Logs:Wrong Question

Wrong Question
Dramatis Personae Scott, Jax, Hank, Storm, Charles, Hive, Flicker, Kitty, Eli, Joshua, Scramble, Matt, Blink, Shane, Daiki, Kyinha, Tian-shin	thirteen very long years "See? I told you they'd come."
Location a tumultuous relationship
february 2009. fermi research laboratory. pennsylvania. It’s a cold night when the X-Men finally arrive. Heavy storm clouds hang over the facility. For those imprisoned there, there are two warnings before — the creeping chill of the air in the building, and a warm maternal voice in the back of the labrats heads, telling them to stay calm, to follow the people in black and yellow. Then the world bursts into motion. The guards of the cell block are dispatched with loud thuds and bright red bursts of light and a violent gust of cold wind. After the last of them stop moving, a furry blue hand presses a button in the guard tower and the cell doors burst open. There’s about to be a brand new hole in the side of the building, and outside it there is a jet waiting to take them all away. Cyclops brings up the rear, making sure every cell is empty and every obstacle to their escape is subdued. It’s not till they’re flying away that he looks over at Jax and gives him a tired thumbs up. The teenager wrapped up under a blanket in one of the seats looks considerably different than when he left the mansion Many Months ago -- a hefty accumulation of scars, new bandaging over one eye, once-colorful hair washed out and faded at its shaggy ends, athletic frame whittled down to just a gaunt and faintly glowing mess of skin and bones. Where he lacks in stature he's made up for in presence, no longer the skittish mouse that used to scurry Xavier's halls; he'd helped shepherd his fellow inmates to the jet before collapsing into his own seat and returns Scott's thumbs up with a grateful if weary smile before nudging the half-drowsing audiokinetic slumped under the blanket beside him to confide, pleased: "See? For real superheroes, I told you they'd come." — march 2009. xavier's school. "Fermi wasn't the only one," Jax's one eye is wide, his tone imploring. He hasn't taken a seat, pacing restless and agitated before his teacher's desk, shimmers of sharp and uneasy yellow-orange light preceding his path through the room. "We know Sebastian got brought there from some lab out west. Montana. He's got a brother still out there an' Lord only knows how many others they're doing the same thing to -- but y'all could help." His pacing stops for just a moment, arm wrapping around his chest to curl his hand around his opposite biceps. "Y'all could help, right?" The look that Dr. McCoy and Ms. Munroe exchange over her desk when Jax stops pacing is long and uncomfortable, blue eyes boring into blue fur with sharp anger. Hank looks away first, fixing his feline stare at Jax. “We’re investigating,” he says, “the extent of Prometheus’ operation, before we make another move. I know you are impatient, but I assure you we will do all we can.” Ororo leans back in her desk chair, quiet, as a sudden gust of wind threatens to shatter the windows. — april 2009. xavier's school. The influx of new faces has come without much forewarning, for most at the school -- though to some it might be easier than others to feel the frightened and hurt minds that roll up, the trauma and relief, their gratitude and wariness and exhaustion and exhilaration at a recent and unexpectedly found freedom. And, woven in among and through them, vast and encompassing, something else furious and fierce and battered and bloodied: an immense telepathic presence still screaming with the last terrified echoes of the souls it has recently snuffed out. They claw in a restless cacophony at the ill-formed borders of a mind hungry to grow itself yet larger than its already monstrous heft. When Jackson's ragtag group of rescuees spill themselves onto Xavier's School grounds the physical presence attached to this is, underwhelmingly, a skinny scrap of a youth just on the cusp of adulthood, shivering in the mild spring weather as he drags himself slowly up onto the front porch swing, paying no heed to the wiiide berth the others are giving him. Against the backdrop of the young telepath's chaotic thoughts, the subtle weight of outside psionic attention might feel like much at all. At first. Even when its presence grows more obvious, the other mind gives off few impressions. Though backed by a prodigious reservoir of power poised to fall upon the newcomer, its investigations are careful, steady, and methodical. And it is terrified. << I am Charles Xavier. Welcome to my school. >> The words that surface at last in the young man's head sound for all the world like they were spoken aloud at a reasonable conversational distance in crisp Received Pronunciation. Xavier's tone is firm and even. << This place is a refuge for mutant children. I would advise you not