wedonot | SEVENTY FOUR ✖ TEXT

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SEVENTY FOUR ✖ TEXT

Just so everyone's aware, I'll be making myself available for anyone who feels that they're in need of counseling in light of what happened.

On a similar note, especially in light of Mark's disappearance, if anyone is interested in volunteering as a counselor to those who might need it, I'd be happy to discuss how to make that work.

[Unless you're a cannibalistic serial killer, in which case you will need to find somewhere else to hang out. :|]

[Filtered to various Friends & Family]

I apologize for not being in touch sooner. I'm alright, and I'd appreciate hearing from you when you've got opportunity.

[Private to Anya]

I hear some congratulations are in order.

[Private to Alex]

Can I come see you?

[ooc: Charles is unaffected by the flood, but if you'd like to be all cuddly and fond with him, I am def up for it. :]b If you think you should be on the filter, you are, and if anyone wants to backdate anything for post-MirrorBarge fallout, I am down!]

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I don't really know what I want to talk about.

[It's honest, and it's not necessarily a dismissal, him saying no, I don't want to talk about this. He'd felt like maybe he was doing alright, that he was going to be okay, but obviously, he's not in a great place emotionally right now.]

When people do things out of love for you, it's easy to feel like it's your fault.

[She says it gently, but not overly so. She doesn't think of Charles as fragile, even if he's in a fragile place. It's just something she has learned to handle gently as part of being kinder to herself.]

Or you could teach me about tree frogs or something. We've got options.

[That hurts, because she's so right. He's still upset with himself because he should have been more careful, because Erik shouldn't have to go through that again or to have to live with those memories, but he knows logically maybe that's not fair to himself, or to Erik, or any of them. He takes a sort of shaky breath - it's not one that's signalling hysterical sobs or anything like that, but it's a little unsteady - and rubs his hands over his face, wondering if he should take the out and dig up some facts about tree frogs.]

I could probably manage either one. I'm mostly just... frustrated. It's exhausting trying to do any amount of good here.

It is, yes. But you've done more good than you...see, I think.

I don't think the barge as a whole is allowed to get better. It's a testing ground, and if you can't learn to be good even when it's hard, even when the world is miserable and unfair and painful - because every world outside the barge is going to be miserable and unfair and painful, at times - then you haven't really learned.

But person to person, we can make a difference, same as out there. And you've done quite a lot of that.

I know. And I don't mean that in some conceited way, I've just been reminded of it a lot by certain people, even when I'm feeling particularly low. But I'm tired of putting myself out there only to be treated to people's passive aggressive attempts at proving what a terrible person I must actually be when all I honestly want to do is take Erik and go home. But I can't just pretend like I'm not capable of helping and leave everyone without an option for support.

Charles, I'm pretty sure the only person who actually ever wanted to prove you were terrible was me, and that was mostly because I was really invested in everyone being secretly terrible back then, and you were so...meticulously inoffensive. And I failed spectacularly. It was very frustrating.

[She says it with a rough smile, casual and affectionate.]

People just...I don't think you let yourself see it, when people misunderstand you. Maybe because some subconscious telepathic part of you just...expects the meaning to be communicated. Or maybe some people did stubbornly misinterpret you because of their own damage and now that's just what you expect. Or maybe it's something else entirely, I don't know. But when people argue without venom you think it's got to be passive aggression, that it's got to be an attack, and you sort of...entrench.

I'm not saying it's all your fault, or that it doesn't hurt, because it's not and obviously it does. It's just...a pattern I've noticed, a little.

I know. I know how exhausting and - and thankless it feels, trying to take care of everyone all the time. It's awful. And maybe it makes you...I mean, general you, you and me and everyone like that, it makes us a little nuts, because we are trying so damn hard and every criticism feels like...god, what's even the point, if it's still not good enough? But I don't think people are usually saying that, most of the time. It just...feels like it. And that sucks.

Anya, Iris admitted she went in looking for a fight. And I'm sick of it.

