OOC Commentary - Magneto
Log: The Mills of God
Log Date: 6/11/06
Players: Magneto
Summary: Erik drops the last straw on the camel's back, and Charles shows his true? colors.
[ ] Xavier finally gets cracking on this commentary I said I'd do for Xavier. Erik. WAKE UP, ERIK.
[ ] Magneto licks fingers. Yay!
[ ] Xavier: Which one should I do?
[ ] Magneto: ...uuuh.
[ ] Magneto: Which one do you want to do?
[ ] Xavier waves a wild hand. I do not /know/.
[ ] Magneto: Probably murder attempt or Cerebro, I think.
[ ] Sergei: MURDER.
[ ] Xavier: Murder is such a ... an /ugly/ word.
[ ] Magneto: Isn't it, though?
Terrorists.
The character of Xavier hasn't been mine for very long, or rather -- it's been mine for about a month, with some extra playing time as a puppet before I actually got around to apping him. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Xavier is a hard character to play. He was shared by several puppeteers for a few years, which lent itself to wildly different interpretations and personalities. He's emotionally distant: there are few people that he considers close, since most of them are separated from him by a significant generational gap, as well as leader/follower, class, teacher/pupil, mentor/mentee barriers. He's moved by an idealism that looks just great in principle, but in practice doesn't stand up well against the apparently insurmountable odds that are constantly thrown at it. He's the ideological leader of a combat group, a political player, a philanthropist, a philosopher, a psychiatrist, a telepath--
--In real life? I'm not that bright. I eat instant ramen for snacks. And sometimes I read books that have words of more than one syllable. (But only if I'm feeling really ambitious.)
As I say, Xavier is hard. I've found in the past though, that writing commentaries can really help get into the mind of a character. Until now, the only character I've dared this with is Chris Rossi, who is by far the most fleshed out and long-standing of my characters. (Oh. Percy-player just reminded me I did some for Bach. OOPS.) However, it seems time and past for Charles to get his own chance in the spotlight: if not for him, for me. Separating my opinion and perceptions of what Xavier is from the models that I've felt obligated to conform to when I was only puppeting him has proven to be a difficult practice. Clarification and consideration never hurts.
And then, of course, there's the simple fact that I enjoy commentarying scenes with Magneto. He's just so damn cool.
The set-up is simple. Erik has taken his merry band out to rob a bank. Using Mastermind's illusions and Mystique's shape-shifting abilities, they donned X-Men outfits and pretended, basically, to be X-Men. It was a small victory for the Brotherhood in terms of concentrated chaos and rewards: some money, some metal, all good. What was more significant for Erik and his group is that in one afternoon, they managed to undo months, if not years of work by the X-Men, and indelibly tarnish them with the mutant threat brush. Ororo was outed on national television by association. Morphed as her, Mystique kissed Magneto. This was also attractively captured for cameras. Storm threw a fit and a freak thunderstorm hit Westchester; faced with this masterly stroke and the news that people died as a result of Magneto's actions, Charles is faced with the certain knowledge that through inaction, he has also made himself responsible for those deaths.
Inaction is one of the things that is most difficult to explain about Charles. On the one hand, he is not passive; he's a vigorous man who has, lacking physical capacity of his own, formed a strike team that's capable of acting as his proxy out in the world. He works in the political arena to change opinions and to educate, he uses his money and his influence to push mutant equality through and block anti-mutant legislation where he can, he has an active and a determined will. But what frustrates Magneto about him is that he doesn't seem to act effectively. He accuses Charles of expending his energies in trying to block him, when there are other things that could be more usefully done; in short, but blocking Magneto, he's effectively taking no action to forward the mutant cause.
Secreted away in the back of his mind, Charles knows that Erik is right, if not for the same reasons. There's something so seductive about the prospect of violence. It's easy and once started, it's mindless; it appeals to the energetic, physical man that he used to be before he was crippled and trapped in his wheelchair. This is one of the difficult things about posing him. My tendency is to play physically present characters, because physical posing is what I'm -- I won't say good at, but it's my preference. Dialogue is harder for me: its spacing, its sound, its unique voice from person to person. With Charles, I'm constrained to a limited palette, both in sound and in movement. Patrick Stewart's speech patterns, which I attempt to model as best as I can, is very distinctive and distinct. It's possible that over time I'll grow more accustomed and it'll become second-nature to me. For the time being, it sometimes slows me up to ridiculous lengths. My solution, when it gets too bad, is to jettison the attempt altogether and just try to play Xavier rather than Patrick Stewart.
Another problem for me is telepathy, but I'll mention that later. Let's actually talk about Xavier himself for a minute. Or rather, heck. Let's actually get to the log itself, shall we?
There is silence in Cerebro. There has been for some time: vast, empty, loosened at last from the vibrating tension of Charles Xavier's mood. Anger has muted -- at last -- and drawn away from the forebrain to take up a brooding, sullen seat behind the curtain of restraint. In the casement of his seat, the telepath stares blankly at the splay of hands across the headpiece in his lap.
Quiet footfalls scuff along, Erik's heels dragging in the relative silence of the upper level. His door swings open on well-oiled hinges. He shuffles in. His door swings shut, and Erik lowers himself stiffly down onto the side of his bed, ignoring the cold, wet push of Achilles blunt nose into the side of his leg.
Cerebro is dangerous when used under the influence of strong emotion, and though Charles was (for a little while) beyond caring what the impact would be on Erik, he's gained the habit of pausing and waiting until he's calm before acting. Like Erik, he's a man of strong passions, and his temper is pretty formidable once someone has managed to push him past his not inconsiderable patience. As a telepath -- really, as any kind of omega mutant -- this is extraordinarily dangerous. Conscience and experience have taught him to recognize the signs of irrational thinking on his part, and he forces himself to gain distance from the stimulant of the moment. It's a matter of pride to him that he can and will do this, as much a part of his own image of himself as the image he portrays to others. He is Charles Xavier. He is in control. He does not engage in vulgar outbursts of emotion.
I suppose it says something about the player that all the characters I play seem to have a strong theme of self-control and self-discipline running through their psyches.
Cerebro is an anodyne to Charles and his passions. With his power, there is that constant need to restrain and to rein in, and when he's veering towards strong emotion, there's the possibility of empathic leakage. For a telepath and empath as powerful as he is, a severe enough slip of control can create a feedback loop; his anger can color other minds, which will reflect back to him and feed his own. As a psychic clean room that both contains and blocks out anything readable, Cerebro is the one place on earth where he's free to practice therapeutic shouting, to let go and rage, or even just to sulk.
Erik has a dog. It gives him unquestioning love. There's that old adage about pets coming to resemble their masters. Barring displays of homicidal rage, which Achilles has yet to demonstrate on-camera, there's a very grave, dignified, self-sufficient greatness to Erik Lensherr's pet. I simply mention it because I love Erik's characterization of the dog. He has gravitas. He has personality. He is, in many ways, a role model that Erik should maybe follow. Beyond the occasional investigation of his own genitalia, Achilles does not engage in socially unacceptable practices like, say, bank robbery and murder.
I digress.
One thing that Erik's player is outstanding at is the cadence of a pose. I've mentioned this before, but it never hurts to mention it again; where I often try to pack in too much, and my sentence structure develops a kind of routine and repetitive sameness, Erik's poses are pretty much always interesting, not only in their content but in their presentation and variation. I have to say that he is one of the very small handful of players whose poses I always read all the way through. Like, read-read, and not skim-read just to get the jist. He has a very sparse and direct style that suits the character to a T. A lesson I'm trying to learn is that sometimes you do not need to describe what the door looked like, what it smelled like, what its history and its personality and its conflict is. Sometimes the door just opens. Sometimes the character just shuffles in.
It's also worth noting that Erik's player has the comfort level with the character that I'm hoping to eventually get to with Charles. The small human touches of scuffing footsteps and the stiffness as he sits, the old man shuffle and the little, undignified faults that come with old age: these are things that you can do really well when you and the character are familiar enough with each other that you know they're right for him, and the character won't attempt to saw off your testicles with a butter knife for posing them. Erik's player does them really well. I envy him his relationship with Magneto. Moving on!
Hands stir, lifting. Breath puffs white frost into the air, briefly fogging the metal as it rises and sets, a sleek crown for the polished scalp. Xavier closes his eyes; the powerful mind casts out in unfocused search, skimming across the warp and weft of a billion minds. Familiarity here, power there: a lazy tendril of affinity remembers the flavor of a voice, the aftertaste of presence -- there. /There/. Remembered anger flares, only to be thrust ruthlessly back. << /ERIK/. You /ass/. >>
From sullen introspection to an alert upward snap, Erik's eyes are more telling than the hollow lobby of his mind, which has very little to say at the moment. Achilles pushed away with a bare foot, Erik lies back across his bed and reaches to tug a pillow up over his face. << Hello, Charles. >>
Charles was hasty in contacting Erik. That is to say, he paused long enough to get his temper under control, to restrain his mood, to disperse his focus so he wasn't concentrating too much (the last time he used Cerebro and truly focused, the victim of that unwitting exercise died an agonizing death. It is not an experience Xavier chooses to repeat by chance) and to prepare himself mentally for the contact. However, what he didn't do was figure out what he was going to say or what he was going to do once he reached out and, as they say, touched the man. For him, this is the equivalent of picking up the phone to yell at your friend for screwing you over. You don't plan this sort of thing or map out the dialogue unless you're attempting to reason with him, or to convince him of something, or argue with him -- and Charles and Erik are long past that stage, though the old debates and lectures do still come up as part of the familiar habits of their friendship and association. Thus his first greeting, which is certainly not the dignified salutation of the Master of Xavier House, but rather a younger, exasperated outburst from the beginnings of their relationship, when both were younger men and still discovering the world.
