Logs:(M)other

(M)other
CN: gaslighting, reference to past child sexual abuse, extreme sibling favoritism
Dramatis Personae Beldam, Lucien, Matt	2024-01-26 "{Was it too much to hope that you have grown in my absence, as I have myself?}"
Location <NYC> Tessier Residence - Backyard - Greenwich Village
Living in the heart of Manhattan means space is precious, and as such, the yard behind this house is small. It is as exquisitely well-kept as the rest of the place, though; all available space has been meticulously cultivated and transformed into a lush retreat from the concrete and asphalt of the city. The borders of the garden are lined in a wealth of flowers, the selection chosen to provide a panoply of color in all seasons save winter. A grassy rock-bordered pathway separates these from the raised-bed vegetable garden that dominates its center. The far left corner of the garden plays host to a tiny rock-lined pond, goldfish and a pair of turtles living in its burbling water. To one side of the pond is a garden table and set of chairs and presiding over the pond, a large oak tree with a hammock underneath, its branches spreading out over the tall brick wall that screens the entire area off from the city outside. It's freakishly warm today -- late-afternoon sun should not be balmy in a New York January, and yet today the garden is pleasant and mild. The back gate is just opening -- Lucien's voice precedes him into the garden, but not by much. Today he is in a light gray herringbone suit in sleek modern lines that hangs just a little too loose on his rapidly slimming frame, white spread collar shirt with labradorite cufflinks, a forest green tie in intricate floral scroll that complements the uncanny natural green of his eyes, and black monk shoes. His voice is quiet but intense to whoever is on the other end of his earpiece. "-- don't officially have such a policy, but unofficially I would sooner burn the place down than host a group of --" But as he's locking the gate behind himself and turning in to the garden his words cut off. Softer than before, steady: "My deepest apologies, I will have to call you back." Once the light blinks off he does not move, veeeery still like perhaps he has just spotted a Tyrannosaur across the garden. It's perhaps not quite a Tyrannosaur sitting at the patio table, but Elie certainly takes up more than her fair share of space. Pushing the weather envelope just a little, she is decked out in a strapless petal sleeve dress in sage cinched with a brilliant emerald sash, a matching though faintly translucent silk shawl draped loosely over bare shoulders -- springlike from flouncy updo to green strapped sandals with chunky cork heels, and skewing far more youthful than most women her age would dare to strive. The slant of her vivid green gaze narrows fractionally as she turns and rises in one smooth motion, green silks billowing. "Lucien." It might be a greeting or an accusation. She does not approach him, does not retreat either, just stands there as if guarding the house against him. "How far down your list priorities was this stop, I wonder." It is pointedly not a question, but here her tone suddenly skews animated -- almost gleeful. "Oh! I'm sure Matthieu will be ever so interested to hear about your day." Lucien stays put, fingers curling hard around the keys still held in his hand. "This stop?" He does not sound gleeful. He does not, really, sound anything at all, expression gone flat and his voice flatter. "I live here. This is my house. Matthieu --" His fist clenches harder, his eyes cutting towards the kitchen door. "You are here to see Matt?" Elie arches her eyebrows at Lucien. "He is my son." This in a tone of patient sufferance, as though she were explaining a difficult concept to a misbehaving child. "Of course I would be here for him in his time of need while you, despite -- as you say -- living here, are not." The jut of her chin is subtle yet inordinately disdainful. "{But after all, you are so terribly busy -- with drugs and whoring, I don't doubt. Was it too much to hope that you have grown in my absence, as I have myself?}" When she smiles again it's sharp with unsavory mirth. "{Though perhaps I have misjudged you. At least you haven't seen fit to drag him into your sordid affairs again.}" "Yes, but he --" Like a misbehaving child, perhaps, Lucien is stubbornly resisting understanding. He glances towards the back door as if it might give him answer. When all it gives him is silence, his gaze lowers to the ground. "{My sordid affairs have served you perfectly well in the past.