She admitted that she overreacted and lashed out at you because you stumbled over one of her sore spots. That is different from looking for a fight or deliberately twisting your words to make you an ego maniac or trying to prove you're anything. This is exactly what I mean, Charles.

She says she was being unfair to you and some part of you thinks that means she must be doing it on purpose, but that's just not true.

It still hurts. You've every right to be sick of it, and you've every right to take a break, even if you don't feel like you can, and to tell her off like you did. I'm not saying this to make it your responsibility to untangle every flare-up, I swear. It's really not, and she did react badly, and if she hadn't apologized already I'd have insisted on it. But she doesn't have it out for you, and I just...I think it might hurt less if you didn't see things through that lens, that's all.

Edited 2013-11-11 01:01 (UTC)

I don't think Iris specifically has it out for me. I'm frustrated because the conversation would have gone very differently if she had just said what was bothering her, instead of implying that I was somehow trying to subjugate Zane or tell him he didn't have a right to be here or want to help because she was upset about something she still hasn't really articulated to me. I'm also frustrated because I've had several people recently express that they're concerned about why I'm so unhappy all the time, and then when I try to explain why that's the case, the discussion turns into me being at fault again. It isn't exactly incentive to open up any more than I already have.

I don't think anybody thought you were trying to subjugate him. She'd have said that right out if she thought it, Iris doesn't hold things back. As she demonstrated rather terribly just now.

[She sighs. She feels horribly like she's sliding on sliprock into doing the exact same thing, when it's the last thing she wants to do; but she can see him making defensive assumptions that only contribute to his misery, and she wishes she could just yank the patterns of it out. That, she supposes, is why they need training.]

It's not your fault you're unhappy. You're enduring so much, from people wrapped up in their own hurts taking things out on you and from this place that drains people dry and then cracks them open again and you just - you keep taking on even more, because you care so much. It's awful, and it's not you're fault. You're amazing for trying as much as you have.

[She's tearing up a little, and it's in her voice but she doesn't let them fall, because it's supposed to be about him, but she just. She's heartbroken for him, for the the exhaustion and invisible isolation he's confiding in her, and she cares so much more than she expected to, even one month ago.]

I'm so sorry you've had to deal with all of that, Charles. I really am. And about feeling like people wouldn't hear you most of all.

[She comes over to him, hand hovering near his shoulder for a second, not sure if even the small, bracing touch would be welcome. And then, in a typical-atypical moment of recklessness, she decides to just full throttle the thing, and wraps her arms around him in a hug.]

[It catches him off guard, and it takes him a moment to return it, if only for that reason. He also doesn't really understand why it might be hitting her this hard - they haven't talked much about her mother, but he's touched and surprised and has immediately felt like he needs to comfort her, too when he hears how emotional she's getting.

So he puts his arms around her and rubs her back, fighting past the tightness in his chest and focusing on just breathing. He's tired of feeling broken and helpless and he definitely doesn't want to cry, so he breathes and focuses on calm.]

Thank you.

[She's listening, and she does understand, and it's just good to hear that someone other than Erik understands. That it wasn't a terrible mistake to open up to her.]

I'll be alright.

[She laughs softly, a little jagged, because she knows exactly what he's doing, but she doesn't know how to pull back from hurting for him without looking like she's pulling back from caring, too.]

This isn't even supposed to be about me. I'm going to be fine.

[She doesn't let go, though, just stands cheek to cheek with him, almost exactly of a height, and squeezes a little tighter. She feels oddly, unnecessarily, instinctively comforted by the hand on her back, and something burbles up inside her, raw feeling as much as much as thought, fierce and absolute: I wish you were my real family. The you is broad, Charles and Erik and Alex and Jean a little too, but she has Erik one way or another already; Charles is the centerpoint of the desire. It would matter less, maybe, how often they don't quite get on, if they had that other bond to hold through instead of just Erik and tea. She never really saw eye to eye with Magda either, not even when she was a precocious and stubborn three-year-old. But they were part of each other anyway, flesh and blood.]

