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EIGHTY ONE ✖ VIDEO & SPAM
[Charles is back, and while he doesn't look any different - he doesn't look older, he's got the same hair cut and navy blue sweaters - there's still something different. He seems... happier, more enthusiastic than he's been in a long time before Erik graduated.]
Well, I'm glad to see the ship hasn't burned down in my absence. [And if he sounds mildly surprised about that, can you really blame him?
Anyway, moving on.]
I'm very happy to report that things are moving along quite smoothly at home. Erik says hello, [Or some variation on that to some of you, let's be serious graduation didn't suddenly turn him into a super fluffy fun guy who particularly cares about 90% of you.] Although he remains fairly adamant that he's absolutely not coming back in this lifetime, if at all possible.
[Which kind of begs the question of what the hell is he doing back here, but that's for him to know and you guys to find out at some point maybe.
And with all that said and done, he sobers a little, although he's still looking pretty upbeat and generally pleased.]
I've spend two years on this ship, and in that time, I've had too many people tell me some variation of "you can't change your future", or that I was wasting my time putting my faith in someone who's too incompetent to ever do anything right, and I understand where all of that stemmed from. It's incredibly easy to lose hope here, especially in regards to both those things, and if anyone tries to tell you you're weak for doing so, they're wrong.
But it does work, and you can change your future. This place has done everything it could to drag me and the people I love under, but we've still managed to overcome it, and you can, too.
[And he means that, seriously. He's got the proof to back it up now, too.]
For any new arrivals, I'm Doctor- or I suppose it's really Professor Charles Xavier, now. I'm a warden, I'm a telepath, [Mutant and proud, right?] and I'm one of the wardens in charge of the garden, if anyone's interested in lending a hand. I'm also available as a counselor for anyone - warden or inmate - who feels they need someone to talk to.
[Spam for Jonah]
[He'd been a little concerned when he'd first returned that he might not remember everything about the ship. It's not uncommon - he can still remember how jarring it had been to see Merlin staring at him with a combination of confusion and wariness when Charles had told him they were friends - but it seems like he shouldn't have worried. Everything feels familiar, and he knows most of the people he sees in the hallways, remembers the amenities and physical layout.
Still, it's been a few months for him, even if it's only been a few weeks for everyone on the Barge, so taking some time to re-acclimate himself seemed to make sense.
The library is a logical first stop, if only because he seems to have inherited the books Erik had "borrowed" from the library and never. Brought back. And he does actually need some space on his desk and coffee table for other things.
He enters the room with a stack of books, and instead of leaving them for Chromie or someone else to put away, he chooses to return a couple himself, if only so he can go on an investigation to see if anything new has turned up since the last time he's been here. There usually is, and honestly, he thinks this is going to be the thing he misses most about the Barge when he does leave for good.
Whenever that turns out to be.
He's reshelving a copy of Through the Looking Glass he'd been borrowing before he'd left when he spots a familiar face and gives Jonah a friendly smile.]
Hello again.
Well, I'm glad to see the ship hasn't burned down in my absence. [And if he sounds mildly surprised about that, can you really blame him?
Anyway, moving on.]
I'm very happy to report that things are moving along quite smoothly at home. Erik says hello, [Or some variation on that to some of you, let's be serious graduation didn't suddenly turn him into a super fluffy fun guy who particularly cares about 90% of you.] Although he remains fairly adamant that he's absolutely not coming back in this lifetime, if at all possible.
[Which kind of begs the question of what the hell is he doing back here, but that's for him to know and you guys to find out at some point maybe.
And with all that said and done, he sobers a little, although he's still looking pretty upbeat and generally pleased.]
I've spend two years on this ship, and in that time, I've had too many people tell me some variation of "you can't change your future", or that I was wasting my time putting my faith in someone who's too incompetent to ever do anything right, and I understand where all of that stemmed from. It's incredibly easy to lose hope here, especially in regards to both those things, and if anyone tries to tell you you're weak for doing so, they're wrong.
But it does work, and you can change your future. This place has done everything it could to drag me and the people I love under, but we've still managed to overcome it, and you can, too.
[And he means that, seriously. He's got the proof to back it up now, too.]
For any new arrivals, I'm Doctor- or I suppose it's really Professor Charles Xavier, now. I'm a warden, I'm a telepath, [Mutant and proud, right?] and I'm one of the wardens in charge of the garden, if anyone's interested in lending a hand. I'm also available as a counselor for anyone - warden or inmate - who feels they need someone to talk to.