My interpretation of how Cerebro and Xavier's mind work are food for a different commentary. Part of it I'm still working out. More important and interesting at the moment is how Erik responds to the voice in his mind. His first glance is up -- hi, God! -- and then he blocks his senses out with the pillow, which is a very funny image. The last time Charles came a-knocking in his mind, he borrowed Erik's senses willy-nilly and without apology. (Well, he could. And Erik was being a twat.) This time, he doesn't get to. Not unless he seizes control. And on the one hand, Charles is blocked out from the world and left to deal with Erik and Erik alone -- but on the other hand, Erik has blocked out the world, and is forced to deal with Charles, and Charles alone. Even above the natural intimacy of having a man sitting in your mind, there's a level of implied privacy there of the two men together, the world kept out, even with the futile hint of trying to block Charles out altogether.
Incidentally, I love that line, 'the hollow lobby of his mind.' Magneto rules.
A mental spank bites across the aether, leaving stinging pain in its wake. << I see Raven has rediscovered her powers, >> Charles snaps, focus gnawing and nibbling on the borders of perception. << You are very fortunate that Storm was not there in person. There are things she would do to you that even Jean could not repair. >>
Magneto winces despite himself, physically, rather than mentally against the dull grey of the pillow he's enlisted to block out the rest of the world. Why he insists upon staring at the uninteresting nothingness of it, there really is no telling. He finally considers this and closes his eyes, exchanging vague grey for an unmarred field of black. << Is there a fee up front, or does she charge by the hour? >>
Let me pause to mention how poor I am at writing telepathy. I am the Buffalo Bills attempting to win the Superbowl five years in a row poor at writing telepathy. I am Mugabe convincing the world that all is well in Zimbabwe poor at writing telepathy. I am the US government winning the hearts and minds of the Middle East poor at writing telepathy. In retrospect, apping for a telepath might not have been the smartest move that I have ever made. OH WELL.
I operate, though, on the principle that if I'm crap at it, I should promptly try it and practice it in order to get better. (This is predicate on the assumption that the thing that I'm crap at is something that interests me to begin with, mind.) So there you go. The difficulty isn't only in writing telepathy, but in writing telepathy and somehow managing not to end up all purple about it. (Purple meaning "purple prose" for those who are unfamiliar.) As though things weren't bad enough already -- and there is a tendency towards purple inherent in playing Xavier, especially when one remembers the Shakespearean quality to Patrick Stewart. There's a theatrical aspect to him that translates well into my perception of Charles, I think; the difficulty is in keeping it under control, when by inclination (or habit) I can reel off into the wildest of scenery-chewing thesaurus-raping offenses against the English language imaginable.
Thus far into the exchange there's very little to indicate the sheer limits to which Charles feels driven to. The slap is a spank, hardly damaging, more like an annoyed swat that you give your six-year old after he's reached one too many times for the sharp knives you told him not to touch. There is snark there, and the implication that Jean could or would continue to treat Lensherr, as she has done on occasions in the past. In other words, there is no suggestion just how serious the situation is and the lengths to which Charles will go over the course of the rest of the scene. This is, I admit, as much an OOC as an IC thing; ICly it was because he was restraining himself as much as possible, trying not to go spare on Erik's head. OOCly it was because I was unsure where this scene was going to go, though Erik's player was aware of the possibility.
Erik responds accordingly. Charles has always forgiven, if not forgotten; he's never crossed that one line, much as Erik has pushed and mocked and contemptuously attempted to shove his erstwhile friend over it. There's no surprise, either in his initial greeting or in the marshalled snark that he throws back. It suggests he fully expected Charles to come yell at him again, after which -- if the patterns of before were repeated -- he would retreat, sulk for a while, and then passively forgive and turn a blind eye. Again. Because Charles is weak.
It is a reasonable expectation. Unfortunately for them both, Charles has just about had it. He's trembling on the verge right now, and what he's looking for from Erik is something that he's not going to be able to get. More on that later. In retrospect, you have to wonder what Erik expects of Charles in making those demands on him, in trying to force him to kill with his power or take those steps past ethics. He's not an unintelligent man; he can't not anticipate the possibility that the first step Charles will take into killing won't be against him and his people. Then again, you have to wonder why, with the power of Cerebro at his disposal, Charles doesn't just Take Steps against Magneto and his kind: to put some sort of mental block in to prevent him from going out and killing people. It's a double-edged sword. The same ethics that Erik wants him to overcome are the same ethics that keep Erik safe. Well, duh.
Ominous jags of color snap and growl through black, crawling across the mind's blackened eye in a nauseating writhe. << You are trying my patience, /old friend/. >> Warning power snakes after, poised with hungry and open jaws around the harbors of memory. In Cerebro, Xavier's mouth thins, whitening in the press of lips over locked jaw. << I congratulate you. >>
No bolster is made against that show of strength, no threat returned, or anger beckoned. Erik exhales long and slow, and is treated to the scent of stale coffee and altoids heavy on his own breath against the pillow's smothering press. << Thank you. >>
I have mentioned already my inability to pose telepathy. Lacking a wide range of physicality to use, I am reduced to posing a power that I am just not very good at -- and then sneak the physicality in anyway, because while the temptation is to pose everything from Magneto's point of view in this kind of scene, that's damned hard for me to do since it's in a medium that I'm not as familiar or as comfortable with: namely, the mind. Phone conversations, no problem! Telepathic channels, problem. The mind deals in ideas and amorphous concepts at its highest state, and that's just not a place that's easy to pose. This is, in fact, a lot like words. Imagery is the key, so I throw in ... uh, some. The jags of color are compliments of stress headaches and migraines that I used to have, where I would get streaks of color blurring off of the things that I looked at. Charming, isn't it?
Snakes. I like snakes as images for this. Partly because there's an ominous quality to them, and color streaks have a sort of worm-like, snake-like quality to them. Partly because snakes have always had complicated meanings in any culture. The caduceus used as the symbol of the medical profession involves serpents. Death, healing -- one can occasionally mean the other, and both end up tangled together during the course of the log.
Erik, meanwhile, is maddening. He drops his initial snark to simply accede, and gives way with relative indifference. Charles is not easy to goad, admittedly, but once he has gotten angry there is a great deal to work with -- and there's a great deal of danger, to boot. After years of association, Erik knows exactly how to annoy him the most: he is like a master tickler with a grand old catfish. In all fairness, it's possible that Erik truly has more important (better) things on his mind than having to deal with a cranky old telepath halfway across New York. However, we don't care. Charles is now well and truly riled up. When one is not accustomed to being upset or angry, one pettishly and peevishly wants acknowledgment that it is a Notable Occasion. One wants recognition for the agitation, and people to scurry around and react. One does not want to be met by indifference.
For all Charles is good at restraining his temper, he isn't so good at what to do with it once it's well and truly let go. This makes sense, of course; if you're not used to dealing with it in full steam, you don't necessarily have the tools to hand. What he has in his toolchest are two things: his power, and the wherewithal (the drive, at least) to control his temper. Once the desire to control his temper are lost, all that's left is power. This is not good.
Unsatisfying, this easy acquiescence. Even in the rigidity of control, a taste of that irritation leaks through. Charles balls his hands into fists, massaging the knuckles against the cold metal of his chair. Memory is caught and dragged into the open, reeled back through hours (mockery, strangling, "Go to bed, Erik,") into the chaos and triumph of the bank. Toad. Jason. Storm's face, the insolence of it, the kiss--
Magneto stiffens immediately - non-reaction no longer a simple option as hollow silence is filled with the backwards trample of his own dismay, fury, irritation, triumph; The pillow wrested abruptly aside, Erik sits up, breathing hard in rough time with the pound of his heart at the back of his sternum and lashes out, magnetism's release ineffectual in the echo of a more direct mental attempt against the onslaught.
So THERE. In his mind, Charles is telling himself that he's plowing through Magneto's memories for the greater good. And to a certain extent, this is true. What has Erik been up to? What has he been doing? What are his cunning plans, his strategems, all that make him a threat? Charles missed an opportunity once before to recognize what was coming down the bend at him -- out of that damned telepathic courtesy that he follows so erratically -- so given impetus and provocation, he jettisons it out the window. You want rough play? Fine. Have some.
While he would claim that he's going through Erik's mind for the greater good, there's a not so laudable irritation underneath, a childish -- even old men can be immature! -- drive to get back at Erik, to make him jump at the end of Xavier's string the way that Erik's turned Xavier's X-Men into puppets for the media. Power is a heady thing for both these men, and while Charles restrains himself and forces himself not to act, when he finally does, the desire to act finally and thoroughly can be a dangerous and deadly tightrope to walk. Especially for one who's got a bit of a tendency towards playing a benevolent, all-seeing God.
