5/13/08 - Storm
---
=XS= Front Porch - Xavier's School
The porch of the mansion is sweet and simple with the serene beauty of a country postcard. A friendly little brass placard proclaims 'Welcome' beside the front doors that are kept open in the summer, a screen door deparating the formalness of the interior from the wide sweep of the outside. A swing sways at one end and several chairs are set about the time warped floorboards. Little flower beds nestle against the steps and sit neatly beneath the brick walls and railings, and several weather-hardy chairs have been set about on the somewhat time warped floorboards.
A path leads off from the side steps into a traditional Victorian garden that favours strong, geometric shapes and bright colours. Roses in reds, whites, pinks and yellows steal the show and are stolen in turn by many a lovesick teenager, but tulips, daffodils, irises, columbines and all the other best-loved bulbs grow as well, in steady succession through spring, summer and fall. A tall marble angel surrounded by a long rectangular fishpond is the garden's centerpiece, rather ostentatious and slightly ugly, but kept in deference to whatever Xavier ancestor first commissioned the thing to resemble his wife. Grey slate pathways radiate from that center point with one path leading towards the back patio of the mansion, another to a corner of the garden where a well-loved tree and bench are, and a last that loops and spiders out in small connecting paths around the cultivated area.
The dusk falls slowly, cloaking the cloudy sky in purple and gold. Ororo is aflow as she walks through the garden in a summery dress not quite suited to the weather, white and flecked with tiny pink and yellow flowers. The weather is well in line with the predictions of the weather channel at the moment; at times, nature paints a picture as beautiful as any she could manufacture, all on its own.
She is not wearing shoes. Home again, she is free to exercise her shoe allergy to her heart's content.
Charles is more sedentary, and he wears shoes. Somewhere on his expensive shoe tree, it is possible that he hangs a pair of sandals, but his toes are not for viewing.
Not paired with a silk grey suit, at any rate.
The wheelchair hums like a pensive cat in its tour down the path, the rubber treads crunching lightly across slate and the speckling of gravel. The hand at the controls is light, and practiced; the mind that glides ahead is peaceful, and searching. Familiarity touches Ororo's mind, tickling warmth across her thoughts. Silent greeting follows, wordless. Does he intrude? And if he does, does it necessarily follow that it is unwelcome intrusion?
Ororo turns to face him on her heel, as he approaches. Hers is a subdued warmth this evening, and quiet of mien, she inclines her head to him in greeting. The intrusion is not unwelcome. She did not return home to cocoon herself in solitude and silence. "Professor," she says, her smile swift to couple with the word, and all the meaning it carries beyond its simple text.
Affection wraps itself around her -- cocoon? Of a sort, though not of the stifling sort: wings, merely -- and brief in its folding. << It is a pleasant evening, >> Charles says, the mind's voice shading into the timbres of the throat's in mid-sentence, blending in an odd duality. "And the flowers are doing well, I see. I'm afraid I don't visit them often enough." His glance around him is more resigned than regretful. "I hope it has not fallen too far from how you remember it."
Ororo brushes her fingertips against the head of the arranged tulips nearest her, a light touch for the familiar rather than anything that might test the strength of their petals. << I have not touched it, >> she notes with a warm whisper of amusement in the answering thought. "I am glad to see that my absence has not affected them too badly," she says aloud. "It seems that in some ways at least the place does not fall to shambles without me."
"In some ways," Charles says dryly, with an inflection that resurrects much of the old teacher-student days. He watches his erstwhile pupil consort with flowers with amusement bedded in the hazel eyes, and creased in their corners along old smile lines. "In other ways, disaster. Whatever the drama of the moment, the staff continues determinedly on their way, carrying on despite us. It is a terrifying thing. I expect daily to hear that they have moved on to less challenging environments. Governorship of a small, third world country, perhaps."
"Jean has told me all manner of horror stories." Ororo tips her head, lashes lowering over the rueful edge that glints in her gaze, and lets her hands fall away from the plants. "It is good to be home. Better still to have thus far avoided any particular crises."
Charles spreads his hand, palm up, and then closes it over the arm of his chair with a firm, "Far better. During a lull, in fact, although I've no doubt tempted fate by saying so. Barring the usual stir of anti-mutant sentiment in the city--" His mouth curls in a not entirely unshadowed smile. "Following historical precedent, in fact. Your timing is, as always, impeccable."
Ororo exhales slowly and glances away again, the fingers of an internal chill creeping past the edges of her aspect. "Mmm. Jean told me all about that, as well," she says, the dark suggestion of a growl burying itself in her low voice. "As though the civil rights movement never happened. With the figures in the ledger to back it up, or so I understand." Insurance companies and money make a good nebulous enemy in conjunction, to stoke inchoate frustration towards ambiguous wrath.
