OOC: Windex commentary (Part II)
LJ Entry: Windex
Date: 10/28/2005
Players: Emma, Percy, Rossi
Requested by: Emma
Continued from Part One
It is not long before there comes a brisk quadruple knock at the door, Percy leaning with shoulder braced against its frame and watching his fingernails with mild interest as he waits to be allowed ingress.
And now we enter the real purpose of this sensual extravaganza: Windexing. Apropos nothing in particular, I'm not entirely sure that I remember how and when we started calling it windexing; it sounds like something I would've come up with, but who the hell remembers? I have this short-term memory thing going for me anyway, so it's quite possible I'm mistaken. If anybody recalls, gimme a shout. Nonetheless, the phrase is pretty descriptive, while at the same time being completely ass-backwards. What Emma and Percy propose to do is not clean up or even wipe away the memories in Rossi's head, but blur them, hide them, and wrap around the irrepressible memories a conditioning towards reluctance that will prevent Rossi from ever pursuing this line again.
We had some conversations OOCly about how this process would work, and what the final result would be like for Rossi. Emma's player and Jean's player determined, I believe, that memories can't really be erased -- excised, so to speak -- but they can buried and stitched over, repressed so far that it would take a significant act to bring them into the open again. The possibilities of this were dizzyingly fantastic, and I admit that privately I writhed a little in delight.
The actual details, Emma's player left up to me -- how I wanted to play it out, what his eventual recovery would be like, how it would impact his relationship with mutants, how it would color his relationship with the other people involved in the case: Jason, Sabby, Percy, etc. Such trust. My inner twink woke up and twittered like a canary on E. I will talk about what impact it did end up making a little later.
Percy makes his entrance, with a deliberate show of nonchalance. Poor Percy. It was not an easy decision for him to make, to come to Emma; there were worries that she was losing her mind. Certainly anxiety over the effect that Jean becoming Black Queen had had on her. Still, making Percy White Bishop was probably the wisest thing Emma could have done, and while it didn't work out in the way Emma expected, it has also been a fantastic path of development for both her and Percy. Their characters have blossomed and changed and evolved so spectacularly that I have to pause and applaud them both. Because, dude. Sweet.
I am easily distracted. Shit. What was I talking about? Right. Percy. So Percy is anxious, and not in a position where he trusts Emma as much as he'd like to be able to. The Little Bishop Who Would: his presence is as much to use his mutation to help Emma keep control, as it is to protect Rossi.
They have a quaint and see-sawing relationship, Chris and Percy, each protecting the other -- not out of friendship, but through a curious sense of obligation (at least on Chris's side) -- from random bugbears. Percy is the more far-sighted of the two, which is only natural, since he has more knowledge. When he /is/ aware of threat or a need on Talhurst's part, though, Chris steps in: facing off against Bahir, suggesting to Sabby that she look after Percy after prison, even keeping Percy's mutation a secret from Leah after learning they slept together, though that's more for her sake than it is for his. Percy's protection has been more significant, and debateable of merit. His presence likely kept Chris from enduring more than he did during this session (death, for instance) but then again, he's one of the reasons Chris gets erased to begin with. He warned Bahir off of messing with Chris, even as Chris thought he was warning Bahir off of messing with either of them.
After this episode in Rossi's life, he gave Percy very little thought, in the same way one doesn't really think about the friends of friends, distant acquaintances at best. Percy, I imagine, did much the same, after recovering from attendant guilt and stress and the like. However, there's an old Chinese proverb that a life you save is yours forever. While it's not the same case in regards to these two, I think there's something between them that uncomfortably acknowledges obligation of one sort or another. I know what that feeling of obligation is on Chris's side. I'll talk more about that later, too.
Check me out, making up all sorts of crap about Percy. For all I know, he just finds Rossi a pain in the ass.
For the man on the bed, the knock is a diversion, if not necessarily a welcome one. Rossi rolls up, hands raking idly through already rumpled hair; a glance cants towards the bathroom as he stands, catching up his shirt and slipping into it as a nod to modesty. "Hey. Someone's at the door." Memory flicks back and retrieves stored data: she wore no wedding ring.
Random note: Rossi doesn't do married women. At least, he doesn't do women he knows are married -- and he checks visually, looking for the wedding band or the indentation of one that has been removed. This is, I realized belatedly, part of what he was doing during the entire foreplay of this scene: checking Morgan's hands for a sign. He is a thwarted romantic, and the Catholic upbringing and his parents' example have made him an idealist when it comes to marriage. At the same time, his work has shown him all the ugliest side of marriage. Cops all know that husbands kill wives and wives kill husbands. He is unwilling to be a cause, an excuse, or even simply another nail in the coffin of a marriage, whether already doomed or not.
He doesn't really expect an indignant husband to charge into the room, mind. He's guessing it's more like room service, or hotel staff. Still -- he has had at least one memorable experience while in college (part of the reason he doesn't do married women. Anymore. Or drive taxis. Anymore.) -- so when interrupted, he can't help but double-check. She's not married. Right?
Emma tosses one more look around the room, searching for any clues that if left behind would whisper suspicion in Chris' ear. A few dirty towels, a washcloth darkened by makeup, kleenax and cellophane in the trashcan. Emma cants an unseen look toward the detective from behind the closed door and inhales slowly, rushing through a mini version of normal centering techniques before reaching into mental fingers already embedded in his conscious and squeezing, triggering flashpoints and pulling control of Rossi's body from him. All conscious control flees, leaving him paralyzed.
Emma opens the door and steps out, a malicious little smile playing on lips familiar and yet not, and moves to the door. "Don't worry, darling. I'll get it." She turns the handle and pulls it in after her as she moves back toward Chris. "There. I hid the evidence rather well, don't you think?" she coos, bending close, a strand of blond hair sliding forward.
Half-way to the door already, there is little to catch Rossi as he crumples, collapsed like the proverbial stringless marionette. Loose-limbed, startled, he falls to the side, barely missing the sofa with his head; a second later, lust -- pheromonal opiate that it is, fogged thick and murky through the room -- is erased entirely. Shock, first. Alarm. Then rage blooms to supplant it, instant and violent: it smashes at the pair, claws bloody and savage, before mental walls slam back into place. Green eyes glare at Emma, belated realization promising murder.
Possibly this pose of mine should've gone somewhere in the middle of Emma's pose, so it can better track: shock as he loses all control, and alarm; these are inevitable. But what Emma says makes it immediately obvious that this is her doing: /she's/ not surprised. Nor is she apologetic. Obviously not -- and combined with her change of appearance, it takes very little intelligence for Rossi to lay the appropriate blame at the responsible party's door.
It's the first time that Rossi has experienced any of the darker side of telepathy. He was intellectually aware that it was possible to have control of your body seized from you, but it was academic to him, as I'd mentioned before. Jesuit-trained though he was, he's sat through plenty of arguments about the mind vs. the soul, and the distinction between the two. Those days of philosophical speculation are long past him, but still, there is an atavistic instinct to merge the two into one gestalt. Knowledge is different from experience: his initial reaction of rage is as much a proxy for fear as it is a recognition of what's about to happen.
Percy's player mentioned that he was really glad Percy wasn't in the room for the Thing that happened later. For Rossi, what starts here was rape; everything that followed was just a different flavor of the same violation.
Percy slinks into the room through the door Emma's opened, all diffident slouch with fists curled into the safety of his pockets. And the instaneous violent crash of Rossi's rage sweeping over his senses is hardly unexpected, either: pheromonal agents, soothing it away, robbing him of it -- unnatural tranquility falling heavy on all three as the White Bishop does his duty.
And here's another violation, right on top of the first. First they strip Rossi of physical control, then they strip him of emotional, leaving him only intellect and the conviction that mental will likely follow in short order. What Percy does here is just as much rape to Chris as the loss of his motor control. There's no sexual overtone to this, except what Emma injected before and again, later. The rape that I'm referring to here is forcible violation, subjegation, humiliation, and debasement. While Chris is hardly a control freak, so much of what he does and what he is is based on control -- control of himself, of his emotions, of his intelligence, his memories, his instincts -- and using all of that as a tool or weapon. The worst that Magneto could do and does do to him later doesn't hold a candle to what Percy and Emma do to him in this scene. All Magneto can do to him is kill his body. What Percy and Emma are doing is tantamount to killing his soul.
Percy's player, I think I recall, mentioned that smoothing away the anger was as much for his own sake -- but Chris doesn't know that. Neither does he care. Good intentions or not, the effect is what matters.
Emma winks down into those blazing green eyes and transfers a kiss to his lips with a fingertip before Percy's manipulations settle the regretful malevolence fueling the action. "We'll have to get him stripped and settled in the bed. I could loose him enough to allow him use of his legs, but I'm afraid he'll fight us," she says to Percy over her shoulder as she rises and moves toward the desk.
Anger dies, suffocated under artificial calm. In its wake, cold reason and calculation clamps down on Rossi's thoughts, retreating him still further behind those well-crafted shields. Recognition darkens the eyes, turned askance to identify the newcomer; the barest hint of wistfulness registers at the suggestion of freedom, however limited. Possibilities. Opportunities. Swift and violent revenge.
Sniffle. she's malevolent. And whyever for? Chris didn't even /sleep/ with her. You do realize that I'll make you comment at least this part of this log for me, right, Emma? Turnabout's fair play. Why and wherefore her emotional state, and the malice that occurs throughout this part of the log?
Suppression of his emotions does give Chris room to think, and the recognition is as much for the unnatural speed of that emotional suffocation as it is for the entering Percy. He knows Talhurst's mutation from the interrogation, and he remembers other things from the interrogation as well -- accusations he made, ideas he toyed with. He's unsure whether Emma or Percy killed his anger: Percy did it before, but Emma is a telepath, after all. At this point, it doesn't matter. He broke Percy in the interrogation room, so he has little worry that he can break Talhurst here ... if only he can get his mouth back. He thinks he knows what buttons to press, what leashes to tug--
--of course, Percy the White Bishop is a slightly different animal from Percy Talhurst the Suspect. Rossi doesn't know that. I think he believed at this time that a telepath had some sort of hold over Percy, or held some kind of threat over him, since a telepath was involved in the attack on Alyssa somehow, one which neither Percy nor Jason gave up. It seems that this woman is that telepath.