Arrogance is one of Charles's abiding sins, though he hides it somewhat better than Erik. (Lensherr is right on so many levels. Xavier is a hypocrite, Janus-faced on many fronts.) It's easy for him to forget that being able to see into a mind is not the same as understanding or being able to predict it. So easy, in fact, that even though he preaches that knowledge to other telepaths, the assumption of understanding has become embedded into his own, fairly considerable self-opinion. As a result, he takes surprises even more poorly than most, viewing it almost as a personal affront when someone's actions manage to startle him.
Erik's little feat with the X-Men disguises has managed to startle him. Not surprise him, exactly -- he knows Erik is capable of that and so much worse -- but that he was companionable with Erik for a time and was even present in his mind, and still managed to miss this little secret? It is an affront that Charles takes quite personally.
Satisfaction taints the slide of minds, touched with malice, that urgent intimacy of one man's presence against the other. << She was better served without her power, >> Xavier says grimly, overlapping that press of Storm-Mystique lips with the memory of Erik's earlier fury: the feel of her throat between aging hands. << I see she has lost none of her former charm. >>
Cold sweat springs up across the heavy-lined knit of Erik's brow, breath forced wheezing from between hardly parted teeth as he glares hard at the empty space in front of him. Disoriented, unhinged, unsettled by the ongoing overlap, and by the stir it creates in his gut. << /Stop this/. >>
Charles has gotten a response from Erik, which satisfies the impulse of the moment. Unfortunately, he's already moved on. The original motive is lost in favor of other recollections; Mystique has never been a favorite of his, for one thing. This is not as relevant as the point that even after victory, Erik still doesn't have satisfaction. He goes home and promptly tries to strangle Mystique. There will never be peace for Lensherr, not while he lives, and Charles wonders -- not for the first time -- if there is anything that will satisfy Erik now that he's begun spilling blood. It will never be enough. Not because of his fight for mutant equality, but because there are old ghosts and scars driving him, and old enemies that he'll never be able to kill.
I've mentioned before in poses that compassion has always been Charles's abiding failure, and this is both true and false. It's compassion that keeps his personal flaws from turning him into a megalomaniac terrorist, that prompts him to provide a shelter for mutants, that drives him to work relentlessly on behalf of the marginalized mutants in society and to accept the possibility that some day, humanity and mutants will live side by side. On the other hand, it's that same compassion that makes him accept the terrible and the murderous and the sacrifice of life that Erik seems to feel is necessary. He could cut it off at the source by simply killing Erik, but he doesn't. It isn't that Charles isn't capable of ruthlessness or a chilling pragmatism and will. It's just that the two have never swung into equal alignment before. Compassion has, in the past, almost always trumped other concerns.
The picture of Mystique's smiling face fades, leaving behind only her scent and the tactile memory of her skin against palms. << You have had no qualms abusing my people or their reputations at your whim, >> Xavier says flatly, protective anger sharp-toothed behind the voice. << You undo years of work with one foolish blow. And for what? What do you gain from this? >>
<< What benefit is there to be retained in secrecy? You have had time enough to come forward on your own. To create your own image. >> Chest still rising and falling unsteadily, Erik reaches up to ring a hand loosely about his own neck as his glare rolls tiredly away. << You failed to act, and now I have acted for you. Your X-men will feel the frustration of being feared and hated, for all that they wish to help. They will feel as I have felt. >>
Charles has never really crossed the preemptive strike line with Erik. The X-Men have always responded; they've never instigated, barring Jean's Dark Phoenix episode -- which I think we can all agree wasn't exactly an X-Men operation. It shouldn't be a surprise to Charles that Erik would screw him and his hard work over like this, but there you go. Charles is fallible. His faith in Erik is one of those vulnerabilities, one of those blind spots that his students really don't share -- and they warn him, and like any autocrat, he ignores them. And they prove themselves correct. Well. He has no right to be surprised.
Xavier cherishes his dignity, perhaps even more than Erik does. Like any human being he can occasionally be wrong, a point which he is ready to concede. His position and his work give him ample opportunity to look silly. One does not run a secret mutant strike team, play politics, play philanthropist, go about in the public eye, and work with children without inviting embarrassment to come play hop-scotch on your ass. However, it's one thing to look silly. It's another to discover that one's been made a fool of, particularly in an area where he has extended himself on behalf of another man. Irrational though it is, he has had (up till now) a kind of trust in Erik that Erik has now betrayed. Yes, I realize past history doesn't exactly support this, but fuckit. It's my Xavier. I play him my way.
You know what else? I just figured this out. While the idea of the X-Men disguise might have been Erik's idea, the memory of Mystique so strongly in Lensherr's thoughts remind Xavier of a rivalry I think he might have had with Raven, to some extent. Mystique-player, I must discuss this with you, but I imagine that in some ways, Charles and Raven were the little angel and the little devil sitting on Erik's shoulders. Raven has effectively won the battle for Erik's soul, and I think that maybe Xavier hasn't quite reconciled himself to that. Hence irrational impulses where Erik is concerned. What do you think?
Meanwhile, Erik's reason for doing what he did. Secrecy. All that. Erik always pushes. Not later. Now. Xavier, I think, spends a lot of time feeling like Magneto's clean-up crew, like the poor bugger with the shovel and the garbage can who follows the elephants in the big parade. Frustration? You've got to be kidding me. He spends half of his time chasing after Magneto's merry disasters, and he has the nerve to tell Xavier about frustration? Butthead.
It's amusing to me personally that there's a sense here that Magneto is jealous of the X-Men, envious that they're treated like heroes (protectors!) while his group, which is actively taking action on behalf of the mutants against humans, is treated like the enemy by the community he thinks he's apparently trying to help. Privately, Charles feels the same way about Magneto's way, albeit for different reasons. So tempting, to just let go and smash. Maybe not constructive in the long run, but Erik has a kind of freedom that Charles can't have, because Xavier needs to work in the system to reach his ends. He knows from history that change is a gradual process, and public opinion is a fickle thing. He has to build equality from the ground up, and not just ride in and demand it. Erik and Charles are like siblings, each one jealous of what the other one has.
<< Part of your grand scheme, is it? >> Charles demands, that threatened frustration swift: already old, already there, from years past. << Misery loves company? You've become a cliche in your old age, Erik. Isn't your sad band of madmen and zealots enough companionship for you? >>
Nausea rising and failing with some effort, Erik focuses upon slowing down the gnash and snarl of thoughts and memories caged within his skull, and his breathing slows with them. His pulse. << It's charming, the way that you continue to insist that /your/ vigilantes are somehow more acceptable than my own. >> Neck released, Erik rubs the same hand up over his brow and coughs.
Frustration is made even more acute by the fact that history tells Charles that there's no sure way or perfect way to achieve his ends, and that Erik could very well be proved right, in the long run. His method could be the one that gets them what they want. The problem is that they don't know. They can't possibly know, until history is finished being written in this chapter.
It's bitter to Charles to have public opinion snatched out of his hand by Erik, yet again. It's so easy to create a ruinous image; so much harder to build a good one. His people have worked so hard at it, and in one fell swoop -- well. I've already mentioned that above. I point above to how awesome Magneto's posing is, that grand old lion. He's unwell. Charles isn't making things any better. There's a nice bit where Erik grabs hold of the high ground and refuses to relinquish it to Xavier; Vigilantes, he says, including the Brotherhood as people of the same stripe. Not terrorists. Volunteers. Angels fighting the good fight. And if they're equals, it makes sense that they should share equal misery and equal victory, doesn't it?
Hah. As if.
<< Yours create chaos. Destruction. Misery. Fear. Your brotherhood is not less acceptable. It is insupportable. >> Charles bridges the gap of emotions, fishing for the crackle of guilt under the surface. His hands spread across the wheelchair's arms, fingers curling around the long slant of metal. << And what next for your merry band of murderers? Secret Service uniforms? Infiltration of the Sesame Street cast? >>
Guilt is never difficult to find, however thick the glaciatic ice shifting slow and rigid over the surface might be. An innocent woman, crushed. She probably had a family. Children. A mother, eliminated mercilessly without reason or purpose, taken without warning, and without provocation. The guard. Too young to be a father. But what of the future? He'd died painfully. He had screamed. Erik closes his eyes again, brows pressed low and hard over the track of his own boots through blood spilt now and in the past, at his order. And still, somewhere, a part of him makes a mental note, unable to stop itself. Secret service uniforms. He says nothing.
Here is a Catch-22. If Charles had encountered a complete lack of remorse, a total lack of guilt, he would have been disgusted and it would have solidified his purpose. He would have snuffed Erik out right then and there. But what he got instead, that guilt, the full awareness of what he had done and the consequences to unknown lives, on top of that unstoppable planning about the secret service uniforms-- well. That was just as bad.
Xavier is as much a party to guilt as Erik is, in that he experiences it quite readily. It's a natural emotion for someone who regularly sends people that he's taught, mentored and practically raised into danger. (Not to mention the fact that he has a bit of that God complex, which means if he's responsible for successes, he is likewise responsible for failures.) On the other hand, he doesn't wallow. Pragmatism tells him that he would be unable to make the necessary decisions or take the necessary actions if he spends too much time clinging to woe; his ethics, much vaunted though they are, suffer much the same light, light touch when they come into conflict with what needs to get done. In private he might very well struggle with them. In public, he prefers to project certainty of purpose. His ethical qualms are his problem, after all, and as a telepath he knows full well that doubt in a leader can inspire doubt in the followers.
