(no subject)
7/6/2007
By the time they reach the room, Emma is already wishing she'd insisted on stopping long enough to change. White silk is fine and dandy for entertaining prospective business partners, but for the work anticipated... Ugh. There are a pair of pawns positioned near the door. One is psionic-based, the other not. "Adel suggested I work at a distance," Emma murmurs, looking up at the taller mutant at her side for reaction.
Magneto is difficult to read beyond surface calculation. The clean, elegant black of his suit has little of significance to say about his mood, and the close-shorn scruff around his jaw hides the ghost of tension persistent around his person. "I will go." Again he glances down -- this time marginally more deliberately. "It would be a shame if she set you on fire."
Emma narrows her eyes and hisses a single word before nodding at the guard to let them through. Both of them. "Ass." The rest of their contingent spread out, positioning themselves to follow their monarchs in.
Only a little smugly satisfied with himself, tired as he is, Erik smirks all the way into Sabitha's holding area with exhaustion easily exchanged for casual confidence in posture and stride along the way.
Sabitha is sprawled on the bed, resting on her stomach as she flips through today's Times. A further spread of papers is stacked beside her, and the desk holds both a laptop and the remains of several pieces of tropical fruit. At the first sound outside, she scrambles to her feet to stand and face the door with wary anxiety. She looks like Sabitha - and yet she doesn't. Her hair is longer and darker, hanging loose around her face in a fierce cloud, and the set of her nose is crooked. Her stance is defensive as she waits.
Emma follows in Erik's footsteps, stepping in far enough to allow the spread of wary pawns to file in behind them and take up positions around the room. Emma certainly looks like Emma, or at least the one Sabitha remembers from /before/. Her chin tips up, and she sighs down the length of her (unbroken) nose. "Who are you?" << And don't bother lying. I will know. >> Telepathy brushes lightly across her mind, wafting the message on deceptively gentle winds.
The first entrance is met with surprise, a widening of her eyes and a turn that loosens the tension of limbs. "Magneto?" she asks blankly before her gaze whips toward the woman behind him and she breathes out deep relief. "/Emma/. Thank /God/. I thought they weren't going to let me see you until morning." Her mind is clear and accepting of the telepathy, if a touch fuzzed by the effects of alcohol, and she takes several fast steps toward the other woman.
And at the lead, Erik looks like Erik. Except older, far more wiry, and with grizzled scruff that is too neatly trimmed about the edges not to be intentional. Both of his hands are bare, and built of muscle and bone. He takes up a position a little further on into the room, apart from Emma and pawns, and merely looks at her -- until she moves for Emma, and a low magnetic thrum rolls an unspoken warning through the floor.
Sunset hues fire brightly in Fever's eyes as she steps forward just a bit faster to slide between Sabby and Emma. She balances on the balls of her feet and leans forward, seeming to channel the rattle of magnetic warning into her aggressive stance. Emma takes an easier route and slams Sabitha's open mind with vertigo that turns her senses upside down. "I asked you a question." She glances to Erik, then back again.
Vertigo takes Sabby's already-fuzzed mind hard, and she doesn't just stop - she stumbles. Her weight drops heavily to her knees and she presses a hand into the floor as she closes her eyes and waits.
Magneto looks back, eyes clear and inquiring when Sabitha is taken down to her knees, and magnetism's pulse ebbs and then fades entirely.
Eliza crouches, shuffling sideways at feel of Emma's closing. "I won't ask again. If you are in possession of any of this woman's memories, you should know that," Emma says reasonably, voice sliding as silkily as the fall of the dress she wears.
"Then maybe," Sabby answers with deep-seated irritation, "You should fucking stop turning my head upside down and let me /talk/." Her head whips up, hair flying with the motion, and she eyes Emma sourly.
It's something about the hair flip, perhaps, that triggers Erik's memory. He kidnapped her once. Oh. Idle realization leads to nothing further of particular interest, and he remains somewhat removed from the exchange, contributing only a mild caution while he waits. "Manners."
Emma rolls her eyes and looks away, stepping further behind Fever as she searches the room for a chair. Hello chair. Come here. It obeys, with the help of a pawn. Good chair! There is time enough for a response from Sabby while Emma settles herself on the chair in the middle of the room, surrounded by pawns and a king. And something not labeled, unless one counts 'threat' and 'danger.'
