wedonot | SIXTY ONE ✖ VOICE & SPAM

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SIXTY ONE ✖ VOICE & SPAM

[Friends Filter]

[Charles sounds tired - and anyone who was in the infirmary right after port ended might have noticed him hovering while people tried to help Zane - but otherwise, actually pretty okay.]

I know we're all exhausted and in need of some relaxation, but if everyone wouldn't mind letting me know you got out alright, I'd appreciate it. And if there's anything I can do for any of you, don't hesitate to let me know.

[Spam for Erik]

[Getting his telepathy back felt like he'd been unblindfolded, and while he had noticed the change immediately, in the first minutes back on the Barge, he hadn't had time to appreciate it. The focus was instead on saving Zane's life, and it wasn't until he was stable and unconscious that Charles had the time to reach out with his gift and reassure himself that they were back, they had made it out, and so had the people he cared about.

He'd checked on the kids first, reassured himself that they were in one piece and mostly in need of rest before anything else, and reassured them that he just needed much of the same before looking for Erik.

It's not difficult. His mind had almost instinctively wrapped itself around the familiar presence as soon as it had been established that Zane would be alright, and so Charles catches up to his friend as Erik's coming down from the deck, a relieved smile immediately stretching across his face as he gets his first good look at him.]

This might be the ultimate instance of the pot calling the kettle black, [Because he knows he's got some cuts on his face and other minor injuries from their time in port, too.] but you look like you're about to fall over.

[ooc: Filter includes but is not limited to the immediate X-Fam, Zane, Merlin, Arthur, Morgana, Anya, Pietro, Barbara, Tony, Kelsier, the Emperor, Ivy, and even you, Felix. Basically anyone Charles is friendly with or would have reason to check up with, idk I'm always bad with these filters and end up forgetting someone. /o\

Also, feel free to spam him if you want! He'll probably be pretty unconscious for the first day and a half afterward, but will be up and around after that.]

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Of course. [Are you just assuming because he's British?

I mean, it's true, so. Maybe it's fair. B(] Do you want some?

[She's not assuming, okay, she just thought of you first.]

Someone suggested it might help my throat.

[She still sounds fairly croaky, though not as bad as the night before.]

It couldn't hurt, especially with some honey. There's some research that suggests honey might be more effective at treating coughs than most cough medicines are. [The more you know.] Would you like me to bring you some?

I can come around. If you have the time?

[Her space is her own; she isn't ready to let Charles into it.]

Of course. Come by whenever you'd like.

I'll be there in about half an hour?

[It sounds silly as soon as she says it, he's two doors away, but it gives them both time to sort themselves out, gives the tea time to...steep, or whatever.]

[Well, hey, maybe you're in the library finishing up a book or something. You never know.]

I'll be here.

[She arrives almost exactly thirty minutes later, knocks evenly.]

It's me.

[He opens the door and smiles when he sees her, pulling it open all the way and stepping aside to let her in.] Hello. Make yourself comfortable, we've probably got another couple minute or two before the water boils. What sort of tea would you like?

[His room's fairly tidy in a way that still looks lived in. Everything looks a little expensive, but comfortable, especially the arm chairs and couch. There are several book shelves, and stacks of other books on different flat surfaces around the room - a novel on the bedside table, several genetics, evolution and biology related texts stacked on his desk near several note books and loose pages of notes, a few other "fun" texts neatly stacked on the coffee table - and there are a couple other personal effects here and there. There are a few pictures of him and Raven from when they were younger, his flight suit is draped over a chair waiting to be repaired, and there's a fleece, Captain America shield patterned slanket crumpled on the couch.

It should also be pretty apparent that it's from the same house or building Erik's living in, although Charles has a bathroom attached.]

Black, please.

[Her hands and forearms are bandanged, too heavily to indicate ordinary scrapes, but aside from splits on a few fingers, lack the bulk of a cast. She wanders through the space, taking the measure of it, lingering as she scrutinizes the books. She gives the slanket a long, slightly puzzled look, but eventually elects not to ask. She finds a chair to sit in, resisting the urge to draw her knees up.]

If that's alright.

