6/7/08 - Norah
---
=XS= Xavier's Office - Lv 1 - Xavier's School
This is a quiet, gracious room, wood panels and polished wooden floor giving warmth to a great and high-ceilinged study. A large fireplace claims the inner wall, a mantel lipped wide under a 16th century painting of Leonidas at Thermopylae. Colors are rich, glowing with life and vigor; the room itself is adorned likewise, thick rugs laid underfoot to draw together the hues of curtains and prints. A large desk dominates the far end of the room, framed behind by high windows that look out across the lawn. Closer to the door, bookshelves curl around the corner, framing a small nook for heavy, butter-soft leather chairs and sofas circled around a small tea table and chessboard.
Norah
Norah hardly sticks out in a crowd -- in fact, your eyes might just glaze right over her. She's in her early twenties, of average height. Her frame is padded with just a little extra fat, not due to gluttony but mere indolence. She's not fat; she's just not in shape either. What might be a classic hourglass figure is marred by a tendancy to the hips, though not enough to incite jokes or stares.
Her hair is dark brown and inclined to unruly waves, frizzing a little in humid weather. It's kept long, about shoulder-blade length, though with a side bang cut across her forehead. Norah's skin is naturally pale, though dotted liberally with freckles across her nose and cheeks (and a few old acne scars, slow to fade completely). Her teeth are straight and even enough to be the evident work of braces.
She's currently wearing a sky blue A-line skirt, striped diagonally with white and yellow, and a crisp white collared shirt and a yellow cardigan.
It's hot outside -- mercilessly hot, humid, and miserable. But you'd never know it at Xavier's, with the A/C running at full blast, piping in cool, dry air. The air from the vent is softly gusting past Xavier's shelf of desk toys, moving them gently. Gently, that is, until an invisible hand starts messing with the things, setting the Newton's cradle clacking back and forth, tipping a balanced see-saw, rearranging things with a boldness that most would not assume with Professor Xavier's stuff. But it's Norah, and she's cheerful and bored -- a dangerous combination. Honestly, he's just lucky she's just messing with his toys instead of rigging up a bucket of water above the door, which hangs gently open.
It is custom for Charles Xavier to sweep ahead with his formidable mind -- in the dealings between Professor and mutant school body, the advantage, however trivial, can provide the necessary edge. It is courtesy rather than warning that feeds the tickle of his presence into Norah's mind, a few seconds before his advent: kindly-meant and inviting, for all it is voiceless. Humor comes first, and welcome for the will-o-the-wisp alumnus, fed by the open wellspring of private warmth; then the soft purr of his wheelchair as it ghosts down the corridor towards the office. << If you look on the shelf behind the door, you will find a confiscated Nerf gun. >>
"Professor!" Norah says, and a toy gets knocked off the shelf as she spins to look towards the door -- though, of course, he's not there quite yet. It gets picked up and settled back in its place before she goes to look behind the door. "Ooh, and this is a good one, too. Can I borrow it? Some people might need to be ambushed. Desperately. Like, say, Dr. Grey."
<< Of course, >> says the amiable baritone, tipping quaintly into stereo as the audible voice overlays the telepathic one on the last word. The wheelchair turns the corner, entering the frame of the door and the Professor is suddenly /there/, in person, seated smiling-eyed and amused in his mobile throne. He is dressed, as ever, in business formal, his favorite grey cut in one of the innumerable suits that make up the bulk of his wardrobe. "Provided the identity of your weapons dealer remains anonymous, of course. I think I recall also being given a water gun of some sort. A, ah, super-- sopper? Let me think. Where did I--"
"Totally anonymous," Norah solemnly swears, popping into view as Xavier does -- though honestly, he's probably much more familiar with her invisible form than her visible one. She's dressed casually, overlong jeans and an old t-shirt with some Chinese characters. (The characters read, "I do not speak Chinese.") "A SuperSoaker! Yes, I need that one, too." She grins excitedly, bouncing a little on the balls of her toes, much like a person far younger than herself would.
It is infectious enthusiasm, though the Professor's reflection of it back at her is a more staid thing, though quite as conscious of mischief in the brewing. "I think if you explore in the wardrobe," he recommends, nodding towards the solid door inset in the panels beside the fireplace. The fingers at the controls move him through the door into the office itself, angling him towards that selfsame closet. "The more destructive gifts I've been given over the years are stored in there, in case of future need. I've been meaning to have the staff go through them and cull what they can for donation. I assume I can trust you not to use it inside the school itself?"