Pale eyes twinkle, though their expression is somewhat lost in the gathering dark of evening. Telepathy offers what vision might not, equanimity bobbing the bright, answering flotsam of rue between them. "Numbers that the school has certainly not contributed to," Charles says, turning his chair towards a tangle of rose bushes bordering the path. "If it had, they would be much higher. Catastrophic, in fact. We can only be thankful that we no longer rely on the easily shocked sensibilities of insurance adjusters."
Ororo shifts back slightly, folding her arms loosely over her stomach as she lowers her head, her mouth twisting to a partial grimace. "I suppose so," she says, and jerks her chin slightly to shake the forward fall of her hair away from her face. "I suppose that little stunt at Bad Ass was meant to show them all that discriminatory exclusion is also not the wisest policy?"
"As a demonstration of anything resembling rational thought, it was something of a failure," Charles says, dry once more. His eyebrows rise, quirking in the familiar expression of disapproval that habitually greets exhibitions of egregious irrationality in others. "Though the sentiment might have been noble enough, I fear the message was somewhat lost in the, shall we say, lack of self-disciplined displayed by participants. If anything, it simply reinforced the opposing view."
Ororo snorts, her lower lip caught in her teeth as she fights a smile, and she raises her eyebrows at him. "We had a few fingers in that particular ill-thought-out pie, hadn't we?" she asks.
Charles settles himself against the wheelchair's back: the closest he comes to relaxing in public. His sigh, quiet, stirs the mental aether. "It is a constant comfort to me to know that our graduates consistently demonstrate the common sense and good judgment one might expect from an over-excited hamster."
"Not only graduates, either." Ororo lifts a hand to rub at her left eye with her right forefinger, her brows pulled together and her lips pressing into a line. Oh, Xavier's School, the expression says. Oh, dear.
It is an expression mirrored -- in sentiment, if not in actuality -- in the subtle changes of Charles's face. "Perhaps I should review the curriculum," he muses, his baritone light over the undercurrent of sincere resignation. "Or perhaps it's something previously undetected in the food, or water? I should apply Hank's scientific mind to the problem."
"It may be incurable." Ororo ventures this option mildly, and then sighs as she slowly shakes her head. "Youth, that is. That leaves us hunting for palliatives..."
"Age?" Charles's fingertips slide across the dome of his head, now a dull pink and purple reflecting the sky's glory. "I'm afraid that's no cure for lack of judgment. A means for them to exercise their poor judgment in a way least harmful to the world around them, or themselves -- Ororo." The thought diverges mid-flow, dispassion replaced by sudden, vigorous warmth. "It /is/ good to have you back."
Ororo laughs, startled and full of breath. Her glance flicks to the sky and then back to Charles, beneath the upward sweep of her fine brows. "Thank you," she says. "I'm glad to be here, Professor."
Charles chuckles quietly, a sound that is rich with the nostalgia of her youth and his first, unblemished hopes of a brighter future. "You remind me that the impossible is possible. I need that reminder from time to time. Most especially when I am grading papers, or discover that Erik has combined a kink for fancy costumery with the desire to teach again, right under my nose."
"That too, I heard." Ororo drops her hands to her hips and lifts her chin slightly, suppressing an ill-humored remark that suggests her relief that Magneto did not also decide to try on her pants while he was here. "I am glad to be of help. I think."
"He asked me for leather chaps," Charles says, and it is a testament to his self-disciplined that not so much as a quiver betrays his feelings on that front.
Ororo closes her eyes, pinning the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. "Gods."
Charles clears his throat -- just once -- and then the beautiful voice says, almost apologetically, "I told him they chafed."
Ororo drops her hand to look at Charles reproachfully.
"Well, they /do/." It is not one of Charles's most impressive arguments.
"I am relieved to hear it." Ororo's voice rasps, brushed with desert air. She shakes her head again, almost as if to clear it of unwelcome thoughts -- thoughts she has not, we will note, allowed the luxury of forming completely before she forced their dissipation. "In any event--" she says, although where the subject change is going, even she doesn't know.
The laughter forming behind Charles's eyes is not of a sort to be expressed aloud: it is too inappropriate, given audience and occasion, though it weaves through the skein of his voice in a brilliant thread of color. "In any event, it eases my mind considerably to have you back with us. I'll hope that we will not drive you away again too quickly, though I can make no promises. The mood of the house is happier with you here. Jean -- not to mention the others -- missed you terribly."