[Spam for Jonah]
[He'd been a little concerned when he'd first returned that he might not remember everything about the ship. It's not uncommon - he can still remember how jarring it had been to see Merlin staring at him with a combination of confusion and wariness when Charles had told him they were friends - but it seems like he shouldn't have worried. Everything feels familiar, and he knows most of the people he sees in the hallways, remembers the amenities and physical layout.
Still, it's been a few months for him, even if it's only been a few weeks for everyone on the Barge, so taking some time to re-acclimate himself seemed to make sense.
The library is a logical first stop, if only because he seems to have inherited the books Erik had "borrowed" from the library and never. Brought back. And he does actually need some space on his desk and coffee table for other things.
He enters the room with a stack of books, and instead of leaving them for Chromie or someone else to put away, he chooses to return a couple himself, if only so he can go on an investigation to see if anything new has turned up since the last time he's been here. There usually is, and honestly, he thinks this is going to be the thing he misses most about the Barge when he does leave for good.
Whenever that turns out to be.
He's reshelving a copy of Through the Looking Glass he'd been borrowing before he'd left when he spots a familiar face and gives Jonah a friendly smile.]
Hello again.
[private]
Intimidating and foreboding, definitely. Like something out of a Dickens novel.
But anyway.
I would say we're very close.
[private]
[It's not, though; Magneto's fortress was a proper castle, a heavy stone thing with crenellations for sheilding archers on the old battlements. She thinks it's emblematic of his mind, that even at the very beginning, when they only needed somewhere sheltered for her to heal, he chose so martial a place. Dickensian sounds like a nice change, especially considering that she's essentially Oliver Twist, here, the estranged child welcomed at last.]
I want to know...I know there have to be things I should know, should at least be aware of, that aren't in her file, because they happened here.
[private]
I'm sorry to say there are a lot more than I'd like there to be. Should I start at the beginning, or prioritize?
[private]
[Which, in Anya-speak, absolutely means read all of them, but she didn't ask the Admiral for the private ones. That's - unfair, somehow, much worse than talking to Morgana's friends.]
- so I've got some idea of a trajectory, but. There's a lot of substance missing there.
[private]
Well, first of all, she and Arthur seemed fairly determined to make each other's lives hell the entire time he was here. Merlin tried to alleviate some of the tension, but it wasn't exactly successful, particularly once they both returned from after Morgana had killed Arthur and Merlin killed her. Her first warden - Mozenrath - honestly wasn't a good fit at all. He didn't seem to understand how to help her, and actually helped set her back quite a bit after a few incidents.
Specifically, [And he has to take a deep breath here, focus on the general scope of the story and not the details because they're still painful, it's still easy to feel the dread creeping back in even if it's been a long time.] There was a port where the ship had crashed, and while we were waiting for it to be repaired, several of us were kidnapped by hostile aliens. Some were forced to work for them, others had to fight in gladiatorial contests, and others were tortured and experimented on. Morgana and I were taken, and we were tortured. On the second day we were their, our captors left her in my cell. They'd broken her arm, beaten her, and there wasn't anything I could do to help her besides talk to her until she fell asleep. They took her away a few hours later, and I couldn't- [He sighs, tries to rally because this is by no means his favorite memory.] It was before I'd been able to fix the damage to my spine, so I literally couldn't do anything but watch them drag her away.
I don't know exactly what happened to her next, but she was dying by the time the Admiral brought us back to the Barge. Merlin was able to heal her, but the whole experience did a fair amount of psychological damage. She couldn't sleep, which I tried to help her with, but she started questioning the reality of the Barge and organized an escape attempt with a man called Jefferson - the Mad Hatter. They somehow escaped to Wonderland and remained there for three months before we caught up with them. It drove her insane, and when she got back on board, she killed someone and Mozenrath thought it was appropriate to keep her locked up in Zero and tried to refuse her visitors instead of actually trying to find a way to help her. [There's no mistaking the bitterness he feels there, but it's more disappointment than rage, like it used to be.]
Not long after that was the Overlook. Mozenrath was completely corrupted by the hotel's influence and tried to kill me. She tried to look after me after I was hurt and we basically waited out the final hours of the port together.
That's effectively everything that happened before you arrived here. There was the Mandrake incident of course, and she was assigned to Lara for a short time before she disappeared, but for the last several months, she's just seemed very... depressed. And very resigned to staying here until the Admiral gets bored of her.