Don't think that Rossi didn't hear what Emma said about getting him stripped and settled on the bed. Intellectually (not emotionally, damn Percy) he's coldly considering whether this is a purely sexual assault. He dismisses that almost immediately. Sexual assault, possibly -- but while he has seen some truly stupid shit in his life, a telepath and a pheremonal controller he recently arrested collaborating just to jump his bones is beyond stupid. Not that he hasn't seen outrageous stupidity before, but somehow he's not buying it. Not when /she/ was about to get him into the sack without any help. Unless this is some really, really whacked up pair.
Percy cocks an eyebrow at her. "Can't imagine where you'd get an idea like that." Sardonic drawl, thick and dark, but not entirely amused. "We have to get him /stripped/?" His face twists into a grimace, amber eyes flickering dark to her face before sliding away again -- but avoiding Rossi. Dear God, completely avoiding Rossi. He snorts, though the humor is forced. "Christ. Where's he keep his brain, Emma?"
Emma stops and turns to look at her Bishop, expression as flat and neutral as if they were discussing what cookies to serve at tea. "Unless you judge him to be the sort who /doesn't/ remove his clothes to have sex?" she asks blandly, then lifts an inquiring brow before bending over the desk and searching for a piece of paper. "Where most men do, I suppose," she answers mildy, then rolls her eyes. "In order to prevent him asking questions about how he spent three hours of the night, I'm going to make him /think/ the night goes exactly as he expects."
Rossi's mind races, chasing paths of possibility and consequence -- Talhurst's presence, accusations made in an interrogation room, conspiracy -- and with a curious satisfaction he settles that name, that slipped clue, into place. Trails of money. Illusion. Power. << Emma Frost, >> he thinks, making a dagger of that name. << Get the fuck out of my mind, you bitch. >>
Poor Percy. What's running through his mind, there? Guilt. Possibly horror. Bad enough that he's participating in this at all -- that he set this up, in fact -- but to see the physical humiliation on top of the mental violation?
Rossi's learned well from Jean, both by accident and on purpose, and he has one voice left, so he uses it. If he can't break Percy, he'll dig at Emma, pushing her buttons to jostle her control: a dangerous game, but all he has left. He has no illusions about what is about to happen now, after what Emma has said; his memory will be tampered with, and rewritten. Intolerable. He is the sum total of his memories and experiences, and what Emma is proposing to do is, with all due apology for the dramatic language, worse than death to him.
Despite the knowledge and the horror, however, he knows the twinge of satisfaction. He's got another piece of the puzzle, of this ongoing, painstaking tapestry of understanding that he's building out of clues and hard work and investigation. Emma Frost, who visited Percy in prison, who is tied to SIN, a house of mutants. Another Xavier School, maybe, but something much, much darker.
"Just out of curiosity, how much sex have I actually had with you?" Percy inquires with perfect brightness, arms folded tight over his chest.
The pen stills for a moment at Percy's question, then inks out the remainder of the note Rossi will find in the morning from 'Morgan'. << Aw, hero. Does this mean no post-coital cuddles? >> she murmurs back, confirming Rossi's suspicion. For as long as he will remember it anyway. She straightens and turns around,flicking a glance between the detective and the bed. "We'll have to get him into bed now, at least. Officer? Would you rather I finished what I started earlier, or should I let him have the unwrapping honors later?" The White Queen loosens her control enough to allow speech.
Unwrapping. There's an interesting word. Officer: objectifying Rossi -- not that it hasn't happened to him before in one form or another, but it takes on a particular unpleasantness and ominous quality when taken in context with the subjegation and dominance in what's happening. There's a nudge there, too, to the small thread of homophobia in Rossi. Given Percy's presence and his apparent comfort with Emma, not to mention his collaboration in controlling the situation, Chris has no particular speculation about how far Percy will go or could go if he were the one undressing him.
And Emma doesn't even answer Percy. I suspect her malice about letting Percy undress Rossi was as much a retaliatory jab at Percy for that remark -- betraying lack of trust, after all -- as it was meant to unsettle Chris.
"/Bitch/," spits Rossi, a small tendril of anger writhing free of the pheromonal muzzle before it is squashed again. Stark, that baritone, sunk into the rich accent of his birth; it whips its lash around velvet, leaving the deep timbres bloody and ragged. "Talhurst. I should've known. What's the plan, erase my brain? Or is it just little bits and pieces of it? This the sort of thing that gets you off, you son of a bitch?"
Percy flinches a little, eyes dark and fixed on the floor. The words echo, biting and clawing -- not all of them, though. Not all. 'Should've known,' burying itself deep -- "That's right, Rossi," he says, voice cool and dark. "We're doing this to you /solely/ because I was short on wank material." He raises his glance, to Emma. Quiet and sad, the mental voice -- more revealing, perhaps, than he means it to be -- brushed with wind and rain and /tired/, so /tired/, as he reaches out for her with his thoughts. << I'd prefer not to do the unwrapping. If it's all the same to you. >>
Of the two, Rossi selects Percy as the weaker of the two, the one to target immediately when his voice gets returned to him. The reason is simple: he's broken Percy once before, whereas Emma is an unknown quantity. Having broken Percy once, he is on home turf when he goes after Talhurst. Chris's wording is a little obscure, here, which is unfortunate. What he had in his mind was far more coherent than what his player eventually typed out. (I say again, Rossi is very poorly served by his player.) "This the sort of thing that gets you off--" refers to the entire situation: Chris dominated and basically a puppet, without his own will to call his own, while he is violated in the worst way possible.
It's basically Chris's way of calling Talhurst a sick bastard. Sick bastard doesn't mean anything though, without the sordidness of detail. I like that Percy makes public show of collusion with Emma, even while having a different kind of discussion with Emma, mind to mind. Omote and ura. The outward face of the White Bishop, which doesn't spare the inner Percy Talhurst. Percy has an entire thing going for him, a strain of unease regarding the use of his powers and situations in the past where he used it to coerce people into having sex with him. Rape, in short, though more cynical people would say that you can't rape the willing. So what is it if you can make people want to have sex with you? Something more terrible than straightforward seduction. Removing even their ability to not want you? Where's the line between consent and force?
Chris's words stab somewhat, as a result. I don't know how far, or how meaningful a wound it is; I never asked Percy's player. When Chris was interrogating Percy, it was at the suggestion that Percy might be next door to a rapist that inspired the first flash of anger from the man, whereas before it was just fear and uncertainty. Rossi remembers that. Frightened animals will turn on you when they're cornered, or when you touch a wound. Even in extremis, Chris has the instincts of a predator.
"I just knew you'd come up with the sweetest pet name, darling," Emma replies, bright and brittle saccharine coating her tone. "C'mon, love. Up on your feet then," she orders, telepathic imperative underlying her words as she clumsily simulates the orders his own thoughts would send to his body to comply. Percy's presence is faded to barest whisper as she both retreats from the sense of his emotions and focuses her control on Rossi. "Percy. On the counter is my bag. Fish out the pills and chocolate, please."
Out of this pose, I make a note: I like that Emma's player gives us the cue of 'clumsily.' I admire that she plays Emma as power without subtlety, not to mention her fallibility and lack of perfect control. Emma being one of the really shiny, shiny type of FC, I imagine the temptation to Mary Sue with her must be immense. Despite that, the player doesn't give in. Emma is a nuclear warhead, killing ants. 'Clumsily.' It just tickles me. Okay. I move on.
No, I don't. I just like this pose of hers. 'Bright and brittle saccharine.' See? Imperfect perfection. Knowing she's losing Percy, and taking it out on Chris--
I am pleased. Although as a side note, whenever I read 'fish out the pills and chocolate,' I can literally taste /fish and chocolate/ on the back of my tongue. It is revolting. I do not know where in my past I thought this was a good combination, but it seems I must've tried it at some point. The memory seems to be repressed. The taste, sadly, is coming back. Damn.
The man lurches, inhumanly awkward; perspiration dampens his brow as he sets himself -- futilely -- to battle. Anger for Chris Rossi is a handy cover for other, less acceptable emotion. Fear, unacknowledged, squirms lithe and supple to snap at Percy with poisoned fangs. A thousand tiny deaths, dealt by a thousand tiny mouths: horror for the ultimate violation, for loss of control, for the inevitable betrayal of his own mind. "Got a little too close to your secrets?" he demands through gritted teeth. "What happens when you stop being useful, Talhurst? Your brain gets windexed, too? One spritz: no more Percy. Or your friends? Is it already too late for them, asshole?"
Percy shows his teeth at the other man in a brief, sharp grin that has nothing to do with humor. Cool and quiet, subtle emphasis: "That's when I swallow a bullet, Detective." He emits more chemicals, treacherous soothers that they are, though it's not really for Rossi's nerves that he's trying to settle but his own, frayed and teetering. He crosses the room smoothly, swiftly, retrieving pills and chocolate -- good, obedient spaniel -- from the bag on the counter, and is silent grace itself as he moves to Emma's side, offering them.
This entire section really is about Percy and Rossi, with Emma almost a background character. Their past relationship makes it so, and the immediacy of Rossi's goading; he doesn't know Emma yet, and is still speculating on weapons to use against her.
I do not like my pose. It is le stink. However, this is what happens when anger is wiped away; the thing it was replacing, or covering, gets its chance to sneak out and play. This is the point where Rossi suspects that Sabitha was involved in the entire thing, though he doesn't go so far as to think Sabby set this situation up. Not exactly. (Though a little voice in the back of his mind whispers about mutants, and how they stick together-- and how well does he know Sabby, anyway? What if....) He thinks rather, that maybe Sabby told Percy that Rossi was onto something. He knows Percy and Sabby are close. Just how close are they? Close enough for Percy to do this for Sabby? Or for Sabby to rat him out to protect Percy? In the balance, which is more important to Sabby? Percy or-- he doesn't even bother to finish that thought: he is cynical enough to already know the answer. The taste of betrayal is bitter. This is why he asks about Percy's friends, and not his own, others who might know what Rossi knows. He doesn't mean friends. He means Sabitha. What will you do when Emma turns on her?
