Logs, the Memorial Day Edition: Part II
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Friday, May 23, 2008, 11:41 PM
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=XS= Kitchen - Lv 1 - Xavier's School
A relic of Victorian times, this kitchen is vast, with more than one oven and several stainless steel work surfaces taking the space once claimed by coal hoppers, cooking hearths and cast-iron stoves. Walls still done in period plaster and tile, and the floor still the original fieldstone, fluorescent lights have been installed overhead to bring the lighting up to modern level. At meal times, kitchen workers scurry to and fro with pans and food and various other sundry items, under the watchful eye of the aging head cook, but once past, order is restored, with copper-bottomed pans hanging above the kitchen island, and a tray of cold snacks left out for foraging students and staff alike. Folding wood doors screen off a pantry capable of holding food for an large household's weekly meals -- or three days' worth of teenager food.
[Exits : [H]allway and [B]ack [P]atio]
[Players : Hank ]
The end of a long day's parent-teacher conferencing deserves a little celebration for those who have survived it. Dr. Grey, deputy headmistress, has surely faced her share of them and thus her celebration, quiet though it may be, is well underway as she waits for the coffee maker to stop dripping and blupping its way through a fresh pot. To wit: Jean has a tub of Haagen Daas, and is spooning some of it into a bowl with an air of intent concentration. There is a stack of reports still to be read sitting on the corner of the kitchen island, but they are, for the moment, ignored.
There footsteps in the hallway, another teacher in search of sustenance. The figure that appears at the doorway is much bulkier than the footsteps would have suggested, but it is Hank who has come for a similar dairy treat. Still in impeccable starched white shirt and respectable blue tie, his expression shows the tiredness his wardrobe does not. Finding Jean already in the kitchen, he pauses a few steps in to greet lightly, "Good evening my dear. Finished for the day?"
"At last," Jean agrees, with a sigh and a wave of a hand to bring another dish down. It apprently goes without saying that Hank is to be allowed his share of her high-class ice cream. Mayan chocolate, or so the label proclaims. "I swear, my face was going to fall off if I had to muster up one more helpful, understanding, yet perfectly reassuring smile... and I still have a whole raft of reports flagged by ComSys as Of Interest. You?"
"Much the same. My reassuring expression requires that special something to convey that I am truly a qualified teacher and not likely to consume my students in a fit of pique." Smiling his thanks to Jean at the flight of the bowl, he crosses absently to one of the drawers to select an accompanying spoon. "The endeavor is more draining than one might expect, considering the lack of physical exertion involved. I am grateful that I heal rapidly enough for my stitches to no long trouble me. That would put the finishing touches on the experience."
"I assume by the stitches you're speaking of that fellow that you bumped into in the City," says Jean, with a flicker of concern over the reminder of stitches. The ice cream portioned out, she delivers Hank's bowl to him, moves hers to the island, and tucks the rest away in the freezer to stay cold before transport away from student cravings. "And not any of our visiting parents."
"Bumped into, exchanged injuries with. That fellow indeed." Hank frowns down at his ice cream for a moment, tucking the spoon in but not yet tasting it. The chocolate goodness is unhelpful, not even a drip of melting cream to watch. As he looks up again he smoothes out the expression to say lightly, "Our visiting parents are innocent of any such violence. In fact most of them are far too intimidated to venture a harsh word much less a blow. I hope your meetings were completed with equal civility?"
"Oh, most definitely, I'm pleased to report... although I had to break up what was promising to be a fistfight on the lawn between a couple of the fathers," Jean shares, bowl in one hand, spoon in the other, and with a pause of rapturous silence as she takes her first bite of the icecream. Across on the counter, the coffee maker continues to blup contentedly away. "Have you heard anything more about him?" she wonders. "He seems to have made the news."