Sabitha takes the silence as opportunity to drop back to her bed, a bit unsteadier now, and a lot warier. She pulls in a slow, steadying breath, and glances once to Magneto before looking back to Emma with shadowed eyes. "Look," she finally starts. "I get that this is weird. Percy said I was supposed to be dead, and I get that that's /weird/, and believe me, if I could have figured this out on my own without freaking you all the fuck out, I would have. But I don't know what the fuck is going on, and I need /help/."
"And what help should we give /you/?" Emma's voice is cold and slick as ice, and she arranges the lines of the gown into precise folds and falls. "A traitorous pawn at best. No. A /dead/ pawn at best." She looks up and fixes the girl with a hard stare that give no sympathy, no quarter. And then she smiles. "I suggest we find out what the fuck is going on." She throws her powers wide before channeling them on the one mind in the room that shouldn't be here, battering her thoughts into incoherency with the needle sharp slices of an ice storm.
Confusion locks fast on Sabby's face as she stares at Emma, and she has just long enough to wonder "... What?" before her mind breaks, all thought cut off by the painful slice of angry telepathy.
Magneto stands silently by, back and jaw stiff as he watches, and learns very little. "Emma."
Emma travels among the ice lances with ease. She curls forward and closes her eyes, concentrating on moving past the level of thought and conscious awareness, looking for memory and motive. Where does this Sabby begin?
Anguish creases Sabby's face as she falls heavily back, breath shallow and pained. Her mind parts easily at Emma's touch, twisting and writhing as it spreads to reveal the two and a half years past. Memories spiral past in flickers - a warm bed, Bahir's arm draped heavy over her waist. The towering glass of greenhouse roofs. A fire crackling, devouring, and the shape of a body within as grief wracks her soul. The world around her has fallen into decay. Sidewalks are torn and jagged, buildings cracked or lost to rubble. And finally there is the split point - there is the day a pulse flooded Manhattan and changed everyone in its wake. A few days before and New York is familiar, Sabby is familiar, ice skating with a fireman who's still a stranger and joking with Chris Rossi over sandwiches.
Magneto watches, and does not strictly appove, brows knit when he looks irritably away to focus upon Fever, and then the floor close to his boots.
Emma watches the play of images with jaded eyes, snorting as the girls grief plays out before her. << Oh, touching. Very touching. Though the bit with Bahir was a mistake, for future reference. He's cold, darling. Especially to someone without a penis. >> Emma spins around in the bright light of New York's memory and fishtails after the pulse. << Tell me more? >>
<< Oh-- fuck, fuuuu-- >> Obscenities split through Sabitha's mind and her head jerks in an uncontrolled spasm. It's all there for the taking - Anxious eyes fixed to television and internet and paper in search of an explanation as those around them begin to die. Bridges destroyed by explosion, military with guns. Bodies carted to giant graves along the river. Sabby gasps sharply and jerks her head forward as Hellions gather in Frost Enterprises and turn a lobby into a home while chaos rises around them.
Emma inhales a sharp breath and jerks upright, batting away at the images as she detangles herself somewhat from Sabitha's mind. She turns wide eyes on Erik and pants until she can separate enough of her mind to control her own body functions.
Erik, who is still brooding at the floor, takes a moment to realize that he is being oggled, and looks first to Sabitha. Then Emma, eyes stark and leonine features angled into mild annoyance. What?
Tears sting at Sabby's eyes, but she's too angry to give them the freedom to escape. She collapses backwards against the edge of the bed and stares furiously at Emma. "What the /fuck/ is wrong with you?" she spits.
Emma doesn't hear Sabitha. She doesn't even see Erik, though she looks directly at him for a long moment. Images crowd and fight against her established timeline. Her memories. Her reality. She rises in a quick movement and pulls her attention away from Erik, turning her back on Sabitha and moving in jerky movements in the general direction of the door. Pawns tense and rearrange themselves.
"..." says Erik, mouth fallen slightly open and brows knit after Emma's move for a retreat. Then he looks back to Sabitha, muddled and suspicious. He is doing a lot of looking and very little speaking, the tired hollows around his face rigid and tense.
Sabitha jerks forward as Emma turns away in a fast, desperate movement. "What-- /please/." Her voice breaks on the last and her gaze whips toward Erik instead. "Magneto," she says, and there's clear expectation in the beg of her voice.