Still, despite the suspicion, which is half-brother to certainty -- he doesn't say her name. He suppresses the thought almost as fast as he has it -- he might be wrong, after all -- so it doesn't register loudly enough to reach Emma. Jean's lessons were good for something, after all. Nonetheless, this is why Sabitha's name shows up later in the log, when she's flipping through his mind.
And how unfair of Percy! Given a scenario in which he is placed in the same situation as Rossi, he chooses a way out that he doesn't give Chris: merciful death.
"And that's enough out of you," Emma snaps, focusing her control down again on restricting Rossi's speech and moving around the edge of the bed to push him toward it, counting on gravity and aim to land him across it (but not really bothering to watch to make sure he does) and turns to take the chocolate bar, but not the pills. "I'll need those later," she says in an undertone, looking down at her hands as they unwrap the glucose-enriching confection instead of at her Bishop. "I will no doubt need additional sugar afterwards as well. Would you please go find something appropriate? The card to the room is in my purse. Out in the hall. Don't bother knocking when you return," she orders softly, tossing him his chance of escape before turning back to the detective and the task at hand.
Chris tumbles onto the bed, folding over it with boneless ease: a far cry from his last collapse onto the wide mattress, and with less dire purpose. Italian reels in fluid obscenity behind his eyes, imperfect cover for an intent triggered by Percy's reply. Catholic protest rears -- suicide is a sin! -- and is ruthlessly dismissed. << Surrounded by lapdogs, >> mocks Rossi. << Does everybody sigh with relief when you leave? How powerful /are/ you, Emma Frost? >>
And Emma shows a little kindness, a little compassion for her hard-used White Bishop, sending him out of the room. Of course, sending him out of the room means that pheremonal restraint will go with him, and the removal of a watchful eye. It's a gesture of sorts, a nod to the awareness that all is not right between her and her bishop, and that their friendship is straining: that there's doubt on at least one side, and a thinning of trust. But Percy trusts her, doesn't he? Enough to leave her alone with Chris for a few dangerous, appalling minutes.
Thanks a lot, butthead.
It's not in Rossi's nature to be suicidal. He is, however, self-destructive, and what Percy says gives him a possible avenue of escape. Weighing the options between death and his mind's possible destruction, he'll choose death. One of Sgt. Rossi's old police buddies suffered a stroke while still in his prime, and spent the next twenty years with severe brain damage. Mrs. Rossi used to take the kids to visit him. It was meant to be a kindness, but it was a horror for young Chris, who now numbers mental incapacity as one of his greatest terrors.
No more speech. Well, then. Percy being out of reach now, he turns his attentions to the only one he can affect now, and starts jabbing at the obvious buttons: loneliness, fear, hate, jealousy, uncertainty, greed -- the baser emotions that can drive a person into rash action.
Relief (sure enough, it is!) washes plainly over Percy -- over expression, over thoughts; not to have to watch, not to force himself to /know/ -- but the knowledge is there anyway, isn't it? He smiles, brief and sad. "Emma ..." Her name spoken with soft, tentative warmth, but the ensuing sentence is aborted, unspoken, clothed in /later/. He substitutes, "I'll be back soon." Behind the words dark thoughts lurk: Soon, soon -- no need for her to bear his guilt, /his/ guilt not hers, alone. His glance cants to Rossi and he sighs, heavy and dark. "You won't remember, Chris. But I'm sorry this was necessary." And he starts at a shuffle towards the door, the purse, the card: brief freedom, however false, from observer's responsibility.
<< I imagine they do, Detective, >> she replies soundlessly, bestowing the correct title for the first time that evening as she weaves around furniture and strewn clothing to crawl up on the bed beside his prone body. << Tsk. Such language from a hero, >> is shot back, accompanied by a sense of tinkling laughter, though also a brief, shadowed glance at Percy's back. Once the door closes behind the Bishop, Emma drops her gaze back to Rossi's single visible glittering eye and curls over her knees to brush a kiss to his temple, framing his face with a trail of warm breath to the corner of his mouth. Fingers start to work, pushing and arranging him to ease the removal of the shirt.
Pheromonal control begins to tatter with Percy's removal and distance; sensing freedom, anger gathers and bucks against its reins, straining towards attack. << Must be lonely, >> Rossi observes, pushing away the senses' report of her activities on his body. << Nobody to hang out with -- except maybe other telepaths. Bet you and Jean are tight. Best Friends Forever. You share clothes as well as Summers? >>
Kissing. Rossi's skin crawls. Whether she means it in mockery or in affection (who can tell? Twisted bitch!) or in possessive what-have-you, to him it's just another spasm of revulsion, and another thing for him to push out of his mind. He has bigger, more important fish to fry. Rossi's going swiftly through a list in his head of the insecurities that could possibly stab at Emma. He doesn't know mutants, but he does know women, and jealousy is one of the most common. Love has no real context here -- his next remark after this going to be about Warren -- but as it is, he hits paydirt almost before he realizes it. His reason for mentioning Jean first is simple: his telepathic shielding, such as it is, is from Jean. At one point, Jean told him that all minds have a special stamp, so she could recognize another telepath's work. Perhaps this means that Emma recognizes Jean's. Also, Jean claims to be a very powerful telepath, so perhaps knowing that he's acquainted with her will give Emma pause -- or drive her to more reckless action.
Most significant is the Scott Summers connection. Two strong women sharing the same power, both competing over the same man. There was no way that ended well, no matter which woman was first in Scott's life -- and it's obvious that Summers continues to respect and care for Jean, whether professionally or personally. He had nothing but contempt for Emma, when the the boys talked about her after Matt's encounter with Emma's, uh, loins.
Best Friends Forever is a mocking phrase stolen from Sabby, proof that the suspicion about her hasn't gone away, trivial undercurrent though it is to the more dangerous business at hand. Hi, Sabby!
Emma hisses and rises, reinforcing her control over his body and glaring down with eyes narrowed over ice-chipped irises. "Oh, darling. You have no idea. It's never lonely for a telepath. Always another mind to wrap ourselves up in. Scott knew. Knows. That's why he can't get enough of us," she purrs, velvet in tone and touch. The shirt is tossed to the side and he rolled to his back before she moves down, spreading her knees over his legs and working with the buckle of his pants next. << Bet you've never had sex with a telepath, have you? What's the matter? Too afraid of us? Or was Jean the only one you knew. Shame. She is a little frigid, and you missed your chance tonight. >> Buckle clinks forlornly into the silence of the room, and she reaches for button and fly. << You would have loved it. Guess you'll just have to settle for the job I can give you. Want a sample? >> Without waiting for the naturally negative response, Emma heats his mind again, whirling and burying his senses under a kaleidoscope of images and sensations that leave what had happened earlier in the evening looking tame.
Triumph blazes for a second's satisfaction, recognizing Emma's reponse for what it is: /there/, a weakness, push it, break it open-- only to be lost entirely, sent reeling to be consumed by fire. Violation indeed, and of the most terrible kind. The man's strangled cry rips raw across the small, horrible sounds of his helplessness, of fabric being peeled away; even rage disintegrates, swept up in the conflagration of lying, treacherous senses.
For the record, Emma's player apologized abjectly to me before posing her pose here, and then cringed at her character. Percy's player made stomped rat sounds, and was earnestly grateful that Percy hadn't been in the room to see that.
And me? I laughed. Hysterically. Because I am a sick puppy, yes, but also because I honestly didn't see this coming, and neither did Chris. He was expecting retaliatory pain. He was braced for retaliatory pain. Pleasure? That was something else. It threw both of us, and that delighted me. It always does, when someone manages to surprise me by doing something in character and yet so unexpected. It doesn't happen very often. I'm not arrogant enough to say that I know people -- I don't, and usually, I'm too indifferent to predict their responses -- but I can usually anticipate a range of replies or reactions, say, and figure that if I do this, that will happen. People are, to some extent, predictable. They follow patterns of behavior.
If I'd given it a lot of thought, I might have considered the possibility that Emma would do this, but then again, maybe not. Anyway, sheer hilarity on my part, and pleasure. (Not the kind that Rossi experiences.) Awesome. The entire log was worth it, just for that one terrible, brilliant act.
I am, I must add, rather pleased with my pose there.
And now, let us talk a little bit about what happened to Chris. There's no question that this part of the log, almost from start to finish, is one long violation for him -- I keep using that word, but really, it's the best one for what this is -- and of a kind that strikes at significant vulnerabilities. His inability to protect himself against telepaths. His fear of mutants, though he had overcome that, mostly. Control. Sense of self. Even though Emma covered this memory like she did the others, it's still a significant injury, one that continues to bleed and poison him, bit by bit. Up to this point, he'd used sex to help him forget things for a little while, as a kind of escape from his mind and his work. After this, because of what Emma does to him, it no longer works. Sex is now inseparably linked to horror, if not consciously; it takes a while for his libido to recover, and even after that he no longer finds refuge in it. Post-windex, he no longer sleeps around as much, because he can't quite let himself go anymore, and voices no longer shut up when he's having it. Leah becomes a strange haven for him: she comes along at an opportune time, really. She is both a great excuse and a fantastic match for him; now he absolutely has to maintain control, be in control, and be monogamous at that.
His temper is shorter, and he grasps for control a little more fiercely, with a lot more underlying fear for its loss. While he doesn't really act significantly different at first, Beston notices a few small changes, without really registering them. Rossi no longer shares his thoughts as much. He's more cynical. There are small walls being built that will start to harden and grow stronger with time. His nightmares return, but are worse because there's pleasure mixed in with the horror -- and nobody wants to dream about murdered children and wake up with a boner. That's just not right. He also, and I just realized this, stops thinking about Sabby much. There's an unease there and a wariness that he can't quite come to grips with, completely separate of the trimming Emma did of her status as a mutant.
