8/21/06 - Emma
---
Emma has not been heard from since the last disastrous encounter with Kitty, and Storm has not been seen since closing her door on her one visitor of Saturday evening. In fact, aside from whatever might be picked up by concerted telepathic contact, things have finally quieted down after a day and a half of increasing disgusted agitation punctuated by loneliness and helplessness. Said concerted telepathic contact, if any, has been weakly blocked by a recurrent refrain of some bit of obscure classical music that serves even more as a focus than a cover for thoughts.
That agitation and frustration would come from that closed door is natural: even expected. That it should subside so abruptly and be replaced with hold music is more worrisome. From the quietus of his study, Xavier closes his eyes and sighs, reaching out with gentle courtesy to tap-tap-tap on the closed boundaries of that mind. << Emma. >> The voice is quiet, a whisper just beyond the reaches of hearing. An unformed question holds the name in its hands, cradling it in inquiry. Health, harmony, sanity -- are they still hers? Or lost and fraying?
Health and harmony can hardly be called hers while her body is under the control of another, and the one she inhabits is held prisoner for all intents and purposes, however reasonable and necessary those intents and purposes may be. Sanity, on the other hand... Sanity stirs in recognition of the touch and turns its head to stare blank and hot-eyed at the silent intrusion. << What? >> it demands with childish belligerence.
The Great Tempter is bald, his features strong and kindly; nowhere is there the red hue of skin, or the horns and goatee that mythos inflicts upon him. << If you would prefer your solitude-- >> Xavier says back, poised on the edge of a tactful retreat, layering the last word (so innocuous! so kindly!) with the desolation of mind-blindness, the completeness of isolation that the deaf only know if they could once hear. << I will not intrude against your will. >>
<< NO! >> The reaction is complete, and Emma's mind, broken down to base impulses and memories under the totality of the grip she maintains to suffocate her emotions, flings itself at him. Flashes of light, muted color, images more shadow than form. A girl's voice sobs in the distant dark. << Don't leave me. >>
Compassion washes back, the fading presence returning in stolid strength to anchor that desperate grasp. << I will stay, >> Charles promises, wrapping power in a warm embrace around the darkness to spiderweb it through with light. Freedom. Escape. Comfort. << I will always be here if you need me. All you had to do was ask. >>
His assurance calls forth memories tumbling end over end to flash the old telepath. Another voice answers, cold and grown and hard. << Really, Xavier. I know that line. 'All I have to do is...' is /rarely/ all I have to do. >> Control.
<< The strings are more of your making than mine, Emma, >> says reason to that adult voice; << My child, >> murmurs kindness for the younger, frightened one. Telepathic wings flare wide to shield and then to lift, drawing man and woman above the dross of flesh and human clay. << Come visit with me for a while, if you will. >>
Drawing them above and reforming them in a place formed by thought, restricted only by thought, and fueled by thought. Warmth wraps itself around his leg and reaches higher, caught in the grasp of powers familiar yet not known. << I shouldn't, >> the older warns while the younger sinks nails too sharp for her age into his thigh and holds on. << Don't leave me, don't leave me, you promised, you said you would help. >>
The answering amusement is dry and spare, like vellum scraped clean of its original text. << Shoulds and shouldn'ts seem unlike you, >> Xavier comments, taking shape on that humorous note. In spirit he is as he is in flesh: telling, that comfort in his own skin -- or that pride in his own art -- that shapes him in thought as he is in body. The marks of age sag his jowls and wrinkle deep laughter lines at the corners of eyes; the suit that nods to propriety in reality is as dapper here, as neatly pressed. Only one one point does he differ from the man himself.
On the astral plane, Charles Xavier stands.
Emma's mental avatar wavers without her own powers to supplement and hold it, giving glimpses of her own form, sculpted and perfect and sneering. Buffeted by emotion and thought though, it shifts and reveals all the images that make up the whole of Emma Frost's self. Some vapid, some brittle, some desperate. White Queen to the younger self that twitches her nose at the man in equal parts suspicion and hope. << I had my share of them. Mother saw to that. >>
<< Had, >> Xavier says gravely, opening a hand to extend to Emma, fingertips trailing fine strands. A gift of his power, freely lent; the tendrils drift on some psychic eddy towards the girl, their promise luminous. << Did you turn away from them in your adulthood? Or did you simply build on top of them, hoping to smother their memory? >>
<< Is there a difference? >> Emma asks lightly, almost laughing as she reaches for the gift, unsubstantial fingers closing around the strands. The mirth dies newborn, though, as a head blind brain blunts the power's effectiveness. Emma bows her head and sinks to the ground, and her sandy-brown head dips over the strands and begins to braid.