to attempt any violence here. >> The hungry churn of minds balloons out -- for a moment encompassing Xavier, folding him in effortlessly until he is one with their fear, anger, one with the keening wails of the recently-murdered left behind in the bloody halls of the laboratory, one with the ferocious power that so easily stamped out rescuer and labrat alike. << refuge >> << (refuge) >> << (refuge) >> << (refuge) >> echoes skeptically in their thoughts; << we've heard that before. >> And then the connection pulls back as if nothing had happened, leaving Xavier solitary once more. Hive's skinny shoulders draw inward in time with a guilty-sick shudder, his hand curling tight around a chain of the porch swing before he pulls himself back to his feet. << Violence seems to follow us. >> — april 2010. kitty’s dorm room. xavier’s school. The first aid kit has been well picked over by the time Kitty gets to the cold pack. She pops the bubbles within between her fingers, waiting for it start to get cold before passing it over. She’s mostly calmed down, her expression full of concerned confusion instead of furious hurt as she looks over Flicker’s injuries once more. Her eyes flicker to the open door, frowning. “So, what, is this like, a Young X-Men kind of thing? Missions for extra credit for seniors?” She smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Thought they don’t take students. I asked.” Flicker's face has been pale around its bruising, but at the questioning he flushes red, bowing his head to the ice pack that he takes from Kitty. "No! Please don't tell them, this is -- you know how I said I came from somewhere -- kind of. Bad. Before here? We're just -- there's other kids still there that we're trying to get out." His normally impeccable posture is a bit hunched where he sits at her desk, and his shoulders curl in tighter. "It's not -- the X-Men --" He hesitates, a small frown flitting across his face. "They didn't have anything to do with this." “Oh, good. I’m less jealous.” Kitty blinks, once, twice, brows furrowing. “Wait, what?” --- july 2010. joshua's apartment. lower east side. It's arrogant to call this closet a room, really, but it has a window and the door only locks from the inside and after years of living in a Prometheus cell that's not nothing. The flickering candles balanced on the cramped ridge that passes for a windowsill may be a bit of a fire hazard, but it's vanishingly unlikely that any of the dozen punks jammed into this dilapidated rowhouse are going to complain about one more questionable safety practice. Elijah's smile is lit warm and glowing in the candlelight as he leans up against the wall, gesticulating with a torn-off hunk of challah as he talks. "-- whole school full of us, Joshua! The teachers and all! And," his voice is dropping to an excited hush, "they have this superhero team working out of there I'm not even kidding. Like the ones who came for us but -- not kids like uniforms and a jet and everything. I'm going to be one of them you'll see. I bet you could, too, they could use someone like you." Tucked up against the opposite wall, quietly nibbling his own piece of challah, Joshua pulls his eyes away from the dancing candlelight just long enough to raise an eyebrow at his friend before returning to watching the city through the glowing light. --- may 2012. sub-basement. xavier’s school. “…We keep backup visors and other power regulators in this locker, but any of the other unclaimed ones on this side you are welcome to use for your uniform, for plainclothes, or other personal effects while we are on mission. Now, if you are interested in learning to fly the Blackbird, you will need to arrange that with Scott or Ororo. I recommend Scott, personally. Among the X-Men with Polyphemus-like tendencies, he is the one with his eye on straight.” Hank pauses briefly in his orientation monologue to chuckle at his own joke, then launch himself, prehensile feet first, out the exit of the plane into the rest of the hangar. “Perhaps having you around will help keep our other Cyclops on the straight and narrow, hm? You always did create fewer extra-curricular problems – we all hope your time here will be a more productive outlet. Down here, I must show you the armory, I have some friends at MIT that have been very generous…” Flicker has been fidgeting with the zipper of his stiff new jacket as he trails Hank through the sub-basement. His expression shifts into a brief frown at the mention of other Cyclops, his fidgeting briefly falling into stillness. "Jax is a very good --" he starts, before getting derailed. Blinking over beside Hank with a somewhat wider-eyed: "Armory? Gosh you all are really well --" The hitch in his words is almost small enough to overlook, as is the slight sink of his shoulders as he looks back to the locker. "-- set up down here." —- june 2012. scramble's apartment An air mattress