"I can lure people out onto the grounds," Norah says confidently, turning to the wardrobe and peeking carefully inside. "By the way, Professor, it's good to see you. I've stopped by a couple times, but it seems like you're a pretty busy man these days. At least the summer break's coming up, right?"
"Barring finals," the Professor says dryly, and there is exasperation in the second word, not unmixed with satisfaction. "One more week, and we will be quite finished. Then there is the moving and the parent meetings and the assorted parties. Barring /those/, yes. 'Coming up.'" His eyes twinkle as he parks himself at a convenient distance to watch Norah's explorations of the wardrobe. As promised, it is filled almost to bursting with gifts, small and large, appropriate and whimsical: toys, candlesticks, random odds and ends presented by grateful students who have yet to learn to give what the receiver would like rather than the giver.
"Finals are coming up at my school, too," Norah muses as she shuffles through the items in the wardrobe. "Did you hear I'm teaching now, sort of? I'll /actually/ teach a summer course, right now I'm in charge of detention and generally aiding the other teachers. Aha!" The SuperSoaker is found and lifted, examined closely. "Of course, I can hardly wield a SuperSoaker /and/ a nerf gun at the same time. I'll have to get Tim in on this, it seems."
The Professor's mouth curls towards a faint smile, warmer in the shoals of his deep voice than on the more disciplined mask of his face. "It would do him some good to vent some anxiety," he says, and there is approval in the remark, noncommittal though it is. "A good thought. I hadn't heard about your work. Congratulations. Although," he adds, wry, "detention can sometimes be more of a challenge than teaching. Do they have a policy on what it entails?"
"Sitting quietly, reading or doing their homework," Norah says absently, hunting and finding a few small squirt guns which she takes from the wardrobe as well, shoving them into her pockets. "Or driving me up the wall. I also think a few kids deliberately act up during their less important classes in order to have the time to catch up on their homework for the harder ones. The policy clearly needs to be revised. Maybe have them run laps or do chores, instead."
"If you have the enforced time with them anyway, one might as well make it useful." The Professor gestures with a finger, nudging a wordless suggestion into Norah's mind: the dark purple of a branded messenger bag peeps around a box containing a personal cotton candy machine. A vagrant, humorous thought trails after it -- of all the inappropriate gifts! -- but Ms. Beckett has always had an odd sense of humor. "I believe Moira usually gives lectures on combinatorics as applied to DNA modeling when she hosts the detention class."
"I knew there was a reason I always steered clear of detention," Norah says, amused. She moves aside the candy machine box -- though not before considering long and hard whether or not /she/ needs one of those -- and grabs the messenger bag, setting it open on the floor to load the arsenal into it. "It's a good idea, though. I've been meaning to renew my study of the Federalist Papers -- maybe reading them aloud in detention might be a good start." The nerf gun goes in first, followed by the SuperSoaker and the smaller pistols.
The Professor, whose appreciation of history may be rendered more acute by his personal witnessing of much of it, says drolly, "Provided one finds a way to keep them engaged, as opposed to simply falling asleep. It never ceases to amaze me, the capacity of young people to disconnect their ears from their minds. Are you enjoying the work, at least?" A finger slides across the wheelchair panel; with a quiet murmur, the chair backs away and adjusts itself to send Xavier around his desk. "Have you had any difficulties settling in?"
"Mmm, so far it's okay," Norah says, setting elbows on knees as she crouches by the bag, thoughtfully pausing in the gathering of the arsenal. "It's wierd to be back in New York, with all the ... stuff going on. You know, in college I kind of just turned the mutant part of me /off/, except when I wanted to pull a prank, and it worked. But here I can't ignore it, and I feel kind of pulled in two directions, some days."
A drawer, pulled out, produces gold-rimmed spectacles that the Professor toys with between his fingers before peering at Norah as though they are already donned. It is a remarkably owlish regard. "Do your coworkers know your status?"
"Not yet," Norah admits with a sheepish shrug. She closes the messenger bag and then settles herself into a chair in front of the desk. "I think they need more time to warm to me first, especially considering the tornado and the attack on the police station and everything. It's not good timing, really."
"Understandably." There is neither approval nor disapproval in the Professor's voice, merely pragmatic acknowledgment. He unfolds the arms of his glasses and sets them on his nose, the glass inset in the frames flashing briefly flat under the room's unobtrusive lighting. "It seems like a reasonable course to take. It is far more difficult for people to justify bigotry when it is applied to someone they have already tacitly accepted." Smile lines crinkle at the corners of hazel eyes. "Sometimes."
