ArchivedLogs:Unspoken Worries

Unspoken Worries
Dramatis Personae Mallory, Thomas	2013-09-12 Conversation, worry, and vacation laments.
Location <XS> Teachers' Lounge - B1
Running a school for mutant teenagers just taking control of their powers is not an easy job, and the teachers at Xavier's deserve a place to come and relax. This lounge is their place to come and de-stress, and it does not skimp for relaxation. The room is elegant and luxurious, plush couches making up the seating in the lounge and a glossy glassy bar wrapping around one wall, well-stocked with alcohol (and perpetually fresh-brewed coffee, for those so inclined. A large-screen high-def television hangs on one wall, stocked with about as many movies and games as the childrens' rec room upstairs. High bookshelves hold a wealth of books. The fridge here is always well stocked, and the cook is always willing to make deliveries down to this level. Far in the back, a hot tub is submerged into the floor, for still more unwinding. It's a school night, and all the good students are tucked neatly away in their dorms, studying and working as any good students should be. Teachers should likely be grading papers, or working on curriculums, or some other professional thing as responsible adults should be. But who are we kidding? The students are still putting off homework and trying to avoid curfew, and the teachers are doing whatever they want to do - at least one has retreated to the quiet solace of the teacher's lounge. Mallory is seated on one of the bar stools, leaning against the resting one elbow against the counter top with her chin propped up on the heel of her hand, eyes regarding the paperback pinned open by her other hand. A half finished drink is sweating in its highball glass, the liquid separating out into a gradient of melted ice and cranberry juice, largely forgotten, it would seem. She is dressed comfortably without being too casual, a pale rose colored fluttery tunic top, paired with black yoga pants that obscure the majority of her inhuman legs. Mentally, she is not focusing on the book, her thoughts a rather confused jumble of recent events, a disorganize babble that doesn't seem too concerned about being observed. Dressed still in his button up shirt, bow tie, and slacks all in complementary grays and midnight blues, Thomas makes his way into the lounge with a stack of papers in his hand, with a tablet held in the other. As he makes his way into the room, there's a grimace coming to his lips, as he lets out a sigh. <<Sister dearest, your brain is leaking,>> he thinks at her as he sets the stack of papers down at the bar, dumping the tablet on top of it as he heads around to the other side of the bar. "The ice will ruin that if you don't finish it soon. Almost better to pour a new one," and with that, he glances to the mug and lets shared thought direct him to where the cranberry juice is to put it back on the counter next to her. <<Top shelf, carafe of red stuff is cranberry juice, not blood. Don't touch the thick looking stuff - those are Isra's protein shakes, and I don't actually know what all she puts in them.>> Mallory responds, the words swirling up out of the chaos of her thought processes, and she barely looking up when her twin addresses her, mentally or verbally. Placing the bookmark - a sticky note with random library reference numbers on it - back into place in the book, letting it fall shut, before reaching out to swirl the cranberry juice and water around a little bit, grimacing, "I got lost in thought, as I'm sure you noticed." She takes a sip of the beverage, but then reaches for the carafe of juice Thomas had provided, pouring it into the glass <<Just going to add more juice. The water cuts the tartness pretty well, actually.>> There is a bit of a mental struggle as Mallory closes her eyes, inhaling and exhaling slowly as she does, the jumble of thoughts starts to fall to quiet as she reigns in her thought. Last of all to be quelled is the memory of what happened in the Danger Room, shown from numerous viewpoints, though even once that is pushed aside, the guilt and panic remains as an echo. <<Ah yes, I forget you have horrible taste>> Thomas smiles slightly at her as he pours some of the juice into an acquired cup and places the carafe away. "Have the students been behaving in the library thus far? Or has misbehaviour centered mostly around dangerous chemicals?” Shaking his horned head, he settles down into one of the stools sipping his drink. <<He’s doing alright now, aside from looking a lot older. Poor fellow, but I had warned against it.>> Frowning a little at the thought, he shakes his head. << Not quite meant that way, shame we couldn’t have found something to lock it down and prevent it from happening before he reached that point.>> Glancing over the papers he had been planning on grading, he sets them aside as a lost cause as he looks to his sister. “So how are you feeling precisely? Aside from, well, all of that going on up there?” He gently places his finger on her forehead, giving her the chance to put it to words rather than just dumping it all at once. <<Meh. I meant I just didn’t want more gin in it.>> she contributes, a few hazy, snarky comments filtering through involving taste, but not fully expressed. A swish of the somewhat watered down drink, followed by a pull from the glass, nodding to her brother, “Nothing as bad as over the summer session. Quiet, as it should be, with only an incident where someone startled my assistant and we lost a book or two for a bit. So far no fires, no massive shelf collapses, and no broken limbs. Generally good, I suppose. No chemical burns from your classes, I take it?” There is a grimace, mentally and physically, at the thoughts of Aloke, and a few thoughts and images float towards the surface, flashes of her interactions with him, the sensation of teleportation, perhaps colored with the slight warmth of a blush. Or it could be the memory of the fiery aftermath of the events. “For certain definitions of ‘alright.’ Hank,” she says aloud, punctuating with another sip of her beverage, “Hank says they aren’t even sure he /can/ make a full recovery. Physically he’s fine, but...” She trails off on that sentence, swishing her drink again, smirking slightly as Thomas pokes her forehead <<Do you really want to ask that, Thomas?>> Though even after she thinks that, the rest is already processing, coalescing in her mind with accompanying emotions, <<Guilt, even though Hank says it wasn’t anything I did. Foolish, because I’m still feeling guilty. Worry. For numerous reasons. God, what if that happens to us?>> There’s a sigh, “Sorry. Should have given you more of a chance to say no and get out of range before that tumbled out.” “No burns on the students at least, though the desk is scorched, and at least five beakers have had to been replaced so far.” There’s a sigh from Thomas as he shakes his head, getting out the bottle of gin to mix in with his cranberry juice and leaving it beside Mallory to be helpful. “Drawback of all year schooling, we don’t get the vacations other teachers get. Though I can’t say I know where we’d head, that would be safe, or at least entertaining enough for the risk.” Taking a sip, he shrugs again, and places with the water droplets forming on his glass as it interacts with his body heat more rapidly. “Full recovery would be relative I’m afraid. If he’s aged, well I don’t think we’ve got a student in the veins of Ponce deLeon who can provide the fountain of youth.” He gives a smile, and as she projects so many thoughts into his head, he merely projects one back, the image of her old teddy bear, before it had been incinerated. “I know you worry about it all. His case is similar to ours, but we luck out a bit more.” There's a mental frown at the fact he said luck out. <<We don’t violate physics as much, our worst case scenarios are losing ourselves completely, and we’ll just die. He went through decades of absolute isolation. That’s gotta be worse.>> Downing the rest of the mixed beverage, he just pours straight gin into his cup next. “Ignorance is bliss dearest sister, we are burdened with an abundance of knowledge, both on what could be, and what is. We just have to be more careful, and if we find out what caused his problem, maybe we can avoid it ourselves>> “Well, that is good at least. I imagine chemical burns on the students would generally be frowned upon, even if self inflicted,” Mallory responds dryly, shaking her head, eyeing the gin. <<Oh, you are so helpful. /Thanks/.>> she directs at him, though does not immediately reach for the bottle. “Vacation would be nice. I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten to do that sort of thing, just go somewhere and enjoy it,” she says with a sigh, shaking her head, “Maybe someday, we’ll actually get away to a proper vacation spot, with sandy beaches and all that travel brochure crap. That said - there’s still a bit of an ingrained revulsion to the stereotypical demon look. I have a few students who won’t make eye contact with me this semester.” There’s a touch of exasperation, both in the spoken words and in the thought that follows <<Though that could be, in part, due to the pool incident. Not my finest hour, there. Or the best way to meet your English teacher.>> <<We don’t break the laws of physics, said the self-aware cloud of smoke to the sentient plasma demon?>> Mallory thinks, fixing Thomas with a skeptical look. “He doesn’t seem the worse for wear with regards to the aging - he pulls off the look quite well, actually,” she mutters, almost hard to hear were it not for the accompanying mental images that back up the statement, finally reaching for the gin to add the slightest splash to her cranberry juice. “I meant a full mental recovery. That was just over 10 minutes to us. It was 20 /years/ to him. 20 years of watching his colleagues stand there doing practically nothing in slow motion,” she pauses in her speaking to take a drink of the beverage, “Supposedly Charles has taken a personal interest in his recovery. The Professor is brilliant; but speaking to Aloke, he just seems so, so fragile.” Mallory sighs into her drink, the worry settling into a background thrum to her thoughts, spiking slightly each time Aloke is mentioned. << I think I’d rather die. It would be fast, in theory. I doubt I’d burn for that long, really.>> she passes along the morbid thought, shuddering at the thought of flames. The teddy bear, however, gets an exhausted looking smile, and she shakes her head, “I did save yours. It’s stashed, back at the estate. Let me know the next time you visit, I’ll tell you where I hid it to keep it safe from the fire.” A mental flash of an innocuous looking hat box, tucked away in the cellars at their childhood home. Sipping his own gin, Thomas gives a shrug at her comment on being helpful. “I don’t think either of us ever got around to having proper swimming lessons. So it would mainly be laying on the beach and getting a tan,” pausing he looks down at himself, then to hurt. “So I’m really tan and you’ve got a wicked burn already.” Smirking slightly at her description of the pool related problem, he chuckled. <<Be glad that you don’t have male admirer students after that stunt. I don’t think they would care about the horns or hooves at that point.>> “And we don’t violate it so much as he does. We pretty well continue to observe the conservation of energy in the equation. Mass to mass, mass to plasma even a weak plasma, don’t really cause that much issue. Mass to pure energy? That's the hope of the future for powering the world.” Thomas is about to grab his tablet at that, his hand moving towards it before he shakes his head. <<You don’t want to see the equations on tablet or in my head one way or another. >> Frowning slightly as the fairly obvious crush related commentary and thoughts came pouring to his brain, he looks at his sister again. “I am sorry that he’s gone through this, and that you had to be there to witness it. You wouldn’t have been there except for my askance, though if you hadn’t been, well its likely he would have state changed with me instead, and I can’t say what would have gone on as a result.” Frowning into his cup of rapidly melting ice, he thinks to her << I hope Charles is able to handle the situation for the poor fellow. If he can, at the very least we have a safety net in case something happens to one of us.