takes up much of the floor space in the tiny living room, the only table having been folded and tucked away behind the threadbare couch. Much of the air mattress, in turn, is taken up with fresh laundry, new to the house though obviously not new in any other respect of the word. "I got a few extra shifts next week, so that should help." An underslept Scramble is folding clothes with a kind of mechanical determination. "I know y'all's Mister Clean-looking boss up the school don't want nothin' to do with our terrorism, but couldn't he at least kick us some dead presidents for clothes? Or bandages?" She glances toward the kitchenette. Bites her lower lip. Adds, much more quietly, "Or food?" Jax looks better rested, bright-eyed though the occasional fuzzing at the edges of his colourful hair and makeup belies his fresh-faced appearance. He's helping with the folding, slow but precise, his head bowing at the questioning. "I can ask he might..." he starts, but then stops with a slow sinking of teeth against his lower lip. The silence is a bit too long for his chipper tone to ring entirely true when he continues, "-- you get us a shoppin' list, Ryan an' I have pretty much got our grocery shopliftin' down to an art form." — august 2013. upstate new york. The air is vibrating, the buzzing filling the woods with a droning that reverberates through trees and ground and people alike. Flicker half seems like he's buzzing, too, his usual shimmer-flit of motion almost in tune with the sound that thrums all around them -- though his jumps have been growing slower and more erratic with each of the enormous creatures that drops out of the sky. He's pale and getting paler, X-uniform and hair both drenched with sweat, even the bolstering effect of his teammate only going so far to keep him in the air, and when he wavers, path stuttering, to catch himself and his breath against the side of a tree, he barely even seems to notice the giant bee that's aiming its stinger straight for his back. Neither does he seem to notice his teammate barreling towards him, crashing into his side with all the force in her five foot something frame. He might notice the giant bee fly through the both of them, stinger impaling itself in the bark of the tree and not Flicker’s body. Kitty shoves Flicker down onto the ground, clear of the bee’s atoms, before reaching and solidifying her fist inside the oversized insect's head. When she looks back at Flicker, bee blood on her hand, her face is more terrified than angry. “What is with you right now?” She yells over the bzz-bzz-bzz of the swarm. “You look like you’re going to pass out —“ Another bee flies through her and is quickly parted with its internal organs, “— get back to the plane if you’re going to die on us!” Just ducking out from behind the tree Flicker was leaning against, Eli is looking less hearty than his usual robust self, pale and dappled with still-healing bruises. The aura of revitalizing energy that normally accompanies him is fainter, washing in wan pulses over his teammates. "Nobody's dying today but we could do with like," despite his own he sounds distinctly cheerful, much more prosaically reaching up with a long knife to spear one of the giant bees, "a huge can of Raid in our armory, we should ask Dr. McCoy ffffff--" This sentence just ends in a sharp hiss, a sudden stronger flare of energy briefly swelling through the others and then winking out entirely as another of the bees jabs him in the arm. Though his knife finds its head soon enough, he's leaving a steady drip of blood on the forest floor, casting some doubt on his (slightly less confident): "... we. Got this." --- october 2014. headmaster's office, xavier's school. Xavier's wheelchair hums quietly back to the little chess table by the window, where he settles two cups of Earl Grey across the currently unused board. "Of course, the team would be lucky to have you, as often as your studies can spare you," he's saying as he cradles his own tea. "Your passion and dedication are marvelous -- may you never lose that spirit -- but I would advise you to temper them with your intelligence and judgment, too. And not just for your own sake." He raises his eyes and levels a fond searching gaze at his visitor. "I know you worry about Jackson's...extracurricular missions. I do, too, which is why I hope you can inspire your friends to pursue lasting change through education, cooperation, and nonviolent resistance." He starts to lift his teacup for a sip, but pauses with the gesture half-completed. "The future needs you and them, alive." Kitty’s gaze has drifted out onto the grounds below in the time the Professor has been gone, watching a game of frisbee slowly form on the front lawn as students are released from class. She’s slow to tear her attention back to the chessboard, to the tea, to Xavier’s face. Her thoughts are loud, crowded -- nostalgia for her time at