"I'm sure my charm will win the day," Norah says, confident words belying a slightly worried expression before she brushes past the topic. "I have started blogging about mutant issues; that makes me feel like less of a traitor to the cause, at least. Even if I do get hate mail from mutants, too. I'm just not idealistic or radical enough, I don't think. I should work on that."
The Professor's hand hovers for a moment over a stack of papers, then forages in them to tease out a printout. He lifts it, solemnly self-congratulatory. "So I've heard. And read," he acknowledges, the twinkle returning to the deep-set gaze, "though I am at least a page behind, I'm afraid. One of the students was so kind as to try and help me add a reply to one of your posts, but I was pulled away so I was unable to complete it. In any case, it seems you are generating discussion, which is the first step towards any great change. Why do you think idealism and radicalism is called for?"
"Didn't you know that all the popular blogs are the /really/ crazy ones?" Norah asks, grinning, though look pleased at the print-out. "Compromise and moderation leaves everybody at least a little bit grumpy and not especially inspired. Craziness gets you rabid followers." She laughs, and then adds hastily, just in case, "Totally joking. Although sometimes I do wonder at my own inability to really stick to a position. I settle on one idea and then somebody posts a thoughtful comment that has me re-thinking everything."
"There are no absolutes to an open mind," the Professor observes, lapsing into the slightly pedantic quality of the habitual lecturer. Self-awareness tucks a shadow into the corner of his mouth; the smile moves like a whisper across his face, easing the small, authoritative firming of his expression. "It takes time to form a worthy opinion. If your aim is to gain a rabid following, by all means, do what your market requires. As long as you can separate the fact from the fiction, that is. If there were more open minds in this world, there would be far less chaos." The hand holding the printout gestures towards the windows. /Out there/.
"I think I'll survive without the rabid following, and settle for encouraging healthy debate," Norah says with a cheerful shrug. "And I could certainly do with less chaos. Which is why I didn't take a job here, for starters." She grins, teasingly. "Seriously, Professor. I can hardly understand how you're still sane, much less still willing to keep this all going." She gestures vaguely at the school. "Although I'm sure the students are glad you are. I know I'm lucky you were here, back in the day."
With the spectacles now precariously perched on his tip of his nose, the dip of his head and his look at Norah over them is almost theatrically reproachful. "'Sanity' is relative," he says with mock severity. "As an unbiased and outside psychologist, I would be seriously concerned. As it happens," he adds with his more customary vigor, "I find it refreshing to receive occasional visits from our successful alumni. Alumni who have managed to sever the apron strings, as it were, and make lives for themselves. It gives me hope for success, if not within my lifetime, at least within yours."
"I was only here for a year, you didn't have time to properly ruin me," Norah teases with a wink. "I think getting far away for college helped, too." Hands empty and restless, she gets up from the chair to grab the Newton's Cradle from the shelf and then bring it back to the desk, putting it in front of her so she can plink it back and forth. "And hey, maybe one day I'll be successful enough that you can start sending me harrassing alumni letters asking for donations, like all proper private schools are supposed to do. Although I /do/ think paying rent to Jean ought to count, in some sort of roundabout way."
A responsive twinkle answers Norah. The Professor pinches at the bridge of his nose, disrupting the dangle of his spectacles. They slide off, tip over the end of his nose, and then are adjusted to balance with more decorum. "Perhaps the question will arise at some point," he says, placing the printout neatly on the desk blotter. "As it is now, there are few alumni -- barring Warren, of course -- who could afford it. I would much rather they spend their energies in moving on. The foundation can support the costs for now."
"I'll work on that moving on thing, then," Norah agrees, serious for just a second before picking up the messenger bag. "In the meantime, though, I have an ambush to plan." She grins brightly and then winks out of sight, bag included. "You never saw me here, 'kay? And no warning Jean, that's not fair." The chair scoots back, and then the door swings open a little wider. "I'll see you around, Professor. Stay out of trouble!"
The Professor is too canny a hand to request the impossible from Norah. His farewell consists of an amused, "Do not get caught, my dear." << And come back to visit me again, someday, >> he adds in departing invitation, telepathy unfolding like a cradling hand under the woman's mind before it fades away, leaving only the memory of warmth and understated affection. He bends his head over his paperwork, light skating off the polished scalp. A small smile plays on his lips.
[Log ends]
Norah comes by to visit Xavier, who arms her. He is an enabler.