Charles takes the few steps necessary to close the distance between them. A useless gesture, on a plane where thought is synonymous with deed -- but there is vigor in the stride, and a subdued, private joy in his step, of a body that has known strength and lost it, and knows now to relish the opportunities it has. << Perhaps, >> he says, dropping to a knee beside her. A hand drops gentle benediction on the dusky head. << This has been hard for you. I am sorry for it. >>
The simple, childish task of weaving those strands together buoys the younger manifestation, or perhaps it is the kindly hand on her head. She sighs and drops her hands to her lap. << You play your role well, Xavier, >> she admits grudgingly.
Eyes crinkle, the smile that never lingers far from the commanding features deepening well-worn paths with its return. << We all play our roles well, Emma, you no less than I, >> Xavier says with a hand on his knee, the other sweeping wide to shape the world around them. Hellfire's glittering ballroom, empty thrones facing each other across an empty, massive chessboard. << To paraphrase a greater voice than mine: I am what I am. >>
Emma looks up and out at the familiar sight, subtly rearranged, and the twinned emotions of love and hate, perverted into desire and loathing, gleam in her eyes and mind. << Oh, tsk, Xavier. Only greater in conceit, surely? >>
<< I have no ambitions to be God, >> Xavier counters, while great, wooden shapes carved into faceless pieces slowly fade into existence around them. Not black and white, but warmer, richer colors: the deep brown of chocolate; the soft cream of ivory. They sit in the shadow of a dark pawn, whose unfinished features watch over them with sad benevolence. << To become what I am capable of becoming is enough, and difficult enough. Humanity is a mortal failing. >>
Emma warps her arms around her knees and shivers in the dark shadow, her eyes ringing white and wary. << Come now, darling. You /like/ playing God. Don't deny it. You know best, and so who better than you? >>
Amusement again, though it has a darker side to it: whispered acknowledgment of temptation, shared willingly with the woman. Xavier rises, offering Emma his hand. << Arrogance is also a mortal failing, >> he agrees with some rue, << and we're more susceptible to it than others. It is easy to forget that knowing something is not the same as understanding. Looking is not the same thing as seeing. >>
Her eyes travel up the length of his leg and down his arm to rest on the hand reaching out. She flicks them up to his face, and habitual distrust of the motives of anything male ages her face and lightens her hair. << It's not, but it sometimes it is all we have. >> Her hand finds his.
The fingers that grip hers is steady and certain, the skin under hers thin with that inescapable march of age. He has no shame of his years, does Charles Xavier; he wears them lightly, gracefully, the weight of time counted fair exchange for the benefits of wisdom and experience. << The forest, >> he says, << for the trees, White Queen. >>
The floor falls away. They rise: up, up, over the heads of chess pieces to see the board from above. A labyrinth at ground-level proves a pattern from overhead.
<< You paint a pretty picture, Xavier, but what is it you want me to see? >> Emma asks pointedly, her grip on his hand tightening, fingers cool and slender in his. She shows no fear at the illusion of falling ground, this Queen of the Astral Plane, though a queen temporarily dethroned.
<< Shades of grey, Emma, >> Xavier says wryly, while the pieces below sretch and wake to move in internecine battle. The clatter of swords, the cacophony of voices is murmurous from above, a ghost on the wind that they ride. A scent of blood. A shout of pain. << So much labor and misery expended to rise to your throne, and for what? What lasting legacy? >>
<< You seek to instill regret, or know if there is any already there? >> She looks on the carnage spreading out at her feet, then turns away dismissively, hardening further, the plaster of paris facade imperfect.
Xavier watches clear-eyed while faces take shape out of the chaos. The al-Razi brothers, dark and beamish. Sebastian Shaw, teeth savage-bright and reddened. << Neither. If you feel regret, it is yours to keep or share, as you see fit. And if you have none, no doing of mine will make you capable. You play your role well, Emma. Is it by choice? Or habit? >>
<< One becomes the other, >> she murmurs back, defiantly indifferent to the ghostly fingers creeping up her spine. Other faces join, less defined, younger. Children's faces, really. Tyanna, Rebecca, even Sabitha.
<< Until you lose the ability to choose. >> Lives flame brightly for a time -- enter the fray -- and are consumed whole by the battle. New bodies for old. << Power is meaningless without control. >>
<< Indeed, >> she agrees easily, pulling her hand from his and moving away from the board.
A path opens for her, stairs ribboning out in a spiral from the astral plane to the body -- Storm's body, stolen, borrowed -- sunk in the trap of mental blindness. << I can teach you, >> Xavier's voice says behind her, fading even as the world fades away, colors dimming for the exchange of the mind's brilliance with mortal sight. << All you need do is ask. Emma. >>
And then he is gone.
[Log ends]
Xavier takes Emma on an outing.