Given that this is the name that only the uneducated masses generally refer to him by these days, there is a hint of automatic condecension about the way he looks her over. If nothing else, his eyes are certainly the same. "What?"
Emma slows and stops, turning to look across a shoulder at the girl. There is no recognition in her eyes, no comraderie, or understanding. Just a wary distance that masks the tumult of memories and impressions trying to sort themselves out into a workable frame. She waits too.
Sabitha doesn't know what to say next-- what to ask for. Abruptly, she feels terribly, horribly alone, and she draws her arms up around her middle. She stares at Magneto for a long moment, lost in silence.
Magneto's brow furrows, and he turns to follow away after Emma. Crazy idiot mystery girl. Wonderful. "Have her sedated."
Sabitha's eyes widen abruptly in instant response. "/No/--!"
Emma floats a vacant look across Sabby, and turns back to her progress, reaching a hand out to grip Erik's arm for guidance if not support.
Vexed as he is, Erik must resist the impulse to shake her off whilst pawns fall in around Sabby, unmoved by whatever protest she sees fit to make. Michael stands well back, fire extinguisher at ready. Just in case. Exuent the King and Queen.
Sabitha's "/Please!/" rises behind them, a frustrated call raised by a tight voice and swiftly thinning patience. She scrambles to stand next to the bed and watches them leave through the shield of pawns, helpless.
The door shuts before Magneto's Drama Queen Monarch Associate staggers and claps a hand to her forehead. "Ngh." Brilliant! Emma stops and releases his arm to brace herself with both hands on her knees as she closes her eyes and attempts to force the swirl to settle.
Magneto's right hand lifts on cue to brush at where her grip rumpled his sleeve, which he then frowns at. "Some form of painful telepathic defense? Or an attack? Outwardly, at least, she seemed disconcertingly genuine."
"/No/," she insists, running through a series of lightening fast centering techniques to pull her thoughts free and clear. "I don't know /what/ she is, but--- It's just-- Her memories. Whoever did this spent a great deal of time crafting them... They're hard to-- God, Erik." She straightens slowly and turns around to one of the pawns. "Fruit, chocolate, juice," she orders, then picks up her pace.
"Coffee," Erik tacks on to the end of Emma's list, brows at an awkward and uneven tilt when he falls into belated step behind her. "Half answers. Disjointed explanations. If those of us without telepathy are doomed to suffer as much for the evening, I believe I may follow in your young friend's footsteps."
Emma turns angrily on him, considering sharing /fully/ the nauseating sensation of pulling the tangled intervening years worth of experience from the Hellion's mind. Instead, she simply shakes her head and turns again to pace for the upper levels. "There are too many memories and images. They're not connected. They don't make any sense. Just... flashes. Like watching a DVD on fast forward." Emma slows and looks back, narrowing her eyes and considering her next words. "But apparently in her version of things, you are now sitting on the smoking ruins of New York City in the aftermath of a war you started."
Magneto slows and stops on the stairs, giving Emma a distinct height advantage for once in her life. His eyes blank along with his expression, and he looks back over his shoulder.
Emma doesn't care about height advantages. She just cares about getting to her room before her head falls off her shoulders and rolls down the hallway. She keeps going, slowing only to kick off her heels before attempting the stairs. Bloodhound gives her an arm before long.
His hand flexed around the banister, Erik turns back shortly to watch Emma go, only to find that she is already gone. And then, from stillness to abrupt movement, he turns on his heel to stride quickly back for Sabitha's quarters.
Magneto has long legs and long strides. It does not take very long for him to shoulder his hurried way back into the room, and with theatrical timing, gruff a low, "Stop!" to stave off the syringe-weilding knot of pawns that has Sabby pinned face down to the floor.
Sabitha has not gone without a fight. And in the past two and a half years, she's learned to fight. One of the pawns has a split lip, and Sabby herself sports a scrape along one cheek and a red eye that looks like it's going to swell, if not blacken. There is, however, not a singe to be seen. One pawn has her hands twisted neatly - if a bit painfully - behind her back, and Sabitha is breathing hard with anger as she lifts her head to glare at the man who's reappeared in her doorway.
Huffing and puffing a bit himself, Erik takes the moment consumed by pawns of this world and the other staring at him to draw himself back up into dignified order while he watches them back. "Let her go," is tried -- and viola, she is set free, if warily and reluctantly. Thusly reassured, he steps on into the room, leaving the door open behind him. "Fever, stay. The rest of you, out."