"I missed this place." Ororo's voice is low and bears a trace of wist: it is not only the place she missed, and the people, but the memory of days gone by, days different from these -- imaginary days, perhaps, when the world was simpler. Her smile is slight, lingering on her lips as she glances first towards Charles and then away again, turning on a little in a pivot to let her gaze take in the broad sweep of the garden revealed in the fading light. "I do not think I will leave again so soon," she says, with more firmness of earth than flight of air. "My place is here."
"As long as you wish it," Charles says, vigor again returning to his seat and his voice, as he straightens -- perhaps in response to that declaration, or at some other, more elusive thought. Again the smile lines crease. "Though you may find it more confining after your time away. I do not wish you to feel that you are trapped here, Ororo, or caged by our demands on you."
Ororo inclines her head in acknowledgment of that, a hint of humor in the purse of her lips. "I will try not to," she says, and her voice lightens with the words. "It is not the school that chooses my burdens."
The old telepath inclines his head, empathy again uncurling towards her like the touch of his hand on her hair. "The impossible is possible," Charles says, humor directed inward in answer to a private jest. "I have produced sensible students with clear vision. At least once or twice before."
"Reasonably sensible," Ororo demurs. "Reasonably clear." She glances back up toward the walls of the school, and all the student life that mutters and putters within it, and her breath escapes on another voiceless laugh. "Well."
It is growing colder, now that the sky is rapidly darkening, though it is seasonal cold and seasonal darkness; still warm enough for the old man in his thin suit. Certainly temperate enough for a weather witch? "I would suggest you go inside before you catch a cold," Charles says, resigned to the promptings of instinct over intelligence. "It seems unnecessary, after all these years. I should go in to finish grading those papers while the optimism you've given me endures."
"I will go in soon," Ororo says, shaking her head at him and biting off the edge of her smile. "But you are right that there's hardly a danger of a cold." She breathes out a partial snort, and looks up into the sky. "Good luck with grading."
<< Thank you, my dear, >> Charles says under the whirr of quietly retreating motors, and the equally quiet crunch of gravel and rubber wheels. A fond touch bids farewell and his wheelchair turns the corner, obedient to his hand at the controls.
Ororo watches him go with an almost contemplative hue to her expression, and then turns back to resume her silent walk among the plants.
[Log ends]
Charles welcomes Ororo home, at long last.
=XS= Front Porch - Xavier's School
The porch of the mansion is sweet and simple with the serene beauty of a country postcard. A friendly little brass placard proclaims 'Welcome' beside the front doors that are kept open in the summer, a screen door deparating the formalness of the interior from the wide sweep of the outside. A swing sways at one end and several chairs are set about the time warped floorboards. Little flower beds nestle against the steps and sit neatly beneath the brick walls and railings, and several weather-hardy chairs have been set about on the somewhat time warped floorboards.
A path leads off from the side steps into a traditional Victorian garden that favours strong, geometric shapes and bright colours. Roses in reds, whites, pinks and yellows steal the show and are stolen in turn by many a lovesick teenager, but tulips, daffodils, irises, columbines and all the other best-loved bulbs grow as well, in steady succession through spring, summer and fall. A tall marble angel surrounded by a long rectangular fishpond is the garden's centerpiece, rather ostentatious and slightly ugly, but kept in deference to whatever Xavier ancestor first commissioned the thing to resemble his wife. Grey slate pathways radiate from that center point with one path leading towards the back patio of the mansion, another to a corner of the garden where a well-loved tree and bench are, and a last that loops and spiders out in small connecting paths around the cultivated area.
The dusk falls slowly, cloaking the cloudy sky in purple and gold. Ororo is aflow as she walks through the garden in a summery dress not quite suited to the weather, white and flecked with tiny pink and yellow flowers. The weather is well in line with the predictions of the weather channel at the moment; at times, nature paints a picture as beautiful as any she could manufacture, all on its own.
She is not wearing shoes. Home again, she is free to exercise her shoe allergy to her heart's content.
Charles is more sedentary, and he wears shoes. Somewhere on his expensive shoe tree, it is possible that he hangs a pair of sandals, but his toes are not for viewing.
Not paired with a silk grey suit, at any rate.
The wheelchair hums like a pensive cat in its tour down the path, the rubber treads crunching lightly across slate and the speckling of gravel. The hand at the controls is light, and practiced; the mind that glides ahead is peaceful, and searching. Familiarity touches Ororo's mind, tickling warmth across her thoughts. Silent greeting follows, wordless. Does he intrude? And if he does, does it necessarily follow that it is unwelcome intrusion?
