a series of meetings

[noman]

CHARACTERS: David, Charles 'Groovy Mutation' Xavier, Erik 'Buckethead' Lehnsherr, maybe others.
LOCATION: Base Camp's makeshift science station, the wreck of the Tranquility, maybe elsewhere.
WARNINGS: Just a little violence.
SUMMARY: David makes some friends. :)
NOTES: Catch-all, closed starters inside. Drop a line if you'd like to collide.


EXT. BASE CAMP – DAY

Having only very recently made the decision to join base camp, David has spoken to few of its residents, but the number of faces familiar to him is growing all the same. Familiar at close range, that is. After days of observation, he can already identify many of the camp's residents at a distance, albeit not by name—and given his scientific leanings, which have brought him often to the very tents David now approaches, Charles Xavier is one of these people.

He stops shy of the raised platforms, hands at his sides, and for a while just looks at all the equipment laid out before him, his eyes moving about with interest while his head turns in brief but smooth increments. With his perfect posture, neatly combed hair and unblemished skin, he radiates the impression that the Tranquility jumpsuit he wears would have been pressed free of wrinkles if only he had access to a proper iron and board. Even his boots have been attended to, the mud knocked from the soles, the uppers brushed clean.

The moment he sees a body move into view—the one he recognises, not so coincidentally—this tall, bright-eyed stranger turns his face toward it and waits, looking pleasantly expectant. It becomes clear before long that he hasn't been noticed, and so:

"Hello, there."


INT. TRANQUILITY WRECKAGE – DAY

Hours later, once again zipped into his streamlined excursion suit, David is still vaguely contemplating his meetings thus far while he examines a bag he's found. Standard-issue, nylon, still flattened from previously airtight storage. This will do. He slips his gloved fingers through a hole in the plastic packaging and tears it away.

What's left of the Tranquility medical bay is still frequented by bodies on the regular, and so much of what is useful has been taken, but not all eyes are equally discerning. Once he happened upon a nearly complete set of dentistry tools, his shopping list grew organically—now his latest find, what looks almost like a pen with a little lever, he treats with especial care by wrapping it in gauze, slipping it into a side pocket all its own. A box of fine needles joins it soon, and some long-handled cotton swabs, and several precious doses of anaesthetic. The beam of his flashlight appears, sweeps to a neighbouring area cast into shadow by damaged circuits, searches briefly before he prudently snuffs it again. If X-ray machines of even partial portability exist here he'd like to find one, but that isn't in the cards today. It's just as well, since on his way back to the exit climb he's already carrying an autoclave the size of a microwave oven. With one hand. Cradled in his other arm like a bouquet of roses is a canister of nitrous oxide, and the accompanying tubes and variously sized nasal masks fill the bag on his shoulder. (He saw oxygen back at base camp, otherwise that would have been first priority.)

Whatever it was that had driven him to excessive caution regarding those at camp, he's glad it has past. If one must be marooned on an alien world, company is preferable, he thinks. And then he stops, astonished, having just come face-to-face with a man of uncanny resemblance to... himself.

Comments

[forgodssake]

Even as a figment of Erik's imagination, even in the dimness of the gutted, tilted medical bay, Charles' jaw tenses haughty at continued-- whatever this is. Erik isn't shredding David to pieces, but nor is he letting up. His head tips by some degrees at the words he hears mainly filtered through Erik's ears, and a dimmer echo of what he can sense of David's mind at the same time.

He's a thinking, feeling person. I don't know very much. He was created-- built, in his world, I don't know the details, but I can read his thoughts.

And so. It's as simple as that, as far as Charles is concerned.

Let him up. Please, Erik, I know what you're feeling. I met him a few hours ago, I was coming to find you.

[sorrycharles]

“Yes,” says Erik, loudly, with the affect of one covering the phone while Charles makes his case: “all the more reason for you to be cheeky.”

One of his hands turns out -- open invitation, if David would like to continue on. He has enough floating metal here to build a second camp and a doppelganger is trying his patience.

But.

This is an inane sort of irritation, pride ruffling over a decision he’s still in the process of making. He looks Charles up and down when returns to him with the full of his attention, displaced anger prickling into an unappreciative prompt. It’s subtle in the wrinkle of his brow. Maybe a little prissy, played down for their captive audience. How long have you been back at this level?

“What’s your name.”

He’s still staring down Charles ‘err on the side of optimism’ Xavier.