Sabitha jerks back and up, pulling her arms forward and rolling her shoulders as she scrambles to a stand. She remains stiff and straight in front of Erik, watching him warily. One hand scrapes up and over the her eyes, testing cautiously.
"/Out/." Irritable insistance is required, but the pawns move, and the door closes after them. Unobtrusive, Eliza manages to remain nearly within arm's reach without making too much of a warning spectacle of herself, and Erik narrows his eyes at the only vaguely familiar young woman standing before him.
Dropping, Sabby's arms folds over her chest and she stares at Magneto. After a moment, she ask with a bite, "What do you want?"
"If you know who I am, then you know better than to address me as you are." Unimpressed, Erik stares her down with fists clenched hard at his sides. He does not seem likely to blink any time soon. "What is this?"
"What, because if I cooperate you'll treat me well?" Sabby snaps before she staggers backward toward the support of the bed, one hand raised to the throb of her temples. She closes her eyes as she sinks down into it, and when she opens them again she's a bit calmer. Forcibly so. She answers simply, "I don't know."
Magneto watches her stagger and sink without evident remorse. Any potential for guilt is lost to irritation at her persistent attitude, and he exchanges a hard look with Fever, who very clearly does not think he should be fooling around in here without more guards. "Emma mentioned a war."
"Yeah," Sabby answers. She pauses, hovering on the edge of the bed, and then scoots back enough to pull her legs up to sit cross-legged. "There was a war." Her gaze lifts, dry as it sweeps around the room and she corrects, "Well. Not here, apparently. But I remember a war. Eight months of it."
An actual response, or hope of one, draws the chill of Erik's eyes quickly back down onto Sabitha's. "A war that I began."
"The Brotherhood," Sabby confirms, gaze locked warily on Erik's.
Hungry for more information, it is a (somewhat failed) struggle to maintain some semblance of indifference to that. Fever stiffens a little at his shoulder. "The Brotherhood."
"Yeah--" Sabby answers again, and her brows lower a bit as she studies him uncertainly.
Magneto's eyes are frigid in their distracted search over Sabitha's face, looking for some clear indication of truth or trickery or some other foothold to settle into. Meanwhile, he is thin and old, and coffee is thick on his breath. He doesn't speak again just yet.
Discomfort grows under that gaze, and eventually Sabby speaks just to break the silence. "You look different," she tells him. Her lips quick in a tired smile. "The arm, for one. Do you think I could get some tylenol or something?"
Brows hooding low again at that, Erik straightens out of the slight forward lean he's caught himself adopting and looks aside. Muddled. "When I leave, you will be sedated. It would be in your best interest not to struggle."
Sabitha's eyes flash with anger, sparks rising in her eyes. "You /are/ different," she spits.
"Evidently." One last preoccupied glance scraped over Sabitha from head to toe, Erik turns to leave with a curt nod of farewell.
"That's what you came in here for?" Sabby stirs again, voice rising anxiously. "I came to you for /help/." She rises, taking a single step toward him. "I've cooperated every step of the way-- /please/." There's a frantic note to her voice on the final word. "Don't sedate me."
Magneto is swift enough to lift the arm that stays Fever at his side when he turns, and Sabitha steps. "In one form or another, you have proven yourself a considerable threat to this organization. I do not know what you are or why you are here. If you are operating indepedently, or knowingly, or as part of a larger game. All things considered, as much as I would like to hear more of this world of yours, I think it best to err on the side of caution. At your inconvenience." A glance cast to an appropriate corner of the room later, the door opens, and Erik turns to pace through it with Fever at his heels.
A choked cry of protest follows Erik out before Sabby's left standing, staring helplessly at the door of her prison as dread grows tight in her belly.
The vacuum left by Erik is filled quickly by the pawns he initially evicted, and the door closes behind him, leaving the sedation to resume itself without supervision.
This time, Sabby stands stiff and straight as she accepts it. Her gaze does not move from the door.
Magneto says nothing to Eliza through their trek down the hall back in the direction of the stairs, though there is a definite need for something to be said. Eventually, a muttered order to check in on Emma is deemed sufficient, and Erik moves off on his own way for the conservatory.
The monarchs pay Sabby a visit.
