ArchivedLogs:In Which Punishment Is Amended To One More Satisfactory, And Some Tea Grows Quite Cold

In Which Punishment Is Amended To One More Satisfactory, And Some Tea Grows Quite Cold
Dramatis Personae Taylor, Xavier	2015-12-28 "{You'll find as you get older, the business of making decisions for others is a tricky one.}"
Location <XS> Headmaster's Office - B1
Quietly elegant, the headmaster's office is as old-fashioned as the headmaster himself. The large wooden desk is the centerpiece of the room, the guest's chair a high-backed dark wood one. The walls are painted in rich dark colours, a sole impressionist painting hanging on the wall. The hardwood floors are polished, the floor kept carefully neat and tidy, the room perpetually immaculately organized. The sun is still somewhat shining, early Monday morning, casting it's rays upon an earth that refuses to warm. The chill clings to the glass, but the building's heating system does a decent job of keeping it from venturing much further. Professor Xavier sits in his chair, glancing out across the grounds visible from his office window, his expression far away in thought. He wears a dove gray suit with a light weight cardigan under the jacket, in place of his usual vest. He holds a small saucer between thumb and the side of a forefinger, while his other hand holds a fragile tea cup near his lips, offering a small sip before settling with a soft 'think' back on the china. He rouses himself from distant thought before wheeling back and turning to greet the summoned student, << Enter. >> Taylor doesn't look so dapper, scuffed old jeans and a LA Dodgers tee under a black-and-blue zip-up hoodie, frayed, restitched in several places. There's already a defensiveness built up in his mind; it's reflected in his posture, shoulders tensed and pushed back, chin held up, eyes just a touch narrowed. His longest arms are coiled around his torso but some of the smaller ones shift restlessly at his back. "{Morning, Professor.}" Even if his mental landscape is sullenly /huffy/, his quiet Japanese words, at least, are polite as he shuts the door behind himself. "{Good morning, Mr. Allen. I was hoping to have a word with you about your recent excursions and the consequences that followed.}" Xavier leans forward and sets his saucer down on the table, resuming his more restive position afterward. The words he uses are Latin, partially out of practice for himself and partially as they are the root of the Romance languages and allow for easy translation into his students' minds - something he helps Taylor do, should he find his own telepathy lacking. "{Would you care to sit?}" << Not really, >> surfaces reflexively in Taylor's mind, fingers twitching at his sides. "{I kind of figured I was here to talk about the punishment stuff.}" He rests the tip of an arm lightly on the back of the guest chair, pulling it out and perching on its edge. "{What kind of a word. I thought I was already grounded until pretty much I'm dead.}" There's a bitterly amused flicker that ghosts through his mind at that thought. "{Ah, well, that is what we are here to discuss. I will be honest: a fair bit of what was issued out at the time was out of fear. The area was under quarantine and large numbers of mindless murderers wandered the streets -- and would turn up on our own campus, whether through an unfortunate trespass or by the ravages of the disease. In an effort to attempt to keep you safe, we issued what we now feel are unreasonable punishments.}" Professor Xavier speaks quietly, his tone steady. "{I apologize and would like to make some amends.}" He pauses just long enough to let the thought set in before continuing. "{I am not saying you are free and clear, but we should discuss what would be more reasonable.}" There's a long pause after this -- at least, externally. The stark /surprise/ in Taylor's mind is easy enough to read -- not, necessarily, at the implication that his punishment might be changed. Xavier's apology though pings a very loud and clear note of /flabbergast/ in the teenager's mind, very evidently not used to very many Authority Figures who are willing to /apologize/ for their mistakes when it comes to children. The silence stretches on for a minute and then another as he considers this. Carefully, at length, he ventures a hesitant: "{... amends?}" He sits just a hair farther back in the seat, relaxing his grip on its arms. "{I don't know what's reasonable. I don't even know how long I'm grounded for.}" "{Let us take grounding off the table then. Let us instead discuss what happened, this time, from your point of view.}" Professor Xavier also now gestures to the pot of Earl Grey tea that sits steaming beside them, one eyebrow arching in question, creating a myriad of lines on his aged forehead. "{Could you tell me?}" Taylor's lips press together; there's a twinge of phantom pain that ripples through his (very much healed) limbs, through his jaw, through scars stippled across his arms. Daiki's face is surfacing in his mind; he pushes it back with a small sharp huff. His brows lift as he focuses on the tea, leans forward to pour himself a cup that he doesn't actually know if he wants. "{Do you mean before I got grounded or after?}" "{Before, I think. What lead to you decide to not adhere to rules that you agreed to when you started at this school?