The point of this commentary is to document how he feels about telepaths, though, and the inevitable fallout of his feelings regarding them. After this, the mental disciplines he learned from Jean are shot; for a long time, he finds himself unable to form the shields that he thought he'd mastered, and is plagued by irritation and restlessness when he tries. He cancels his lessons with her, coming up with one excuse or another, and avoiding personal contact for quite a while. He doesn't want to see her. He doesn't want to talk about her. He doesn't want to think about her. None of this is Emma's doing -- I don't think -- but is instead a manifestation of his new terror regarding telepaths. He has no source for terror, though, so he is puzzled and determines (logically) that he's not afraid of Jean; he's just, well, too busy and stressed and tired to deal with this mental shit right now.
The immediate fear subsides after a while, but mostly through repression and transference. Now instead of being afraid of telepaths, he's intensely annoyed by her morality and her holier-than-thou attitude. Who can trust someone who's that perfect all the time? Always acts like she knows better, acts better, thinks better than everyone else. Bullshit. Give him someone more human, any day. Curiously, this aversion is less strong when it's applied to male telepaths: he can come up with rationales to tolerate them better, if not like them. Bahir, for instance, may be a telepath, but the flaws that make him dangerous also seem to make him less of a threat, in Chris's mind.
Chris was never a misogynist, but he's starting to develop tendencies that way. I suspect the end of Leah's arc will exacerbate that, somewhat.
Emma straightens, a cruelly satisfied snarl curling her lips, and lets the ghost sensations continue to dance across his mind, stirring natural responses unnaturally as she sets about to finishing the task in methodical fashion. Shoes, socks, pants... there's not even a pause to appreciate New York's Finest before he wrapped in the comforter, and she is settled in a chair near the head of the bed with his hand in her lap, and her fingers stroking over still sensitive skin in a echo of his earlier caress in the restaurant.
A small moan is the best Rossi can manage for that malice, disjointed despair struggling to regroup itself as rage: his shield, his frail and useless armor. << ...Jean, >> he manages, groping after purpose. << ... strike a nerve? Then again, he stands by /her/, doesn't he? He still /wants/ her. Is she more powerful, is that it? Better than you? >>
Mean Emma. And yet she maintains physical contact, even while she tortures him -- for the telepathy? I wondered, but didn't ask. I assumed it was malice, and so posed to it. Yet another pose of mine that had some nice elements in it. Rossi still tries to push that button, now that he's found it. Push push push! He got rage once, and she struck back; if he keeps pushing at it, maybe she'll go beyond pleasure to something more final.
I laughed at Emma's part about appreciating New York's Finest.
Emma's nails curl into the delicate meat under Rossi's thumb, and she slices the connection between his mind and conscious thought, sending him spiraling into unconsciousness, and her slumping in the chair, pain already wrapping tightening bands around her head.
Percy slinks back in, re-entry padded on silent feet, bearing a large white pastry box under one arm. The box is deposited on the counter, and the man himself on a chair, to lean forward with elbows upon his knees: quiet and still and calm as he watches. And, of course, broadcasting similarly.
Percy's return is noted with a brief flicker of blue peeking out through darkened lashes, and then the whole intensity of Emma's powers turn to Rossi, sliding in, down past thought and reason, darting through memories like silver fish; brief, bright specks among the field of his mind.
You're late, Percy. (Fucker.)
I have little to say about this part, except that I loved Emma's imagery there: the darting and the silver fish.
...and Percy's player has just said something to remind me that I haven't explained why Rossi feels obligation towards Percy, even though the little weasel is also responsible for his mental butchery.
Of course, Chris doesn't remember this night the way it happened. There's no Percy, no association with mental rape, nothing. However, there is residual discomfort whenever he thinks about Talhurst -- a kind of reluctant distress that makes him restless. He has chalked this up to bigotry on his own part, and is ashamed of it: anti-mutant bigotry, homophobia, whichever. He can't sit down and work through it because he just /can't/ think about Percy that long -- he approaches thoughts about Percy like ducks do really large pieces of bread, jabbing at them and then retreating, then jabbing again to break it apart into manageable chunks. It's a relief to just chalk it up to bigotry and feel guilt about it. On top of determining Percy's innocence, (albeit not /conclusively/. There's still a niggling little doubt. After all, a mutant vouching for a mutant?) Rossi's got a little extra guilt to gnaw at in between meals.
He's not the type to get jittery so much, but there's definitely an uncomfortable awareness of Percy whenever they're near each other. He makes up for what he fears are his private issues by compensating in the way he knows best. He won't feign a friendship he doesn't really feel, since Percy's not a suspect or a witness, someone to be played. However, he still takes an interest, much as a vet might tend to a particularly ugly dog once under his care. He'll protect and defend, instead, where appropriate and necessary. Obligation.
In silence, in somnolence, his mind unfolds. Not field nor pool, but temple, shaped in stained glass and enduring, mute silhouette. Experience given color, form, depth, texture, even the ripples of sound are caught and molded by a sybarite's talent: all the senses, preserved in mortal patterns. New impressions, recovered memories -- Jean Grey's cat, Summers drinking beer -- glow radiant against darker, uglier scars. (Brutality, violence, inhumanity exercised by humanity on living flesh and dying, /pain/--) Already the lash of pleasure and horror bleeds its dyes into other pieces; the name, her name, fits itself into intricate design, a backdrop of mutancy and conspiracy. Talhurst. Wyngarde. Winters. Melcross. SIN.
Well, of course it would be a temple. Cathedral, even. Rossi's priestly past built this edifice: the first two decades of his life, plus change, went into its shaping. It's been a long time since I've played telepathy. Not since my Pern days, back in the '90s, in fact. Out of practice, shame on me -- so it's a clumsy pose, which is sad. We used to have some fun times with dragon speech, back in the day. Woe.
A ghostly avatar, sheathed in white, forms on the steps of Rossi's subconscious and eyes the defiled and defaced effaces before passing into the inner sanctuary. Holy aura guides the search among the relics for the icons of his suspicion. One step into three, three days become one thought, Bishop presiding over the sacraments of Mother, Daughter, and SINful House. Slowly, slowly, the events his suspicions were founded upon are found and erased or altered, the stray and careless words focusing his attention blended and dispersed into the familiar words of Mass. The need, the desire propelling him inexorably toward the holy moment of revelation soothed and braided into tapestry for the alter.
Complicated, that pattern of light and hue, and the paint it sketches on its fellows. A piece here, a piece there, touching other things, other designs. Worry for Alyssa, for Wyngarde, for Melcross, even for Talhurst (past betrayal, past treachery) banded across with affection and the urge -- intolerable, impossible need -- to protect. To provide a peace beyond his own grasp. Face remote, lost in the dispassion of dreams, Chris Rossi stirs and makes a small sound: instinctive protest. Too little, too late.
This was not my best pose ever, but I was a little uncertain of what to pose, and how, so in retrospect it could've been a whole lot worse. The mind is a complicated place, and we do not necessarily control our urges. Percy was already lodged in there with a little of the guilt from above: the one related to the mistaken arrest, at least. So irrational, to want to protect a man even while you want to rip out his intestines and use them to knit an afghan.
The noise draws Percy out of reverie (dark, inward, worried). He sits forward in his chair, amber eyes intent on the tableau as knuckles draw slow and idle over his lips.
Warning pulses of discomfort lighten Emma's avatar with rhythmic bursts of light, hurrying her mental work and drawing her physical face into a mask of tensed lines. Time? How much time? Time has lost it's meaning in these quiet, hallowed walls. Walls older than the man, older than men. Too much time spent tracing tapestries and holy relics, too much time burying compulsions to leave certain questions alone, coloring their answers as unimportant, unnecessary, unessential. Thw White Queen fades her presence, withdrawing, trading the spirit for the flesh, catching hold at the mental marker she'd placed in his mind just before Percy's knock sounded on the door. Memories much more earthy than divine are smoothed across the time they'd taken, fastened into place with details of sight, sound, and smell, and a compulsion to sleep for another few hours. Blues eyes crack open and immediately press shut again.
In the bed, Rossi sighs, faint lines of strain -- shadows, bruises of eyes -- easing for oblivion. A rare gift, tranquility, however fleeting. The dark head stills on its pillow, haloed in black; years fade from the quiet mien, conjuring a younger, more innocent self. Chris sleeps.
Chris doesn't usually sleep well. He's one of those people who wakes up at everything. When he can sleep, really sleep, it's a really rare gift. So that's nice. Uh, I have nothing to say about this.
He'll wake up in the morning with the memory of great sex, the greatest he's ever had, according to Emma's player. (Emma has her pride, after all!) In his paper notes, he makes mention of it. 'I got laid.' This is not a glowing encomium, it's true. He 'remembers' it well, and with pleasure -- but not, for whatever reason, desire. This vaguely puzzles him. Why wouldn't the memory of the most fantastic lay ever not stir even the slightest twinge in his libido? Oh well. He chalks it up to stress, and moves on. After all, there is a case to be solved, and things to be done.
Percy catches the shift in Emma's expression, the sound of the subject's sigh, and slides out of his chair, footsteps slow and quiet across the soft hotel carpet, though he doesn't yet speak.
Good thing. Emma tiredly reinforces her shields, withdrawing deeply to huddle behind them, deep and steady inhalation steadying the physical reaction to the migraine already building in intensity. She slits her eyes again and shifts, sliding bonelessly from the chair to fall to her hands and knees and just /hold/ there for a moment before attempting to regain her feet. "He'll sleep for a few more hours," she whispers to the carpet. "Does... Does the room look right? Pills, Percy, please."
Percy retrieves the pills and drops to his knees on the carpet, offering them to her with one hand while the other rests, delicate, tentative, between her shoulders. "Room's fine," he answers, voice low and quiet.
Emma pops the top and sends it rolling under the chair while shaking out three of the white capsules into a trembling palm. "Let's go," is whispered after swallowing them down, and she grabs the edge of the bed for support as she pulls herself to her feet, one hand pressing lightly against her stomach.
Percy swings smoothly back to his feet again, to retrieve both his pastry box and her bag, and circles back to offer quiet physical support, Bishop to Queen, for their exit.
And the rest is silence. So. All done! I think. Okay.