Of course. [He grabs tea bags and mugs - they're boring, white ceramic, but they're clean - and once the water boils, pours the tea and passes her one before sitting down across from her.]

Can I ask what happened?

[She doesn't answer right away. She sits with her tea, eyes down, breathing in the steam. It's a meditation pattern, albeit a subtle one, and she isn't shutting herself off, just - holding herself in. After a little while she says, not flatly or flippantly but lightly, with as little intensity as possible,]

To my hands? A thing shaped like my father buried me alive.

[It's a little easier, each time she says it. She lets the words flutter away like the ashes on the wind there.]

I knew it was counterproductive, but I lost my composure.

[Battering uselessly against the lid.]

I'm sorry.

[He doesn't really know what else to say, although he desperately wishes he has something more useful to say. It probably all shows in his expression.]

I wish I could have helped. I tried to get in touch with you, but my communicator wasn't exactly being cooperative.

It's probably better you didn't. Using them attracted the monsters. That's how the others I was with found me, actually. He didn't even mark my grave.

[The last sentence has the most emotion so far. Indignant, insulted. He'd been wrecked, or he'd mimicked a wrecked man, anyway, but it still feels a little like the last (first) in a long line of slights, one more sign of being reckoned worth so little.]

[Charles swaps his mug over to his left hand and kneads his free hand over his forehead.]

Was it after you?

Yes. I almost gave up, then. Just let it happen like it happened in Pietro's world, just - lie quiet and still. Go to sleep in the dark. Tucked in. Mourned.

[Mourned for, she means, not mourning herself, and that was more of a lure than she entirely wants to admit. She balances her tea in her wrapped hands, takes slow sips.]

I'm glad you didn't. [And he is, actually. He still remembers how disgusted he was to hear what she'd done to her sister, and in so many ways, he was still disgusted by it, but. He didn't want Anya dead, he didn't want her trapped there forever or hurting, and so he really does mean it.]

I've been told commandeering the ship and trying to turn it around rarely goes well. [He's trying to lighten the mood, but he's still being serious. Even if he hadn't been leading the charge, he knew Alex and Erik would happily have taken up that particular torch.]

[She cracks a smile for that, a little wan but real. It makes the rest easier.]

Indeed. Lua kept me going - and so did Junko, in her way.

You remember I told you the other night, that Wanda was there? Or, not her, but. Her face. Her voice, her - the wobbly deformed little things that used to be the results of her hexes.

[That makes her voice waver, just a little, such an obvious mark of childhood, of vulnerability, of the history they'd shared and how Anya got to her, because she didn't have enough control to really defend herself.]

And I kept thinking, that it was - right, that I die and she live. And I begged Lua to save her instead. She just kept saying to hang on, that we'd find her together.

[It's hard talking to Anya sometimes - or really, all the time - because he constantly feels like he needs to be careful about how he reacts, or what he says, and this is certainly one of those times.

Again, it's bringing up Wanda that triggers the discomfort, because he's just become so conflicted on the issue. He hates that it happened, he hates that she did it, but he doesn't hate her, and he wants to be there for her. She just... was difficult, and he didn't want to mess this up.]

Well, I'm glad she was able to help. [It seemed like nice, even ground to settle on.] How is she?

[She glances up, giving him a tight, sharp-edged smile. She knows from deflection.]

I do know it would have been justice, if she were real. But that wasn't the point.

[And then she lets her eyes fall back to her teacup, takes another slow sip, and allows the conversation to lapse into the easier topic he offered.]

Shaken, but all right, I think. I hope. She wasn't badly hurt and she is kind of a hero.

[This smile is as different from the first as could be. Still small, but warm and dear. As far as Anya is concerned, there's no 'kind of' about it.]

[Charles barely hears what she says about Lua, even though there's a part of him that registers it. Instead, he's just staring at her, not sure if he's hurt or just surprised, and if it's the former, he's not sure what he's hurt about, her acting like he'd agree with her, that it would be justice for her to have died there and Wanda rescued, or that she thinks that.]

That wouldn't have been justice, Anya. I don't-

[He fumbles, not sure how to articulate this.]