"What precipitated the fistfight?" Hank wonders mildly. He too takes a spoonful of ice cream, though his enjoyment is more distracted and not quite as rapturous. He gestures with his smudged spoon in what is probably the general direction of his room saying, "I did notice an article in the Times concerning another encounter at an arcade. I was glad to be reassured that I did him no lasting damage, though I am not in the least surprised by his actions, based on my assessment of his mental state from the little he said to me. And his power establishes him as a significant danger to even the most accomplished of opponents." His thoughts are not quite as eloquently expressed as sometimes, showing to someone familiar with him the breadth of his previous thought on the matter.
"Father A's son has his eye on Father B's only daughter," Jean supplies, lending the feuding fathers at least a small bit of anonymity, despite the twitching of her lips. They still immediately on Hank's news, and Jean takes another bite of ice cream before reflecting that "We really do need to try and get a location on him. I'll have to check in with Charles and see if Cerebro's mapping functions are restored. Maybe if we can get to him, and get to him in the right way to hold him... what's your take?" she wonders.
Hank smiles at her choice of anonymous names and at the motivation before answering her question. "Primarily that his violence is part of self-destructive and even suicidal behavior rather than being motivated in any way by the people he attacks. If I were to guess, I would put him as having endured some great trauma at one point." He pauses to eat, moving slowly and keeping his teeth well hidden from a habit reinforced by the day's conferences. "As far as holding him, I believe it would be extremely difficult to effectively do so unless he could be persuaded to stay of his own will. At least, without a better understanding of the mechanics and limitations of his teleportation abilities."
"I believe," Jean notes with a dry smile over at Hank that is aware and appreciative of either interpretation, "That I've gotten the solo avenger thing out of my system. Ororo might be useful, or Scott -- ranged, I think, is probably a good way to go. If Charles is coordinating from Cerebro and you were medical backup... well," she sums up, with a curve of her lips and a return to the chocolate ice cream "This is all based on finding him first. And I suppose we still have asteroids to plan for too."
Hank smiles, but otherwise does not address the topic of solo avenging. Instead he comments with light amusement, "Indeed. Though predictably, I find my mind more readily confronting such an immediate threat. The prevention of the destruction of all life as we experience it is difficult to carve down into bite-size approachable research goals."
"We -need- to meet with these people," says Jean with a grumpy look at her innocent ice cream. It melts. "I mean, I realize that with Forge's help they've been busy making the spaceship that can get us out there, but I want to be -training-. Or at least doing more than the theoretical exercises everything is feeling like." The ice cream dies screaming. Silently.
"Yes?" Hank says, less a question than an expression of interest. "I do understand the impulse to be active rather than bide one's time. But, having been at least partially involved in the design and troubleshooting of the spacecraft, I have not yet experienced the impulse."
"I envy you that, then," says Jean, and cleans off her spoon with a flick of her tongue. Rising with a sigh, she smiles over her shoulder as she carries dish and spoon over to the dishwasher, and wonders a "Coffee?" as it appears that the coffee maker has finished working its magic. "Although I suppose I should be careful what I wish for... do you think I might tag along to your next meeting, then?"
"Your attendance and your input would be welcome. I cannot promise that the meeting would be scintillating by any means. We frequently find ourselves caught up in some detail that we believe might potentially prove important but that ultimately does not." He shakes his head slightly to the offer of coffee, saying, "With luck I will be able to retire soon." Reminded of his own still half filled dish, he sets to with more purpose, pausing between bites to offer, "I have a number of plans and calculations cluttering my desk waiting for my attention if you wanted to peruse them. Perhaps it would motivate me to place them higher on my list of priorities."
"To sleep, perchance to dream. Lucky you," Jean laughs, and pours herself a very large mug of coffee indeed. "I have abunch of flagged incidents to go over, as well as two papers on the effects of microgravity that have just been translated out of Russian."
"I am only at liberty to sleep because I have decided that it would advisable. My list of tasks is likely not as daunting as yours, but still considerable." Hank savors the last bite of ice cream, cleaning any trace of it from his spoon before letting it fall back into the bowl. A deep breath brings the strong scent of coffee and a smile to his lips. "I trust that your translation is adequate? If you have the originals I would be glad to clarify any point that you find confusing due to the lingering language barrier."