the school (Flicker’s face bruised and pale in her dorm room), doubt in ability to balance everything on her plate already (Eli’s blood drip-drip-dripping on the forest floor), so much love for her team already (Jax and his kids, Spencer is so young it hurts her heart) and a burning desire to live, live, live to see this better world. “I hope so, Professor,” she says at last, reaching for her own tea. “I hope so, too.” --- may 2016. headmaster's office, xavier's school. There's a chaotic churn of imagery in Jackson's mind, worried-tumultuous spinning out about the horrors that might be being inflicted on his friends at this moment, but the images no longer seep out into the world around him even in his agitation. "We ain't never seen eye to eye on this, sir, but please --" There's a slight waver in his voice, and though the light does not flutter the fierce power stored within him roils. "They ain't just pluckin' folks out of jails no more they stole 'em straight from their home." In his mind there are faces in clear relief among the discord; Eli's bright smile, Joshua's quiet solemnity, Halim's steady calm. "One of ours. One of yours. That's gotta mean somethin', sir?" On the far side of his desk, Xavier has been listening quietly, his tea untouched. His hands are steepled before him and his mouth pressed into a grim line. "It does, and this is indeed a disturbing development. I've been dreading this day since you first started going after Prometheus." He peels his fingers away from each other and makes a small gesture of helplessness. "I'm not blaming you, but we are talking about a U.S. government agency that you have been attacking for years. It was always a matter of when and not if they would strike back, and if we go after them, it will put the school in their crosshairs, too." His hands sink back down to the desk, and his gaze drops with them. "I'm sorry, Jackson. We cannot take this risk." — july 2016. xavier's school. danger room. The world around them is in ruins, these blocks of the city crumpled and pulled down by some immense outpouring of electromagnetism. In the middle of it Joshua is looking half a ruin himself, button-down wrinkled, hair shaggily overgrown, too many weeks' worth of beard untended on his face. Only the stiff X-jacket folded over his arm is crisp and new, and he holds it closer, eyes just slightly wide and his lips moving silently as the simulation melts away around them to leave just the immense and quiet dome arching overhead. "Right, man," he's murmuring half to himself, lifting a hand to idly brush the scrap of torn black ribbon affixed to his collar, "legit superheroes." His head has tipped back to peer up overhead before he drops his steady gaze to fix on the other man here with him. "What's the one for the labs look like?" It's frank and curious, his voice quiet when he continues, "Shoulda listened to him sooner. Maybe together there'll be a lot fewer like him." Behind ruby quartz glasses, Scott blinks. “The labs.” He glances up and away, frowning in the direction of the control room. Opens his mouth to answer, presses his lips together tight instead when Joshua goes on. The corner of his lips twitch, eyebrows furrowing together. It’s quiet for a moment, Scott looking resolutely up at the window like he’s arguing with it. “We — y’know, we haven’t programmed them in yet.” He glances down at his watch, up again to the control room, then finally back to Joshua. “Cerebro, build me a cell block — pull from 2009, Pennsylvania mission logs.” A quiet, empty version of the Fermi lab builds up around them, scaffolded in blue light before the illusions settle in. “We have some updating to do, I think, to get it ready for the rest of your team.” — august 2016. headmaster's office. xavier's school Matt has his chin propped in the palm of one hand where he sits idly perusing a syllabus plucked from Xavier's desk while his host makes tea, his mental notes on it an eclectic mixture of curiosity, excitement, and skepticism. Now he sets the paper down and looks up to receive his cup. "Thank you, Professor." His mind is still focused on the syllabus, which somehow conjures lurid images of hospital rooms and laboratories, of his labmates and the friends who eventually delivered them. Yet the intensity of his horror and despair and relief are all distant and muted, his attention eerily steady. "I cherish the opportunity you are giving me, not only to educate and inspire--" << --and hold down a real job-- >> "--but to use my powers to help our people." He drums the fingers of his free hand over a section of the syllabus entitled "The Duty to Act". Xavier's faint smile of benevolent interest does not waver, but there's somehow a suggestion of disapproval that to Matt coincides with a softly dissonant psionic impulse. "I think that the peculiarities of a power like yours make it easy to focus too much inward, putting