B'bye.
Date: 10/28/2005
Players: Emma, Percy, Rossi
Requested by: Emma
Continued from Part One
It is not long before there comes a brisk quadruple knock at the door, Percy leaning with shoulder braced against its frame and watching his fingernails with mild interest as he waits to be allowed ingress.
And now we enter the real purpose of this sensual extravaganza: Windexing. Apropos nothing in particular, I'm not entirely sure that I remember how and when we started calling it windexing; it sounds like something I would've come up with, but who the hell remembers? I have this short-term memory thing going for me anyway, so it's quite possible I'm mistaken. If anybody recalls, gimme a shout. Nonetheless, the phrase is pretty descriptive, while at the same time being completely ass-backwards. What Emma and Percy propose to do is not clean up or even wipe away the memories in Rossi's head, but blur them, hide them, and wrap around the irrepressible memories a conditioning towards reluctance that will prevent Rossi from ever pursuing this line again.
We had some conversations OOCly about how this process would work, and what the final result would be like for Rossi. Emma's player and Jean's player determined, I believe, that memories can't really be erased -- excised, so to speak -- but they can buried and stitched over, repressed so far that it would take a significant act to bring them into the open again. The possibilities of this were dizzyingly fantastic, and I admit that privately I writhed a little in delight.
The actual details, Emma's player left up to me -- how I wanted to play it out, what his eventual recovery would be like, how it would impact his relationship with mutants, how it would color his relationship with the other people involved in the case: Jason, Sabby, Percy, etc. Such trust. My inner twink woke up and twittered like a canary on E. I will talk about what impact it did end up making a little later.
Percy makes his entrance, with a deliberate show of nonchalance. Poor Percy. It was not an easy decision for him to make, to come to Emma; there were worries that she was losing her mind. Certainly anxiety over the effect that Jean becoming Black Queen had had on her. Still, making Percy White Bishop was probably the wisest thing Emma could have done, and while it didn't work out in the way Emma expected, it has also been a fantastic path of development for both her and Percy. Their characters have blossomed and changed and evolved so spectacularly that I have to pause and applaud them both. Because, dude. Sweet.
I am easily distracted. Shit. What was I talking about? Right. Percy. So Percy is anxious, and not in a position where he trusts Emma as much as he'd like to be able to. The Little Bishop Who Would: his presence is as much to use his mutation to help Emma keep control, as it is to protect Rossi.
They have a quaint and see-sawing relationship, Chris and Percy, each protecting the other -- not out of friendship, but through a curious sense of obligation (at least on Chris's side) -- from random bugbears. Percy is the more far-sighted of the two, which is only natural, since he has more knowledge. When he /is/ aware of threat or a need on Talhurst's part, though, Chris steps in: facing off against Bahir, suggesting to Sabby that she look after Percy after prison, even keeping Percy's mutation a secret from Leah after learning they slept together, though that's more for her sake than it is for his. Percy's protection has been more significant, and debateable of merit. His presence likely kept Chris from enduring more than he did during this session (death, for instance) but then again, he's one of the reasons Chris gets erased to begin with. He warned Bahir off of messing with Chris, even as Chris thought he was warning Bahir off of messing with either of them.
After this episode in Rossi's life, he gave Percy very little thought, in the same way one doesn't really think about the friends of friends, distant acquaintances at best. Percy, I imagine, did much the same, after recovering from attendant guilt and stress and the like. However, there's an old Chinese proverb that a life you save is yours forever. While it's not the same case in regards to these two, I think there's something between them that uncomfortably acknowledges obligation of one sort or another. I know what that feeling of obligation is on Chris's side. I'll talk more about that later, too.
Check me out, making up all sorts of crap about Percy. For all I know, he just finds Rossi a pain in the ass.
For the man on the bed, the knock is a diversion, if not necessarily a welcome one. Rossi rolls up, hands raking idly through already rumpled hair; a glance cants towards the bathroom as he stands, catching up his shirt and slipping into it as a nod to modesty. "Hey. Someone's at the door." Memory flicks back and retrieves stored data: she wore no wedding ring.
Random note: Rossi doesn't do married women. At least, he doesn't do women he knows are married -- and he checks visually, looking for the wedding band or the indentation of one that has been removed. This is, I realized belatedly, part of what he was doing during the entire foreplay of this scene: checking Morgan's hands for a sign. He is a thwarted romantic, and the Catholic upbringing and his parents' example have made him an idealist when it comes to marriage. At the same time, his work has shown him all the ugliest side of marriage. Cops all know that husbands kill wives and wives kill husbands. He is unwilling to be a cause, an excuse, or even simply another nail in the coffin of a marriage, whether already doomed or not.
He doesn't really expect an indignant husband to charge into the room, mind. He's guessing it's more like room service, or hotel staff. Still -- he has had at least one memorable experience while in college (part of the reason he doesn't do married women. Anymore. Or drive taxis. Anymore.) -- so when interrupted, he can't help but double-check. She's not married. Right?
Emma tosses one more look around the room, searching for any clues that if left behind would whisper suspicion in Chris' ear. A few dirty towels, a washcloth darkened by makeup, kleenax and cellophane in the trashcan. Emma cants an unseen look toward the detective from behind the closed door and inhales slowly, rushing through a mini version of normal centering techniques before reaching into mental fingers already embedded in his conscious and squeezing, triggering flashpoints and pulling control of Rossi's body from him. All conscious control flees, leaving him paralyzed.
Emma opens the door and steps out, a malicious little smile playing on lips familiar and yet not, and moves to the door. "Don't worry, darling. I'll get it." She turns the handle and pulls it in after her as she moves back toward Chris. "There. I hid the evidence rather well, don't you think?" she coos, bending close, a strand of blond hair sliding forward.
Half-way to the door already, there is little to catch Rossi as he crumples, collapsed like the proverbial stringless marionette. Loose-limbed, startled, he falls to the side, barely missing the sofa with his head; a second later, lust -- pheromonal opiate that it is, fogged thick and murky through the room -- is erased entirely. Shock, first. Alarm. Then rage blooms to supplant it, instant and violent: it smashes at the pair, claws bloody and savage, before mental walls slam back into place. Green eyes glare at Emma, belated realization promising murder.
Possibly this pose of mine should've gone somewhere in the middle of Emma's pose, so it can better track: shock as he loses all control, and alarm; these are inevitable. But what Emma says makes it immediately obvious that this is her doing: /she's/ not surprised. Nor is she apologetic. Obviously not -- and combined with her change of appearance, it takes very little intelligence for Rossi to lay the appropriate blame at the responsible party's door.
It's the first time that Rossi has experienced any of the darker side of telepathy. He was intellectually aware that it was possible to have control of your body seized from you, but it was academic to him, as I'd mentioned before. Jesuit-trained though he was, he's sat through plenty of arguments about the mind vs. the soul, and the distinction between the two. Those days of philosophical speculation are long past him, but still, there is an atavistic instinct to merge the two into one gestalt. Knowledge is different from experience: his initial reaction of rage is as much a proxy for fear as it is a recognition of what's about to happen.
Percy's player mentioned that he was really glad Percy wasn't in the room for the Thing that happened later. For Rossi, what starts here was rape; everything that followed was just a different flavor of the same violation.
Percy slinks into the room through the door Emma's opened, all diffident slouch with fists curled into the safety of his pockets. And the instaneous violent crash of Rossi's rage sweeping over his senses is hardly unexpected, either: pheromonal agents, soothing it away, robbing him of it -- unnatural tranquility falling heavy on all three as the White Bishop does his duty.
And here's another violation, right on top of the first. First they strip Rossi of physical control, then they strip him of emotional, leaving him only intellect and the conviction that mental will likely follow in short order. What Percy does here is just as much rape to Chris as the loss of his motor control. There's no sexual overtone to this, except what Emma injected before and again, later. The rape that I'm referring to here is forcible violation, subjegation, humiliation, and debasement. While Chris is hardly a control freak, so much of what he does and what he is is based on control -- control of himself, of his emotions, of his intelligence, his memories, his instincts -- and using all of that as a tool or weapon. The worst that Magneto could do and does do to him later doesn't hold a candle to what Percy and Emma do to him in this scene. All Magneto can do to him is kill his body. What Percy and Emma are doing is tantamount to killing his soul.
Percy's player, I think I recall, mentioned that smoothing away the anger was as much for his own sake -- but Chris doesn't know that. Neither does he care. Good intentions or not, the effect is what matters.
Emma winks down into those blazing green eyes and transfers a kiss to his lips with a fingertip before Percy's manipulations settle the regretful malevolence fueling the action. "We'll have to get him stripped and settled in the bed. I could loose him enough to allow him use of his legs, but I'm afraid he'll fight us," she says to Percy over her shoulder as she rises and moves toward the desk.
Anger dies, suffocated under artificial calm. In its wake, cold reason and calculation clamps down on Rossi's thoughts, retreating him still further behind those well-crafted shields. Recognition darkens the eyes, turned askance to identify the newcomer; the barest hint of wistfulness registers at the suggestion of freedom, however limited. Possibilities. Opportunities. Swift and violent revenge.
Sniffle. she's malevolent. And whyever for? Chris didn't even /sleep/ with her. You do realize that I'll make you comment at least this part of this log for me, right, Emma? Turnabout's fair play. Why and wherefore her emotional state, and the malice that occurs throughout this part of the log?
Suppression of his emotions does give Chris room to think, and the recognition is as much for the unnatural speed of that emotional suffocation as it is for the entering Percy. He knows Talhurst's mutation from the interrogation, and he remembers other things from the interrogation as well -- accusations he made, ideas he toyed with. He's unsure whether Emma or Percy killed his anger: Percy did it before, but Emma is a telepath, after all. At this point, it doesn't matter. He broke Percy in the interrogation room, so he has little worry that he can break Talhurst here ... if only he can get his mouth back. He thinks he knows what buttons to press, what leashes to tug--
--of course, Percy the White Bishop is a slightly different animal from Percy Talhurst the Suspect. Rossi doesn't know that. I think he believed at this time that a telepath had some sort of hold over Percy, or held some kind of threat over him, since a telepath was involved in the attack on Alyssa somehow, one which neither Percy nor Jason gave up. It seems that this woman is that telepath.