"Mine wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the parent-teacher interviews," Jean admits, with a crooked smile over her coffee mug for Hank's obvious appreciation of the ice cream. "I got back an hour as it turns out that Marieta Elliott has suffered neither a brain tumour or a run-in with an illusionist, but -did- run across a fellow who can apparently shapeshift into a housecat."
"I trust this is a name I need not recognize?" Hank confirms with one blue brow lifted ever so slightly in query. "Or perhaps my memory has begun to fail me at last. Undoubtedly such an ability would prove unsettling for others. How did you determine that the incident was not merely illusion?"
"She takes some training here from time to time, as she's an adult pyrokinetic who's spent most of her time since manifesting getting by by suppressing it as hard as she can." Jean explains. "Brings her massive suck of Doberman along -- Nate's a fan. Also, she was the one who organized that ill-fated protest at Bad Ass Coffee that the mad tornadist decided to ruin with a brick through the window." This information dump deserves a pause after it. Jean grants one. More cofee disappears, and she pads back to the kitchen island to leaf through some of the papers on top of her stack. "As for how, she ran into the strangely-sentient cat again, and had it turn into a naked man using a trashcan to shield his modesty."
"Ah, perhaps I have unwittingly met her previously in that case. I seem to recall her Doberman, at least." Hank can't quite restrain a quiet snort of amusement at the plight of the shape shifter. "I see. One situation that stands out as not the work of an illusionist. An unfortunate drawback to that ability."
"Well," Jean points out with a judicious tone and a twinkle in her eyes. "An exhibitionist illusionist might... although I suppose then they wouldn't be inclined to the trash can."
"I fervently hope that I never have occasion to encounter such exhibitionist illusionist. I would prefer a conflict with--" Hank reaches for an appropriately dangerous opponent, the first to come to mind being, "Sabretooth. I trust I would emerge from that with fewer scars, if both mental and physical were tallied." His tone is as usual dry, but obviously amused.
Jean winces at this example, the coffee mug left floating absent-mindedly in front of her as she rubs her fingers against the now-healed break site on her left forearm. "Personally, I'd prefer neither... although we'll have to deal with -him- too, eventually. Teleporter, save the planet, then catch the madman?"
Hank glances to that place on her arm, and his amusement dies somewhat. He offers her an apologetic smile for his unfortunate choice of words. "I believe that is probably our best course. We have not heard much of that particular madman of late."
Jean's hands lift and spread reassuringly before she claims her mug again, rescuring it from the slight spin that had been imparted. "And may such things continue. Now," says she, pushing up from her seat and collecting her reading. "I think I'm going to curl up with these and read, but I'll come bug you tomorrow about when your next meeting with the aerospace boffins is, yes?"
"Please do. I will of course necessarily rise bright and early to attend to the work I have deferred this evening." He rises as well, but collecting his empty bowl to head to the sink instead of the door. "I hope that you get some rest as well. Good night, Jean."
"Rest well, Hank," Jean bids, giving a last smile over her shoulder before she pads out and on her way to find a comfortable seat and good light.
Having survived Parent-Teacher Conference Days, two teachers celebrate with ice cream, and discuss rampaging teleporters, threatening asteroids, and how best to stop them both. Just another night at Xavier's, really.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Saturday, May 24, 2008, 7:48 PM
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=XS= The Boathouse - Breakstone Lake - Xavier's School
A welcome refuge from the crowded atmosphere of the mansion in the summer, the boathouse is appealing in its simplicity. A wooden chalet perched overtop the cinder block construction of the actual ground floor boat locker, access is by climbing a set of wooden stairs to a wide wraparound redwood deck with a thick 2x4 railing and built-in seats. The roof is of red asphalt shingles, and the wooden siding is kept in a crisp white. Shutters and frames are painted in red, and a long line of four-square windows look out over the lake. Inside, two tiny bedrooms and a miniscule bathroom are the only interior walls up, leaving the rest of the chalet as one open-concept room with a small kitchenette alone the inside wall. The flooring is old, scarred pine, warmed by braided rugs. The furniture is whatever aging things have been banished from the mansion proper. There are collections of old Readers Digest condensed books and magazines on a built-in shelf in the wood panel walls, the countertop is formica from the 1960s, and the appliances putter and hum rather capriciously, but it's a comfortable escape all the same. In the fridge, a collection of imported Canadian beer bottles lurks. A note states emphatically 'These are mine. -Logan'.