}" His voice is quiet, and his eyes drag slowly back to his mother. "{What is it you have grown into}? Elie's eyebrows climb higher, her scoff half-way to a decidedly humorless laugh. "{Do you actually believe it served me that you manipulated him? That you used his body for a shield and then used his pain to turn him against me? That you stole him away with no regard for his health, mental or physical?}" She turns her eyes briefly to the sky as if praying for strength. "{No. It was you who poisoned his mind to serve your petty disregard for our family's needs -- his included. Seven years in that awful place gave me clarity, and come what may I will protect my darlings from your depravity.}" "{No regard? I took him to every treatment. I made sure he had food. I was there when the pain --}" But here Lucien's breath catches, his shoulders tightening somewhat less noticeably than if his suit were properly fitted. There's a quiet scraping of metal as his fist clenches harder around his keys. His voice is tighter when he speaks again, words coming out only with difficulty. "{The money served you well enough.}" Elie's eyes narrow fractionally, but a trick of the light makes them look darker with just that small shift. She takes a step toward Lucien when his breath catches -- just one step, but there is suddenly something menacing in her carriage. "{The pain? And how did you help him with that, hm?}" Her always pleasant voice has gone quieter and more saccharine. "{You made so much of your own discomfort, so perhaps you imagined him as weak and imbecilic as...}" She doesn't exactly stop mid-rant when she hears an excited scrambling of paws at the kitchen door, but trails off as though searching for a word that eludes her. The door to the kitchen opens and an exuberant Flèche promptly beelines for Lucien, followed by a somewhat more sedate Matt with the celadon tea set on a tray. He's in spring work clothes--a lilac dress shirt sans tie, gray linen vest, and matching slacks--and looks just a bit out of sorts despite his ready smile. "{Welcome home, darling!}" sounds normal enough, and though the reach of his power is hesitant it does ultimately thread into Lucien's and bolster its range. He comes around the table farther than he habitually does to set the tray down, his eyes darting furtively between his mother and brother. When he straightens he doesn't quite put himself between them, but something in the shift of his weight suggests he's ready to do so. Or maybe he just can't remember how to stand upright without cocking one hip in coquettish fashion. And maybe it says something if he's trying, anyway. In just the time it takes for the door to open and her eldest to emerge, Elie has transformed. Her hard blank mask lapses into an adoring smile that brightens her eyes. Her aggressive stance gentles and subtly reorients toward Matt, though she still stands straight enough that, in her heels and upright posture, she looks taller than her barefoot son. "{Oh, thank you, darling.}" Her sickly sweet voice, too, is suddenly lilting and mellifluous, which makes it all the more jarring when she turns back to Lucien and seemingly picks right up where she left off with, "{...as I was just telling Matthieu, it was such a marvelous coincidence that I saw you breakfasting with Doctor Xavier this morning at Le Sanctuaire. I didn't want to interrupt, as I'm sure you had important business, but I'm terribly curious --}" She interrupts herself to glance back at Matt, "{He is your employer, no? Or does he just fund that school of yours?}" Where Matt's power threads through Lucien's it finds a tense kind of disarray, his carefully groomed processing jarred somewhat out of whack and fussily re-tidying itself. It's not a very long-lived tidying; only a glance at Elie and something is stressed again, straining. Lucien's brow has creased just slightly when Elie picks back up; Matt can feel the jarring shock of confusion that has disrupted him, now. He drops to a crouch, scrunching his fingers into Flèche's soft fur, and this at least helps start to calm the knot inside him -- for just a moment. His fingers have frozen at Xavier's name and there's a flood of guilt, of anxiety, of an odd contradictory pride. Still, he doesn't speak quite yet, just bonking his forehead lightly against the dog's until he's organized himself a little bit more. "{You ought to have told me,}" his voice is soft, and he's not looking up, "{that we had company.}" Matt doesn't visibly react to his brother's disrupted neural activity, but he is slow to respond to Elie. "{Mm? Oh yes, he is my boss, also.