Don't think that Rossi didn't hear what Emma said about getting him stripped and settled on the bed. Intellectually (not emotionally, damn Percy) he's coldly considering whether this is a purely sexual assault. He dismisses that almost immediately. Sexual assault, possibly -- but while he has seen some truly stupid shit in his life, a telepath and a pheremonal controller he recently arrested collaborating just to jump his bones is beyond stupid. Not that he hasn't seen outrageous stupidity before, but somehow he's not buying it. Not when /she/ was about to get him into the sack without any help. Unless this is some really, really whacked up pair.
Percy cocks an eyebrow at her. "Can't imagine where you'd get an idea like that." Sardonic drawl, thick and dark, but not entirely amused. "We have to get him /stripped/?" His face twists into a grimace, amber eyes flickering dark to her face before sliding away again -- but avoiding Rossi. Dear God, completely avoiding Rossi. He snorts, though the humor is forced. "Christ. Where's he keep his brain, Emma?"
Emma stops and turns to look at her Bishop, expression as flat and neutral as if they were discussing what cookies to serve at tea. "Unless you judge him to be the sort who /doesn't/ remove his clothes to have sex?" she asks blandly, then lifts an inquiring brow before bending over the desk and searching for a piece of paper. "Where most men do, I suppose," she answers mildy, then rolls her eyes. "In order to prevent him asking questions about how he spent three hours of the night, I'm going to make him /think/ the night goes exactly as he expects."
Rossi's mind races, chasing paths of possibility and consequence -- Talhurst's presence, accusations made in an interrogation room, conspiracy -- and with a curious satisfaction he settles that name, that slipped clue, into place. Trails of money. Illusion. Power. << Emma Frost, >> he thinks, making a dagger of that name. << Get the fuck out of my mind, you bitch. >>
Poor Percy. What's running through his mind, there? Guilt. Possibly horror. Bad enough that he's participating in this at all -- that he set this up, in fact -- but to see the physical humiliation on top of the mental violation?
Rossi's learned well from Jean, both by accident and on purpose, and he has one voice left, so he uses it. If he can't break Percy, he'll dig at Emma, pushing her buttons to jostle her control: a dangerous game, but all he has left. He has no illusions about what is about to happen now, after what Emma has said; his memory will be tampered with, and rewritten. Intolerable. He is the sum total of his memories and experiences, and what Emma is proposing to do is, with all due apology for the dramatic language, worse than death to him.
Despite the knowledge and the horror, however, he knows the twinge of satisfaction. He's got another piece of the puzzle, of this ongoing, painstaking tapestry of understanding that he's building out of clues and hard work and investigation. Emma Frost, who visited Percy in prison, who is tied to SIN, a house of mutants. Another Xavier School, maybe, but something much, much darker.
"Just out of curiosity, how much sex have I actually had with you?" Percy inquires with perfect brightness, arms folded tight over his chest.
The pen stills for a moment at Percy's question, then inks out the remainder of the note Rossi will find in the morning from 'Morgan'. << Aw, hero. Does this mean no post-coital cuddles? >> she murmurs back, confirming Rossi's suspicion. For as long as he will remember it anyway. She straightens and turns around,flicking a glance between the detective and the bed. "We'll have to get him into bed now, at least. Officer? Would you rather I finished what I started earlier, or should I let him have the unwrapping honors later?" The White Queen loosens her control enough to allow speech.
Unwrapping. There's an interesting word. Officer: objectifying Rossi -- not that it hasn't happened to him before in one form or another, but it takes on a particular unpleasantness and ominous quality when taken in context with the subjegation and dominance in what's happening. There's a nudge there, too, to the small thread of homophobia in Rossi. Given Percy's presence and his apparent comfort with Emma, not to mention his collaboration in controlling the situation, Chris has no particular speculation about how far Percy will go or could go if he were the one undressing him.
And Emma doesn't even answer Percy. I suspect her malice about letting Percy undress Rossi was as much a retaliatory jab at Percy for that remark -- betraying lack of trust, after all -- as it was meant to unsettle Chris.
"/Bitch/," spits Rossi, a small tendril of anger writhing free of the pheromonal muzzle before it is squashed again. Stark, that baritone, sunk into the rich accent of his birth; it whips its lash around velvet, leaving the deep timbres bloody and ragged. "Talhurst. I should've known. What's the plan, erase my brain? Or is it just little bits and pieces of it? This the sort of thing that gets you off, you son of a bitch?"
Percy flinches a little, eyes dark and fixed on the floor. The words echo, biting and clawing -- not all of them, though. Not all. 'Should've known,' burying itself deep -- "That's right, Rossi," he says, voice cool and dark. "We're doing this to you /solely/ because I was short on wank material." He raises his glance, to Emma. Quiet and sad, the mental voice -- more revealing, perhaps, than he means it to be -- brushed with wind and rain and /tired/, so /tired/, as he reaches out for her with his thoughts. << I'd prefer not to do the unwrapping. If it's all the same to you. >>
Of the two, Rossi selects Percy as the weaker of the two, the one to target immediately when his voice gets returned to him. The reason is simple: he's broken Percy once before, whereas Emma is an unknown quantity. Having broken Percy once, he is on home turf when he goes after Talhurst. Chris's wording is a little obscure, here, which is unfortunate. What he had in his mind was far more coherent than what his player eventually typed out. (I say again, Rossi is very poorly served by his player.) "This the sort of thing that gets you off--" refers to the entire situation: Chris dominated and basically a puppet, without his own will to call his own, while he is violated in the worst way possible.
It's basically Chris's way of calling Talhurst a sick bastard. Sick bastard doesn't mean anything though, without the sordidness of detail. I like that Percy makes public show of collusion with Emma, even while having a different kind of discussion with Emma, mind to mind. Omote and ura. The outward face of the White Bishop, which doesn't spare the inner Percy Talhurst. Percy has an entire thing going for him, a strain of unease regarding the use of his powers and situations in the past where he used it to coerce people into having sex with him. Rape, in short, though more cynical people would say that you can't rape the willing. So what is it if you can make people want to have sex with you? Something more terrible than straightforward seduction. Removing even their ability to not want you? Where's the line between consent and force?
Chris's words stab somewhat, as a result. I don't know how far, or how meaningful a wound it is; I never asked Percy's player. When Chris was interrogating Percy, it was at the suggestion that Percy might be next door to a rapist that inspired the first flash of anger from the man, whereas before it was just fear and uncertainty. Rossi remembers that. Frightened animals will turn on you when they're cornered, or when you touch a wound. Even in extremis, Chris has the instincts of a predator.
"I just knew you'd come up with the sweetest pet name, darling," Emma replies, bright and brittle saccharine coating her tone. "C'mon, love. Up on your feet then," she orders, telepathic imperative underlying her words as she clumsily simulates the orders his own thoughts would send to his body to comply. Percy's presence is faded to barest whisper as she both retreats from the sense of his emotions and focuses her control on Rossi. "Percy. On the counter is my bag. Fish out the pills and chocolate, please."
Out of this pose, I make a note: I like that Emma's player gives us the cue of 'clumsily.' I admire that she plays Emma as power without subtlety, not to mention her fallibility and lack of perfect control. Emma being one of the really shiny, shiny type of FC, I imagine the temptation to Mary Sue with her must be immense. Despite that, the player doesn't give in. Emma is a nuclear warhead, killing ants. 'Clumsily.' It just tickles me. Okay. I move on.
No, I don't. I just like this pose of hers. 'Bright and brittle saccharine.' See? Imperfect perfection. Knowing she's losing Percy, and taking it out on Chris--
I am pleased. Although as a side note, whenever I read 'fish out the pills and chocolate,' I can literally taste /fish and chocolate/ on the back of my tongue. It is revolting. I do not know where in my past I thought this was a good combination, but it seems I must've tried it at some point. The memory seems to be repressed. The taste, sadly, is coming back. Damn.
The man lurches, inhumanly awkward; perspiration dampens his brow as he sets himself -- futilely -- to battle. Anger for Chris Rossi is a handy cover for other, less acceptable emotion. Fear, unacknowledged, squirms lithe and supple to snap at Percy with poisoned fangs. A thousand tiny deaths, dealt by a thousand tiny mouths: horror for the ultimate violation, for loss of control, for the inevitable betrayal of his own mind. "Got a little too close to your secrets?" he demands through gritted teeth. "What happens when you stop being useful, Talhurst? Your brain gets windexed, too? One spritz: no more Percy. Or your friends? Is it already too late for them, asshole?"
Percy shows his teeth at the other man in a brief, sharp grin that has nothing to do with humor. Cool and quiet, subtle emphasis: "That's when I swallow a bullet, Detective." He emits more chemicals, treacherous soothers that they are, though it's not really for Rossi's nerves that he's trying to settle but his own, frayed and teetering. He crosses the room smoothly, swiftly, retrieving pills and chocolate -- good, obedient spaniel -- from the bag on the counter, and is silent grace itself as he moves to Emma's side, offering them.
This entire section really is about Percy and Rossi, with Emma almost a background character. Their past relationship makes it so, and the immediacy of Rossi's goading; he doesn't know Emma yet, and is still speculating on weapons to use against her.
I do not like my pose. It is le stink. However, this is what happens when anger is wiped away; the thing it was replacing, or covering, gets its chance to sneak out and play. This is the point where Rossi suspects that Sabitha was involved in the entire thing, though he doesn't go so far as to think Sabby set this situation up. Not exactly. (Though a little voice in the back of his mind whispers about mutants, and how they stick together-- and how well does he know Sabby, anyway? What if....) He thinks rather, that maybe Sabby told Percy that Rossi was onto something. He knows Percy and Sabby are close. Just how close are they? Close enough for Percy to do this for Sabby? Or for Sabby to rat him out to protect Percy? In the balance, which is more important to Sabby? Percy or-- he doesn't even bother to finish that thought: he is cynical enough to already know the answer. The taste of betrayal is bitter. This is why he asks about Percy's friends, and not his own, others who might know what Rossi knows. He doesn't mean friends. He means Sabitha. What will you do when Emma turns on her?