Emma has not been heard from since the last disastrous encounter with Kitty, and Storm has not been seen since closing her door on her one visitor of Saturday evening. In fact, aside from whatever might be picked up by concerted telepathic contact, things have finally quieted down after a day and a half of increasing disgusted agitation punctuated by loneliness and helplessness. Said concerted telepathic contact, if any, has been weakly blocked by a recurrent refrain of some bit of obscure classical music that serves even more as a focus than a cover for thoughts.
That agitation and frustration would come from that closed door is natural: even expected. That it should subside so abruptly and be replaced with hold music is more worrisome. From the quietus of his study, Xavier closes his eyes and sighs, reaching out with gentle courtesy to tap-tap-tap on the closed boundaries of that mind. << Emma. >> The voice is quiet, a whisper just beyond the reaches of hearing. An unformed question holds the name in its hands, cradling it in inquiry. Health, harmony, sanity -- are they still hers? Or lost and fraying?
Health and harmony can hardly be called hers while her body is under the control of another, and the one she inhabits is held prisoner for all intents and purposes, however reasonable and necessary those intents and purposes may be. Sanity, on the other hand... Sanity stirs in recognition of the touch and turns its head to stare blank and hot-eyed at the silent intrusion. << What? >> it demands with childish belligerence.
The Great Tempter is bald, his features strong and kindly; nowhere is there the red hue of skin, or the horns and goatee that mythos inflicts upon him. << If you would prefer your solitude-- >> Xavier says back, poised on the edge of a tactful retreat, layering the last word (so innocuous! so kindly!) with the desolation of mind-blindness, the completeness of isolation that the deaf only know if they could once hear. << I will not intrude against your will. >>
<< NO! >> The reaction is complete, and Emma's mind, broken down to base impulses and memories under the totality of the grip she maintains to suffocate her emotions, flings itself at him. Flashes of light, muted color, images more shadow than form. A girl's voice sobs in the distant dark. << Don't leave me. >>
Compassion washes back, the fading presence returning in stolid strength to anchor that desperate grasp. << I will stay, >> Charles promises, wrapping power in a warm embrace around the darkness to spiderweb it through with light. Freedom. Escape. Comfort. << I will always be here if you need me. All you had to do was ask. >>
His assurance calls forth memories tumbling end over end to flash the old telepath. Another voice answers, cold and grown and hard. << Really, Xavier. I know that line. 'All I have to do is...' is /rarely/ all I have to do. >> Control.
<< The strings are more of your making than mine, Emma, >> says reason to that adult voice; << My child, >> murmurs kindness for the younger, frightened one. Telepathic wings flare wide to shield and then to lift, drawing man and woman above the dross of flesh and human clay. << Come visit with me for a while, if you will. >>
Drawing them above and reforming them in a place formed by thought, restricted only by thought, and fueled by thought. Warmth wraps itself around his leg and reaches higher, caught in the grasp of powers familiar yet not known. << I shouldn't, >> the older warns while the younger sinks nails too sharp for her age into his thigh and holds on. << Don't leave me, don't leave me, you promised, you said you would help. >>
The answering amusement is dry and spare, like vellum scraped clean of its original text. << Shoulds and shouldn'ts seem unlike you, >> Xavier comments, taking shape on that humorous note. In spirit he is as he is in flesh: telling, that comfort in his own skin -- or that pride in his own art -- that shapes him in thought as he is in body. The marks of age sag his jowls and wrinkle deep laughter lines at the corners of eyes; the suit that nods to propriety in reality is as dapper here, as neatly pressed. Only one one point does he differ from the man himself.
On the astral plane, Charles Xavier stands.
Emma's mental avatar wavers without her own powers to supplement and hold it, giving glimpses of her own form, sculpted and perfect and sneering. Buffeted by emotion and thought though, it shifts and reveals all the images that make up the whole of Emma Frost's self. Some vapid, some brittle, some desperate. White Queen to the younger self that twitches her nose at the man in equal parts suspicion and hope. << I had my share of them. Mother saw to that. >>
<< Had, >> Xavier says gravely, opening a hand to extend to Emma, fingertips trailing fine strands. A gift of his power, freely lent; the tendrils drift on some psychic eddy towards the girl, their promise luminous. << Did you turn away from them in your adulthood? Or did you simply build on top of them, hoping to smother their memory? >>
<< Is there a difference? >> Emma asks lightly, almost laughing as she reaches for the gift, unsubstantial fingers closing around the strands. The mirth dies newborn, though, as a head blind brain blunts the power's effectiveness. Emma bows her head and sinks to the ground, and her sandy-brown head dips over the strands and begins to braid.