mutantkind before the rest of humanity, which can only deepen suspicions and reinforce biases on both sides of the rift." He tsks and raises his own cup for a sip. "Make no mistake, I value beyond measure your ability to help other mutants learn control. But it is vital to understand this in the context of the greater goal of harmonious coexistence with those who do not possess the X-gene." Xavier can't directly sense the metamutant's powers coil in readiness, but he can feel Matt holding himself back, talking down his incipient rage. His bright green eyes blink slow and incredulous. "I think if humans hate us for taking care of our own when no one else will, maybe we can't afford the cost of their love." — february 2017. lower east side. FDNY's response time to the Lower East Side is leisurely, and by the time the first ladder truck shows up the entire apartment building is already engulfed in flames. There are startlingly few critical injuries among the hastily evacuated residents huddled out on the street, who are presently joined by a coughing middle-aged man as he stumbles out through a swirling purple portal. There's just a glimpse of the mysterious cloaked figure on the other side of the equally mysterious portal. Blink isn't coming out just yet. Her next portal opens onto a raging inferno, the sudden supply of oxygen it brings stoking the flames even higher, tongues of fire and a wall of hot air slamming through before she can shut it down and knocking her back against a clutter of furniture. She goes down in a heap, coughing. Purple light flicks and sparks out on the street like a lighter out of fuel, never resolving into anything large enough to pass through. Amidst the flames and the smoke it's easy to miss one more blurred shape fluttering through the unstable building, sweeping the apartments for stragglers human or pet alike. The blur doesn't stop by Blink, just whisk her coughing form out into the cooler-clearer air of the street outside before solidifying, Flicker's X-jacket unzipped and soot-stained face slightly crumpled in concern. "This kind of thing is real dangerous without backup." he's saying as he offers a water bottle her way. "I know evangelizing is kind of a trope but so is dying horribly because you've hared off alone on a solo mission. I really think ours has a lot to offer." — april 2018. sub-basement. xavier’s school. It is unfortunate for Scramble, probably, that it’s Kitty who’s caught her before raid practice, because the young white woman is oozing extra anxiety disorder now that’s she’s tried to engage Scramble in conversation. It’s been painful for Kitty, at least, as she tries so, so hard to be helpful. “Cerebro can put in pretty much anything you want, it’s been super useful for X-Men stuff,” she’s currently babbling, “because like you never want the first time you run into killer giant hornets or like, literally into collapsed rubble to be for real, you know?” Scramble, in her surplus store tactical gear, has maintained a flatly unimpressed expression through this rambling explanation. "It ain't gonna be the first time." Her tone is clipped, tight with barely contained anger. "We been running into shit for real, and you know this." She takes one step closer, looming over Kitty now, the hungry tendrils of her power tugging and tugging through she does not give them free rein. "You an X...woman, if you want to help, why don't you just help? If you're not too busy chasing giant hornets." — may 2019. sub-basement. xavier’s school. Scott is waiting for him after the raid team finishes training that night, leaning against the wall, hands buried in the pockets of his motorcycle jacket. It’s only after Jax exits that he stands up up fully. “Hey, Jax.” He catches the younger man by a vividly tattooed arm. “Jackson, wait.” The tightness in Scott’s voice is different from usual— there is no confidence behind his baritone, only concern. “You can’t keep doing this. Flicker isn’t well, I saw Shane in there. You can’t seriously be taking him after the last one, what if he loses an arm next?“ There’s another question, buried under that one, that Scott really shouldn’t ask but does anyway — “What if this time it’s Shane that dies?” Jax freezes, what little color there is in his face bleeding away as he turns towards his former advisor. The silence pulls taut between them, finally broken by Jax's soft drawl: "-- Shane'd be dead already if we'd left him in those cages." There's less heat there than pleading, his gaze heavy with exhaustion when he lifts it to Scott. "You want to keep us all back out of 'em, help us. Don't just stand there an' tell us to leave folks to suffer what we done suffered." Scott doesn’t say anything at first, but his grip on Jax’s arm loosens. His lips press into a thin line. “I — we — are giving you everything we can. We aren’t — we have to keep the school safe, that means not picking fights