[Exits : [O]ut]
[Players : Sarah ]
The evenings are beginning to shade into long and comfortable twilights as spring edges closer to summer. Almost eight PM, and the light is still golden, if sunk into the muted clarity that speaks of dusk soon to come. Out on Breakstone Lake, the weekend has brought cottagers out to play, and a last few speedboats can be seen cruising out on the open waters on the far side of the lake. At the boathouse Xavier's built, all is quiet bar for one figure, seated out on the deck of the boathouse's chalet and wrapped up in a sweater, jeans, and a bottle of chilled beer. A stack of papers sits to one side of her, and a cell phone rests on the arm of the Adirondack chair she's claimed, but Jean Grey's eyes are for the light and the water, sparing only her mind to watch the path leading out from the woods.
Out of place in the weekend of play and the quiet of the school winding toward summer, Marrow stalks along that path. Her face is mostly hidden in the shadows of the Slayer cap pulled lower over her horned forehead and the black hood of a well-worn sweatshirt pulled over that. Her shoulders bristle with lumps half-disguised by the cotton material, her back arched artificially by the spikes of her spine. She is uncomfortable, out of place, and her mind is addled with unhappiness. She approaches the boathouse in uncertainty, knowing very well her last visit to the school was not an entirely pleasant thing.
Jean is not entirely alone on the deck: a golden retriever, still smelling faintly of lake water, has been dozing beside her chair in the righteous sleep of a Good Dog. He wakens at the sound of approaching footsteps, a jingle of his collar tags and a thump-thump-thump of a tail sounding out, along with a low and amused comment from Jean that leaves Pickles lying low for a moment. "Sarah," she calls, trusting her voice to carry where line-of-sight does not. "Around the front. Do you want a beer?"
No one offers you a beer when they're planning revenge for your attempt at stabbing one of their people. Sarah continues her approach, winding around to the front of the lakehouse. It is, perhaps, a surprise after the last time she was here when she answers out loud. "Yeah. Why not." Her voice is not the same one Jean has heard before. It is lower, the hiss to it no longer a forced quality, but she is speaking again in spite of having had her vocal chords surgically excised a couple of months before.
It helps, perhaps, that at least one of the persons so almost-stabbed turned out to be Magneto. Or perhaps Jean is just a little more used to patients going sideways than most. Either way, Sarah's arrival is paired with Jean holding out a bottle of Canadian, still dewed with the ice from the bucket it had been resting in. The speaking has her eyes widened with appreciation as she offers it, and offers a quiet "You've got your voice back!" to go with it.
The bottle is taken by emaciatedly thin fingers and Sarah twists the top of it it to take an opening drink. "Yeah," she confirms. The person who gave it back to her comes to mind as Sarah ends up contrasting that friendship with the woman who wanted to help her the night before. "Look, I'm not going to bullshit. The old man told me if I needed psych help, I could come up here whenever I wanted."
"I'm not his equal in that," Jean admits, with a sidelong look at Sarah that leaves her expression open for study even as she attunes her mind to slip into synch with the surface of the younger woman's. "But if you're willing to trust me, I'm willing to try and help."
The surface is a bad place. It is like synching oneself with a desert landscape, rocky, craggy. She is overloaded with frustration and despair. It is bad. "I can't keep living like this," Marrow admits. It is not really a very detailed statement, but it is certainly weighty.