This is one of those things that's different between my portrayal of him when I was just puppeting, and how I perceive him as my own character. The puppeted Xavier was far more prone to grief and self-doubt, and I have a hard time separating what I did then with what I did now. There is still overlap. As I mentioned before, Xavier's voice isn't as strong in my head as other chars I play, so there have been several times when I've gone back and realized I was playing the wrong version. It's something I'll have to keep working on.
Anyway, back to the poses themselves. It's the guilt that's the tipping point for Charles, not only that it hurts Erik so much to do what he does, but also that he will not stop. Even while it's dredged up into the surface, he's laying plans for something new. It's a realization that all Charles's hopes that Erik will lay down arms are futile. Even worse, seeing the pain that it causes him, for -- to Charles's mind -- no good purpose ....
What happens next is as much out of love and compassion as it is out of resolution. Injured dogs too hurt to function are put down by vets all the time. Charles sees no possibility of healing in the future. He's tired. He's angry. He's guilty. He doesn't want Erik to suffer anymore. Enough is enough.
The telepath is ruthless, though he shares those images, that guilt: it spills into his mind and resonates in return, ringing with his own. Too far away to anticipate the future; too compassionate to do what he must. Erik's words. << You were right, >> Charles says, resolution -- regret -- shaping in the background. << I did not have the resolve to do what I should have. >>
<< You should have killed me when you had the chance, Charles. >>
<< I know. I'm sorry, Erik. >>
For the first time, that phrase -- you should have killed me when you had the chance -- isn't heard as a taunt or a challenge, but as a plea. Not, "You should have," but "Why didn't you?" Whether Erik means it that way or no-- you would think a telepath would know, without doubt, but Erik has always been a blind spot for Xavier. On top of which, like anything, we see things through the prism of our own experiences and our own thoughts, and while telepathy is the most clear means of communication possible, I think there's still that slant which makes it possible to misunderstand, to warp meaning based on our own perspectives. After all, knowing isn't understanding, and for all those times that Erik told Charles he should have killed him, it could very well be that this is the first time that Charles has really listened.
Telepathy isn't a field that I'm too familiar with based on game canon, so I'm open to correction. Still, to me it makes sense. Human understanding, even with godlike power, is frail and limited. Fallible. And Xavier is definitely human. He has failed his friend, who should have learned after all these years to be careful what you wish for. If he kills Erik, he will never forgive himself -- but that is, after all, more acceptable than allowing Erik to continue and kill others. Like Erik, he is willing to bear the burden of his actions so other people needn't be tarnished by them. His apology is sincere. All these years he hasn't listened, and by not listening, he condemned Lensherr to a life of grief and misery and suffering in the service of his cause. He's sorry. Now he'll do something about it.
Lucky Erik.
Even thought and spoken, Erik clings to life. To the renewed press of Achilles' nose into the side of his knee, now accompanied an attention-hungry whimper, and to the press of iron and steel in upon him from all sides. He shifts back to lie down again, and holds his breath. << I will try harder. >>
Charles closes his eyes, already tasting the first acrid pang of grief. Anger is gone, lost, drained to the dregs. << Try harder to do what? To destroy humanity? To destroy yourself? You hurt yourself every time you kill. I have made too many compromises already, turned too many blind eyes. Out of friendship. >>
There's something a little heart-wrenching about what Erik says, an echo of the abused (which Erik was, looking at his Nazi concentration camp past) telling the abuser not to hurt him, he'll do better next time. Or even of a child who has disappointed a parent, promising to try harder next time. Even the holding of the breath is like a throwback to childhood, waiting for the stick to fall, like a little bargain with fate. If I hold my breath for this many minutes, he won't hit me. It is as close to a plea for his life that Erik will come to, though why that is between men who know each other as intimately -- SHUT UP -- as these two do, one can only conjecture. Perhaps Erik really does believe he deserves death, or is torn between wanting it and wanting to live.
Death is sort of the ultimate punishment, and Charles fills the role of father figure so well, with most. The entire scenario is a bit scripted, in the sense that there's a feeling Charles is asking questions he already knows the answers to, and that Erik is being posed a test he can't possibly pass. It's an abuse pattern, I realize quite belatedly, though there certainly wasn't that intent when we were scening it. It's interesting to note in hindsight. Weird. Kind of wiggy. Moving on.
No, wait. Not moving on. Another random thought. It makes sense, now that I think about it. Of all powers out there, telepathy/empathy is the most invasive, even when operating under the ethical restraints that Charles has implemented on himself. After all, those restraints are self-imposed, and can be ignored at whim. There is no true assurance of privacy when you are living with or are friends with a telepath. Even if the telepath has no intent or predisposition towards malice, there is a measure of psychological strain there that can probably have all sorts of reprecussions later, especially if one doesn't grow up accustomed to it.
One of the first signs of abusive people is that they claim your privacy for their own. Your mail, your thoughts, your opinions, your friends, your avenues of communication -- these are all coopted and controlled, or taken away. From a certain point of view, I can see where living with a telepath -- where there isn't a truly remarkable trust -- can have much the same effect.
Hollow chested and hollow minded, the echo of a chill prickles distant through the recesses of Erik's ongoing thought process. Fear.
Silence meets silence, as power seeps through the recesses of Erik's mind, gently preparing the way for -- something. For intent. << There is an irony to this, >> Charles says quietly. << One that you would have appreciated. >>
The irony being that Erik has always been the one who pushed Charles to use his powers into killing. And here he is, the first conscious victim of it. It is a mercy killing, and compassionate. In that, at least, Charles is himself. He fully intends to give Erik a state of grace before Lensherr fades away, the kind of happiness he can't ever seem to achieve in this sordid and wretched life that he lives. The forgiving hand of God, as it were.
Magneto's silver crown tilts back into the bed beneath him, eyes rolled up onto the ceiling against a glaze gathering there that threatens to build into something more. He swallows against it, and maintains silence, tattered energy reserves pressed into subduing cold terror mounting hard at the base of his throat. The less he attempts to think, the better.
In Cerebro, Charles opens deep-set, shadowed eyes, facing the proximity of death and the burden of his own guilt and responsibility already heavy on his shoulders. Memories open themselves to his aetheric hand, connections tied together in a mortal chain; he follows their web back through time, a finger on their pulse. << I will miss our talks, old friend. >>
Erik always was a man of few words. Charles ... not so much. Even at this last moment, he wants Erik to say something, do something, or promise something that will stay his hand. Governor's reprieve. Lensherr simply submits, like he did at the beginning of the log. Now that Magneto's player has pointed it out, I see where Erik is starting to get a little tearful, though I didn't interpret it (glaze gathering) as moisture, and more as a fog of some sort. Stupid me. Charles is searching back through Magneto's memories to find the one peaceful, happy moment that he can leave Erik in.
Randomly, there's a Japanese movie out there called After Life, where the premise is that after you die, you go to a kind of government building where a volunteer staff helps you review your life and pick the one moment that you want to spend eternity in. A divine judge doesn't separate you into heaven or hell; you do that yourself, based on your own experiences and what you felt in them. This is what Charles is planning to do, in case y'all were interested. Erik would die, but at least he'd experience joy again before he did.
Shut up. It was not at all gay. It was for friendship.
<< Stop procrastinating. >> A thread of weak humor forces its way across the abyss, and Erik squeezes his eyes shut against the emotion that threatens to rise up after it.
Tired humor meets it, familiar even after all the black, bloody years between friends. Charles smiles faintly. Nobody sees. Power flexes, readied to close, to throttle, to finish. << Charming to the end. Good-bye, Eri-- >>
And then there is nothing.
Of course those would be Erik's last words. Humor -- understanding, even -- to the end. It says a great deal for who he really is. There are two times (says the poet) when a man is really himself. When he's born, and when he dies. Everything else is the act put on for theater.
But then Cerebro goes kablooey and makes the entire thing moot. Charles looks like an idiot yet again. OH WELL. Erik is left with an anticlimactic nothingness. No death, no destruction. He doesn't even get a, "Hah! Fooled you!" to take home with him. Just ... nothing.
The decision to kill Erik is not a light one, and it's one that Charles has to deal with for the next few days while Cerebro is being repaired. He gets to be emo about it, privately, which is where he does most of his emo-ing. Erik is the last person left for Xavier, barring Moira. Even Moira doesn't know him as well as Lensherr does, though -- and after all the years of bickering, debating, dreaming, and planning that they've shared together, killing Erik is like choosing to sever one of his own arms. Without Erik and his Brotherhood, much of Xavier's action derails: there's no single enemy to fight against and no real war to be won. They would be reduced to nothing more than vigilantes, or government puppets, after all. Part of their autonomy is, I think, based on the fact that they understand better than anyone the enemy they fight. In a weird and warped sense, the X-Men need Magneto, and Charles is very aware of that fact. While there is the Brotherhood to act against, humanity and mutant can work together, allied with each other against a common foe.
It's not what Erik meant when he made his Brotherhood to fight for the mutant cause, but it's what is possible.
Hm. Okay. Rambling and strange commentary, but it will do for now. It's been a while since I've done one. For a first run at a character, it could be worse.