By the time they reach the room, Emma is already wishing she'd insisted on stopping long enough to change. White silk is fine and dandy for entertaining prospective business partners, but for the work anticipated... Ugh. There are a pair of pawns positioned near the door. One is psionic-based, the other not. "Adel suggested I work at a distance," Emma murmurs, looking up at the taller mutant at her side for reaction.
Magneto is difficult to read beyond surface calculation. The clean, elegant black of his suit has little of significance to say about his mood, and the close-shorn scruff around his jaw hides the ghost of tension persistent around his person. "I will go." Again he glances down -- this time marginally more deliberately. "It would be a shame if she set you on fire."
Emma narrows her eyes and hisses a single word before nodding at the guard to let them through. Both of them. "Ass." The rest of their contingent spread out, positioning themselves to follow their monarchs in.
Only a little smugly satisfied with himself, tired as he is, Erik smirks all the way into Sabitha's holding area with exhaustion easily exchanged for casual confidence in posture and stride along the way.
Sabitha is sprawled on the bed, resting on her stomach as she flips through today's Times. A further spread of papers is stacked beside her, and the desk holds both a laptop and the remains of several pieces of tropical fruit. At the first sound outside, she scrambles to her feet to stand and face the door with wary anxiety. She looks like Sabitha - and yet she doesn't. Her hair is longer and darker, hanging loose around her face in a fierce cloud, and the set of her nose is crooked. Her stance is defensive as she waits.
Emma follows in Erik's footsteps, stepping in far enough to allow the spread of wary pawns to file in behind them and take up positions around the room. Emma certainly looks like Emma, or at least the one Sabitha remembers from /before/. Her chin tips up, and she sighs down the length of her (unbroken) nose. "Who are you?" << And don't bother lying. I will know. >> Telepathy brushes lightly across her mind, wafting the message on deceptively gentle winds.
The first entrance is met with surprise, a widening of her eyes and a turn that loosens the tension of limbs. "Magneto?" she asks blankly before her gaze whips toward the woman behind him and she breathes out deep relief. "/Emma/. Thank /God/. I thought they weren't going to let me see you until morning." Her mind is clear and accepting of the telepathy, if a touch fuzzed by the effects of alcohol, and she takes several fast steps toward the other woman.
And at the lead, Erik looks like Erik. Except older, far more wiry, and with grizzled scruff that is too neatly trimmed about the edges not to be intentional. Both of his hands are bare, and built of muscle and bone. He takes up a position a little further on into the room, apart from Emma and pawns, and merely looks at her -- until she moves for Emma, and a low magnetic thrum rolls an unspoken warning through the floor.
Sunset hues fire brightly in Fever's eyes as she steps forward just a bit faster to slide between Sabby and Emma. She balances on the balls of her feet and leans forward, seeming to channel the rattle of magnetic warning into her aggressive stance. Emma takes an easier route and slams Sabitha's open mind with vertigo that turns her senses upside down. "I asked you a question." She glances to Erik, then back again.
Vertigo takes Sabby's already-fuzzed mind hard, and she doesn't just stop - she stumbles. Her weight drops heavily to her knees and she presses a hand into the floor as she closes her eyes and waits.
Magneto looks back, eyes clear and inquiring when Sabitha is taken down to her knees, and magnetism's pulse ebbs and then fades entirely.
Eliza crouches, shuffling sideways at feel of Emma's closing. "I won't ask again. If you are in possession of any of this woman's memories, you should know that," Emma says reasonably, voice sliding as silkily as the fall of the dress she wears.
"Then maybe," Sabby answers with deep-seated irritation, "You should fucking stop turning my head upside down and let me /talk/." Her head whips up, hair flying with the motion, and she eyes Emma sourly.
It's something about the hair flip, perhaps, that triggers Erik's memory. He kidnapped her once. Oh. Idle realization leads to nothing further of particular interest, and he remains somewhat removed from the exchange, contributing only a mild caution while he waits. "Manners."
Emma rolls her eyes and looks away, stepping further behind Fever as she searches the room for a chair. Hello chair. Come here. It obeys, with the help of a pawn. Good chair! There is time enough for a response from Sabby while Emma settles herself on the chair in the middle of the room, surrounded by pawns and a king. And something not labeled, unless one counts 'threat' and 'danger.'