The mind sears Jean's thoughts as they brush at it, harsh and scourging sunlight to her own mind's gentle twilight. She reinforces an inner layer of shielding to keep from mingling too much, but does not draw back, for all her hand tenses around its beer bottle. Carefully, gently, she extends a steadying tendril of thought, a little bit of added load-bearing to stave off the rockslide. "How are you living, right now?" she wonders.
"With him," Sarah says, Magneto's capes swirling over the scorched landscape. "And when I'm not with him, I'm by myself. Always fucking waiting for them to come for me again." Flashes of pain and fear and panic, cages and the mindset it takes her to survive those cages all arise.
Jean counters the flashes with little puffs of emotion-clouds, steadying and cooling the harsh edges of the sunbaked expanse, lending them little hints of shade. "Fight-or-flight is good for the crisis," she murmurs, taking a careful sip of her beer. "But it makes for a lousy day-to-day strategy. Wears you down. Walls you away... you must feel very isolated," she ventures.
The edge taken off allows Sarah to keep pushing the mindset that represents Marrow down. She laughs weakly, looking at her beer bottle. "How wouldn't I be isolated? I can't work. Can't show my face in public..." This speaks nothing of the guilt that threatens to well up, a searing heat over the landscape that wants badly to tear the clouds away. She had been with the Brotherhood before, but she had never acted on it. Now she has.
"You're isolated now," Jean agrees, keeping up a steady, subtle flow of empathic comfort from her mind to Sarah's, her tone steady to match it. "You don't have to remain so. You don't have to stay in the patterns you've been ground into. But..." she notes, quietly indeed as she looks out over the lake, "While there are those out there who will reach out to you, you need to let -yourself- feel like you're worthy of it. Can Sarah forgive Sarah?"
"The last time I let someone get close, Jason started sniffing around her," Marrow points out. The empathy is potent for someone who has no real talent in shielding her mind at all. She is all raw emotion and reaction. "Now Magneto, Ellen... I don't want to get people hurt." There is a disturbing thought of the woman she talked to the night before, Elliott, cowering in front of Magneto's boots.
Jean's mind flickers and crackles, catching on that image and mantling protectively about Elliott as one of Her People, distinct from Emma's People or Erik Lensherr's People in the ordering of her world. But the flames remain behind that inner shield of Jean's, with what emerges beyond it limited to a simple moment's intensity of focus. "Jason, Ellen... Magneto. They are dangerous people, yes. And getting bystanders -too- close to them could be dangerous to them, I won't try and lie to you," she murmurs. "But there are middle grounds between isolation and full involvement. And you're allowed to want friends."
"I'm dangerous," Sarah points out in guilt. Her thoughts shift to herself as a violent monster, spikes of bone obscuring almost all of the human shape. This is a subhuman thing that rampages through her consciousness, this version of Marrow. "How many of Jamie Madrox did I kill? How many people did I kill when we tried to break loose out of there?" Her expression darkens and she clings tightly to her bottle of beer, as if it were some refuge from her self-loathing. "I don't know how to be a person anymore."
"-I'm- dangerous," Jean counters, and a crisp breeze stirs up the gathering cloud cover on the mindscape, disrupting the monstrous imagery as it tries to form. "And there's blood on my hands too. I may have been insane, when I took out the Brotherhood's island, but it was still me that did it. You're no more monster than I am. And no less human."
Exhaling through her nose, Sarah looks at Jean before countering, "But you... do shit. You help people. Teach kids. What the hell am I going to do? Teach teenage mutants how to smoke their rock when they can't steal pain-killers?" On the same line of thinking even though her monster is dispersed, the self-loathing that spawned it still looms, a monster in it's own right. "You can work. Fit in, you know? Look at me."