Log Date: 6/11/06
Players: Magneto
Summary: Erik drops the last straw on the camel's back, and Charles shows his true? colors.
[ ] Xavier finally gets cracking on this commentary I said I'd do for Xavier. Erik. WAKE UP, ERIK.
[ ] Magneto licks fingers. Yay!
[ ] Xavier: Which one should I do?
[ ] Magneto: ...uuuh.
[ ] Magneto: Which one do you want to do?
[ ] Xavier waves a wild hand. I do not /know/.
[ ] Magneto: Probably murder attempt or Cerebro, I think.
[ ] Sergei: MURDER.
[ ] Xavier: Murder is such a ... an /ugly/ word.
[ ] Magneto: Isn't it, though?
Terrorists.
The character of Xavier hasn't been mine for very long, or rather -- it's been mine for about a month, with some extra playing time as a puppet before I actually got around to apping him. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Xavier is a hard character to play. He was shared by several puppeteers for a few years, which lent itself to wildly different interpretations and personalities. He's emotionally distant: there are few people that he considers close, since most of them are separated from him by a significant generational gap, as well as leader/follower, class, teacher/pupil, mentor/mentee barriers. He's moved by an idealism that looks just great in principle, but in practice doesn't stand up well against the apparently insurmountable odds that are constantly thrown at it. He's the ideological leader of a combat group, a political player, a philanthropist, a philosopher, a psychiatrist, a telepath--
--In real life? I'm not that bright. I eat instant ramen for snacks. And sometimes I read books that have words of more than one syllable. (But only if I'm feeling really ambitious.)
As I say, Xavier is hard. I've found in the past though, that writing commentaries can really help get into the mind of a character. Until now, the only character I've dared this with is Chris Rossi, who is by far the most fleshed out and long-standing of my characters. (Oh. Percy-player just reminded me I did some for Bach. OOPS.) However, it seems time and past for Charles to get his own chance in the spotlight: if not for him, for me. Separating my opinion and perceptions of what Xavier is from the models that I've felt obligated to conform to when I was only puppeting him has proven to be a difficult practice. Clarification and consideration never hurts.
And then, of course, there's the simple fact that I enjoy commentarying scenes with Magneto. He's just so damn cool.
The set-up is simple. Erik has taken his merry band out to rob a bank. Using Mastermind's illusions and Mystique's shape-shifting abilities, they donned X-Men outfits and pretended, basically, to be X-Men. It was a small victory for the Brotherhood in terms of concentrated chaos and rewards: some money, some metal, all good. What was more significant for Erik and his group is that in one afternoon, they managed to undo months, if not years of work by the X-Men, and indelibly tarnish them with the mutant threat brush. Ororo was outed on national television by association. Morphed as her, Mystique kissed Magneto. This was also attractively captured for cameras. Storm threw a fit and a freak thunderstorm hit Westchester; faced with this masterly stroke and the news that people died as a result of Magneto's actions, Charles is faced with the certain knowledge that through inaction, he has also made himself responsible for those deaths.
Inaction is one of the things that is most difficult to explain about Charles. On the one hand, he is not passive; he's a vigorous man who has, lacking physical capacity of his own, formed a strike team that's capable of acting as his proxy out in the world. He works in the political arena to change opinions and to educate, he uses his money and his influence to push mutant equality through and block anti-mutant legislation where he can, he has an active and a determined will. But what frustrates Magneto about him is that he doesn't seem to act effectively. He accuses Charles of expending his energies in trying to block him, when there are other things that could be more usefully done; in short, but blocking Magneto, he's effectively taking no action to forward the mutant cause.
Secreted away in the back of his mind, Charles knows that Erik is right, if not for the same reasons. There's something so seductive about the prospect of violence. It's easy and once started, it's mindless; it appeals to the energetic, physical man that he used to be before he was crippled and trapped in his wheelchair. This is one of the difficult things about posing him. My tendency is to play physically present characters, because physical posing is what I'm -- I won't say good at, but it's my preference. Dialogue is harder for me: its spacing, its sound, its unique voice from person to person. With Charles, I'm constrained to a limited palette, both in sound and in movement. Patrick Stewart's speech patterns, which I attempt to model as best as I can, is very distinctive and distinct. It's possible that over time I'll grow more accustomed and it'll become second-nature to me. For the time being, it sometimes slows me up to ridiculous lengths. My solution, when it gets too bad, is to jettison the attempt altogether and just try to play Xavier rather than Patrick Stewart.
Another problem for me is telepathy, but I'll mention that later. Let's actually talk about Xavier himself for a minute. Or rather, heck. Let's actually get to the log itself, shall we?
There is silence in Cerebro. There has been for some time: vast, empty, loosened at last from the vibrating tension of Charles Xavier's mood. Anger has muted -- at last -- and drawn away from the forebrain to take up a brooding, sullen seat behind the curtain of restraint. In the casement of his seat, the telepath stares blankly at the splay of hands across the headpiece in his lap.
Quiet footfalls scuff along, Erik's heels dragging in the relative silence of the upper level. His door swings open on well-oiled hinges. He shuffles in. His door swings shut, and Erik lowers himself stiffly down onto the side of his bed, ignoring the cold, wet push of Achilles blunt nose into the side of his leg.
Cerebro is dangerous when used under the influence of strong emotion, and though Charles was (for a little while) beyond caring what the impact would be on Erik, he's gained the habit of pausing and waiting until he's calm before acting. Like Erik, he's a man of strong passions, and his temper is pretty formidable once someone has managed to push him past his not inconsiderable patience. As a telepath -- really, as any kind of omega mutant -- this is extraordinarily dangerous. Conscience and experience have taught him to recognize the signs of irrational thinking on his part, and he forces himself to gain distance from the stimulant of the moment. It's a matter of pride to him that he can and will do this, as much a part of his own image of himself as the image he portrays to others. He is Charles Xavier. He is in control. He does not engage in vulgar outbursts of emotion.
I suppose it says something about the player that all the characters I play seem to have a strong theme of self-control and self-discipline running through their psyches.
Cerebro is an anodyne to Charles and his passions. With his power, there is that constant need to restrain and to rein in, and when he's veering towards strong emotion, there's the possibility of empathic leakage. For a telepath and empath as powerful as he is, a severe enough slip of control can create a feedback loop; his anger can color other minds, which will reflect back to him and feed his own. As a psychic clean room that both contains and blocks out anything readable, Cerebro is the one place on earth where he's free to practice therapeutic shouting, to let go and rage, or even just to sulk.
Erik has a dog. It gives him unquestioning love. There's that old adage about pets coming to resemble their masters. Barring displays of homicidal rage, which Achilles has yet to demonstrate on-camera, there's a very grave, dignified, self-sufficient greatness to Erik Lensherr's pet. I simply mention it because I love Erik's characterization of the dog. He has gravitas. He has personality. He is, in many ways, a role model that Erik should maybe follow. Beyond the occasional investigation of his own genitalia, Achilles does not engage in socially unacceptable practices like, say, bank robbery and murder.
I digress.
One thing that Erik's player is outstanding at is the cadence of a pose. I've mentioned this before, but it never hurts to mention it again; where I often try to pack in too much, and my sentence structure develops a kind of routine and repetitive sameness, Erik's poses are pretty much always interesting, not only in their content but in their presentation and variation. I have to say that he is one of the very small handful of players whose poses I always read all the way through. Like, read-read, and not skim-read just to get the jist. He has a very sparse and direct style that suits the character to a T. A lesson I'm trying to learn is that sometimes you do not need to describe what the door looked like, what it smelled like, what its history and its personality and its conflict is. Sometimes the door just opens. Sometimes the character just shuffles in.
It's also worth noting that Erik's player has the comfort level with the character that I'm hoping to eventually get to with Charles. The small human touches of scuffing footsteps and the stiffness as he sits, the old man shuffle and the little, undignified faults that come with old age: these are things that you can do really well when you and the character are familiar enough with each other that you know they're right for him, and the character won't attempt to saw off your testicles with a butter knife for posing them. Erik's player does them really well. I envy him his relationship with Magneto. Moving on!
Hands stir, lifting. Breath puffs white frost into the air, briefly fogging the metal as it rises and sets, a sleek crown for the polished scalp. Xavier closes his eyes; the powerful mind casts out in unfocused search, skimming across the warp and weft of a billion minds. Familiarity here, power there: a lazy tendril of affinity remembers the flavor of a voice, the aftertaste of presence -- there. /There/. Remembered anger flares, only to be thrust ruthlessly back. << /ERIK/. You /ass/. >>
From sullen introspection to an alert upward snap, Erik's eyes are more telling than the hollow lobby of his mind, which has very little to say at the moment. Achilles pushed away with a bare foot, Erik lies back across his bed and reaches to tug a pillow up over his face. << Hello, Charles. >>
Charles was hasty in contacting Erik. That is to say, he paused long enough to get his temper under control, to restrain his mood, to disperse his focus so he wasn't concentrating too much (the last time he used Cerebro and truly focused, the victim of that unwitting exercise died an agonizing death. It is not an experience Xavier chooses to repeat by chance) and to prepare himself mentally for the contact. However, what he didn't do was figure out what he was going to say or what he was going to do once he reached out and, as they say, touched the man. For him, this is the equivalent of picking up the phone to yell at your friend for screwing you over. You don't plan this sort of thing or map out the dialogue unless you're attempting to reason with him, or to convince him of something, or argue with him -- and Charles and Erik are long past that stage, though the old debates and lectures do still come up as part of the familiar habits of their friendship and association. Thus his first greeting, which is certainly not the dignified salutation of the Master of Xavier House, but rather a younger, exasperated outburst from the beginnings of their relationship, when both were younger men and still discovering the world.