with the government. Definitely not working publicly with Brotherhood members.” The tremor in his tone is gone, replaced by something a little colder, a little more detached. “Just think about calling it off.” Then, softer, he adds, “Please.” — july 2019. jax's apartment. The apartment is sparkling and the kitchen counters heavily laden with cooling racks of cookies. "-- first Eli an' now..." Jax is frowning down into an enormous pot of chickpea stew on his stove that probably does not currently need any tending; still, the stirring gives his restless hands some place to be as he speaks. "I shoulda called this off ages ago Professor Summers been right. I know how Flicker gets too an' -- What if we don't get him back?" And soon on the heels of this, his grip on his spoon a little tighter, "This whole time I thought weren't no way we could just leave people to rot in there but -- What else are we gonna lose tryin'?" Kitty is probably not helping lower the ambient anxiety in the apartment, given that she is pacing “through” chairs and tables and every other obstacle. “You’re going to get him back,” she declares as she walks through the fridge to Jax’s side. “He’s going to come back and he’s going to laugh at all these stress cookies.” Kitty reaches for one herself, worrying too soft crumbs off the edges instead of eating it as she considers the question. “I don’t — maybe, I don’t know, maybe it’s like, put on your own air mask before helping others?” Kitty solidifies next to Jax, wrapping one arm around his torso. “Maybe you gotta take care of your people before you can help everyone else in the world.” — march 2020. creative little garden. east village. It's quiet, here, their mind only recently shorn of its excess weight, the clutter of So Many Other thoughts and experiences joining theirs -- now gone. A blessing and a curse, really, where Hive has been left <strikethrough>alone</alone> here among the snowdrops and crocuses and hellebores to go over -- and over -- and over -- (a shrieking psionic agony tearing through their mindlink) (mercenaries kitted out with pouches full of shrapnel) << You can't keep this up. >> The faint shiver that's running through him isn't entirely from the inadequacy of his thin chambray shirt against the early spring chill. << (too much) >>, rustles across the exhausted landscape of their mind. << (when does it end?) >> A faint blur drops down into the garden beside Hive; his arms are lifting even as Dawson slips the jacket onto his skinny shoulders. The beauty of the garden's early blooms, the bright sky overhead, the chill in the air, ping bright against a mind corded tense as piano wire. << We can. >> There's a drumbeat that sounds in their mind at the musing, the notes of Battle Hymn of the Republic soft and distant below the leafrustle of Hive's thoughts. The answer summoned up as Dawson drops down to sit beside him is brighter, fiercer: << When the last cage is broken. >> — october 2020. sub-basement. xavier’s school. Normally, there is some pre-meeting chatter to cut through, rarely on the scale of the time Storm had to literally make thunder clap to quiet the room, but usually there is something for Scott to cut through. Not so now. Jackson's habitual seat is empty, today -- just a slightly singed X-jacket hanging on the back of his chair, its beadazzled smiling sun cast into shadow where the seat has been hastily shoved away from the table and into the shadows in the room's corner. Whatever his reputation, Shane is usually attentive in meetings; today, though, he just slouches in his seat, head down on the table and his huge black eyes glassily unfocused, looking more through than at the fountain pen that spins between his forefinger and thumb, its polished maple burl barrel just a gleaming blur against his blue skin. Beside Shane, Daiki sits ramrod straight and still save for his restlessly flicking eyes -- down to the phone in his hands, up to his teammates, over to Shane -- his presence intensely and incongruously compelling despite his relative inactivity. Blink has her arms wrapped tightly around herself, making her already diminutive frame look even smaller as she toys with the stark white ribbon cinching the braid hanging over her shoulder. Kyinha leans back against a console, dressed to the nines as he had been when he got the news; whatever his face has to tell, it will tell only to a select few, his rage hidden from the naked eye by the unnatural darkness of his skin, though his halo has flared bright enough to be seen even in the depth of autumn. Kitty stands, too, not leaning against anything. When Ororo goes to put a hand on the young woman’s shoulder, it falls straight through. There's a rapid shimmer-blur of motion just outside the door, resolving itself disappointingly into Joshua's slouch-shouldered figure, usually punctual but dragging himself in slow and tired to take up a position