Ororo turns to face him on her heel, as he approaches. Hers is a subdued warmth this evening, and quiet of mien, she inclines her head to him in greeting. The intrusion is not unwelcome. She did not return home to cocoon herself in solitude and silence. "Professor," she says, her smile swift to couple with the word, and all the meaning it carries beyond its simple text.
Affection wraps itself around her -- cocoon? Of a sort, though not of the stifling sort: wings, merely -- and brief in its folding. << It is a pleasant evening, >> Charles says, the mind's voice shading into the timbres of the throat's in mid-sentence, blending in an odd duality. "And the flowers are doing well, I see. I'm afraid I don't visit them often enough." His glance around him is more resigned than regretful. "I hope it has not fallen too far from how you remember it."
Ororo brushes her fingertips against the head of the arranged tulips nearest her, a light touch for the familiar rather than anything that might test the strength of their petals. << I have not touched it, >> she notes with a warm whisper of amusement in the answering thought. "I am glad to see that my absence has not affected them too badly," she says aloud. "It seems that in some ways at least the place does not fall to shambles without me."
"In some ways," Charles says dryly, with an inflection that resurrects much of the old teacher-student days. He watches his erstwhile pupil consort with flowers with amusement bedded in the hazel eyes, and creased in their corners along old smile lines. "In other ways, disaster. Whatever the drama of the moment, the staff continues determinedly on their way, carrying on despite us. It is a terrifying thing. I expect daily to hear that they have moved on to less challenging environments. Governorship of a small, third world country, perhaps."
"Jean has told me all manner of horror stories." Ororo tips her head, lashes lowering over the rueful edge that glints in her gaze, and lets her hands fall away from the plants. "It is good to be home. Better still to have thus far avoided any particular crises."
Charles spreads his hand, palm up, and then closes it over the arm of his chair with a firm, "Far better. During a lull, in fact, although I've no doubt tempted fate by saying so. Barring the usual stir of anti-mutant sentiment in the city--" His mouth curls in a not entirely unshadowed smile. "Following historical precedent, in fact. Your timing is, as always, impeccable."
Ororo exhales slowly and glances away again, the fingers of an internal chill creeping past the edges of her aspect. "Mmm. Jean told me all about that, as well," she says, the dark suggestion of a growl burying itself in her low voice. "As though the civil rights movement never happened. With the figures in the ledger to back it up, or so I understand." Insurance companies and money make a good nebulous enemy in conjunction, to stoke inchoate frustration towards ambiguous wrath.
Pale eyes twinkle, though their expression is somewhat lost in the gathering dark of evening. Telepathy offers what vision might not, equanimity bobbing the bright, answering flotsam of rue between them. "Numbers that the school has certainly not contributed to," Charles says, turning his chair towards a tangle of rose bushes bordering the path. "If it had, they would be much higher. Catastrophic, in fact. We can only be thankful that we no longer rely on the easily shocked sensibilities of insurance adjusters."
Ororo shifts back slightly, folding her arms loosely over her stomach as she lowers her head, her mouth twisting to a partial grimace. "I suppose so," she says, and jerks her chin slightly to shake the forward fall of her hair away from her face. "I suppose that little stunt at Bad Ass was meant to show them all that discriminatory exclusion is also not the wisest policy?"
"As a demonstration of anything resembling rational thought, it was something of a failure," Charles says, dry once more. His eyebrows rise, quirking in the familiar expression of disapproval that habitually greets exhibitions of egregious irrationality in others. "Though the sentiment might have been noble enough, I fear the message was somewhat lost in the, shall we say, lack of self-disciplined displayed by participants. If anything, it simply reinforced the opposing view."
Ororo snorts, her lower lip caught in her teeth as she fights a smile, and she raises her eyebrows at him. "We had a few fingers in that particular ill-thought-out pie, hadn't we?" she asks.
Charles settles himself against the wheelchair's back: the closest he comes to relaxing in public. His sigh, quiet, stirs the mental aether. "It is a constant comfort to me to know that our graduates consistently demonstrate the common sense and good judgment one might expect from an over-excited hamster."
"Not only graduates, either." Ororo lifts a hand to rub at her left eye with her right forefinger, her brows pulled together and her lips pressing into a line. Oh, Xavier's School, the expression says. Oh, dear.
It is an expression mirrored -- in sentiment, if not in actuality -- in the subtle changes of Charles's face. "Perhaps I should review the curriculum," he muses, his baritone light over the undercurrent of sincere resignation. "Or perhaps it's something previously undetected in the food, or water? I should apply Hank's scientific mind to the problem."