My interpretation of how Cerebro and Xavier's mind work are food for a different commentary. Part of it I'm still working out. More important and interesting at the moment is how Erik responds to the voice in his mind. His first glance is up -- hi, God! -- and then he blocks his senses out with the pillow, which is a very funny image. The last time Charles came a-knocking in his mind, he borrowed Erik's senses willy-nilly and without apology. (Well, he could. And Erik was being a twat.) This time, he doesn't get to. Not unless he seizes control. And on the one hand, Charles is blocked out from the world and left to deal with Erik and Erik alone -- but on the other hand, Erik has blocked out the world, and is forced to deal with Charles, and Charles alone. Even above the natural intimacy of having a man sitting in your mind, there's a level of implied privacy there of the two men together, the world kept out, even with the futile hint of trying to block Charles out altogether.
Incidentally, I love that line, 'the hollow lobby of his mind.' Magneto rules.
A mental spank bites across the aether, leaving stinging pain in its wake. << I see Raven has rediscovered her powers, >> Charles snaps, focus gnawing and nibbling on the borders of perception. << You are very fortunate that Storm was not there in person. There are things she would do to you that even Jean could not repair. >>
Magneto winces despite himself, physically, rather than mentally against the dull grey of the pillow he's enlisted to block out the rest of the world. Why he insists upon staring at the uninteresting nothingness of it, there really is no telling. He finally considers this and closes his eyes, exchanging vague grey for an unmarred field of black. << Is there a fee up front, or does she charge by the hour? >>
Let me pause to mention how poor I am at writing telepathy. I am the Buffalo Bills attempting to win the Superbowl five years in a row poor at writing telepathy. I am Mugabe convincing the world that all is well in Zimbabwe poor at writing telepathy. I am the US government winning the hearts and minds of the Middle East poor at writing telepathy. In retrospect, apping for a telepath might not have been the smartest move that I have ever made. OH WELL.
I operate, though, on the principle that if I'm crap at it, I should promptly try it and practice it in order to get better. (This is predicate on the assumption that the thing that I'm crap at is something that interests me to begin with, mind.) So there you go. The difficulty isn't only in writing telepathy, but in writing telepathy and somehow managing not to end up all purple about it. (Purple meaning "purple prose" for those who are unfamiliar.) As though things weren't bad enough already -- and there is a tendency towards purple inherent in playing Xavier, especially when one remembers the Shakespearean quality to Patrick Stewart. There's a theatrical aspect to him that translates well into my perception of Charles, I think; the difficulty is in keeping it under control, when by inclination (or habit) I can reel off into the wildest of scenery-chewing thesaurus-raping offenses against the English language imaginable.
Thus far into the exchange there's very little to indicate the sheer limits to which Charles feels driven to. The slap is a spank, hardly damaging, more like an annoyed swat that you give your six-year old after he's reached one too many times for the sharp knives you told him not to touch. There is snark there, and the implication that Jean could or would continue to treat Lensherr, as she has done on occasions in the past. In other words, there is no suggestion just how serious the situation is and the lengths to which Charles will go over the course of the rest of the scene. This is, I admit, as much an OOC as an IC thing; ICly it was because he was restraining himself as much as possible, trying not to go spare on Erik's head. OOCly it was because I was unsure where this scene was going to go, though Erik's player was aware of the possibility.
Erik responds accordingly. Charles has always forgiven, if not forgotten; he's never crossed that one line, much as Erik has pushed and mocked and contemptuously attempted to shove his erstwhile friend over it. There's no surprise, either in his initial greeting or in the marshalled snark that he throws back. It suggests he fully expected Charles to come yell at him again, after which -- if the patterns of before were repeated -- he would retreat, sulk for a while, and then passively forgive and turn a blind eye. Again. Because Charles is weak.
It is a reasonable expectation. Unfortunately for them both, Charles has just about had it. He's trembling on the verge right now, and what he's looking for from Erik is something that he's not going to be able to get. More on that later. In retrospect, you have to wonder what Erik expects of Charles in making those demands on him, in trying to force him to kill with his power or take those steps past ethics. He's not an unintelligent man; he can't not anticipate the possibility that the first step Charles will take into killing won't be against him and his people. Then again, you have to wonder why, with the power of Cerebro at his disposal, Charles doesn't just Take Steps against Magneto and his kind: to put some sort of mental block in to prevent him from going out and killing people. It's a double-edged sword. The same ethics that Erik wants him to overcome are the same ethics that keep Erik safe. Well, duh.
Ominous jags of color snap and growl through black, crawling across the mind's blackened eye in a nauseating writhe. << You are trying my patience, /old friend/. >> Warning power snakes after, poised with hungry and open jaws around the harbors of memory. In Cerebro, Xavier's mouth thins, whitening in the press of lips over locked jaw. << I congratulate you. >>
No bolster is made against that show of strength, no threat returned, or anger beckoned. Erik exhales long and slow, and is treated to the scent of stale coffee and altoids heavy on his own breath against the pillow's smothering press. << Thank you. >>
I have mentioned already my inability to pose telepathy. Lacking a wide range of physicality to use, I am reduced to posing a power that I am just not very good at -- and then sneak the physicality in anyway, because while the temptation is to pose everything from Magneto's point of view in this kind of scene, that's damned hard for me to do since it's in a medium that I'm not as familiar or as comfortable with: namely, the mind. Phone conversations, no problem! Telepathic channels, problem. The mind deals in ideas and amorphous concepts at its highest state, and that's just not a place that's easy to pose. This is, in fact, a lot like words. Imagery is the key, so I throw in ... uh, some. The jags of color are compliments of stress headaches and migraines that I used to have, where I would get streaks of color blurring off of the things that I looked at. Charming, isn't it?
Snakes. I like snakes as images for this. Partly because there's an ominous quality to them, and color streaks have a sort of worm-like, snake-like quality to them. Partly because snakes have always had complicated meanings in any culture. The caduceus used as the symbol of the medical profession involves serpents. Death, healing -- one can occasionally mean the other, and both end up tangled together during the course of the log.
Erik, meanwhile, is maddening. He drops his initial snark to simply accede, and gives way with relative indifference. Charles is not easy to goad, admittedly, but once he has gotten angry there is a great deal to work with -- and there's a great deal of danger, to boot. After years of association, Erik knows exactly how to annoy him the most: he is like a master tickler with a grand old catfish. In all fairness, it's possible that Erik truly has more important (better) things on his mind than having to deal with a cranky old telepath halfway across New York. However, we don't care. Charles is now well and truly riled up. When one is not accustomed to being upset or angry, one pettishly and peevishly wants acknowledgment that it is a Notable Occasion. One wants recognition for the agitation, and people to scurry around and react. One does not want to be met by indifference.
For all Charles is good at restraining his temper, he isn't so good at what to do with it once it's well and truly let go. This makes sense, of course; if you're not used to dealing with it in full steam, you don't necessarily have the tools to hand. What he has in his toolchest are two things: his power, and the wherewithal (the drive, at least) to control his temper. Once the desire to control his temper are lost, all that's left is power. This is not good.
Unsatisfying, this easy acquiescence. Even in the rigidity of control, a taste of that irritation leaks through. Charles balls his hands into fists, massaging the knuckles against the cold metal of his chair. Memory is caught and dragged into the open, reeled back through hours (mockery, strangling, "Go to bed, Erik,") into the chaos and triumph of the bank. Toad. Jason. Storm's face, the insolence of it, the kiss--
Magneto stiffens immediately - non-reaction no longer a simple option as hollow silence is filled with the backwards trample of his own dismay, fury, irritation, triumph; The pillow wrested abruptly aside, Erik sits up, breathing hard in rough time with the pound of his heart at the back of his sternum and lashes out, magnetism's release ineffectual in the echo of a more direct mental attempt against the onslaught.
So THERE. In his mind, Charles is telling himself that he's plowing through Magneto's memories for the greater good. And to a certain extent, this is true. What has Erik been up to? What has he been doing? What are his cunning plans, his strategems, all that make him a threat? Charles missed an opportunity once before to recognize what was coming down the bend at him -- out of that damned telepathic courtesy that he follows so erratically -- so given impetus and provocation, he jettisons it out the window. You want rough play? Fine. Have some.
While he would claim that he's going through Erik's mind for the greater good, there's a not so laudable irritation underneath, a childish -- even old men can be immature! -- drive to get back at Erik, to make him jump at the end of Xavier's string the way that Erik's turned Xavier's X-Men into puppets for the media. Power is a heady thing for both these men, and while Charles restrains himself and forces himself not to act, when he finally does, the desire to act finally and thoroughly can be a dangerous and deadly tightrope to walk. Especially for one who's got a bit of a tendency towards playing a benevolent, all-seeing God.
