5/28/08 - Jean
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=XS= Back Patio and Swimming Pool - Xavier's School
The patio is a mixture of grades of cobblestone, flanked with a few flowering bushes and other flora along the outside edges. Its footprint is in the space between the wings of the mansion where the glass walls of the arboretum leave off. A grill and picnic table rests to the side, just under the ledge of the house's roof. The area just outside the kitchen leads to a large pool area. Landscaped with slate around the edges instead of poured concrete, the pool is sloped with both a shallow end and deep end with enough depth for a diving board. A circular in-ground jacuzzi bubbles invitingly just off the shallow end. Chairs and white chaise lounges line along the pool, and a hammock is strung up between two maple trees.
Exams are in the air, and the young astronomers of Xavier's School have been sprung a not-quite-surprise bonus quiz, owing to clear nights and the darkness of the countryside. All around the back of the school a small thicket of six telescopes has grown, each manned by a pair of students happily indulging in breaking curfew in the name of science and the finding of as many constellations and their coordinates as possible within a time period. Their appointed keeper has no telescope to aid her stargazing, but Jean sits snugged up in a lawn chair all the same, on the very fringes of the out-spilling glow from the kitchens and with a blanket to stave off the spring dew.
He is aged, but not decrepit. The same vitality that holds its own in the face of overeager teenagers sends Charles Xavier out into the night, garbed less formally than his wont: a black turtleneck sweater; grey wool slacks; expensive Italian shoes. The wheelchair provides heat in any case, a touch of Forge utility that leaves a curious trail of steam behind it. Some questions are best not asked.
<< A pop quiz? >> Humorous approval skates across Jean's mind, a substitute for greeting.
<< I learned from a master of the art. >> floats back Jean's greeting in turn, a bright gloss of red hair shifting in amongst the MacTaggart plaid blanket engulfing the lawn chair, and an over-the-shoulder smile gleaming just as bright in the shadows of the light's edge. << And Saturn is visible to the southeast... if they can all agree on what direction that is. >> Her own eyes cast skyward, but track a different quadrant altogether, seeking celestial bodies less fixed in their orbits and as yet invisible to sight. Asteroids tumble lazily across the surface of her mind, thick in density as they are in film, if not in reality.
There's an old game involving asteroids. The thought tickles, vagrant, through the image -- an idea born in her generation's memories, and conveyed by another's nostalgia. Rare for Charles to be so flippant. A little pixelated spacecraft spits a laser bolt at one of the asteroids (pew! pew!) and then dissolves into a deprecating smear. << A pleasant notion, >> he observes, leaving it to her to interpret his meaning. << Practical application is a better way of teaching than most. A pity it does not apply to English Literature. >>
<< Perhaps if we let Forge fulfil his lifelong dream of building a superlaser. >> Jean suggests, her amusement paired with a silvery mental laugh with overtones of jingling arcade quarters. Her asteroids promptly pixellate in turn, and then wink out one by one, leaving a darkened starfield, but not nearly a void. Out on the back lawn there is a sudden flurry of discussion. A UFO? A comet? No. An angle on one window of the girl's dorms. "I remind you that any moons recorded must be -celestial- in nature." Jean calls aloud from her nest of plaid, subsiding with amusment flickering over her mind like an aurora, here and then gone. << Dramatic readings and plays are, alas, the best you can do there. >> she agrees vis-a-vis the literature, before a change of thought ripples across her mind. << Charles, are the universities going to accept them? >> By the inflection of the thought, it is not the campfires and songs meaning of the word she choses.
Charles says mildly, << I haven't the faintest notion. But there are options outside of the United States, if it comes to that. >> There is a certain flatness in the reply, an underpinning of ruthlessness that is oddly placed, as though borrowed from one thought and applied to another. A wry note curls over it, like a cat's flipped tail. << I am not so bereft of friends that I cannot find them places in Oxford, for instance. And there are other options for those who prefer something closer. Canada, I'm told, has some schools. One or two. >>
The wheelchair completes its path across the patio, descending the ramp to come to a halt beside Jean's seat.
<< Harvard and Johns Hopkins still seem proud of me, >> Jean agrees. << Or at least enjoy the notoriety of my guest lectures. >> The pair of schools are slid into the deck of Xavier's options with a conjurer's subtle touch. << But I admit our second wave of students isn't doing all that well out here. I think Jackson Holland has spent more time out of school than in it. Piotr's struggled. Jubilee and Rogue are all right out on the West Coast, but went through Hell here. >> A bubble of private amusement surrounds this news, coloured with memories of cheerful Jubilee wake-up calls on the heels of slamming cell doors.
