(no subject)
The living area is dark, save for the blue-white glow of the muted television. Shadows dance long around the couch, and the shape of an overlarge dog sprawled across the length of it. Erik is at the room's single window, with the rarely-opened blinds slanted enough for him to see the bustling city night beyond. Even around the docks, it's too bright to see any stars.
Emerging from the room down the hall, Ellen is quiet: her footfalls are light, although shod in sensible flats and not silent. Rather than walk with clasped hands, she loosely holds a sheaf of printed materials. She pauses on the threshhold of the living area, glancing around in the dim light, and frowns.
Achilles stretches, big paws planted against both arm rests while he yawns and resettles, and Erik turns his head enough to eye Ellen over his shoulder. He says nothing for a moment, expression cut into inscrutibility by the light filtering in through the blinds until he turns back to squint through them again. "Why do you think I am still here?"
Ellen stills, brow knitting without comprehension. She glances around at the dark room, and then pads a few paces further into it, moving to set her papers down on the sofa and then close her hands before her. "Sir?" she says. "I am not sure I understand the question."
"My family was taken from me. Destroyed." Erik is not in any rush to elaborate in a manner that makes sense, apparently. He pauses again, chilly eyes skimming over a rooftop across the street. "So many people. Doctors, visionaries. Children. I was nothing, up to my elbows in ash. I should not have lived, and they were not the last to think that I should die. And yet."
It makes sense enough to Ellen, enough that her expression clears, and takes on contemplation -- and perhaps, a little old grief. She moves another pace toward the window, and bows her head. "I cannot guess at why what is. But I have always understood that those who live where death should walk," she says, "have tasks to do. Changes to work on the world."
"Yes," Erik agrees, again on a delay, and more quietly now that she's closer. The iron in his voice is weathered and scarred, lacking its usual strength. "To protect mutantkind from the hatred inherent in humanity. Only...now there is the matter of the asteroid."
After a moment's considered silence, Erik's self-appointed warrior-priestess lifts her head again. "Doom in the sky," Ellen asks, with a flick of her glance toward the window, "so why must you live to see it, if the world is wrecked with all your tasks yet undone?"
"What if that is my task. The rock. If the government fails to stop it..." The creases at the corners of his eyes cinch, and the flat of his chest lifts over a deep drawn breath. "I'm not sure."
Reaching out to slide fingertips along one of the blinds, Ellen frowns at the flicker of light pollution beyond the window. "You may have more than one task," she says. "Nothing is ever as simple as would be convenient, is it, sir?"
"No." That, he agrees with some certainty, bristled jaw set under the hollows of his eyes when he turns enough to take Ellen in again. "More than one. Am I a tool, then? The morality of one line of action is far more clearly cut than the other."
"I do not know," Ellen says. Her smile shadows her lips, there and then gone again: ghostly, as such apparitions come and go. "In my heart I think you are a man. I just do not know what that means."
"I cannot afford to be only a man. Men are fallible." Ellen's smile is noted with an inward twitch of Erik's brows, and the older mutant releases his long-held breath out into a sigh. "Regardless of what God intends, I do not think that I can allow these golems to gain a foothold unchallenged."
Inclining her head, Ellen straightens slightly, and turns her hands outward in an opening gesture. "In the name of any god, I would not counsel you to go against your conscience, sir. What must we do to fight this battle? I am of little enough use against a creature of no flesh."
"We cannot do anything unless we know where they are being kept, or where they are coming from. How they move. How they are powered. And Raven has fallen out of contact." Doubt etches across the lines over his brow, but he says nothing on the subject of his conscience.
"And our other allies are of little use?" Ellen's gaze narrows again in another thoughtful frown, and her exhalation bears the suggestion of a sigh. "Jason may be of some use in reconaissance, if not as well as Mystique would be."
"Jason," says Erik, voice rough with private exasperation. "Somehow or another, I suspect they have guarded themselves against the possibility of prying telepaths."
"Oh." Ellen tips her head slightly to one side, the furrow of her brow reaching scowlish proportions. "With such limited resources, I am afraid I am at a loss."
Magneto says nothing to that, but frustration creeps in black about his profile, and a crack ticks long across a lower corner of the window pane. Leather cushions creak behind them in the meanwhile, and Achilles rolls sluggishly over onto his back.
Gaze flicking to the sliver of the crack in the window pane, Ellen draws herself straight again, and folds her hands neatly behind her back. "If we can determine who might know more about the project," she says, "we could hold their health hostage for better information. But it is a risky proposition at best and likely shows our hand." Apologetically she adds, "I am not very subtle."
"Nor am I." Less apologetic, Erik looks down into the squared curl of his palm, then his wrist. "I must re-establish contact with the circle. Charles will not give me the information I require."
"He is not very accomodating," Ellen observes, helpfully. She takes half a step back, settling her weight on the plant of her feet.
"No," says Erik, who continues to frown to himself. "He isn't."
Ellen seems a little at a loss again, and glances back at the sofa, and also the dog. "Perhaps I will return to my work," she says after a moment, turning slightly on one heel.
Magneto nods, chilly eyes scraping back up over the cityscape before he turns to step after her, vaguely in the direction of the couch. "Alright."
Ellen falls silent, then, and moves to retrieve her pile of papers for the reading of them.
Magneto lingers at her back for a moment or two, oddly silent. Then his footfalls track away across wood flooring, towards the back rooms.
Tools and paths.