[He's not sure if he was supposed to hear that, but after a moment's hesitation, he's responding to it anyway.]

I hope this isn't too presumptuous, but as far as I'm concerned, you are a part of my real family. [Along with Erik and Raven and Alex and Jean, not to mention Sean and Hank back home, even Darwin and Moira.]

I've never put too much stake in blood being thicker than water. [Because it's just been so painfully untrue for him. It wasn't even that his mother and stepfather had genuinely hated him or anything, they just didn't care, and the fact that he had people who did meant so much more to him.]

[It grates on her, but not because she thinks it's presumptuous. She's just mad at the whole cultural order of it, that whatever they are is defined and elevated by referring to the people who failed them so spectacularly, whom Anya failed in turn. Quietly, she mutters,]

People always get that backward. It's - in the original saying, it's about the blood shed by comrades in battle, how it's more important than the water of the womb.

We're blood, you and me. It's real. It's right.

[She laughs a little, soft and rough and rueful.]

I just wish we'd been stuck with each other from the beginning, you know?

[However terribly they've gotten along, on occasion, at least they've both always cared.]

[It's not a new concept - he's wished he could have met Raven years earlier, that he hadn't had to wait until he was thirty to meet Erik, the person who was quite literally the other half of his soul, who'd spent so long being lonely and angry and scared.

And thanks to the Barge, he can remember what it was like to know each other as children, to stay up late at night and plot all the things they could do now that they knew they weren't alone, and that's without even mentioning the other lives they've led together. And then he can remember holding Alex in the hospital just after he'd been born, witnessing his first words, his first steps, being there to tell him that it was okay, there wasn't anything wrong with him for being different, reading him stories before bed and making him lunch. He can remember talking to Anya, telling her about how he was bad at knitting and how he'd met Erik, and listening to her - a normal, more or less happy kid who got to make pancakes with her dad who loved her, regardless of who or what she was.

It's not the first time he's wished that things could have been different, that they could have been there for Alex and Anya and each other from the start.

So, he gets it. He wouldn't trade the people he knows now for different versions, ones that got to live lives where they were all together from the beginning, but. It's hard not to wish that parts of it were real.]

I do.

[She leans back a bit, not enough to pull out of the hug entirely, just enough to look him in the eyes, her hands gripping his arms lightly, just below the elbows. She sniffs, gets her breathing steady and under control, manages a shaky smile.]

We should. Do things. Besides tea.

Everyone needs things that they can just. Do for themselves, you know? I suppose you're still pants at knitting.

[His smile in response is probably best described as sheepish, but certainly not dismissive.]

I haven't exactly had much chance to practice, in recent years.

You'd have found time, if you really liked it. So maybe something else.

I'm open to suggestions.

What did you used to do for fun? Before the barge, and...everything.

[She waves a hand vaguely.]

Do you want the honest answer? [Your stepmom was a drunk fratboy. B(]

Always.

[Omg mom you cad, spill.]

Before I met Moira and Erik, most of my free time was spent either doing whatever Raven wanted to do as long as I was coming up for air from my latest project, or getting embarrassingly drunk and fooling around with my female classmates.

[And he does look more embarrassed than proud of all this. Because you know. He has grown up a bit since then.]

[She snickers a little, mostly because of his embarrassment, but it smoothes out into a contemplative expression.]

You ever play bar games? Darts, pool, that kind of thing? I know Dean organizes some. You don't have to be a party animal all the time to indulge with people a little.

I suppose not. It just hasn't interested me as much as it used to. [Which... is actually true about a lot of things. Meeting Erik kind of shocked him into actual maturity pretty quickly, and then winding up the paralyzed guardian of three kids sort of sealed the deal.]

But I guess I could give it another go.

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fridgetothefire - 2013-12-20 15:50 (UTC) - Expand

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