Charles takes the few steps necessary to close the distance between them. A useless gesture, on a plane where thought is synonymous with deed -- but there is vigor in the stride, and a subdued, private joy in his step, of a body that has known strength and lost it, and knows now to relish the opportunities it has. << Perhaps, >> he says, dropping to a knee beside her. A hand drops gentle benediction on the dusky head. << This has been hard for you. I am sorry for it. >>
The simple, childish task of weaving those strands together buoys the younger manifestation, or perhaps it is the kindly hand on her head. She sighs and drops her hands to her lap. << You play your role well, Xavier, >> she admits grudgingly.
Eyes crinkle, the smile that never lingers far from the commanding features deepening well-worn paths with its return. << We all play our roles well, Emma, you no less than I, >> Xavier says with a hand on his knee, the other sweeping wide to shape the world around them. Hellfire's glittering ballroom, empty thrones facing each other across an empty, massive chessboard. << To paraphrase a greater voice than mine: I am what I am. >>
Emma looks up and out at the familiar sight, subtly rearranged, and the twinned emotions of love and hate, perverted into desire and loathing, gleam in her eyes and mind. << Oh, tsk, Xavier. Only greater in conceit, surely? >>
<< I have no ambitions to be God, >> Xavier counters, while great, wooden shapes carved into faceless pieces slowly fade into existence around them. Not black and white, but warmer, richer colors: the deep brown of chocolate; the soft cream of ivory. They sit in the shadow of a dark pawn, whose unfinished features watch over them with sad benevolence. << To become what I am capable of becoming is enough, and difficult enough. Humanity is a mortal failing. >>
Emma warps her arms around her knees and shivers in the dark shadow, her eyes ringing white and wary. << Come now, darling. You /like/ playing God. Don't deny it. You know best, and so who better than you? >>
Amusement again, though it has a darker side to it: whispered acknowledgment of temptation, shared willingly with the woman. Xavier rises, offering Emma his hand. << Arrogance is also a mortal failing, >> he agrees with some rue, << and we're more susceptible to it than others. It is easy to forget that knowing something is not the same as understanding. Looking is not the same thing as seeing. >>
Her eyes travel up the length of his leg and down his arm to rest on the hand reaching out. She flicks them up to his face, and habitual distrust of the motives of anything male ages her face and lightens her hair. << It's not, but it sometimes it is all we have. >> Her hand finds his.
The fingers that grip hers is steady and certain, the skin under hers thin with that inescapable march of age. He has no shame of his years, does Charles Xavier; he wears them lightly, gracefully, the weight of time counted fair exchange for the benefits of wisdom and experience. << The forest, >> he says, << for the trees, White Queen. >>
The floor falls away. They rise: up, up, over the heads of chess pieces to see the board from above. A labyrinth at ground-level proves a pattern from overhead.
<< You paint a pretty picture, Xavier, but what is it you want me to see? >> Emma asks pointedly, her grip on his hand tightening, fingers cool and slender in his. She shows no fear at the illusion of falling ground, this Queen of the Astral Plane, though a queen temporarily dethroned.
<< Shades of grey, Emma, >> Xavier says wryly, while the pieces below sretch and wake to move in internecine battle. The clatter of swords, the cacophony of voices is murmurous from above, a ghost on the wind that they ride. A scent of blood. A shout of pain. << So much labor and misery expended to rise to your throne, and for what? What lasting legacy? >>
<< You seek to instill regret, or know if there is any already there? >> She looks on the carnage spreading out at her feet, then turns away dismissively, hardening further, the plaster of paris facade imperfect.
Xavier watches clear-eyed while faces take shape out of the chaos. The al-Razi brothers, dark and beamish. Sebastian Shaw, teeth savage-bright and reddened. << Neither. If you feel regret, it is yours to keep or share, as you see fit. And if you have none, no doing of mine will make you capable. You play your role well, Emma. Is it by choice? Or habit? >>
<< One becomes the other, >> she murmurs back, defiantly indifferent to the ghostly fingers creeping up her spine. Other faces join, less defined, younger. Children's faces, really. Tyanna, Rebecca, even Sabitha.
<< Until you lose the ability to choose. >> Lives flame brightly for a time -- enter the fray -- and are consumed whole by the battle. New bodies for old. << Power is meaningless without control. >>
<< Indeed, >> she agrees easily, pulling her hand from his and moving away from the board.
A path opens for her, stairs ribboning out in a spiral from the astral plane to the body -- Storm's body, stolen, borrowed -- sunk in the trap of mental blindness. << I can teach you, >> Xavier's voice says behind her, fading even as the world fades away, colors dimming for the exchange of the mind's brilliance with mortal sight. << All you need do is ask. Emma. >>
And then he is gone.
[Log ends]
Xavier takes Emma on an outing.