Sabitha takes the silence as opportunity to drop back to her bed, a bit unsteadier now, and a lot warier. She pulls in a slow, steadying breath, and glances once to Magneto before looking back to Emma with shadowed eyes. "Look," she finally starts. "I get that this is weird. Percy said I was supposed to be dead, and I get that that's /weird/, and believe me, if I could have figured this out on my own without freaking you all the fuck out, I would have. But I don't know what the fuck is going on, and I need /help/."
"And what help should we give /you/?" Emma's voice is cold and slick as ice, and she arranges the lines of the gown into precise folds and falls. "A traitorous pawn at best. No. A /dead/ pawn at best." She looks up and fixes the girl with a hard stare that give no sympathy, no quarter. And then she smiles. "I suggest we find out what the fuck is going on." She throws her powers wide before channeling them on the one mind in the room that shouldn't be here, battering her thoughts into incoherency with the needle sharp slices of an ice storm.
Confusion locks fast on Sabby's face as she stares at Emma, and she has just long enough to wonder "... What?" before her mind breaks, all thought cut off by the painful slice of angry telepathy.
Magneto stands silently by, back and jaw stiff as he watches, and learns very little. "Emma."
Emma travels among the ice lances with ease. She curls forward and closes her eyes, concentrating on moving past the level of thought and conscious awareness, looking for memory and motive. Where does this Sabby begin?
Anguish creases Sabby's face as she falls heavily back, breath shallow and pained. Her mind parts easily at Emma's touch, twisting and writhing as it spreads to reveal the two and a half years past. Memories spiral past in flickers - a warm bed, Bahir's arm draped heavy over her waist. The towering glass of greenhouse roofs. A fire crackling, devouring, and the shape of a body within as grief wracks her soul. The world around her has fallen into decay. Sidewalks are torn and jagged, buildings cracked or lost to rubble. And finally there is the split point - there is the day a pulse flooded Manhattan and changed everyone in its wake. A few days before and New York is familiar, Sabby is familiar, ice skating with a fireman who's still a stranger and joking with Chris Rossi over sandwiches.
Magneto watches, and does not strictly appove, brows knit when he looks irritably away to focus upon Fever, and then the floor close to his boots.
Emma watches the play of images with jaded eyes, snorting as the girls grief plays out before her. << Oh, touching. Very touching. Though the bit with Bahir was a mistake, for future reference. He's cold, darling. Especially to someone without a penis. >> Emma spins around in the bright light of New York's memory and fishtails after the pulse. << Tell me more? >>
<< Oh-- fuck, fuuuu-- >> Obscenities split through Sabitha's mind and her head jerks in an uncontrolled spasm. It's all there for the taking - Anxious eyes fixed to television and internet and paper in search of an explanation as those around them begin to die. Bridges destroyed by explosion, military with guns. Bodies carted to giant graves along the river. Sabby gasps sharply and jerks her head forward as Hellions gather in Frost Enterprises and turn a lobby into a home while chaos rises around them.
Emma inhales a sharp breath and jerks upright, batting away at the images as she detangles herself somewhat from Sabitha's mind. She turns wide eyes on Erik and pants until she can separate enough of her mind to control her own body functions.
Erik, who is still brooding at the floor, takes a moment to realize that he is being oggled, and looks first to Sabitha. Then Emma, eyes stark and leonine features angled into mild annoyance. What?
Tears sting at Sabby's eyes, but she's too angry to give them the freedom to escape. She collapses backwards against the edge of the bed and stares furiously at Emma. "What the /fuck/ is wrong with you?" she spits.
Emma doesn't hear Sabitha. She doesn't even see Erik, though she looks directly at him for a long moment. Images crowd and fight against her established timeline. Her memories. Her reality. She rises in a quick movement and pulls her attention away from Erik, turning her back on Sabitha and moving in jerky movements in the general direction of the door. Pawns tense and rearrange themselves.
"..." says Erik, mouth fallen slightly open and brows knit after Emma's move for a retreat. Then he looks back to Sabitha, muddled and suspicious. He is doing a lot of looking and very little speaking, the tired hollows around his face rigid and tense.
Sabitha jerks forward as Emma turns away in a fast, desperate movement. "What-- /please/." Her voice breaks on the last and her gaze whips toward Erik instead. "Magneto," she says, and there's clear expectation in the beg of her voice.