[noman]

That's a good sign. Marginally good sign. The majority of people wouldn't seek to assign a name to the thing they were about to kill. It's something other than a brick of alloy to the face, most importantly, which at least seems like improvement.

"David," he breathes, and breathes again before he goes on. "I knew yours because someone made a mistake. He thought I was you." Now he waits, in case sharing any more without prompt will raise this fellow's blood pressure again.

Checking the glove once pressed to his ribs yields nothing concerning. But then, after carefully touching the node of pain on his forehead, the source of the steady dribble he can barely feel, he looks at his fingers as though it's the first time he's ever seen such a thing. He turns his hand just enough to move the light across it. Brings the glove closer to his nose, inhales, frowns gently. Touches it with his tongue and then looks at it again. Maybe he assumes Erik isn't paying attention just now; maybe he doesn't care if he is.
If his time is to be short, he'd at least like to know something more about his own body before it ends.

[forgodssake]

Charles' shoulders settle out of their tense line, although the slackening is resultant of a different sort of exasperation. This is hARDLY THE PLace and time, but--

Since remembering what I am again.

And then David says that, and the hallucinated projection of Charles Xavier lifts a defensive hand, index finger raised.

For-- for a split second, just the initial-- he startled me.

Just. For the record. He did not meaningfully mistake this pristine, polite, blonde, uncanny valley version of Erik for someone he has known for as long as he has, David, for a moment longer than squawking the wrong name.

Charles' hands fall at his sides, fixing a look back at Erik. Much like David, Charles is taking the demand of a name as a good sign, for all that he is aware that cats can play with their food. Still, he did say he trusted him, once.

For some reason.

Look again. See what I saw.

And gone, like Erik blinked and displaced him from reality, leaving behind the impression of a nudge towards the sustained empathy -- David's hurts, rabbity adrenaline, wonder. Less a command, but calling attention, as light as a fingerprint left behind.

[sorrycharles]

Erik has barely heard the name ‘David,’ and he’s rounding into deeper indignation, hard in the nose, good eye alight with fresh ire. Charles’ defense is well-timed to interrupt the progression from incredulity to true anger. Lukewarm resentment is the byproduct, spent in a glance. ‘Look again.’

Charles vanishes, leaving behind no trace. Not even the air is disturbed.

Doubt wastes no time creeping into the vacuum, an icy trickle of adrenaline with the hypothetical proposition that his friend was never there at all. He stays where he is a moment. It feels a little bit like falling.

David’s continued existence is a more immediate, tangible and pressing problem.

The scuff of his boots will mark his approach, thick treads over damp garbage. He stops short before he’s close enough to be kicked.

“Can you stand.” His inflection is difficult to interpret. Flat affect.

Great masses of levitating shrapnel sink to the floor around them, starting with the heaviest. They creak like steel cables as they go, weakened by the crash, and the events since.

[noman]

David understands. In the absence of anger, his commanding officer—his sister—spoke just the same way.

"I believe I can." There's only one way to find out for sure, but caution keeps him where he is, half prone, too wise to leap right to his feet at the suggestion. Again the metal's movement draws his attention; his eyes follow its descent, bright with interest even through his troubled frown. Before too long, though, a sidelong look travels up the length of Erik's figure to his face. "May I?"

(He would thank Charles if he knew.)

[sorrycharles]

“Please.”

Patience is a struggle. Erik performs admirably under the strain. His jaw takes the brunt of it, tension borne through the clamp of his teeth into bolts of muscle belted stiff in his neck.

There’s something defeated in the slant to his shoulders, apathy in the loose curl of his fingers round the fold of his Raybans.

[noman]

Leaving the floor is a struggle, too, though David is markedly less upset about his own difficulties. He doesn't expect any help, doesn't reach for any, doesn't look at Erik while he scrapes himself into more of an upright shape, except to glance aside at his legs like he's checking for signs of an oncoming kick. The bag's nylon strap slips from his arm as he finally leaves it all the way behind. Again his palm comes to rest on that same spot below the EVA suit's armoured plate, along the bottom curve of his ribcage; again it drops away once his spine has straightened.
With one slow breath out, the creases of his grimace fade away, leaving behind a more sedate sort of unease. A stare.

There, he's standing. Now what.

[sorrycharles]

Erik circles closer around to David’s fore, once he’s standing, not quite eye to eye. The light isn’t ideal to perform an inspection by; he twists a small flashlight off of his belt once he’s had a lengthy look at his own face peering back at him. He continues to appear disheartened.