}" He reflexively reaches to adjust Lucien's power himself, and though he stops and shifts the balance of his own to augment it more broadly instead. His concern jangles strange and muted--not just in his usual way--but spikes briefly at the soft admonishment along with a similarly muddled guilt. "{I ought to have,}" he agrees, brows furrowing, though only briefly. "{Mother, I asked you not to...}" What did he ask her? Did he ask her? There's a different kind of confusion now in his memory retrieval, but he doesn't seem particularly alarmed by it. He glances between Lucien and Elie again, and though the morass of his neurochemical landscape isn't clearing his affect suddenly is. "{I'm terribly sorry,}" he demures, at least in his speech--his eyes fix on Elie in keen if not unpleasant appraisal, "{but as I said, it's been such a long week at work and I'm quite out of sorts. Pray don't be cross.}" The smile he deploys is practically a mirror to hers, easy and warm and solicitous. "{We can chat again soon--you'll be coming by for Sera on Sunday, no?}" By contrast with either of her sons, Elie's brain is altogether quite in order, or at least is righting itself very handily from whatever had disturbed it before Matt's power made it visible to Lucien. That doesn't make her any less impatient when Lucien takes so very long to speak.Matt's somewhat distracted reply inspires no such exasperation. At least not until she looks back at her younger son. "{My dear boys, I am your mother.}" This in a tone of boundless, sorrowful patience. "{I would look after you, if only you would let me.}" She tsks softly, but her irritation bleeds away at Matt's entreaty. "{Oh, but I know you will have it your way or none at all. Do get some rest and a decent meal, or I'll be forced to intervene -- goodness, but you are both too skinny.}" She stops -- anyone else would be coming up short, but she's much too self-possessed for that -- and looks Lucien over again where he's huddled over the dog. "{But yes, I shall be by Sunday, and you ought to come with us! When's the last time you've taken communion -- no, don't tell me! I will see myself out.}" She kisses Matt once on each cheek, and turns with just enough force to set her shawl afloat behind her as she sweeps back inside with a sing-song, "Salut, mes loulous!" Lucien stays where he is, his mind slowly reasserting its equilibrium as Elie sweeps away. It's only once the door has closed behind her that he looks up, lips compressing slightly. "-- Why was she at L'Entente?" Matt fills two mugs with mellow Yunnan gold and brings one to his brother. "Why?" he echoes, faintly perplexed. "I suppose she probably hadn't headed out yet--this was early, no? Why was Chaz at L'Entente? The man loves his castle, to a pathological degree." This is bemused, with maybe a faint touch of disdain, but now he frowns, considering Lucien thoughtfully. "Is...something wrong?" There's another sharp jarring that goes through Lucien's mind. Perhaps more concerningly, he doesn't take the tea, just looking blank and uncomprehending up at Matt. "Hadn't headed --" His distress is Flèche's gain, because his fingers are scrunching down at her head again and she's turning eagerly into the inadvertent scritching. "{You cannot mean to say she is staying there?}" Matt is looking equally blank and uncomprehending down at his brother. "{Yes. You didn't know?}" He also doesn't seem to know what to do with the tea now, has perhaps not really considered that Lucien might not accept it. "{Why wouldn't she have told you?}" "{I've no idea,}" comes Lucien's extremely dry reply, "{until now she has always afforded me such respect.}" He's pushing himself slowly to his feet, wobbling just slightly before a reflexive internal adjustment steadies his dizziness. He he has plucked his phone from his pocket, heavily engaged with it as he drifts over to the garden table. He almost sets himself down in his usual seat, already pushed aside from the table when Elie vacated it, but then hesitates, moves aside from the table altogether to perch himself on the edge of the hammock. "{Connived a comped room,} the absolute audacity of her," he's saying a short time later, and though he doesn't quite toss his phone aside in disgust he drops it more heavily than he otherwise would onto the net beside him. "I expect she wanted to make sure I was not dragging you into my," his lips thin, and only now is he finally unclenching his other hand -- the teeth of his keys have bitten deep and painful red into his fingers and palm, "sordid affairs." He swallows, his voice gentler now, but cautious. "{I had not realized you were -- spending time with her.