Still, despite the suspicion, which is half-brother to certainty -- he doesn't say her name. He suppresses the thought almost as fast as he has it -- he might be wrong, after all -- so it doesn't register loudly enough to reach Emma. Jean's lessons were good for something, after all. Nonetheless, this is why Sabitha's name shows up later in the log, when she's flipping through his mind.
And how unfair of Percy! Given a scenario in which he is placed in the same situation as Rossi, he chooses a way out that he doesn't give Chris: merciful death.
"And that's enough out of you," Emma snaps, focusing her control down again on restricting Rossi's speech and moving around the edge of the bed to push him toward it, counting on gravity and aim to land him across it (but not really bothering to watch to make sure he does) and turns to take the chocolate bar, but not the pills. "I'll need those later," she says in an undertone, looking down at her hands as they unwrap the glucose-enriching confection instead of at her Bishop. "I will no doubt need additional sugar afterwards as well. Would you please go find something appropriate? The card to the room is in my purse. Out in the hall. Don't bother knocking when you return," she orders softly, tossing him his chance of escape before turning back to the detective and the task at hand.
Chris tumbles onto the bed, folding over it with boneless ease: a far cry from his last collapse onto the wide mattress, and with less dire purpose. Italian reels in fluid obscenity behind his eyes, imperfect cover for an intent triggered by Percy's reply. Catholic protest rears -- suicide is a sin! -- and is ruthlessly dismissed. << Surrounded by lapdogs, >> mocks Rossi. << Does everybody sigh with relief when you leave? How powerful /are/ you, Emma Frost? >>
And Emma shows a little kindness, a little compassion for her hard-used White Bishop, sending him out of the room. Of course, sending him out of the room means that pheremonal restraint will go with him, and the removal of a watchful eye. It's a gesture of sorts, a nod to the awareness that all is not right between her and her bishop, and that their friendship is straining: that there's doubt on at least one side, and a thinning of trust. But Percy trusts her, doesn't he? Enough to leave her alone with Chris for a few dangerous, appalling minutes.
Thanks a lot, butthead.
It's not in Rossi's nature to be suicidal. He is, however, self-destructive, and what Percy says gives him a possible avenue of escape. Weighing the options between death and his mind's possible destruction, he'll choose death. One of Sgt. Rossi's old police buddies suffered a stroke while still in his prime, and spent the next twenty years with severe brain damage. Mrs. Rossi used to take the kids to visit him. It was meant to be a kindness, but it was a horror for young Chris, who now numbers mental incapacity as one of his greatest terrors.
No more speech. Well, then. Percy being out of reach now, he turns his attentions to the only one he can affect now, and starts jabbing at the obvious buttons: loneliness, fear, hate, jealousy, uncertainty, greed -- the baser emotions that can drive a person into rash action.
Relief (sure enough, it is!) washes plainly over Percy -- over expression, over thoughts; not to have to watch, not to force himself to /know/ -- but the knowledge is there anyway, isn't it? He smiles, brief and sad. "Emma ..." Her name spoken with soft, tentative warmth, but the ensuing sentence is aborted, unspoken, clothed in /later/. He substitutes, "I'll be back soon." Behind the words dark thoughts lurk: Soon, soon -- no need for her to bear his guilt, /his/ guilt not hers, alone. His glance cants to Rossi and he sighs, heavy and dark. "You won't remember, Chris. But I'm sorry this was necessary." And he starts at a shuffle towards the door, the purse, the card: brief freedom, however false, from observer's responsibility.
<< I imagine they do, Detective, >> she replies soundlessly, bestowing the correct title for the first time that evening as she weaves around furniture and strewn clothing to crawl up on the bed beside his prone body. << Tsk. Such language from a hero, >> is shot back, accompanied by a sense of tinkling laughter, though also a brief, shadowed glance at Percy's back. Once the door closes behind the Bishop, Emma drops her gaze back to Rossi's single visible glittering eye and curls over her knees to brush a kiss to his temple, framing his face with a trail of warm breath to the corner of his mouth. Fingers start to work, pushing and arranging him to ease the removal of the shirt.
Pheromonal control begins to tatter with Percy's removal and distance; sensing freedom, anger gathers and bucks against its reins, straining towards attack. << Must be lonely, >> Rossi observes, pushing away the senses' report of her activities on his body. << Nobody to hang out with -- except maybe other telepaths. Bet you and Jean are tight. Best Friends Forever. You share clothes as well as Summers? >>
Kissing. Rossi's skin crawls. Whether she means it in mockery or in affection (who can tell? Twisted bitch!) or in possessive what-have-you, to him it's just another spasm of revulsion, and another thing for him to push out of his mind. He has bigger, more important fish to fry. Rossi's going swiftly through a list in his head of the insecurities that could possibly stab at Emma. He doesn't know mutants, but he does know women, and jealousy is one of the most common. Love has no real context here -- his next remark after this going to be about Warren -- but as it is, he hits paydirt almost before he realizes it. His reason for mentioning Jean first is simple: his telepathic shielding, such as it is, is from Jean. At one point, Jean told him that all minds have a special stamp, so she could recognize another telepath's work. Perhaps this means that Emma recognizes Jean's. Also, Jean claims to be a very powerful telepath, so perhaps knowing that he's acquainted with her will give Emma pause -- or drive her to more reckless action.
Most significant is the Scott Summers connection. Two strong women sharing the same power, both competing over the same man. There was no way that ended well, no matter which woman was first in Scott's life -- and it's obvious that Summers continues to respect and care for Jean, whether professionally or personally. He had nothing but contempt for Emma, when the the boys talked about her after Matt's encounter with Emma's, uh, loins.
Best Friends Forever is a mocking phrase stolen from Sabby, proof that the suspicion about her hasn't gone away, trivial undercurrent though it is to the more dangerous business at hand. Hi, Sabby!
Emma hisses and rises, reinforcing her control over his body and glaring down with eyes narrowed over ice-chipped irises. "Oh, darling. You have no idea. It's never lonely for a telepath. Always another mind to wrap ourselves up in. Scott knew. Knows. That's why he can't get enough of us," she purrs, velvet in tone and touch. The shirt is tossed to the side and he rolled to his back before she moves down, spreading her knees over his legs and working with the buckle of his pants next. << Bet you've never had sex with a telepath, have you? What's the matter? Too afraid of us? Or was Jean the only one you knew. Shame. She is a little frigid, and you missed your chance tonight. >> Buckle clinks forlornly into the silence of the room, and she reaches for button and fly. << You would have loved it. Guess you'll just have to settle for the job I can give you. Want a sample? >> Without waiting for the naturally negative response, Emma heats his mind again, whirling and burying his senses under a kaleidoscope of images and sensations that leave what had happened earlier in the evening looking tame.
Triumph blazes for a second's satisfaction, recognizing Emma's reponse for what it is: /there/, a weakness, push it, break it open-- only to be lost entirely, sent reeling to be consumed by fire. Violation indeed, and of the most terrible kind. The man's strangled cry rips raw across the small, horrible sounds of his helplessness, of fabric being peeled away; even rage disintegrates, swept up in the conflagration of lying, treacherous senses.
For the record, Emma's player apologized abjectly to me before posing her pose here, and then cringed at her character. Percy's player made stomped rat sounds, and was earnestly grateful that Percy hadn't been in the room to see that.
And me? I laughed. Hysterically. Because I am a sick puppy, yes, but also because I honestly didn't see this coming, and neither did Chris. He was expecting retaliatory pain. He was braced for retaliatory pain. Pleasure? That was something else. It threw both of us, and that delighted me. It always does, when someone manages to surprise me by doing something in character and yet so unexpected. It doesn't happen very often. I'm not arrogant enough to say that I know people -- I don't, and usually, I'm too indifferent to predict their responses -- but I can usually anticipate a range of replies or reactions, say, and figure that if I do this, that will happen. People are, to some extent, predictable. They follow patterns of behavior.
If I'd given it a lot of thought, I might have considered the possibility that Emma would do this, but then again, maybe not. Anyway, sheer hilarity on my part, and pleasure. (Not the kind that Rossi experiences.) Awesome. The entire log was worth it, just for that one terrible, brilliant act.
I am, I must add, rather pleased with my pose there.
And now, let us talk a little bit about what happened to Chris. There's no question that this part of the log, almost from start to finish, is one long violation for him -- I keep using that word, but really, it's the best one for what this is -- and of a kind that strikes at significant vulnerabilities. His inability to protect himself against telepaths. His fear of mutants, though he had overcome that, mostly. Control. Sense of self. Even though Emma covered this memory like she did the others, it's still a significant injury, one that continues to bleed and poison him, bit by bit. Up to this point, he'd used sex to help him forget things for a little while, as a kind of escape from his mind and his work. After this, because of what Emma does to him, it no longer works. Sex is now inseparably linked to horror, if not consciously; it takes a while for his libido to recover, and even after that he no longer finds refuge in it. Post-windex, he no longer sleeps around as much, because he can't quite let himself go anymore, and voices no longer shut up when he's having it. Leah becomes a strange haven for him: she comes along at an opportune time, really. She is both a great excuse and a fantastic match for him; now he absolutely has to maintain control, be in control, and be monogamous at that.
His temper is shorter, and he grasps for control a little more fiercely, with a lot more underlying fear for its loss. While he doesn't really act significantly different at first, Beston notices a few small changes, without really registering them. Rossi no longer shares his thoughts as much. He's more cynical. There are small walls being built that will start to harden and grow stronger with time. His nightmares return, but are worse because there's pleasure mixed in with the horror -- and nobody wants to dream about murdered children and wake up with a boner. That's just not right. He also, and I just realized this, stops thinking about Sabby much. There's an unease there and a wariness that he can't quite come to grips with, completely separate of the trimming Emma did of her status as a mutant.
