bakerstreet | THE DENNY'S MEME

The thing about foiling a plot that would kill all mutants fifty years in your own future and trying to reconnect with an old friend-turned-enemy and losing the use of your legs was...

It didn't really give you time to go grocery shopping.

But even very sad and busy mutants got hungry, so here he was. At Denny's. At 3 am.

Under different circumstances, Raven probably would have been more than all right going to Denny's with Charles. But as it is, it felt a little more like one of those awkward 'I'm here, but leave me alone' things than a touching family reunion. And besides, she wasn't really there with him so much as she was meeting up with him. Spontaneously.

"So what are you getting?" She asked, sliding effortlessly into the seat opposite him. Not even so much as a 'hello', or a 'sorry I ditched you while you were in incredible amounts of pain on a beach'.

Charles blinked at her. He was still having trouble controlling his newly-regained powers, but he instinctively quelled them in her presence. It was what he'd promised, after all. Once upon a time. If she was ever going to be his Raven again, he had to regain her trust. And she yours, a voice at the back of his mind whispered.

He also had to fight back some choice quips, such as, 'I'm getting whiplash from your constant alignment swings' or 'I'm getting a tremendous amount of upper body strength, thanks very much.' Two feelings were currently greater than bitterness: his hunger, and the fact he'd missed her.

"Waffles," he said, in a tone that said What are you doing here? "With syrup."

It probably said something about her that she worked off the assumption that he wasn't going to read her mind. She was still, at least in some part, the girl who grew up with him and trusted him, even if she'd grown up a little since then. Or a lot.

She just wanted to do what was best for mutantkind. That was all it was, and all it came down to. She wanted to ensure their continued existence without death threats or anything like that.

"Good choice. Though honestly, can you have waffles without syrup? I don't care what else is on them, they're still a little boring if you don't have the syrup."

"There's... butter," he said. But he was interrupted in his attempt to not talk about anything important by the waitress. She was tired, looking older than she needed to via the attempt to look younger, and currently thinking about the boy she had at home sleeping and the rent she needed to pay in the morning and the propensity for uppity folk like themselves to require someone to serve them at this ungodly hour.

"Waffles," he reiterated to Agnes. "And hash browns. Eggs, over easy. Toast, rye. And er, bacon."

The tip would be sizable, to say the least.

"Butter? Seriously?" She asked simply, her disbelief clear in her tone. A waffle with nothing but butter was just sad. Raven remained focused on him instead of the menu or the waitress, possibly to her detriment, but she was fairly intent on studying him in a calmer setting.

"The same," she stated when the waitress' attention fell to her, and she did grant a glance and a smile up at the woman as she did so. Her manners hadn't gone completely out the window. Still, only faint traces of the smile remained when she looked back at Charles.

"You're certainly hungry tonight."

"I could say the same," Charles said, regretting a bit that Agnes had taken the menus and left him without anything else to focus on. He arranged his silver. Again. After a moment, he sighed, and looked up at the young woman across from him. It hurt, just looking at her. It probably always would.

"Are you going to make me ask?"

"I'm a hungry girl. I do a lot of running around." A simple explanation, and one she wasn't planning on elaborating upon. After all, he was a smart guy, even without the telepathy; it wasn't everyone who could do the sort of work he did, nor who could become a professor. She was still proud of him, no matter what else happened.

Things had splintered somewhere down the line. It hurt to look at him too, but she did it anyway, studying him as he fidgeted and sighed. "You know I am, Charles."

Hungry could mean a lot of things. But if she wanted to be treated as an adult, fine. He would be direct. He still didn't know why he had to be. She wasn't stupid, either. She knew what he wanted to know. Why did she make him press her?

"Very well," he said. "Why are you here? Don't misunderstand me--I would never deny your company. But after everything... why come here?"

It was true that she knew exactly what he wanted to know, and that she wanted to be treated like an adult. Part of being an adult was having conversations: asking questions that needed to be asked, giving answers that weren't necessarily what anyone wanted to admit or hear. Up until that point, she'd wondered why she bothered slipping into the booth with him too, but there had been no turning back once she had.

Basically, she wasn't just going to bail because she didn't like that he was looking at her like that, asking difficult questions she didn't necessarily have the answers to.

"Shouldn't you be able to just read my mind and figure that out?" She asked, shaking her head a little, her fingers toying with her napkin a little, fidgeting and tearing a small piece off the edge. Finally, she went on: "Because. Maybe I figured it was high time we actually talked."

"I told you," he said quietly, flatly, "I would never do that. I don't ever want to feel I have to. I could, you know. It's an effort, not to read the thoughts of everyone who comes near. It's..." He pressed his eyelids together, for a moment. "It's overwhelming. But you know that. You know I have to work, to remain apart. To appear normal. Just as you do. So yes, it's time we talked. What I don't understand is why now. Why we couldn't before."

A soft sigh escaped her, and she tore another part of her napkin off, fiddling with it until it was a crumpled, tiny ball between the tips of her fingers. Fingers she recognised almost as a separate entity from herself - her, but not quite. "I do know that," Raven confirmed for him, eyes locked across the table, watching him intently.

"I don't know," she admitted finally. "I don't know why we couldn't talk before. Because everything was all weird. And neither of us knew the world like we do now." They'd both grown, and not just because of everything that happened. Of course, that definitely helped-

"But hey. Now we're here in a Denny's at three in the morning, and why not talk? It's not like we've got anything else to do. I don't know about you, but I'm awake. And I'm guessing you don't have your thesis on you."

THE DENNY'S MEME

Charles Xavier | X-Men: DOFP

not sorry.

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