}" (Lucien --> Wendy): You are meant to keep me apprised of everyone who checks in to my hotel. (Wendy --> Lucien): Don't I? (Wendy --> Lucien): Should my memos be more detailed. SSNs maybe. Eye color. I can adjust. (Lucien --> Wendy): How long has Elie been there? (Wendy --> Lucien): Your mom? (Wendy --> Lucien): Almost all month. After your NYE thing. (Wendy --> Lucien): I assumed you knew, aren't you comping her room? The desk thinks you are. That seems like a thing you would know. (Lucien --> Wendy): I see. Matt drifts back over to the table, but also does not sit so much lean languidly against the back of his own chair. "{Mm. She's always been imperious, I'm not making excuses for her and I certainly haven't any stones throw there.}" He turns one hand up in mild resignation, the simultaneous amusement and suspicion beneath it plainer to Lucien's sense now. "{But at least we've never connived our way into any hotel rooms.}" He finally puts the mug down, and seems to consider picking the other one up, but ultimately doesn't. "I'd gladly meddle in your sordid affairs if you ever want my input again, and I don't give a single solitary fuck what she thinks about it." He braces his hands back against the chair, and the way it compresses his shoulders makes him look curiously small. "{We've talked. She keeps turning up here for Gae and Sera, who...}" A stir of confused discomfort tries to surface in his mind, then subsides. "{Well. It seemed wise to keep an eye on her. She's still a bitch, and probably always will be, but she is turning up...for them. And while there's no changing the past, I really do think she's changed.}" He swallows and looks down at the ground between his bare feet. Even muted--in his usual way, now--the particular blend of grief and anger that rises in him now is familiar enough to telegraph his next thought before he even speaks it. "{Prometheus makes a lot of us rethink our priorities, and she was in there a long time. She's been awful to you, but so have I and if I can reform...maybe she can, too.}" "{Seven hundred hotels in New York City and it's a coincidence,}" Lucien's voice is clipped, now, "{that she connived her way into mine? You can't possibly be comparing what we -- she is hardly wanting for --}" The keys are rattling once more as his hand clenches again, and behind his choked and faltering words there's a sick and terrified fury. "{Prometheus paid her well enough, I am quite sure she could afford a room. But, yes. Changed, certainly. She sells her children's bodies for science, now. Gods help Sera if she reforms any further.}" "{I don't think it's a coincidence. I think you're her son and she wants to reconcile with you and she doesn't know how because you--}" Matt closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, which does nothing to dispel his roiling frustration and confusion. He does sideline them briefly, however, at that surge of fear and anger from his brother. "{It was rude she didn't tell you, but that doesn't make it sinister. I know it's hard--I mean, she's a crazy bitch, I know a thing or two about that.}" He straightens up and takes a step toward Lucien. Then freezes, his eyes wide. "{What--what are you talking about? She was a subject.}" The wrenching pain of betrayal is visceral, far more acute than anything else Lucien has sensed in him today. "Whatever liberties it looked she had--you don't understand what it's like. If you're the right kind of useful they might isolate you, hold your labmates hostage, fuck with your head more ways than you can imagine, to say nothing of literal mind control." He presses one quivering hand to his mouth to stifle a noise that doesn't come, because as abruptly as his distress came it suddenly collapses again into blank stillness. His hand falls away limply. "{If you think my view is warped, which--it probably is, ask Gae or any of the other kids she was helping in there. You don't have to forgive her, but for the rest of our sakes, at least give her a chance to prove herself, I beg you.}" "{A subject. With her own apartment and paycheck and --}" Lucien's own confusion is growing, as is his anger -- but both of these grind to a sudden halt at his brother's words. The sudden collapse of his emotional landscape looks considerably different than Matt's, crumbling away to an odd void and then, just as readily, reconstructing itself. "{I am sorry. I --}" Lucien presses his thumb and forefinger to the hollows of his eyes, and his nod is heavy. "{For your sake.}"