>> Mallory sighs, “Oh, I can’t swim. Learned that in university. I don’t really float, either. A beach is just the the stereotypical vacation I guess. Not like I could actually sit through rides at Disney World or some such thing.” There’s a bit of a hand wave at the statement, and then the thought to the pool situation, and Mallory puts her head in her hand, rather poorly hiding the obvious blush that rises to her already red cheeks. <<Oh, god. Thank you so much for that reminder. I /had/ been trying not to dwell on that aspect of it. Assuming they were terrified of me was /so much/ more comforting.>> She scratches at the base of her left horn with a single digit, coughing slightly, and still avoiding eye contact with her twin. Typically, Mallory doesn’t blush this easily, perhaps just the right combination of frustration, embarrassment, and gin, but the librarian is flushed a deeper red color than normal. In what is often a struggle for her, she attempts to shutter her mind to her brother, hiding the blush colored memories and concerns from him in a decided effort, <<Sorry, brother. I…>> her thought trails off in quiet, though the word <<Foolish>> echoes in the relative silence. “I suggested he work with you on testing. I volunteered to be there, even before you asked. I am glad I was, otherwise I could have lost you, too, and,” she takes a deep breath, finally glancing at Thomas, “Well, I’d probably be near as broken as he is if that happened.” “Oh I don’t know, I imagine you could do some of them, as long as the seat back isn’t completely closed. There’s gotta be a few, right?” Thomas tilts his head thinking, imagining roller coasters and the like, since neither had been there anyway. At Mallory’s reaction to the male reaction, he raises a brow and shakes his head. “You don’t think like a guy dear sister, but well, at least you don’t have to see the minds of your students either. Reading teenage boy minds, would probably make you sit with a spray bottle the entire time and yelling at them No.” The words come with the accompanying image of cats getting water bottled. As she works on shuttering her mind, Thomas projects blank whiteness to help her calm down and collect herself, though theres a frown at what she says after. “He wanted to figure out what was going on, and we’re all professionals. This is probably the best equipped place to handle what he was going through, and the only other option would have been if Xavier managed to make him not be able to change in the first place.” Pushing the cup along the table a moment on the moisture pool, he shakes his head. “You wouldn’t have lost me. Its possible he wouldn’t have had the change go through entirely if I had taken him with me first. The pain might have been enough of a distraction in the first place, and its possible the state change could have used up some of his energy.” He shrugs and shakes his head again. “We can’t go by what ifs, we can just go by what we can figure out. But I wouldn’t want to lose you either. And you’re more at risk than I am, I may take a lot longer to coalesce, but you may just burn out entirely.” “Depends on what kind or ride it is, I guess. I don’t exactly relish the idea of this thing getting caught in the tracks of some ride. It’s bad enough when I step on it,” Mallory snorts slightly, finishing off her cranberry juice, “Either way, small steps first, likely. I may see about going into the city sometime this weekend. Because I honestly don’t know what sort of policy most vacation spots have on people like us, but at least in the city I know I’m just going to get a ticket for walking while mutant.” Even as she has quieted her mind, frustration surfaces again over the link, though she drops the line of conversation about vacationing. “I know. What ifs are a dangerous road to go down, especially when most of the facts of the matter go right over my head,” Mallory responds, shaking her head as she starts gathering her things, taking the now empty glass behind the bar with her. <<Sorry for the brain dump and worrying. Thank you for listening, though, even if it was somewhat involuntary.>> Mallory thinks, her mental voice somewhat subdued, and she doesn’t respond to the potential for her transformation going awry, though the twinge of fear in reaction is telegraphed mentally and physically. “I should be getting back to grading soon. And let you get back to yours, which I distracted you from,” Mallory says with a guilty grin, starting to move toward the door of the lounge. “I’d suggest we see about more of a private island beach resort type thing. Then you really only have to deal with the owner and the help staff. We can maybe look into it, and suggest it as options for other mutants who have more visible mutations if it looks viable.” Thomas dumps the rest of his watered down beverage down his mouth and shakes his head. “Cities just tend to be a bother half the time, between the people in them and the services available. Guess I’ll just have to patent some fancy new material and we don’t need to worry about money again to have all the privacy we want.” As Mallory gets up to go off, Thomas just leaves his own empty cup beside him on the bar top. “You can call them hypotheses if it makes you feel better. Then you get the benefit of sounding like a scientist instead of a worry wart.” There's a slight grin at that, then a shake of his head. <<Not a worry, though I’d hope that you aren’t too over worried about the matter. We can only do what we can. Its not our responsibility to ensure that no accidents ever happen, and there is little we can do to predict the results of how the course of mutation proceeds. We all do what we can, and this seems to be the best place for it for now.>> He offers her a little wave as she heads on out, and gets to work seeing how poorly the students understood molecular bonding and weak nuclear forces.