Arrogance is one of Charles's abiding sins, though he hides it somewhat better than Erik. (Lensherr is right on so many levels. Xavier is a hypocrite, Janus-faced on many fronts.) It's easy for him to forget that being able to see into a mind is not the same as understanding or being able to predict it. So easy, in fact, that even though he preaches that knowledge to other telepaths, the assumption of understanding has become embedded into his own, fairly considerable self-opinion. As a result, he takes surprises even more poorly than most, viewing it almost as a personal affront when someone's actions manage to startle him.
Erik's little feat with the X-Men disguises has managed to startle him. Not surprise him, exactly -- he knows Erik is capable of that and so much worse -- but that he was companionable with Erik for a time and was even present in his mind, and still managed to miss this little secret? It is an affront that Charles takes quite personally.
Satisfaction taints the slide of minds, touched with malice, that urgent intimacy of one man's presence against the other. << She was better served without her power, >> Xavier says grimly, overlapping that press of Storm-Mystique lips with the memory of Erik's earlier fury: the feel of her throat between aging hands. << I see she has lost none of her former charm. >>
Cold sweat springs up across the heavy-lined knit of Erik's brow, breath forced wheezing from between hardly parted teeth as he glares hard at the empty space in front of him. Disoriented, unhinged, unsettled by the ongoing overlap, and by the stir it creates in his gut. << /Stop this/. >>
Charles has gotten a response from Erik, which satisfies the impulse of the moment. Unfortunately, he's already moved on. The original motive is lost in favor of other recollections; Mystique has never been a favorite of his, for one thing. This is not as relevant as the point that even after victory, Erik still doesn't have satisfaction. He goes home and promptly tries to strangle Mystique. There will never be peace for Lensherr, not while he lives, and Charles wonders -- not for the first time -- if there is anything that will satisfy Erik now that he's begun spilling blood. It will never be enough. Not because of his fight for mutant equality, but because there are old ghosts and scars driving him, and old enemies that he'll never be able to kill.
I've mentioned before in poses that compassion has always been Charles's abiding failure, and this is both true and false. It's compassion that keeps his personal flaws from turning him into a megalomaniac terrorist, that prompts him to provide a shelter for mutants, that drives him to work relentlessly on behalf of the marginalized mutants in society and to accept the possibility that some day, humanity and mutants will live side by side. On the other hand, it's that same compassion that makes him accept the terrible and the murderous and the sacrifice of life that Erik seems to feel is necessary. He could cut it off at the source by simply killing Erik, but he doesn't. It isn't that Charles isn't capable of ruthlessness or a chilling pragmatism and will. It's just that the two have never swung into equal alignment before. Compassion has, in the past, almost always trumped other concerns.
The picture of Mystique's smiling face fades, leaving behind only her scent and the tactile memory of her skin against palms. << You have had no qualms abusing my people or their reputations at your whim, >> Xavier says flatly, protective anger sharp-toothed behind the voice. << You undo years of work with one foolish blow. And for what? What do you gain from this? >>
<< What benefit is there to be retained in secrecy? You have had time enough to come forward on your own. To create your own image. >> Chest still rising and falling unsteadily, Erik reaches up to ring a hand loosely about his own neck as his glare rolls tiredly away. << You failed to act, and now I have acted for you. Your X-men will feel the frustration of being feared and hated, for all that they wish to help. They will feel as I have felt. >>
Charles has never really crossed the preemptive strike line with Erik. The X-Men have always responded; they've never instigated, barring Jean's Dark Phoenix episode -- which I think we can all agree wasn't exactly an X-Men operation. It shouldn't be a surprise to Charles that Erik would screw him and his hard work over like this, but there you go. Charles is fallible. His faith in Erik is one of those vulnerabilities, one of those blind spots that his students really don't share -- and they warn him, and like any autocrat, he ignores them. And they prove themselves correct. Well. He has no right to be surprised.
Xavier cherishes his dignity, perhaps even more than Erik does. Like any human being he can occasionally be wrong, a point which he is ready to concede. His position and his work give him ample opportunity to look silly. One does not run a secret mutant strike team, play politics, play philanthropist, go about in the public eye, and work with children without inviting embarrassment to come play hop-scotch on your ass. However, it's one thing to look silly. It's another to discover that one's been made a fool of, particularly in an area where he has extended himself on behalf of another man. Irrational though it is, he has had (up till now) a kind of trust in Erik that Erik has now betrayed. Yes, I realize past history doesn't exactly support this, but fuckit. It's my Xavier. I play him my way.
You know what else? I just figured this out. While the idea of the X-Men disguise might have been Erik's idea, the memory of Mystique so strongly in Lensherr's thoughts remind Xavier of a rivalry I think he might have had with Raven, to some extent. Mystique-player, I must discuss this with you, but I imagine that in some ways, Charles and Raven were the little angel and the little devil sitting on Erik's shoulders. Raven has effectively won the battle for Erik's soul, and I think that maybe Xavier hasn't quite reconciled himself to that. Hence irrational impulses where Erik is concerned. What do you think?
Meanwhile, Erik's reason for doing what he did. Secrecy. All that. Erik always pushes. Not later. Now. Xavier, I think, spends a lot of time feeling like Magneto's clean-up crew, like the poor bugger with the shovel and the garbage can who follows the elephants in the big parade. Frustration? You've got to be kidding me. He spends half of his time chasing after Magneto's merry disasters, and he has the nerve to tell Xavier about frustration? Butthead.
It's amusing to me personally that there's a sense here that Magneto is jealous of the X-Men, envious that they're treated like heroes (protectors!) while his group, which is actively taking action on behalf of the mutants against humans, is treated like the enemy by the community he thinks he's apparently trying to help. Privately, Charles feels the same way about Magneto's way, albeit for different reasons. So tempting, to just let go and smash. Maybe not constructive in the long run, but Erik has a kind of freedom that Charles can't have, because Xavier needs to work in the system to reach his ends. He knows from history that change is a gradual process, and public opinion is a fickle thing. He has to build equality from the ground up, and not just ride in and demand it. Erik and Charles are like siblings, each one jealous of what the other one has.
<< Part of your grand scheme, is it? >> Charles demands, that threatened frustration swift: already old, already there, from years past. << Misery loves company? You've become a cliche in your old age, Erik. Isn't your sad band of madmen and zealots enough companionship for you? >>
Nausea rising and failing with some effort, Erik focuses upon slowing down the gnash and snarl of thoughts and memories caged within his skull, and his breathing slows with them. His pulse. << It's charming, the way that you continue to insist that /your/ vigilantes are somehow more acceptable than my own. >> Neck released, Erik rubs the same hand up over his brow and coughs.
Frustration is made even more acute by the fact that history tells Charles that there's no sure way or perfect way to achieve his ends, and that Erik could very well be proved right, in the long run. His method could be the one that gets them what they want. The problem is that they don't know. They can't possibly know, until history is finished being written in this chapter.
It's bitter to Charles to have public opinion snatched out of his hand by Erik, yet again. It's so easy to create a ruinous image; so much harder to build a good one. His people have worked so hard at it, and in one fell swoop -- well. I've already mentioned that above. I point above to how awesome Magneto's posing is, that grand old lion. He's unwell. Charles isn't making things any better. There's a nice bit where Erik grabs hold of the high ground and refuses to relinquish it to Xavier; Vigilantes, he says, including the Brotherhood as people of the same stripe. Not terrorists. Volunteers. Angels fighting the good fight. And if they're equals, it makes sense that they should share equal misery and equal victory, doesn't it?
Hah. As if.
<< Yours create chaos. Destruction. Misery. Fear. Your brotherhood is not less acceptable. It is insupportable. >> Charles bridges the gap of emotions, fishing for the crackle of guilt under the surface. His hands spread across the wheelchair's arms, fingers curling around the long slant of metal. << And what next for your merry band of murderers? Secret Service uniforms? Infiltration of the Sesame Street cast? >>
Guilt is never difficult to find, however thick the glaciatic ice shifting slow and rigid over the surface might be. An innocent woman, crushed. She probably had a family. Children. A mother, eliminated mercilessly without reason or purpose, taken without warning, and without provocation. The guard. Too young to be a father. But what of the future? He'd died painfully. He had screamed. Erik closes his eyes again, brows pressed low and hard over the track of his own boots through blood spilt now and in the past, at his order. And still, somewhere, a part of him makes a mental note, unable to stop itself. Secret service uniforms. He says nothing.
Here is a Catch-22. If Charles had encountered a complete lack of remorse, a total lack of guilt, he would have been disgusted and it would have solidified his purpose. He would have snuffed Erik out right then and there. But what he got instead, that guilt, the full awareness of what he had done and the consequences to unknown lives, on top of that unstoppable planning about the secret service uniforms-- well. That was just as bad.
Xavier is as much a party to guilt as Erik is, in that he experiences it quite readily. It's a natural emotion for someone who regularly sends people that he's taught, mentored and practically raised into danger. (Not to mention the fact that he has a bit of that God complex, which means if he's responsible for successes, he is likewise responsible for failures.) On the other hand, he doesn't wallow. Pragmatism tells him that he would be unable to make the necessary decisions or take the necessary actions if he spends too much time clinging to woe; his ethics, much vaunted though they are, suffer much the same light, light touch when they come into conflict with what needs to get done. In private he might very well struggle with them. In public, he prefers to project certainty of purpose. His ethical qualms are his problem, after all, and as a telepath he knows full well that doubt in a leader can inspire doubt in the followers.