=XS= Xavier's Office - Lv 1 - Xavier's School
This is a quiet, gracious room, wood panels and polished wooden floor giving warmth to a great and high-ceilinged study. A large fireplace claims the inner wall, a mantel lipped wide under a 16th century painting of Leonidas at Thermopylae. Colors are rich, glowing with life and vigor; the room itself is adorned likewise, thick rugs laid underfoot to draw together the hues of curtains and prints. A large desk dominates the far end of the room, framed behind by high windows that look out across the lawn. Closer to the door, bookshelves curl around the corner, framing a small nook for heavy, butter-soft leather chairs and sofas circled around a small tea table and chessboard.
Norah
Norah hardly sticks out in a crowd -- in fact, your eyes might just glaze right over her. She's in her early twenties, of average height. Her frame is padded with just a little extra fat, not due to gluttony but mere indolence. She's not fat; she's just not in shape either. What might be a classic hourglass figure is marred by a tendancy to the hips, though not enough to incite jokes or stares.
Her hair is dark brown and inclined to unruly waves, frizzing a little in humid weather. It's kept long, about shoulder-blade length, though with a side bang cut across her forehead. Norah's skin is naturally pale, though dotted liberally with freckles across her nose and cheeks (and a few old acne scars, slow to fade completely). Her teeth are straight and even enough to be the evident work of braces.
She's currently wearing a sky blue A-line skirt, striped diagonally with white and yellow, and a crisp white collared shirt and a yellow cardigan.
It's hot outside -- mercilessly hot, humid, and miserable. But you'd never know it at Xavier's, with the A/C running at full blast, piping in cool, dry air. The air from the vent is softly gusting past Xavier's shelf of desk toys, moving them gently. Gently, that is, until an invisible hand starts messing with the things, setting the Newton's cradle clacking back and forth, tipping a balanced see-saw, rearranging things with a boldness that most would not assume with Professor Xavier's stuff. But it's Norah, and she's cheerful and bored -- a dangerous combination. Honestly, he's just lucky she's just messing with his toys instead of rigging up a bucket of water above the door, which hangs gently open.
It is custom for Charles Xavier to sweep ahead with his formidable mind -- in the dealings between Professor and mutant school body, the advantage, however trivial, can provide the necessary edge. It is courtesy rather than warning that feeds the tickle of his presence into Norah's mind, a few seconds before his advent: kindly-meant and inviting, for all it is voiceless. Humor comes first, and welcome for the will-o-the-wisp alumnus, fed by the open wellspring of private warmth; then the soft purr of his wheelchair as it ghosts down the corridor towards the office. << If you look on the shelf behind the door, you will find a confiscated Nerf gun. >>
"Professor!" Norah says, and a toy gets knocked off the shelf as she spins to look towards the door -- though, of course, he's not there quite yet. It gets picked up and settled back in its place before she goes to look behind the door. "Ooh, and this is a good one, too. Can I borrow it? Some people might need to be ambushed. Desperately. Like, say, Dr. Grey."
<< Of course, >> says the amiable baritone, tipping quaintly into stereo as the audible voice overlays the telepathic one on the last word. The wheelchair turns the corner, entering the frame of the door and the Professor is suddenly /there/, in person, seated smiling-eyed and amused in his mobile throne. He is dressed, as ever, in business formal, his favorite grey cut in one of the innumerable suits that make up the bulk of his wardrobe. "Provided the identity of your weapons dealer remains anonymous, of course. I think I recall also being given a water gun of some sort. A, ah, super-- sopper? Let me think. Where did I--"
"Totally anonymous," Norah solemnly swears, popping into view as Xavier does -- though honestly, he's probably much more familiar with her invisible form than her visible one. She's dressed casually, overlong jeans and an old t-shirt with some Chinese characters. (The characters read, "I do not speak Chinese.") "A SuperSoaker! Yes, I need that one, too." She grins excitedly, bouncing a little on the balls of her toes, much like a person far younger than herself would.
It is infectious enthusiasm, though the Professor's reflection of it back at her is a more staid thing, though quite as conscious of mischief in the brewing. "I think if you explore in the wardrobe," he recommends, nodding towards the solid door inset in the panels beside the fireplace. The fingers at the controls move him through the door into the office itself, angling him towards that selfsame closet. "The more destructive gifts I've been given over the years are stored in there, in case of future need. I've been meaning to have the staff go through them and cull what they can for donation. I assume I can trust you not to use it inside the school itself?"