The point of this commentary is to document how he feels about telepaths, though, and the inevitable fallout of his feelings regarding them. After this, the mental disciplines he learned from Jean are shot; for a long time, he finds himself unable to form the shields that he thought he'd mastered, and is plagued by irritation and restlessness when he tries. He cancels his lessons with her, coming up with one excuse or another, and avoiding personal contact for quite a while. He doesn't want to see her. He doesn't want to talk about her. He doesn't want to think about her. None of this is Emma's doing -- I don't think -- but is instead a manifestation of his new terror regarding telepaths. He has no source for terror, though, so he is puzzled and determines (logically) that he's not afraid of Jean; he's just, well, too busy and stressed and tired to deal with this mental shit right now.
The immediate fear subsides after a while, but mostly through repression and transference. Now instead of being afraid of telepaths, he's intensely annoyed by her morality and her holier-than-thou attitude. Who can trust someone who's that perfect all the time? Always acts like she knows better, acts better, thinks better than everyone else. Bullshit. Give him someone more human, any day. Curiously, this aversion is less strong when it's applied to male telepaths: he can come up with rationales to tolerate them better, if not like them. Bahir, for instance, may be a telepath, but the flaws that make him dangerous also seem to make him less of a threat, in Chris's mind.
Chris was never a misogynist, but he's starting to develop tendencies that way. I suspect the end of Leah's arc will exacerbate that, somewhat.
Emma straightens, a cruelly satisfied snarl curling her lips, and lets the ghost sensations continue to dance across his mind, stirring natural responses unnaturally as she sets about to finishing the task in methodical fashion. Shoes, socks, pants... there's not even a pause to appreciate New York's Finest before he wrapped in the comforter, and she is settled in a chair near the head of the bed with his hand in her lap, and her fingers stroking over still sensitive skin in a echo of his earlier caress in the restaurant.
A small moan is the best Rossi can manage for that malice, disjointed despair struggling to regroup itself as rage: his shield, his frail and useless armor. << ...Jean, >> he manages, groping after purpose. << ... strike a nerve? Then again, he stands by /her/, doesn't he? He still /wants/ her. Is she more powerful, is that it? Better than you? >>
Mean Emma. And yet she maintains physical contact, even while she tortures him -- for the telepathy? I wondered, but didn't ask. I assumed it was malice, and so posed to it. Yet another pose of mine that had some nice elements in it. Rossi still tries to push that button, now that he's found it. Push push push! He got rage once, and she struck back; if he keeps pushing at it, maybe she'll go beyond pleasure to something more final.
I laughed at Emma's part about appreciating New York's Finest.
Emma's nails curl into the delicate meat under Rossi's thumb, and she slices the connection between his mind and conscious thought, sending him spiraling into unconsciousness, and her slumping in the chair, pain already wrapping tightening bands around her head.
Percy slinks back in, re-entry padded on silent feet, bearing a large white pastry box under one arm. The box is deposited on the counter, and the man himself on a chair, to lean forward with elbows upon his knees: quiet and still and calm as he watches. And, of course, broadcasting similarly.
Percy's return is noted with a brief flicker of blue peeking out through darkened lashes, and then the whole intensity of Emma's powers turn to Rossi, sliding in, down past thought and reason, darting through memories like silver fish; brief, bright specks among the field of his mind.
You're late, Percy. (Fucker.)
I have little to say about this part, except that I loved Emma's imagery there: the darting and the silver fish.
...and Percy's player has just said something to remind me that I haven't explained why Rossi feels obligation towards Percy, even though the little weasel is also responsible for his mental butchery.
Of course, Chris doesn't remember this night the way it happened. There's no Percy, no association with mental rape, nothing. However, there is residual discomfort whenever he thinks about Talhurst -- a kind of reluctant distress that makes him restless. He has chalked this up to bigotry on his own part, and is ashamed of it: anti-mutant bigotry, homophobia, whichever. He can't sit down and work through it because he just /can't/ think about Percy that long -- he approaches thoughts about Percy like ducks do really large pieces of bread, jabbing at them and then retreating, then jabbing again to break it apart into manageable chunks. It's a relief to just chalk it up to bigotry and feel guilt about it. On top of determining Percy's innocence, (albeit not /conclusively/. There's still a niggling little doubt. After all, a mutant vouching for a mutant?) Rossi's got a little extra guilt to gnaw at in between meals.
He's not the type to get jittery so much, but there's definitely an uncomfortable awareness of Percy whenever they're near each other. He makes up for what he fears are his private issues by compensating in the way he knows best. He won't feign a friendship he doesn't really feel, since Percy's not a suspect or a witness, someone to be played. However, he still takes an interest, much as a vet might tend to a particularly ugly dog once under his care. He'll protect and defend, instead, where appropriate and necessary. Obligation.
In silence, in somnolence, his mind unfolds. Not field nor pool, but temple, shaped in stained glass and enduring, mute silhouette. Experience given color, form, depth, texture, even the ripples of sound are caught and molded by a sybarite's talent: all the senses, preserved in mortal patterns. New impressions, recovered memories -- Jean Grey's cat, Summers drinking beer -- glow radiant against darker, uglier scars. (Brutality, violence, inhumanity exercised by humanity on living flesh and dying, /pain/--) Already the lash of pleasure and horror bleeds its dyes into other pieces; the name, her name, fits itself into intricate design, a backdrop of mutancy and conspiracy. Talhurst. Wyngarde. Winters. Melcross. SIN.
Well, of course it would be a temple. Cathedral, even. Rossi's priestly past built this edifice: the first two decades of his life, plus change, went into its shaping. It's been a long time since I've played telepathy. Not since my Pern days, back in the '90s, in fact. Out of practice, shame on me -- so it's a clumsy pose, which is sad. We used to have some fun times with dragon speech, back in the day. Woe.
A ghostly avatar, sheathed in white, forms on the steps of Rossi's subconscious and eyes the defiled and defaced effaces before passing into the inner sanctuary. Holy aura guides the search among the relics for the icons of his suspicion. One step into three, three days become one thought, Bishop presiding over the sacraments of Mother, Daughter, and SINful House. Slowly, slowly, the events his suspicions were founded upon are found and erased or altered, the stray and careless words focusing his attention blended and dispersed into the familiar words of Mass. The need, the desire propelling him inexorably toward the holy moment of revelation soothed and braided into tapestry for the alter.
Complicated, that pattern of light and hue, and the paint it sketches on its fellows. A piece here, a piece there, touching other things, other designs. Worry for Alyssa, for Wyngarde, for Melcross, even for Talhurst (past betrayal, past treachery) banded across with affection and the urge -- intolerable, impossible need -- to protect. To provide a peace beyond his own grasp. Face remote, lost in the dispassion of dreams, Chris Rossi stirs and makes a small sound: instinctive protest. Too little, too late.
This was not my best pose ever, but I was a little uncertain of what to pose, and how, so in retrospect it could've been a whole lot worse. The mind is a complicated place, and we do not necessarily control our urges. Percy was already lodged in there with a little of the guilt from above: the one related to the mistaken arrest, at least. So irrational, to want to protect a man even while you want to rip out his intestines and use them to knit an afghan.
The noise draws Percy out of reverie (dark, inward, worried). He sits forward in his chair, amber eyes intent on the tableau as knuckles draw slow and idle over his lips.
Warning pulses of discomfort lighten Emma's avatar with rhythmic bursts of light, hurrying her mental work and drawing her physical face into a mask of tensed lines. Time? How much time? Time has lost it's meaning in these quiet, hallowed walls. Walls older than the man, older than men. Too much time spent tracing tapestries and holy relics, too much time burying compulsions to leave certain questions alone, coloring their answers as unimportant, unnecessary, unessential. Thw White Queen fades her presence, withdrawing, trading the spirit for the flesh, catching hold at the mental marker she'd placed in his mind just before Percy's knock sounded on the door. Memories much more earthy than divine are smoothed across the time they'd taken, fastened into place with details of sight, sound, and smell, and a compulsion to sleep for another few hours. Blues eyes crack open and immediately press shut again.
In the bed, Rossi sighs, faint lines of strain -- shadows, bruises of eyes -- easing for oblivion. A rare gift, tranquility, however fleeting. The dark head stills on its pillow, haloed in black; years fade from the quiet mien, conjuring a younger, more innocent self. Chris sleeps.
Chris doesn't usually sleep well. He's one of those people who wakes up at everything. When he can sleep, really sleep, it's a really rare gift. So that's nice. Uh, I have nothing to say about this.
He'll wake up in the morning with the memory of great sex, the greatest he's ever had, according to Emma's player. (Emma has her pride, after all!) In his paper notes, he makes mention of it. 'I got laid.' This is not a glowing encomium, it's true. He 'remembers' it well, and with pleasure -- but not, for whatever reason, desire. This vaguely puzzles him. Why wouldn't the memory of the most fantastic lay ever not stir even the slightest twinge in his libido? Oh well. He chalks it up to stress, and moves on. After all, there is a case to be solved, and things to be done.
Percy catches the shift in Emma's expression, the sound of the subject's sigh, and slides out of his chair, footsteps slow and quiet across the soft hotel carpet, though he doesn't yet speak.
Good thing. Emma tiredly reinforces her shields, withdrawing deeply to huddle behind them, deep and steady inhalation steadying the physical reaction to the migraine already building in intensity. She slits her eyes again and shifts, sliding bonelessly from the chair to fall to her hands and knees and just /hold/ there for a moment before attempting to regain her feet. "He'll sleep for a few more hours," she whispers to the carpet. "Does... Does the room look right? Pills, Percy, please."
Percy retrieves the pills and drops to his knees on the carpet, offering them to her with one hand while the other rests, delicate, tentative, between her shoulders. "Room's fine," he answers, voice low and quiet.
Emma pops the top and sends it rolling under the chair while shaking out three of the white capsules into a trembling palm. "Let's go," is whispered after swallowing them down, and she grabs the edge of the bed for support as she pulls herself to her feet, one hand pressing lightly against her stomach.
Percy swings smoothly back to his feet again, to retrieve both his pastry box and her bag, and circles back to offer quiet physical support, Bishop to Queen, for their exit.
And the rest is silence. So. All done! I think. Okay.
B'bye.