"It may be incurable." Ororo ventures this option mildly, and then sighs as she slowly shakes her head. "Youth, that is. That leaves us hunting for palliatives..."
"Age?" Charles's fingertips slide across the dome of his head, now a dull pink and purple reflecting the sky's glory. "I'm afraid that's no cure for lack of judgment. A means for them to exercise their poor judgment in a way least harmful to the world around them, or themselves -- Ororo." The thought diverges mid-flow, dispassion replaced by sudden, vigorous warmth. "It /is/ good to have you back."
Ororo laughs, startled and full of breath. Her glance flicks to the sky and then back to Charles, beneath the upward sweep of her fine brows. "Thank you," she says. "I'm glad to be here, Professor."
Charles chuckles quietly, a sound that is rich with the nostalgia of her youth and his first, unblemished hopes of a brighter future. "You remind me that the impossible is possible. I need that reminder from time to time. Most especially when I am grading papers, or discover that Erik has combined a kink for fancy costumery with the desire to teach again, right under my nose."
"That too, I heard." Ororo drops her hands to her hips and lifts her chin slightly, suppressing an ill-humored remark that suggests her relief that Magneto did not also decide to try on her pants while he was here. "I am glad to be of help. I think."
"He asked me for leather chaps," Charles says, and it is a testament to his self-disciplined that not so much as a quiver betrays his feelings on that front.
Ororo closes her eyes, pinning the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. "Gods."
Charles clears his throat -- just once -- and then the beautiful voice says, almost apologetically, "I told him they chafed."
Ororo drops her hand to look at Charles reproachfully.
"Well, they /do/." It is not one of Charles's most impressive arguments.
"I am relieved to hear it." Ororo's voice rasps, brushed with desert air. She shakes her head again, almost as if to clear it of unwelcome thoughts -- thoughts she has not, we will note, allowed the luxury of forming completely before she forced their dissipation. "In any event--" she says, although where the subject change is going, even she doesn't know.
The laughter forming behind Charles's eyes is not of a sort to be expressed aloud: it is too inappropriate, given audience and occasion, though it weaves through the skein of his voice in a brilliant thread of color. "In any event, it eases my mind considerably to have you back with us. I'll hope that we will not drive you away again too quickly, though I can make no promises. The mood of the house is happier with you here. Jean -- not to mention the others -- missed you terribly."
"I missed this place." Ororo's voice is low and bears a trace of wist: it is not only the place she missed, and the people, but the memory of days gone by, days different from these -- imaginary days, perhaps, when the world was simpler. Her smile is slight, lingering on her lips as she glances first towards Charles and then away again, turning on a little in a pivot to let her gaze take in the broad sweep of the garden revealed in the fading light. "I do not think I will leave again so soon," she says, with more firmness of earth than flight of air. "My place is here."
"As long as you wish it," Charles says, vigor again returning to his seat and his voice, as he straightens -- perhaps in response to that declaration, or at some other, more elusive thought. Again the smile lines crease. "Though you may find it more confining after your time away. I do not wish you to feel that you are trapped here, Ororo, or caged by our demands on you."
Ororo inclines her head in acknowledgment of that, a hint of humor in the purse of her lips. "I will try not to," she says, and her voice lightens with the words. "It is not the school that chooses my burdens."
The old telepath inclines his head, empathy again uncurling towards her like the touch of his hand on her hair. "The impossible is possible," Charles says, humor directed inward in answer to a private jest. "I have produced sensible students with clear vision. At least once or twice before."
"Reasonably sensible," Ororo demurs. "Reasonably clear." She glances back up toward the walls of the school, and all the student life that mutters and putters within it, and her breath escapes on another voiceless laugh. "Well."
It is growing colder, now that the sky is rapidly darkening, though it is seasonal cold and seasonal darkness; still warm enough for the old man in his thin suit. Certainly temperate enough for a weather witch? "I would suggest you go inside before you catch a cold," Charles says, resigned to the promptings of instinct over intelligence. "It seems unnecessary, after all these years. I should go in to finish grading those papers while the optimism you've given me endures."
"I will go in soon," Ororo says, shaking her head at him and biting off the edge of her smile. "But you are right that there's hardly a danger of a cold." She breathes out a partial snort, and looks up into the sky. "Good luck with grading."
<< Thank you, my dear, >> Charles says under the whirr of quietly retreating motors, and the equally quiet crunch of gravel and rubber wheels. A fond touch bids farewell and his wheelchair turns the corner, obedient to his hand at the controls.
Ororo watches him go with an almost contemplative hue to her expression, and then turns back to resume her silent walk among the plants.
[Log ends]
Charles welcomes Ororo home, at long last.