Given that this is the name that only the uneducated masses generally refer to him by these days, there is a hint of automatic condecension about the way he looks her over. If nothing else, his eyes are certainly the same. "What?"
Emma slows and stops, turning to look across a shoulder at the girl. There is no recognition in her eyes, no comraderie, or understanding. Just a wary distance that masks the tumult of memories and impressions trying to sort themselves out into a workable frame. She waits too.
Sabitha doesn't know what to say next-- what to ask for. Abruptly, she feels terribly, horribly alone, and she draws her arms up around her middle. She stares at Magneto for a long moment, lost in silence.
Magneto's brow furrows, and he turns to follow away after Emma. Crazy idiot mystery girl. Wonderful. "Have her sedated."
Sabitha's eyes widen abruptly in instant response. "/No/--!"
Emma floats a vacant look across Sabby, and turns back to her progress, reaching a hand out to grip Erik's arm for guidance if not support.
Vexed as he is, Erik must resist the impulse to shake her off whilst pawns fall in around Sabby, unmoved by whatever protest she sees fit to make. Michael stands well back, fire extinguisher at ready. Just in case. Exuent the King and Queen.
Sabitha's "/Please!/" rises behind them, a frustrated call raised by a tight voice and swiftly thinning patience. She scrambles to stand next to the bed and watches them leave through the shield of pawns, helpless.
The door shuts before Magneto's Drama Queen Monarch Associate staggers and claps a hand to her forehead. "Ngh." Brilliant! Emma stops and releases his arm to brace herself with both hands on her knees as she closes her eyes and attempts to force the swirl to settle.
Magneto's right hand lifts on cue to brush at where her grip rumpled his sleeve, which he then frowns at. "Some form of painful telepathic defense? Or an attack? Outwardly, at least, she seemed disconcertingly genuine."
"/No/," she insists, running through a series of lightening fast centering techniques to pull her thoughts free and clear. "I don't know /what/ she is, but--- It's just-- Her memories. Whoever did this spent a great deal of time crafting them... They're hard to-- God, Erik." She straightens slowly and turns around to one of the pawns. "Fruit, chocolate, juice," she orders, then picks up her pace.
"Coffee," Erik tacks on to the end of Emma's list, brows at an awkward and uneven tilt when he falls into belated step behind her. "Half answers. Disjointed explanations. If those of us without telepathy are doomed to suffer as much for the evening, I believe I may follow in your young friend's footsteps."
Emma turns angrily on him, considering sharing /fully/ the nauseating sensation of pulling the tangled intervening years worth of experience from the Hellion's mind. Instead, she simply shakes her head and turns again to pace for the upper levels. "There are too many memories and images. They're not connected. They don't make any sense. Just... flashes. Like watching a DVD on fast forward." Emma slows and looks back, narrowing her eyes and considering her next words. "But apparently in her version of things, you are now sitting on the smoking ruins of New York City in the aftermath of a war you started."
Magneto slows and stops on the stairs, giving Emma a distinct height advantage for once in her life. His eyes blank along with his expression, and he looks back over his shoulder.
Emma doesn't care about height advantages. She just cares about getting to her room before her head falls off her shoulders and rolls down the hallway. She keeps going, slowing only to kick off her heels before attempting the stairs. Bloodhound gives her an arm before long.
His hand flexed around the banister, Erik turns back shortly to watch Emma go, only to find that she is already gone. And then, from stillness to abrupt movement, he turns on his heel to stride quickly back for Sabitha's quarters.
Magneto has long legs and long strides. It does not take very long for him to shoulder his hurried way back into the room, and with theatrical timing, gruff a low, "Stop!" to stave off the syringe-weilding knot of pawns that has Sabby pinned face down to the floor.
Sabitha has not gone without a fight. And in the past two and a half years, she's learned to fight. One of the pawns has a split lip, and Sabby herself sports a scrape along one cheek and a red eye that looks like it's going to swell, if not blacken. There is, however, not a singe to be seen. One pawn has her hands twisted neatly - if a bit painfully - behind her back, and Sabitha is breathing hard with anger as she lifts her head to glare at the man who's reappeared in her doorway.
Huffing and puffing a bit himself, Erik takes the moment consumed by pawns of this world and the other staring at him to draw himself back up into dignified order while he watches them back. "Let her go," is tried -- and viola, she is set free, if warily and reluctantly. Thusly reassured, he steps on into the room, leaving the door open behind him. "Fever, stay. The rest of you, out."