Light slants off of deep-set eyes that are hazel in the day; transparent at night. << We make it a little too easy for them, I'm afraid, >> Charles murmurs, looking out across the lawn and the clusters of students, busied with their telescopes and their arguments. Age pulls at him in profile, his jowls and throat sagging over the high lip of his turtleneck. << The ones who leave -- truly leave -- do well enough. It's the ones who stay in the nest-- >>
<< The nest may need to fill up again, temporarily. >> Pricked by the needle of recent memory, the amused bubble vanishes, leaving the darkened starfield across the surface of Jean's mind. << I'm pointing the lawyers at the current sign campaign to see about -some- sort of cease-and-desist, but if mutants are outed and hounded because of CPAM, we may need to pull them out and give them a place to lay low. >> Little mental tallies run, of just how -many- can be stowed in various places in the City, in the mansion itself. A tangent runs towards the barns, and stops. Haylofts are not comfortable. << I don't suppose we could convince them to hurry the asteroid up a bit and give the panicky sorts something real to panic over? >>
Dry practicality answers, a pragmatic cover for a less arid dismay over the prospect of invaders, sheltered or no. << I think the asteroid will come all too soon for all our comfort, even without the encouragement. >> Charles curls his hands around the arms of his chair, the long fingers still graceful for all the bony knuckles and tapestry of veins under parchment skin. << Still, I fail to see why tit for tat should not be a tool in our arsenal, when it comes to the signs -- though not, perhaps, on the windward side of ethics. >>
<< I admit, >> Jean confesses, and worms a little deeper into her so-sadly-free-of-Forge-enhancements lawn chair and blanket. << The thought had crossed my mind. And as we do have a rather tech-savy adult pyrokinetic who comes here for the odd lesson from me... >> Against the star field, a dossier flashes up, Elliott's name and particulars delivered in a tidy package for consideration. ("The problem with assembling your witch hunt electronically is that it leaves traces.") << She'll be finding us some names. >> The hubbub of students grows more pronounced at one end of the telescop cluster. Saturn! Rings! It hushes abruptly as the rules of the exercise are remembered, but more than a few nearby telescopes begin tentatively swinging to match the angles of the lucky pair.
<< And mutation is not the only inconvenient condition at liberty in the population. Nor are mutants the only subjects of database registration. Even if the faces on the flyers are not, strictly speaking, real, they would certainly rouse more vocal and politically powerful opposition. >> The corners of Charles's eyes crinkle; the faint traces of a chuckle corrugate around the mental voice, sighing without breath. Imagine, says knowledge without words. Flyers for the STD-infected. Flyers for homosexuals. Flyers for racial minorities.
<< It's a shame we can't put up flyers warning for gross stupidity. >> Jean's mind and body alike echo a gusty, regretful little sigh. The latter causes heads to bob up and look over all along the telescope ribbon. Teenagers, like kittens, are curious beasties.
Says Charles, tartly, << I fail to see why not. In the past ten years, simple human stupidity has accounted for far more deaths than the sum total of mutantkind combined. >> His gaze turns tranquilly across the field of upturned faces, one thick eyebrow rising in polite, if dampening, enquiry.