Jean turns in her seat, setting the beer bottle back in the ice bucket to better do just that: she looks. "I'm looking," she agrees. "But I'm still not seeing a monster. I'm seeing a survivor. I'm seeing a work in progress. I think you can do... much." Steady, her eyes, green and cool with the deep gaze of a telepath. "All that's waiting is for -you- to look. Would you like to?" she wonders, offering over one hand, palm-up.
Sarah looks down at the palm offered out to her. She doesn't, however, look like she has any idea of what to do with it. "What is there to see?" she asks, in a stubborn, pessimistic sort of tone.
"Possibilities," is Jean's answer, quiet and thoughtful. A moment later, the thoughtfulness dissolves into a crooked grin. "To break the first rule of telepaths and stop being inscrutable, though, I'm offering to let you see what I'm thinking. Let you get some outside perspective from inside your own head."
A spindly hand slaps down against Jean's palm. Sarah doesn't say anything, but she is willing to see what Jean is convinced of here. She isn't closed off to possibilities, she just discounts them all.
In the space of a thought, the landscape adjusts itself. No more the broken and parched desert of Sarah's mind, the field of view is instead that of Dr. Grey, complex and layered with rapid-fire thoughts shuttling off here and there to various levels and containments. There are green fields, there are high speed rail lines, and at the heart of it all there is fire and shadow and the flicker of wings in the peripheral. In the midst of this a hall of mirrors, each reflecting an image of a thousand possible Sarahs. There is a band, reformed once more. There are music lessons. There are lessons of other sorts. Bodyguard, performer, teacher, student, soldier, street-medic, protester, clerk. Purgatory features a guest act. The Wee Book Inn has a new barrista. Mundane, arcane, plausible, fantastical, boring, fulfilling and all in between, the potentials spill out and reflect off each other in the mind's eye. The glimpse of Jean's mind ends, but Jean's mind does not retreat just yet -- while being observed, it has been doing its own observing, and two small tendrils of thought reach out to take the self-loathing by its shoulders and study its roots.
The hall of mirrors is overwhelming. There are things that are possible enough that it almost breaks Sarah's heart, knowing she hasn't managed them. There are things that are so fantastic that she dismisses them as impossibilities. Jean is externalizing and showing her so many things that she is convinced will never leave the realm of dreams. That self-loathing, the spikey, almost bestial thing it is, writhes as it is examined. It roots itself in the easiest of places. In Sarah's horribly damaged self-image, in the knowledge that she is hideous to look at. There is no delusion that she might find acceptance. She knows she is disgusting, her mutation crippling as far as hopes for a normal life. It also has roots dug into her guilt, the knowledge that she has killed people, that she helped pull Ellen out of prison. These things are partly tempered by the situations, by her loyalty to Ellen for being the one person who has ever allowed her to be normal. Sarah knows Ellen has killed people who never deserved it, but Ellen has been something of a guardian angel to her. It is a tremendously guilty affection she feels for the Valkyrie.
"Normal is as normal does," murmurs Jean, to Sarah or to her shadow-self. "You can't go through life defining yourself by what you're not, what you can't have, what you can't do. You have to reach out and grab what you -can-. And you can do much." More tendrils reach for the self-loathing, wrapping its limbs within their coils and holding it fast. A late-breaking image is shared: Sarah's face as it stands in her mind, then presented emotionally neutral, stripped of the loathing, of the fear, of the hate. Next, with just a slight adjustment, as something exotic, unusual and unique. "Which of these is real?"
Sarah's mind offers the same image back as something to be feared, a freak. "How much can I do? I can't find work as anything but a studio guitarist. And then, they make me sit in a closed studio so the /artists/ don't see me." The self-loathing roars, rearing it's head and trying to break free. The frustration is also feeding it, a thick root rushing nourishment into the shadowy monster. "I can't afford to eat unless I'm stealing. I can't get through a week without Jason to numb the pain or the drugs." A normal life is something glittering in the distance, the brass ring that her skinny fingers are unable to reach, no matter how far she leans off of her spiky, ugly carousel horse as she rides past.