leaning against a back wall. Scott drags his gaze across the assembled X-Men, lips tight. He presses his hands against the table, head bowed. It’s Hank who eventually cuts through the oppressive silence, leaning forward onto blue elbows. “So. Now what?” — january 2021. headmaster's office. xavier's school It's unclear whether Xavier made the coffee himself or had it brought in, but the headmaster is doctoring his own cup now, keeping his eyes on the task as much as his guest. "I know things have been difficult for you," he says, stirring in a generous splash of (definitely dairy) creamer. "I only wish you had come to me, or Dr. McCoy, before you came to harm." He sets the spoon down delicately. "Dawson's loss has been wrenching, but..." His hands fold together on the desk in front of him, then unfold. "Those raids have been killing you for a long time. Not just the physical danger, but the pressure and responsibility and grief. Who next? Joshua? Matt? God forbid, Shane?" He sighs, looking suddenly old and frail. "Your cause is noble -- that I have never disputed, even if I cannot condone how you go about it. But you cannot keep doing this to yourself -- or to them. Come to your senses, Jackson." When he raises his eyes it is nearly impossible to doubt that he is truly concerned, and truly afraid. "I don't want to lose any more of you." Across the desk, Jackson is curled tight around his untouched coffee as though desperate to absorb its warmth. Here in the shortest of days there's no illusion to mask the shadows under his eyes, the weight he's been losing; though Joshua's work has left no scarring on his wrists it can't erase the twisted warping that now runs through his vivid tattoos there. His normally overbright mindscape is clouded heavy with grief and guilt, darkening further at the Professor's words. It's an effort for him to pull words from the storm, an effort for him to look up at the older man. "You're right, sir." The concession drops leaden and defeated as his head bows again. "We can't keep up like this no more." — july 2021. sub-basement. xavier’s school. Blink is still zipping up her X-jacket as she exits the locker room through a designated door rather than one of her own making. Her thoughts are busy and faintly troubled, skipping between an encounter with a bigot in Chelsea earlier, the sorry state of her personal finances, and what scenario to run for her training session. She's turning to head for the Danger Room, but stops dead in her tracks when she sees the person coming down the hall. "Oh! Hi, what are you..." She frowns deep, her mind wordlessly answering the question she hadn't actually finished asking. The thought of raid sends her straight to a single memory sharpened by love and grief, Flicker's face, pale and drawn and haunted, the first time she'd seen him he returned from Blackburn. There is a kind of reluctance when she amends that to, "Oh God. You -- you're doing another one?" << -- can they even do it without him? >> It's the memory of Flicker that does it, perhaps, dredging up another presence behind the grey-green eyes that look back at Blink. Any verbal answer is preempted by a low roiling churn of feeling that blows in cold and unsettling psionic gust through Blink's mind. Though it amplifies the doubt there there's a contradictory resolve buried in it, steel boned with grief and fury. << Gonna be out here till the last cage is broken, >> comes Hive's reply. And, much softer, in a rustling of dry leaf litter that feels almost-but-not-quite like laughter, << or we all are. >> — january 2022. xavier’s school. The first class has been deployed to a new mission today; school defense. As the media descend upon Westchester, they are finding themselves impeded by unfavorable weather, by more irritable dispositions, and by the rotating cast of faculty members enforcing a boundary around the school. It’s very little, just soft nudges from Ororo and Jean, when they could do so much more – it’s only meant to decrease the total media presence, not completely drive them away. It's no doubt the crowd at the gates that has prompted Jackson's delay about actually leaving the mansion this afternoon; he's slow to tidy his art room, slow to collect his things, hasn't quite yet bothered to track down his wayward teenager and make sure Spence has actually packed up before shabbat. When he does drag himself outside it's to give the front drive and gate an apprehensive look. "Hive'd have them cleared out no time," is grumbled half to himself, one arm wrapping tight around his chest in a half- hug. "Startin' to feel like half a prisoner in here." From the media line Scott is returning to the house, catching Jax on his approach back into the mansion. Behind his glasses, dark bags hang under his eyes from too many long shifts out there. “Well. Cost of being a public hero.” Scott shrugs, hands tucked into the pockets of his motorcycle jacket as he glances back at the crowded front drive. “Was it worth it?” — january 2022. salinas residence. oaxaca. Tian-shin bursts from the house in what is for her, even at this early hour, a shocking level of disarray: hastily dressed, no make-up, long hair damp and helter-skelter. "Joshua!" She's waving her phone long before she's gotten close enough for its screen to be decipherable. "{Did you see the news?