before he remembered some more things, too.

That he got past it, eventually. That he still has people here that care, even if Hank isn't one of them.

That he has a dog.

Really it's this last one that motivated the rest, and so, here he is. A jungly drizzle is wetting the canvas slopes of ramshackle tents and not yet turning the ground into muddy slush, and he doesn't seem to mind it as he makes his way through base camp, keeping to himself. He has a dim idea about where to find Tyke and the dogs that survived, and he isn't all that optimistic about the likelihood that his own labrador made it through, but he ought to check. To his left, the beached-whale carcass of the Tranquility looms dark. ]

[At the beginning she'd kept away from the jungle, kept to the central safety of the camp, the gathering of people. Especially at night. But her memories had come back slowly, and with them, she'd drifted. Moved further and further out, quieted, stopped interacting quite so readily. There are still pieces missing in her mind, she's sure, but what's there is heavy, and it feels like she needs to learn how to carry it, however she'd managed before.

Her tent, now, is on the outskirts of the camp, nearest the trees. Two cots crowded in under the shelter of the canvas, and she sits on the edge of one, watching as the jungle almost seems to turn a deeper green under the light rainfall. People move around in the camp enough that she doesn't really pay attention to the sound of anyone approaching - but the dog lain at her feet does, jumping to attention with the ear-pricked excitement of familiarity.

He slips between her feet, under the cots and bounds towards their visitor with little hesitation. Taylor twists enough to watch over her shoulder, but she makes no move to stop him - only reaching to lay a heavy hand on the flank of the other black lab laid out on the cot behind her. What remains of his right hind leg is still wrapped in bandaging, and she doesn't want it getting wet should he try to join them in the rain.]

[ Christ. Genuine surprise marks Charles' expression for an audience of no one, save for, incidentally, Tyke herself. Stopping short and almost waiting for the labrador to push his nose at Charles' knees, he stiffly untangles his rigid folded arms, descending down to get on dog level and scratch ears as much as grip folds of furry neck flesh to keep from getting licked to death.

Lincoln is all heavy panting, mingled with compulsive whines, and furious tail wags. Charles, in turn, is quiet, but a crooked smile eventually breaks through. ]

Good boy, [ he says, quietly, which sets off even further conniptions of canine happiness.

Not unaware, Charles tilts a look past squirming dog towards the tent he came from. ]

[There hadn't been anything in the lab's manner to indicate past mistreatment, so Taylor isn't surprised at the way the reunion goes. It's really the only reason why she watches, to make sure - otherwise she'd probably give some privacy. Maybe it wasn't that much of a sensitive scene, but she'd had experience enough of finding things you hadn't even realised you'd lost over the last month.]

Knew he wasn't mine.

[Said as soon as the man's attention lifts to her. It could be a defensive statement, clarifying that she hadn't been attempting to steal the dog, but instead it's just steady, a simple piece of information. She'd known, just like how she'd known the dog on the cot was hers.]

Found him wandering around, figured I'd keep him fed.

[Or from being food.]

o13. quasi closed.

outskirts of camp. fenris + garrett hawke.

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camp. erik lehnsherr + charles xavier.

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chuck come rp w me chuck | backd8ted

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lmk if this is all right, idk your erik chronology

time is a flat circle

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the dog part of camp. tyke + charles xavier. backdated to earlier september.

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