David is bleeding.

This close, the scarring in Erik’s cornea is clear, where Raven’s fingertips twisted in, the pupil clouded over beneath the surface blown out wide.

“I’m not sure that you’re real.”

He snaps the flashlight to on, and flicks the beam up into David’s eyes. He should use a glove to reach and probe for the source of blood coursing down his brow.

He doesn’t have gloves.

[noman]

Please do not probe the gash in his forehead, Erik. Not even with gloves. The flashlight is unpleasant enough—his eyes close against it at first, but open again after a flutter of lashes, looking just away from the beam, away again if it's too persistent, chancing a better look at that damaged eye when they can. Clear blue irises, pupils pinned small in the light. Tiny red filaments across the sclerae. The gleam of a wet surface.

His blood is red as it should be, the wound now weeping slowly through the forming clot. Light scatters within the layered translucence of his skin, also just as it should.

"I am." His voice is deeper at this more intimate volume, wrapped around the weight of certainty. "Would you please stop that."

[sorrycharles]

“Of course.”

What else would he expect a hallucination to say.

“You’re injured.”

The flashlight clicks off after a beat that lasts longer than is strictly polite, given David’s request, leaving electric smears of red a green burned into the backs of his retinas. “You should return to the surface.”

[noman]

You're injured, he says, like he just happened upon the scene. Like he's doing a good deed. The slow look David turns to aim directly at Erik's face should communicate just how he feels about it, and maybe the slack of his jaw helps, too, as his teeth part just slightly behind his lips. The nerve of this guy.

"I'd like to." Apologetic eyebrows deployed. "Unfortunately, in the accident," perpetrated by your violent ass, "I sustained injuries that will make it very difficult to carry the full load of salvage myself." Nobody can haul this much stuff with busted ribs, you superhuman shitlord. "Your assistance would be greatly appreciated." Or I'll tell everyone that you beat me up for no reason. "And I'm sure the rest of the science team would be equally thankful for the help." Your friend endorsed this mission, dumbo. Also I hope you get dysentery. Sincerely, David.

"We could talk about it on the way if you like." PS, you shall burn eternally in the fires of my passive aggression. Smiley face.

[sorrycharles]

Erik has a way of absorbing more than he reflects, these days. In close quarters, his expression is inscrutable, the whetted edge of his good eye tracking closely after apologetic eyebrows and helpful suggestions. The longer he stands there and says nothing, the heavier he seems, and the more looking back at him is like staring down the barrel of a cannon.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Conviction comes to him naturally. There’s a weight to apology that resonates in delivery, direct against the pressure of passive aggression.

“You’ll understand in time.”

There’s nothing directly suggestive about the odds of David lasting that long in the way he says so, manners for manners in the dark. And yet. At this rate.

“I’ll see to your equipment.”

[noman]

This combination of so much gravitas and what would appear to the tone-deaf as subservience, it's all too familiar, like David has just been confronted by his own prior circumstance in living form. Those should be his lines. He can't say it doesn't feel good to receive them—as much as he can feel anything, which, compared to all these people born into their bodies, isn't much at all. (Fear's big entrance, he reckons, came by virtue of its essentiality to self-preservation.)

"Thank you." For seeing reason, if only temporarily. "Sir." For good measure, in case the man's ego would resent going without it.

David is quite ready to be on his way now, thank you very much indeed, but that same notion of familiarity holds him there just before he's leaned all the way into his first step, brings his tone down to a more candid place.

"If I may ask... have you always been called Erik?"

[sorrycharles]

“No.”

He’s been called all sorts of things.

But that isn’t what David is asking.

“Get to the surface.”

Erik looks him over, tone and expression and formal address in a slender blonde package. If the android won’t take the first step away, he will, plotting a course for David’s salvage suspended in midair.

[noman]

After hesitating with his mouth just open, like he wants to say something, and with a gaze pushed into new intensity by the hundred questions struggling for their turn, David finally concedes: "Yes." Get out of this sharp-edged wreck while he can still climb. A fine idea.

They turn at roughly the same time, not by coincidence; he'd be glad to stare awhile longer, but sees Erik's weight shift and takes it as a sign to do the same. He's slow to lift the bag, as it feels heavier now than when he first picked it up, and looping the strap across his chest is an uncomfortable process. Though he's frowning with frustrated effort by the time he's ready to depart, still he turns to wish his fellow well before picking his way out.

"See you at base camp."