}" Though she habitually speaks Spanish here, this tumbles out in Mandarin. By the time she's gotten near enough to actually show what she's worked up about, she has to unlock her screen again. "{There's this--Daiki wrote an article--there're these secret government labs! They're experimenting on mutants.}" Her dark brown eyes are very, very wide. "{We have to do something about this!}" Joshua's been tucked onto the far side of the patio, stretched out on the railing with one leg dangling down and one crooked up toward his chest, head propped against the porch column. His gaze is tipped out toward the mist rising over the mountains, hands cupped around a large mug of coffee that he squeezes tighter at Tian-shin's first urgent cry. His eyes shoot toward her, wider, posture coiling as his leg starts to pull up over the rail -- until she finishes speaking and his breath comes back out all in a rush. His head thunks back against the column, one side of his mouth hooking up into a crooked half-smile as he lifts his coffee for a long swallow, eyes turning back out to the mist-shrouded mountains below. — january 2022. administrative offices. xavier's school The door to Scott's office slams open without preamble. Kyinha is not the nightmarish figure of fire and darkness he was in the warmer months. Even by winter standards, he looks unwell, his brown skin sickly and ashen, his black curls dull and limp. But there's a fire in his dark eyes quite apart from the heat of his dorment mutation. "You knew!" He strides right up to his team leader's desk and slams both palms down on its edge. It's hard to tell whether he's leaning forward to menace Scott or just trying to hold himself up. "You knew, yes? And Charles, too, yet you do nothing!" His face twists into a disdainful scowl. "You say, we use our abilities to help those in need, but we do not even protect our own people. Our own team!" He pushes himself back up, makes a wordless noise of disgust, and spits on the desk where he had just been leaning. "You are not worthy to lead." The heavy metal desk creaks when Kyinha slams into it, the red pen in Scott’s hand leaving an ugly wiggle over a student’s work from the interruption. Scott looks up, face carefully neutral and inscrutable behind his ruby quartz glasses, as he caps the pen. His jaw tightens. “Yes, we knew. Not — all of this. But most. Jax’s team trained here.” It’s not clear if this is offered as a confession or as absolution from the crimes Kyinha accuses him of. His head dips ever so slightly downward. “Maybe you’re right. But I am the leader of this team. If that’s a problem, you are welcome to take it up with the Professor.” — february 2022. headmaster's office. xavier's school. Xavier's chair is turned toward the window, through which two NYPD SUVs can be seen wending down the picturesque drive, bearing away Jackson Holland and his captors. The hand that lifts his lowball for a sip is shaking ever so faintly, the bottle of scotch still sitting out on his desk. "There was nothing I could do, Scott." His voice is soft, his wonted confidence only a ghostly echo. "If I had stopped them, others would have come far more ready to do violence, and it would do Jackson no favors to be accused of evading arrest via telepathy." He puts his face in the palm of his empty hand as if unwilling to watch the vehicles disappear from view. "I tried to guide him. I tried to warn him. We both did." He lifts his head and finally turns to his protégé. "Why wouldn't he listen?" Scott doesn’t pull his gaze from the window until the SUVs leave the grounds. His mind is shockingly calm — Scott is methodically going through every possible outcome of the arrest, the one where the X-Men intervene (bad, now), the one where Xavier sends them away (bad, later), iterating through possibilities until he runs out of ideas. There is no good ending — the one in front of them is the best he can think of, given the circumstances. When Scott goes for a measure of scotch, the simulation in his mind changes; every confrontation, every warning, every moment between Jax and Scott over the last decade that he can remember loops through, trying to find the moment where this became inevitable. He takes a sip, mind landing on that first raid, the too-skinny teenager with one eye singing his praises to a new friend: “See? I told you they'd come.” <<If we had kept going, would it have come to this?>> Out loud, he only says, “I think that’s the wrong question.”