This is one of those things that's different between my portrayal of him when I was just puppeting, and how I perceive him as my own character. The puppeted Xavier was far more prone to grief and self-doubt, and I have a hard time separating what I did then with what I did now. There is still overlap. As I mentioned before, Xavier's voice isn't as strong in my head as other chars I play, so there have been several times when I've gone back and realized I was playing the wrong version. It's something I'll have to keep working on.
Anyway, back to the poses themselves. It's the guilt that's the tipping point for Charles, not only that it hurts Erik so much to do what he does, but also that he will not stop. Even while it's dredged up into the surface, he's laying plans for something new. It's a realization that all Charles's hopes that Erik will lay down arms are futile. Even worse, seeing the pain that it causes him, for -- to Charles's mind -- no good purpose ....
What happens next is as much out of love and compassion as it is out of resolution. Injured dogs too hurt to function are put down by vets all the time. Charles sees no possibility of healing in the future. He's tired. He's angry. He's guilty. He doesn't want Erik to suffer anymore. Enough is enough.
The telepath is ruthless, though he shares those images, that guilt: it spills into his mind and resonates in return, ringing with his own. Too far away to anticipate the future; too compassionate to do what he must. Erik's words. << You were right, >> Charles says, resolution -- regret -- shaping in the background. << I did not have the resolve to do what I should have. >>
<< You should have killed me when you had the chance, Charles. >>
<< I know. I'm sorry, Erik. >>
For the first time, that phrase -- you should have killed me when you had the chance -- isn't heard as a taunt or a challenge, but as a plea. Not, "You should have," but "Why didn't you?" Whether Erik means it that way or no-- you would think a telepath would know, without doubt, but Erik has always been a blind spot for Xavier. On top of which, like anything, we see things through the prism of our own experiences and our own thoughts, and while telepathy is the most clear means of communication possible, I think there's still that slant which makes it possible to misunderstand, to warp meaning based on our own perspectives. After all, knowing isn't understanding, and for all those times that Erik told Charles he should have killed him, it could very well be that this is the first time that Charles has really listened.
Telepathy isn't a field that I'm too familiar with based on game canon, so I'm open to correction. Still, to me it makes sense. Human understanding, even with godlike power, is frail and limited. Fallible. And Xavier is definitely human. He has failed his friend, who should have learned after all these years to be careful what you wish for. If he kills Erik, he will never forgive himself -- but that is, after all, more acceptable than allowing Erik to continue and kill others. Like Erik, he is willing to bear the burden of his actions so other people needn't be tarnished by them. His apology is sincere. All these years he hasn't listened, and by not listening, he condemned Lensherr to a life of grief and misery and suffering in the service of his cause. He's sorry. Now he'll do something about it.
Lucky Erik.
Even thought and spoken, Erik clings to life. To the renewed press of Achilles' nose into the side of his knee, now accompanied an attention-hungry whimper, and to the press of iron and steel in upon him from all sides. He shifts back to lie down again, and holds his breath. << I will try harder. >>
Charles closes his eyes, already tasting the first acrid pang of grief. Anger is gone, lost, drained to the dregs. << Try harder to do what? To destroy humanity? To destroy yourself? You hurt yourself every time you kill. I have made too many compromises already, turned too many blind eyes. Out of friendship. >>
There's something a little heart-wrenching about what Erik says, an echo of the abused (which Erik was, looking at his Nazi concentration camp past) telling the abuser not to hurt him, he'll do better next time. Or even of a child who has disappointed a parent, promising to try harder next time. Even the holding of the breath is like a throwback to childhood, waiting for the stick to fall, like a little bargain with fate. If I hold my breath for this many minutes, he won't hit me. It is as close to a plea for his life that Erik will come to, though why that is between men who know each other as intimately -- SHUT UP -- as these two do, one can only conjecture. Perhaps Erik really does believe he deserves death, or is torn between wanting it and wanting to live.
Death is sort of the ultimate punishment, and Charles fills the role of father figure so well, with most. The entire scenario is a bit scripted, in the sense that there's a feeling Charles is asking questions he already knows the answers to, and that Erik is being posed a test he can't possibly pass. It's an abuse pattern, I realize quite belatedly, though there certainly wasn't that intent when we were scening it. It's interesting to note in hindsight. Weird. Kind of wiggy. Moving on.
No, wait. Not moving on. Another random thought. It makes sense, now that I think about it. Of all powers out there, telepathy/empathy is the most invasive, even when operating under the ethical restraints that Charles has implemented on himself. After all, those restraints are self-imposed, and can be ignored at whim. There is no true assurance of privacy when you are living with or are friends with a telepath. Even if the telepath has no intent or predisposition towards malice, there is a measure of psychological strain there that can probably have all sorts of reprecussions later, especially if one doesn't grow up accustomed to it.
One of the first signs of abusive people is that they claim your privacy for their own. Your mail, your thoughts, your opinions, your friends, your avenues of communication -- these are all coopted and controlled, or taken away. From a certain point of view, I can see where living with a telepath -- where there isn't a truly remarkable trust -- can have much the same effect.
Hollow chested and hollow minded, the echo of a chill prickles distant through the recesses of Erik's ongoing thought process. Fear.
Silence meets silence, as power seeps through the recesses of Erik's mind, gently preparing the way for -- something. For intent. << There is an irony to this, >> Charles says quietly. << One that you would have appreciated. >>
The irony being that Erik has always been the one who pushed Charles to use his powers into killing. And here he is, the first conscious victim of it. It is a mercy killing, and compassionate. In that, at least, Charles is himself. He fully intends to give Erik a state of grace before Lensherr fades away, the kind of happiness he can't ever seem to achieve in this sordid and wretched life that he lives. The forgiving hand of God, as it were.
Magneto's silver crown tilts back into the bed beneath him, eyes rolled up onto the ceiling against a glaze gathering there that threatens to build into something more. He swallows against it, and maintains silence, tattered energy reserves pressed into subduing cold terror mounting hard at the base of his throat. The less he attempts to think, the better.
In Cerebro, Charles opens deep-set, shadowed eyes, facing the proximity of death and the burden of his own guilt and responsibility already heavy on his shoulders. Memories open themselves to his aetheric hand, connections tied together in a mortal chain; he follows their web back through time, a finger on their pulse. << I will miss our talks, old friend. >>
Erik always was a man of few words. Charles ... not so much. Even at this last moment, he wants Erik to say something, do something, or promise something that will stay his hand. Governor's reprieve. Lensherr simply submits, like he did at the beginning of the log. Now that Magneto's player has pointed it out, I see where Erik is starting to get a little tearful, though I didn't interpret it (glaze gathering) as moisture, and more as a fog of some sort. Stupid me. Charles is searching back through Magneto's memories to find the one peaceful, happy moment that he can leave Erik in.
Randomly, there's a Japanese movie out there called After Life, where the premise is that after you die, you go to a kind of government building where a volunteer staff helps you review your life and pick the one moment that you want to spend eternity in. A divine judge doesn't separate you into heaven or hell; you do that yourself, based on your own experiences and what you felt in them. This is what Charles is planning to do, in case y'all were interested. Erik would die, but at least he'd experience joy again before he did.
Shut up. It was not at all gay. It was for friendship.
<< Stop procrastinating. >> A thread of weak humor forces its way across the abyss, and Erik squeezes his eyes shut against the emotion that threatens to rise up after it.
Tired humor meets it, familiar even after all the black, bloody years between friends. Charles smiles faintly. Nobody sees. Power flexes, readied to close, to throttle, to finish. << Charming to the end. Good-bye, Eri-- >>
And then there is nothing.
Of course those would be Erik's last words. Humor -- understanding, even -- to the end. It says a great deal for who he really is. There are two times (says the poet) when a man is really himself. When he's born, and when he dies. Everything else is the act put on for theater.
But then Cerebro goes kablooey and makes the entire thing moot. Charles looks like an idiot yet again. OH WELL. Erik is left with an anticlimactic nothingness. No death, no destruction. He doesn't even get a, "Hah! Fooled you!" to take home with him. Just ... nothing.
The decision to kill Erik is not a light one, and it's one that Charles has to deal with for the next few days while Cerebro is being repaired. He gets to be emo about it, privately, which is where he does most of his emo-ing. Erik is the last person left for Xavier, barring Moira. Even Moira doesn't know him as well as Lensherr does, though -- and after all the years of bickering, debating, dreaming, and planning that they've shared together, killing Erik is like choosing to sever one of his own arms. Without Erik and his Brotherhood, much of Xavier's action derails: there's no single enemy to fight against and no real war to be won. They would be reduced to nothing more than vigilantes, or government puppets, after all. Part of their autonomy is, I think, based on the fact that they understand better than anyone the enemy they fight. In a weird and warped sense, the X-Men need Magneto, and Charles is very aware of that fact. While there is the Brotherhood to act against, humanity and mutant can work together, allied with each other against a common foe.
It's not what Erik meant when he made his Brotherhood to fight for the mutant cause, but it's what is possible.
Hm. Okay. Rambling and strange commentary, but it will do for now. It's been a while since I've done one. For a first run at a character, it could be worse.