Sabitha jerks back and up, pulling her arms forward and rolling her shoulders as she scrambles to a stand. She remains stiff and straight in front of Erik, watching him warily. One hand scrapes up and over the her eyes, testing cautiously.
"/Out/." Irritable insistance is required, but the pawns move, and the door closes after them. Unobtrusive, Eliza manages to remain nearly within arm's reach without making too much of a warning spectacle of herself, and Erik narrows his eyes at the only vaguely familiar young woman standing before him.
Dropping, Sabby's arms folds over her chest and she stares at Magneto. After a moment, she ask with a bite, "What do you want?"
"If you know who I am, then you know better than to address me as you are." Unimpressed, Erik stares her down with fists clenched hard at his sides. He does not seem likely to blink any time soon. "What is this?"
"What, because if I cooperate you'll treat me well?" Sabby snaps before she staggers backward toward the support of the bed, one hand raised to the throb of her temples. She closes her eyes as she sinks down into it, and when she opens them again she's a bit calmer. Forcibly so. She answers simply, "I don't know."
Magneto watches her stagger and sink without evident remorse. Any potential for guilt is lost to irritation at her persistent attitude, and he exchanges a hard look with Fever, who very clearly does not think he should be fooling around in here without more guards. "Emma mentioned a war."
"Yeah," Sabby answers. She pauses, hovering on the edge of the bed, and then scoots back enough to pull her legs up to sit cross-legged. "There was a war." Her gaze lifts, dry as it sweeps around the room and she corrects, "Well. Not here, apparently. But I remember a war. Eight months of it."
An actual response, or hope of one, draws the chill of Erik's eyes quickly back down onto Sabitha's. "A war that I began."
"The Brotherhood," Sabby confirms, gaze locked warily on Erik's.
Hungry for more information, it is a (somewhat failed) struggle to maintain some semblance of indifference to that. Fever stiffens a little at his shoulder. "The Brotherhood."
"Yeah--" Sabby answers again, and her brows lower a bit as she studies him uncertainly.
Magneto's eyes are frigid in their distracted search over Sabitha's face, looking for some clear indication of truth or trickery or some other foothold to settle into. Meanwhile, he is thin and old, and coffee is thick on his breath. He doesn't speak again just yet.
Discomfort grows under that gaze, and eventually Sabby speaks just to break the silence. "You look different," she tells him. Her lips quick in a tired smile. "The arm, for one. Do you think I could get some tylenol or something?"
Brows hooding low again at that, Erik straightens out of the slight forward lean he's caught himself adopting and looks aside. Muddled. "When I leave, you will be sedated. It would be in your best interest not to struggle."
Sabitha's eyes flash with anger, sparks rising in her eyes. "You /are/ different," she spits.
"Evidently." One last preoccupied glance scraped over Sabitha from head to toe, Erik turns to leave with a curt nod of farewell.
"That's what you came in here for?" Sabby stirs again, voice rising anxiously. "I came to you for /help/." She rises, taking a single step toward him. "I've cooperated every step of the way-- /please/." There's a frantic note to her voice on the final word. "Don't sedate me."
Magneto is swift enough to lift the arm that stays Fever at his side when he turns, and Sabitha steps. "In one form or another, you have proven yourself a considerable threat to this organization. I do not know what you are or why you are here. If you are operating indepedently, or knowingly, or as part of a larger game. All things considered, as much as I would like to hear more of this world of yours, I think it best to err on the side of caution. At your inconvenience." A glance cast to an appropriate corner of the room later, the door opens, and Erik turns to pace through it with Fever at his heels.
A choked cry of protest follows Erik out before Sabby's left standing, staring helplessly at the door of her prison as dread grows tight in her belly.
The vacuum left by Erik is filled quickly by the pawns he initially evicted, and the door closes behind him, leaving the sedation to resume itself without supervision.
This time, Sabby stands stiff and straight as she accepts it. Her gaze does not move from the door.
Magneto says nothing to Eliza through their trek down the hall back in the direction of the stairs, though there is a definite need for something to be said. Eventually, a muttered order to check in on Emma is deemed sufficient, and Erik moves off on his own way for the conservatory.
The monarchs pay Sabby a visit.