"Check out a club called Purgatory," Jean suggests. "They've got a DJ you might find some common ground with. Or, if you've got the fingers for jazz, check out Sweet Basil. They've lost a few big names with their open-door policy -- you might have an in. If you need help with pain management, I run a free clinic down in Hell's Kitchen for a reason," she ticks off on her fingers, as the tendrils wrap still tighter about the self-loathing, seeking a strangle hold upon it, and the join to frustration. She does not destroy that dark little root. No, instead she marks it, and lets her mind wander, looking for a more fruitful field for it. "But what would you do, if you could? Leave off the why it won't work. Would you go put a record out? Would you make friends?"
"I miss my music," Sarah admits. With the loathing bound as it is, she can actually be honest with herself. "I thought I was making a difference. Showing mutant kids they could be proud of what they were. I just..." The frustration roars, the monster struggling again, but it is bound tightly. "I think that part of me died when they kidnapped me the first time."
"Nothing dies, in the mind." Jean's tone is calm with this, but there's a weight of certainty beneath it. Idly, her mind gives the bound monster self-loathing an elbow in the ribs. "Things can get lost, subsumed, tangled... but if you miss the music, then go after it. Everything else is just logistics."
"I can't sing anymore," Sarah reminds Jean. The monster roars in pain, some of it's fury subsiding. It allows a starker, more honest frustration to show. Marrow knows that her voice is different because of what those people did to her. Project Butterfly. She knows Ellen Dramstadt did everything she could to rescue her from a life cursed to being mute. This frustration is no psychological trauma. It is very real and very well founded.
"You weren't -just- a singer," Jean reminds right back, although not without a small nod and a small and crooked wince of acknowledged loss. "That said, there's nothing wrong with mourning what you've lost. Denying the hurt... tends to just make it all the more bitter."
A sigh blows out past Sarah's yellow teeth. "What happens if I try and someone touches me wrong? What if I freak out and stab someone because they get aggressive about a song?" There are memories of dressing in leather, baring her mutation proudly and revelling in it on stage. They're a sharp contrast to the woman bundled up, even now, to hide her body.
"You learn to work through that. PTSD isn't just for war vets, but they -have- resulted in there being a lot of really good literature out there on it," Jean answers, tapping her fingertips together one by one before, at last, leaning down to pick up her beer again. "When Charles was offering psychological help, that's one of the things he'd have been talking about. Helping you get back to yourself, in whatever new form that 'self' takes."
Drifting to a wall, Sarah leans against it awkwardly. Her back does not make the posture easy. She sips her own beer as she watches Jean, her guard having lowered considerably. Her shoulders are no longer hunched, her expression no longer a defensive scowl. "It just feels like I'm standing at the base of this giant ass mountain of fucked-up-Marrow I have to climb. I don't know if I can do it." With the loathing subdued, one of her biggest defense mechanisms is disabled. That means the dangerously deep lack of self-esteem shows unfettered.
"They do Everest in stages," is Jean's suggestion to that, peering up and over at Sarah and giving her a crooked grin. "And they don't summit it alone. Consider Charles -- and me, where I can help -- your personal sherpa."
There is a tiny laugh out of Sarah as a thought comes to mind. "I guess this means I can't keep living with Erik, huh?" He has become a security blanket since she left Jean's care after being rescued. There are still strong ties there, directly correlating Magneto to being the way to keep from being kidnapped again. One can hardly blame the woman for the phobia. How many people are kidnapped multiple times in their adult life?
"If he's set up a safehouse for you, he's an old enough hand at the game that it's probably not directly linked to the Brotherhood," is Jean's analysis of the situation. "But if you need another one to crash in, my clinic down in Clinton has an apartment over the top of it, and I know a few people who know a few other people who have couches."