"I can lure people out onto the grounds," Norah says confidently, turning to the wardrobe and peeking carefully inside. "By the way, Professor, it's good to see you. I've stopped by a couple times, but it seems like you're a pretty busy man these days. At least the summer break's coming up, right?"
"Barring finals," the Professor says dryly, and there is exasperation in the second word, not unmixed with satisfaction. "One more week, and we will be quite finished. Then there is the moving and the parent meetings and the assorted parties. Barring /those/, yes. 'Coming up.'" His eyes twinkle as he parks himself at a convenient distance to watch Norah's explorations of the wardrobe. As promised, it is filled almost to bursting with gifts, small and large, appropriate and whimsical: toys, candlesticks, random odds and ends presented by grateful students who have yet to learn to give what the receiver would like rather than the giver.
"Finals are coming up at my school, too," Norah muses as she shuffles through the items in the wardrobe. "Did you hear I'm teaching now, sort of? I'll /actually/ teach a summer course, right now I'm in charge of detention and generally aiding the other teachers. Aha!" The SuperSoaker is found and lifted, examined closely. "Of course, I can hardly wield a SuperSoaker /and/ a nerf gun at the same time. I'll have to get Tim in on this, it seems."
The Professor's mouth curls towards a faint smile, warmer in the shoals of his deep voice than on the more disciplined mask of his face. "It would do him some good to vent some anxiety," he says, and there is approval in the remark, noncommittal though it is. "A good thought. I hadn't heard about your work. Congratulations. Although," he adds, wry, "detention can sometimes be more of a challenge than teaching. Do they have a policy on what it entails?"
"Sitting quietly, reading or doing their homework," Norah says absently, hunting and finding a few small squirt guns which she takes from the wardrobe as well, shoving them into her pockets. "Or driving me up the wall. I also think a few kids deliberately act up during their less important classes in order to have the time to catch up on their homework for the harder ones. The policy clearly needs to be revised. Maybe have them run laps or do chores, instead."
"If you have the enforced time with them anyway, one might as well make it useful." The Professor gestures with a finger, nudging a wordless suggestion into Norah's mind: the dark purple of a branded messenger bag peeps around a box containing a personal cotton candy machine. A vagrant, humorous thought trails after it -- of all the inappropriate gifts! -- but Ms. Beckett has always had an odd sense of humor. "I believe Moira usually gives lectures on combinatorics as applied to DNA modeling when she hosts the detention class."
"I knew there was a reason I always steered clear of detention," Norah says, amused. She moves aside the candy machine box -- though not before considering long and hard whether or not /she/ needs one of those -- and grabs the messenger bag, setting it open on the floor to load the arsenal into it. "It's a good idea, though. I've been meaning to renew my study of the Federalist Papers -- maybe reading them aloud in detention might be a good start." The nerf gun goes in first, followed by the SuperSoaker and the smaller pistols.
The Professor, whose appreciation of history may be rendered more acute by his personal witnessing of much of it, says drolly, "Provided one finds a way to keep them engaged, as opposed to simply falling asleep. It never ceases to amaze me, the capacity of young people to disconnect their ears from their minds. Are you enjoying the work, at least?" A finger slides across the wheelchair panel; with a quiet murmur, the chair backs away and adjusts itself to send Xavier around his desk. "Have you had any difficulties settling in?"
"Mmm, so far it's okay," Norah says, setting elbows on knees as she crouches by the bag, thoughtfully pausing in the gathering of the arsenal. "It's wierd to be back in New York, with all the ... stuff going on. You know, in college I kind of just turned the mutant part of me /off/, except when I wanted to pull a prank, and it worked. But here I can't ignore it, and I feel kind of pulled in two directions, some days."
A drawer, pulled out, produces gold-rimmed spectacles that the Professor toys with between his fingers before peering at Norah as though they are already donned. It is a remarkably owlish regard. "Do your coworkers know your status?"
"Not yet," Norah admits with a sheepish shrug. She closes the messenger bag and then settles herself into a chair in front of the desk. "I think they need more time to warm to me first, especially considering the tornado and the attack on the police station and everything. It's not good timing, really."
"Understandably." There is neither approval nor disapproval in the Professor's voice, merely pragmatic acknowledgment. He unfolds the arms of his glasses and sets them on his nose, the glass inset in the frames flashing briefly flat under the room's unobtrusive lighting. "It seems like a reasonable course to take. It is far more difficult for people to justify bigotry when it is applied to someone they have already tacitly accepted." Smile lines crinkle at the corners of hazel eyes. "Sometimes."