}" Xavier picks up his own cup and saucer to hold and sip. "{No, see, /that's/ a different road.}" Taylor's eyes have widened with a faint note of incredulity. His hands spread in front of him, a few of his tentacles spreading too. "{Is that really the conversation you want to have? Because that's a totally /different/ conversation than why I left to kill zombie. When I started at this school I certainly didn't /agree/ to any of this. When I /started/ at this school I was eleven and had just been plucked out of a /torture/ lab and had no home to /go/ to and if you want to pretend that those are conditions under which anyone /can/ consent to anything, we can't have a conversation at all. And eleven year old half-dead homeless me definitely didn't agree to some radically /different/ set of rules that you all just /made up/ because zombies happened and you got scared.}" "{I was intending to bring up something more immediate to the situation at hand rather than the years prior -- but, if that is a factor, I will take it under advisement.}" Professor Xavier listens quietly as Taylor speaks up, his brow remaining creased as his gaze, steady. "{Indeed. You began as a ward of the school as you were too young to be on your own and had nowhere else to go. Rules existed for your protection as much as the protection of the school. You abided by them blindly under fear of punishment, because that is how children relate to guardians, as they are often unable to grasp alternatives or shoulder the responsibility of those alternatives. You are now seventeen, are you not, and everything has change, including the secrecy of this campus. Unless the school and your friends and loved ones have completely failed you, you should be now able to discuss what are now more social contracts rather than dictates from on high.}" "{Everything has changed,}" Taylor agrees, fighting back memories -- faces -- that are threatening to surface again. "{But if you want immediate, /immediately/ we were all --}" His mind hitches on profanity, goes instead with, "{-- in a bad place. The school. The other kids. All of it. Going crazy watching everyone starve and die and then having this flood of humans gawking at us in our place that's /supposed/ to be safe? We couldn't even mourn in peace. And you all had your hands way too full to worry about other things.}" A few of his arms lift in a shrug. "{They'd probably still /be/ here staring at us at meals and tripping us in the halls if we hadn't gone to clean /their/ houses out.}" "{Indeed. And our hands were and are tied in so much that we cannot ask those under the legal age of majority to serve in such a capacity. It goes against the purpose of the school, to nurture and protect young lives and prepare them for the future.}" Charles Xavier exhales and bows his head. "{It is difficult, the balance between ideals and reality, especially when things are desperate. In the end, the immediate response of an overwhelming desire to /protect/ lead to large scale groundings which did not help at all.}" He draws in a deep breath, then takes another sip before setting his cup down once more. "{Taylor. As you are nearly an adult now, how would you suggest we balance this out? I want to take your opinion into account while I weigh my decision.}" "{You didn't ask.}" Taylor wraps his hands around the mug of tea, eyes dipping down to fix on it. "{I get what the school /wants/ but it isn't always helpful in going about it. Cooped up in here -- with everyone sick and some people dying, we already weren't safe. And with all the outsiders staying it just felt stressful and tense and and not having a lot of way to help wasn't making anything /better/. So we -- helped.}" His fingers press harder against the cup, his brows pulling together. There's confusion in his mind at the question, patently unused to teachers asking /him/ his opinions on Administrative Decisions. "{Telling us to sit down and shut up is pretty much what got us here to begin with. I don't think it's going to help much cooping us up /more/. I -- don't know. Having something /productive/ to do instead would probably be -- better. Something useful. Helpful.}" Professor Xavier nods solemnly as Taylor rehashes the situation, moving through the early steps toward a concluding thought. His gaze softens and his expression warms, but only after Taylor begins to work in a more constructive line of thinking. "{You'll find as you get older, the business of making decisions for others is a tricky one. You do the best with what information you have at hand and sometimes, it doesn't work. How about we instead harvest the good intentions that you have and the desire to help the school and turn it into something -- as you put it -- productive. I'm assigning you an twenty hour in-school community service project.} "{Now, before you feel overwhelmed, let me clarify: this can be something you do all by yourself or something you coordinate many people to do. Everyone's hours will count toward the twenty hour total. You will also have until the end of January to finish. Your restrictions to campus will be lifted and you will have the support of the teaching staff with what you need to accomplish your goal. We will help with whatever supplies you need, I only encourage you not to aim for something extremely expensive. And of course, it'll have to be approved before you get started, as it does need to be something that truly helps the school rather than a project that might best be saved for a less desperate time.