"I was sleeping on his couch," Sarah admits. That is pretty much as direct a link as one can have. She smiles meagerly at Jean. "He might be a lot of things, but no one will take me away if I'm with him... I don't..." The gap in her self-esteem is especially telling again. Admitting to her fears is not the easiest thing for her to do. "I don't think I can live alone anymore."
"Sanctuary's message boards may have burnt down along with the rest of it," Jean muses, accepting the admission with a small nod and little fuss. "But the Wee Book Inn is trying to fill its shoes. Would getting a roommate help?" she wonders. "Someone who'd know if you were gone? Or is it him specifically?"
There is just suddenly a crack in what remains of her armor. "I just don't want to be alone. I can't live through it again," she admits, with a surge of emotion that is going to end up tears in a few moments. Jean has removed one of the dams that keeps her stoic.
Jean remains calm, remains in that partially-effaced state she's been sporting off and on for most of their talk, not disinterested so much as allowing Sarah to have some sense that this is a private breakdown, if breakdown it is to be. "We also have guest rooms here," she murmurs. "If you need a few weeks to try and get your feet under you."
Sarah brings a hand up to her face, wiping at eyes with the back of the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She sighs. "I don't think you guys want me mingling with your kids. You saw what happened last time I was here." Guilt creeps out once more, helping to cool off the flow of other emotion. "I know how to get myself into this place where I don't care about anything but surviving, where I can gut someone to keep myself going. I just... don't know how to get that to go away. I'd love to be able to go fucking hang out with the nice chick with the dog, without worrying about Jason showing up and tormenting her, or her findin' out I been living with Magneto."
"So do it." Jean gives this advice with a slight tip of her chin, followed by the explanation of "I caught a glimpse of her when you thought about her," with a slightly sheepish look as she 'fesses up to such overhearing. "I know her. Moreover, I know Jason, so if you're worried about him, consider me on-side for any necessary spiking of his plans. Don't let maybes make things a never-will."
Over the open telepathic connection, her brain cross-references Elliott and Lark. One as the recent, disallowed hope at having a friend, the other as the example of why she shouldn't. "You know her?" Sarah asks. "No fucking wonder she's so bent on the idea of not giving up on me. You fuckers rub off on people." By you fuckers, she probably means the X-Men. Or the staff of the school. Not that there is a difference. It involves images of black leather suits.
"In Elliott's defense," Jean notes, a flicker of amusement in her eyes, "I think she was like that -long- before we ran into each other. Go ahead," she reiterates. "Make some connections."
"Ran into me on the subway and wouldn't back off until she was sure I as okay. Tried my fucking best to scare her away. All I didn't do was pull a spike and threaten to put it through her." Sarah is pretty incredulous over Elliott. No one should be so convinced that she is someone worth saving. Nevermind that she is standing there talking to Jean, who seems entirely willing to bend over backwards to do so.
"Elliott very aggressively sees the best in people, from my read of her," is Jean's pronouncement, delivered with a slight curve of her lips and a lift of her beer bottle. "On the other hand, I'm inclined to agree with her about you."
"Aren't your reads on people pretty much, uh, dead on?" Sarah asks, tapping a finger to the side of her hood. There is maybe a hint of amusement over the thought. With all of that brutal loathing tied up, she is actually showing other bits of her personality.
"Only if I'm cheating," answers Jean with another flash of a grin. One foot reaches out and around and taps the ice bucket with its toes in thoughtful calculation. "So," she wonders, at last working to remove her mind from Sarah's. "You up for moving inside and out of the dew?" Back, back, back go her thoughts, but the stage is not left pristine: the monstrous self-loathing remains tied up, and though the bonds are ephemeral, limited in their time, it buys Sarah a few hours, at least, before what they bind comes creeping back.
Sarah nods her head, "Yeah. Can I take this fucking jacket off?" she asks before heading for the door. For the hours she does have, she is a different person. A lot more like the woman who existed before the mutant Fight Club happened. She is, perhaps even, good company for the evening.
Trust, truths, telepathy and some of Logan's beer.