"I'm sure my charm will win the day," Norah says, confident words belying a slightly worried expression before she brushes past the topic. "I have started blogging about mutant issues; that makes me feel like less of a traitor to the cause, at least. Even if I do get hate mail from mutants, too. I'm just not idealistic or radical enough, I don't think. I should work on that."
The Professor's hand hovers for a moment over a stack of papers, then forages in them to tease out a printout. He lifts it, solemnly self-congratulatory. "So I've heard. And read," he acknowledges, the twinkle returning to the deep-set gaze, "though I am at least a page behind, I'm afraid. One of the students was so kind as to try and help me add a reply to one of your posts, but I was pulled away so I was unable to complete it. In any case, it seems you are generating discussion, which is the first step towards any great change. Why do you think idealism and radicalism is called for?"
"Didn't you know that all the popular blogs are the /really/ crazy ones?" Norah asks, grinning, though look pleased at the print-out. "Compromise and moderation leaves everybody at least a little bit grumpy and not especially inspired. Craziness gets you rabid followers." She laughs, and then adds hastily, just in case, "Totally joking. Although sometimes I do wonder at my own inability to really stick to a position. I settle on one idea and then somebody posts a thoughtful comment that has me re-thinking everything."
"There are no absolutes to an open mind," the Professor observes, lapsing into the slightly pedantic quality of the habitual lecturer. Self-awareness tucks a shadow into the corner of his mouth; the smile moves like a whisper across his face, easing the small, authoritative firming of his expression. "It takes time to form a worthy opinion. If your aim is to gain a rabid following, by all means, do what your market requires. As long as you can separate the fact from the fiction, that is. If there were more open minds in this world, there would be far less chaos." The hand holding the printout gestures towards the windows. /Out there/.
"I think I'll survive without the rabid following, and settle for encouraging healthy debate," Norah says with a cheerful shrug. "And I could certainly do with less chaos. Which is why I didn't take a job here, for starters." She grins, teasingly. "Seriously, Professor. I can hardly understand how you're still sane, much less still willing to keep this all going." She gestures vaguely at the school. "Although I'm sure the students are glad you are. I know I'm lucky you were here, back in the day."
With the spectacles now precariously perched on his tip of his nose, the dip of his head and his look at Norah over them is almost theatrically reproachful. "'Sanity' is relative," he says with mock severity. "As an unbiased and outside psychologist, I would be seriously concerned. As it happens," he adds with his more customary vigor, "I find it refreshing to receive occasional visits from our successful alumni. Alumni who have managed to sever the apron strings, as it were, and make lives for themselves. It gives me hope for success, if not within my lifetime, at least within yours."
"I was only here for a year, you didn't have time to properly ruin me," Norah teases with a wink. "I think getting far away for college helped, too." Hands empty and restless, she gets up from the chair to grab the Newton's Cradle from the shelf and then bring it back to the desk, putting it in front of her so she can plink it back and forth. "And hey, maybe one day I'll be successful enough that you can start sending me harrassing alumni letters asking for donations, like all proper private schools are supposed to do. Although I /do/ think paying rent to Jean ought to count, in some sort of roundabout way."
A responsive twinkle answers Norah. The Professor pinches at the bridge of his nose, disrupting the dangle of his spectacles. They slide off, tip over the end of his nose, and then are adjusted to balance with more decorum. "Perhaps the question will arise at some point," he says, placing the printout neatly on the desk blotter. "As it is now, there are few alumni -- barring Warren, of course -- who could afford it. I would much rather they spend their energies in moving on. The foundation can support the costs for now."
"I'll work on that moving on thing, then," Norah agrees, serious for just a second before picking up the messenger bag. "In the meantime, though, I have an ambush to plan." She grins brightly and then winks out of sight, bag included. "You never saw me here, 'kay? And no warning Jean, that's not fair." The chair scoots back, and then the door swings open a little wider. "I'll see you around, Professor. Stay out of trouble!"
The Professor is too canny a hand to request the impossible from Norah. His farewell consists of an amused, "Do not get caught, my dear." << And come back to visit me again, someday, >> he adds in departing invitation, telepathy unfolding like a cradling hand under the woman's mind before it fades away, leaving only the memory of warmth and understated affection. He bends his head over his paperwork, light skating off the polished scalp. A small smile plays on his lips.
[Log ends]
Norah comes by to visit Xavier, who arms her. He is an enabler.