}" Xavier folds his hands in his lap and looks over the student across from him, studying Taylor's reaction and whatever emotional reactions assault the teacher's own telepathic senses - as teenagers often do. He takes a deep breath, allowing for a little time before asking, "{So, what do you think?}" "{Everyone's hours will count towards the same pool?}" Taylor's thoughts, of course, immediately flit towards roping Anole and Nick into this project, their groundings like his -- kind of Long. He sits up a little straighter in his chair, reflexively starting to consider things that might be /fun/ and helpful, burn of energy but not be too much an investment; help tend the enormously depleted greenhouse, maybe, or -- -- before his mind wanders to the thoughts that have been assaulting /his/ senses the past weeks, the minds of the other students that have been keeping him up at night with their shock and grief, their horror at watching their classmates dying and eating each other, their pain and their nightmares. He fidgets in his seat, arms twitching at his back, fingers scraping against the side of his teacup. "{I think --}" He hesitates, feeling out the idea forming in his mind. "{-- I think I want to start a --}" One of his hands moves to his opposite wrist, rubbing there at phantom scars. Karrie's image in his mind, curled up at his side. "{A counseling group. Support group? I mean I know we have therapists here but.}" He pulls in a breath, shakes his head. "{But in all honesty sometimes the teachers just aren't /good/ at talking to us. Or helping -- know what. Know how to. Be there for us. I want to start a -- Peer group. For students who have -- shit to cope with after all this. Grieve for. Whatever.}" "{That sounds like an excellent idea. There is a lot of validity the act of supporting each other and allowing each other a chance to grieve from similar perspective. Even as a telepath, I have to confess that I do not /know/ what you are feeling. I can feel it with you and share the experience, but I am ... a fair deal older and there are just things that will not...}" Xavier stops and considers, shaking his head in the end. He pulls himself up a little straighter in his seat, meeting Taylor's gaze once more. "{Okay. You have permission to start a student lead support group. I request that you have one of the schools' counselors act as the group's advisor and that you turn to them for help with things you are concerned about. Privacy should be absolutely respected, but I also want to make certain that the group remains safe and healthy.}" Taylor relaxes slightly at Xavier's reply, swallowing and shifting again in his seat. "{Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Okay.}" He nods at the request, tongue swiping over slightly chapped lips. "{I --}" He hesitates for a moment. "{If it's possible,}" he ventures slowly, "{I'd like to get Shane's help organizing this, too, if he's willing. He's my advisor -- or he was -- I'm not actually sure now that he's been -- suspended or whatever if he'll still be...}" He trails off, one small limb rubbing over the top of his smooth head. "{I know everyone thinks it was irresponsible of him to -- get me around my grounding and all but --}" He takes in a deep breath; there's a very deliberate calm that he forces over the surface of his mind, stilling the brief stab of sick-angry-grief that is fighting its way up. He swallows again, pushing down the hard knot in his throat. Switches, without really thinking about it, from Japanese to Spanish -- it makes the words come a little more easily and not only because he's more fluent in this language. "{Even if he's not always good at rules I think he's good at -- /us/.}" "{Shane Holland...}" There's a long sigh at the introduction of this topic, the headmaster's head seeming so very heavy at the moment. He is definitely weighing the problems that particular young person creates alongside the good he does as well as the need Taylor so obviously has. "{Shane Holland can participate in the group, but not in any official capacity. He needs to work out his standing with the school with me before he can return to any of his other activities here. I appreciate that you may want to vouch for him, but it is an entirely different matter altogether. At this point, he is an alumnus and can visit the school as such. He also probably needs the group just as much as you and the other students do.}" He smiles, albeit wearily. "{You will still need an accredited school counselor as your group advisor. Is that... satisfactory?}" Taylor's eyes stay steady on the Professor for a long moment, and then he nods, his lips compressed thin. He lifts his cup to set it -- the tea untouched -- on the desk. "{Thank you, Professor.}" His teeth worry at a small scrap of dry skin on his lip. "{Is -- there anything else?}" "{That is all I have to say. Is there anything else we can help you with?}" Professor Xavier asks, quietly. Taylor shakes his head, pushing his chair back with a small scrape as he stands. "{N... no. Thank you. Sir. I'll talk to the counselors and get you a -- plan.}" His head bobs, once. "{Thanks.}" Professor Xavier smiles. "{Thank you,}" he replies nodding once. "{Have a good day.}"