You don't deserve to die for what happened to your sister. I've never thought that. I know we have a difficult time agreeing on much of anything, but that doesn't mean I don't care, or that I would want you left in a place like that. [He'd have helped Erik get the ship turned around okay. B(]

Well. You're a bit squeamish.

[She doesn't mean anything bad by it, really. But she does think he's wrong, too emotional - too sympathetic, if not empathetic - to judge with clear-eyed harshness. She's a little touched, actually, that she falls within the circle of people he cares for enough to warp his quasi-pacifistic sensibilities, that he can't bear to follow his disgust of her actions to its natural consequences because his affection is enough to obstruct the way. She takes another sip, muses contemplatively.]

Perhaps justice is the wrong word. It's not entirely a question of retribution or punishment. But if that were the bargain on offer - a guilty life sacrificed, in exchange for an innocent one on my own head - then it would be right to take it. I owe her. I should have been willing to die for her before I hurt her anyway. She was my sister.

She was there too, after the coffin. She begged me to stay. Poor twisted shade, as vicious as I am, she threatened to kill me when I tried to bring her with us, tried to leave. I wanted to give her what she asked for, but she wasn't real, she was just - bait on a fishhook.

[Poor thing, whatever she was. Anya couldn't stay, but she feels more sorry for it than she knows how to say.]

Self-sacrifice wasn't the bargain available, because life doesn't come from death. I can only save her by surviving, by trying to be kinder, by becoming the kind of person who could save someone else the way Lua is saving me. So I'm trying, Charles. I have been for awhile now.

Edited 2013-06-14 03:49 (UTC)

[He does kind of resent the label, regardless of her not meaning anything bad by it. He's seen a lot, first hand and by use of his abilities, and she's the only one he had to walk away from, because he just couldn't handle talking to her about the fact that she'd sacrificed a child's life for her own goals, because she's right. In his mind, she should have been willing to do anything to get her sister out from under their father's thumb, too, and he's very certain that doesn't make him squeamish.

He'd walked away because he'd been shocked and upset and angry with her, and he didn't want to make things worse by staying and saying something he'd regret later. Which is part of why instead of trying to argue about it, that he's not weak or stupid or afraid, he just nods.]

I know you have, and I'm glad you are.

[She doesn't think he's weak or stupid or afraid, is the odd thing: only contradictory, too earnest and emotionally compromised to hold her to account for her sins, even when he loathes them. She chafes under his leniency; it feels like condescension to her, Charles's desire to avoid conflict translating in Anya's mind into the implication that she couldn't emotionally withstand the truth about herself as he sees it, as if she doesn't live with that truth, or as if she's still self-deluding enough not to understand the extent of her own moral failings, even when she's laid out her emotions as well as she can.

She wants to hiss through her teeth but she doesn't. She knows he's trying, is this worst part of it all, she believes that he believes that he cares about her, disrespect though his expression of it feels - he wouldn't mince so gently otherwise. Which means that if she attacks him on it, if she bares her teeth and demands a fight, it only makes her more the guilty party. She feels abruptly outmaneuvered, and she hates it. She takes in slow breathes and sips her tea, eyes falling to trace the table cloth.]

Did the kid gloves work on Erik?

[She asks it - clinically. Not cold, or edged, or disinterested or dubious. Just neatly hemmed in. She's actually a little curious, for all that it's incontrovertibly backhanded.]

[The question half surprises him, but he answers promptly enough anyway.]

I didn't need them. I didn't need to get upset or angry or anything, either, we've just- [He's always had a difficult time describing exactly how he and Erik got along, because he's just not great at articulating this sort of thing, and it's sort of unlike most other friendships he's experience and witnessed. You either understood it, or you didn't.] Always understood each other.

[And he's pretty sure the two of them really don't.]

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oh this has been spam for a while whoops

SPAM HENCEFORTH whatever nbd

SPAM

SPAM

SPAM

SPAM

SPAM wherein stepmom tries okay B(

SPAM anya has a lot of thoughts okay stepmom

SPAM okay B(

SPAM don't make that face!!!! >|

SPAM too bad B(