<< True, >> says Jean, with laughter twinkling the stars of her mind. << The difficulty would be in picking only a handful of faces. If we wished to indicate that the condition is universal, I could recommend the Times Square Tornadist. I got to see him briefly, you know. >>
<< Did you? >> It is academic curiosity that brings the bulk of Charles's attention back, a fragment of that powerful mind sectioned off for a quiet, private word with one of the students on the lawn. The lad flushes -- the change of color visible even in the darkness -- and turns away hastily to fumble with his fly. Oops. << And? >>
<< He happened to have the cell a little ways down from mine, while Ororo and I were cooling our stylish activist bootheels. >> With the fait of the Bay Horse visit now comfortably accompli, Jean's earlier don't-tell-Charles decision has been revoked. << He was nicely sedated and only there until he could be transported, of course, but the Sentinel suits do seem to be able to non-lethally subdue a person without serious harm. >>
Charles's voice waxes dry again. << A fact which is certain to reconcile Erik to them, I'm sure. >> His own feelings, blocked off from empathy's flutter, are ambiguous beyond the mental voice, itself limited on this one subject to the sparsity available of the spoken one. << I take it that you had very little opportunity of conversing with the young fool, then? >>
<< He was, alas, thoroughly unconscious. I got more out of chatting with the duty officer. Good man, >> is Jean's verdict, assigned to the officer in question. Coffee scents the edges of the memory-picture, hinting at what, besides conversation, has earned the man this encomium. << The Sentinel suits were definitely talk of the room, even if they do seem to have come out of no-where. >>
Dissatisfaction crimps around the thought of that 'no-where,' stretching starfish legs into a quieter realm of unease. << I admit I find that fact disturbing, >> Charles observes, sinking back in his seat to nurse his hands in the warmer cradle of his lap, one thumb idly rubbing friction heat into the back of the other. << It is unlike us to be so ill-informed -- and even more unlike Erik to be taken by surprise. If, that is, he was taken by surprise. I should ask. If not him, Emma. >>
<< I don't mind the suits themselves. Used responsibly, they'll help the NYPD a great deal. It's the out of the blue. >> Jean reflects, and shivers slightly despite her coccoon of plaid. << If -Emma- doesn't know, I'll have to keep an eye out for four horsemen. But on the other hand, she -was- sending out teams of college-aged plane hijackers just a few years ago. If she knew, one would wonder why she didn't stop it. >>
<< One would, >> Charles says, and if he was dry before, he is arid desert now. Inappropriate amusement glints in the antechamber of his mind, roused untimely by the subject and its very gravity. << I believe I should ask her. She is better tempered than Erik, though this is hardly an encomium. >>
<< Around you, that is. >> Jean notes, her own mind dialing down the empathic spill to keep her feelings on Emma to herself. While this scarcely hides history, it at least spares Charles having to overhear it all again.
Charles actually chuckles at this, aloud, a low, pleasant sound like the tumble of river stones disturbed by a passing current. Memory flicks across, shared with an odd quirk of satisfaction: the roar of awesome power, and the flattening of the same. Context, like emphatic spill, remains a thing left unexplored. << Not, >> he says with something akin to pleasure, << that you would notice. >>
<< Having adventures, Charles? >> wonders Jean, catching the amusement and the pleasure and her own mind warming in a dusty ray of sunshine in response to it. Thought-heat does little to warm toes chilling steadily away in the midnight air of what is still a spring night, but Jean wriggles them and pulls them in against her blankets before calling a "Ten minutes!" to the young astronomers.
The older telepath blinks solemnly, the twinkle in his eyes hinted at through the wisp of humor unspooled between them. The light itself is too dim to make it clear to vision. << At my age, one does not have 'adventures,' my dear. >> Another chuckle, this one shared in the private recesses of the mind. Charles touches fingers to his control panel, unlocking the brakes with a flick of a nail. << One has -- enriching experiences. >>
<< Ah, >> comes Jean's laughing reply, filial fondness woven tight within it, despite the adult mind that forms the loom. << Duly noted. But still... better you than I, to speak to her. I'll content myself with keeping ties with Bahir al-Razi... did I tell you he's giving his thesis defense soon? >>
<< They grow up so quickly, >> Charles murmurs with irony. Not a sentiment to be shared with the prickly pear of the al-Razi duo, to be sure. His mouth curves towards a smile that is not shared by the quieting surface of his thoughts. << It is a pity, in some ways. >> Two comments, unrelated in reality, though possibly tied together by inference. A glimpse of Hellfire spindle-twists through his mind's threads, then disappears, stitched back into silence. Lightly, aloud, he adds, "I should go inside before your students do. I don't fancy competing with their equipment through the door."
<< I'll be attending, of course. Former lab boss's privilege... and I suspect that of the current Court, only their King could understand what's special. >> The image of Magneto in disguide to attend a thesis defense is considered, abandoned, revived with the addition of alcohol to the image, and then considered further as Jean rises to her feet. "I'll hold them off until you've cleared the south pass," she promises, with a crook of her mouth. "And I believe Madame Vargas has dispatched a minion to have hot chocolate ready for them. One mug is likely for you, by now."
It is a thought that engages Charles's interest: not the hot chocolate, but Erik's possible interest in the thesis. Disguise. Anonymity. The oblivion of onlookers? "Quite likely," he says, resignation sharing shoulder space with affection for the dictatorial cook. The wheelchair hums; the Professor turns back towards the patio and entry. "I will have to see if we have any marshmallows left. For your students, that is. Don't stay out too late, Jean. You'll grow quite tired of skygazing before it's all over."
Xavier does a little stargazing and catching up with Jean.