bakerstreet | THE POST-APOCALYPTIC MEME

He let the touch happen for a moment, before he moved away from her and back to the soup that had been put on the... metaphorical back burner, literal low flame. They had to eat, tonight, and it would do as much as the fire blazing in the fire place. It might even do more.

It also gave him a little room to retreat again, after what was a pretty frankly emotional display from him. Maybe not so much more for anyone else but for him-

"It seems like a different life entirely," he agreed. "If I'd known what was coming I would have done everything different." He sounded haunted. He was haunted, if not as literally as Rogue. He was also still, albeit in a controlled way, furious. "I might even have listened to some of what Magneto had to say."

Not all of it. There were things he would have still fought Erik on, mostly his treatment of Rogue, but some other pretty huge things, too. He would have changed over from 'humans and mutants are the same' a hell of a lot sooner, though, understood how dangerous humans could be, and not been so totally unprepared for what he now saw as genocide.

He'd buried too many kids for Charles' idealism to truly stick. What they'd done... it would have been effective in a world that was better than the one they lived in.

Rogue stayed leaning against the wall, clutching the blanket tightly around her shoulders, and gave a real smile at his words, even if it was full of dark amusement. "He's actually a little smug that you said that," she informed Scott, shaking her head slightly in disbelief. "He always thought you had too much of Charles in your head."

Whereas she had too much of Erik. She'd resented the man the first few years after Ellis Island, hated and feared him for what he'd done to her, but as she got older and began working more closely with Xavier, she'd started communicating with the Erik in her mind, his psyche as prominent as Logan's and just as powerful. He'd actually become a sort of friend to her.

"He's never been pleased to know he was right," she continued, watching the fire as the flames crackled with a life of their own. "You'd think he would be, but he'd much rather have been wrong about it all. He only ever wanted what was best for mutants, for us to be able to live in peace and without the pain and persecution he knew as a child." She still had his nightmares of the worst of those days. "We all should have listened a little more."

"Erik had too much fear of humanity and what they were capable of. Charles didn't have enough." The past tense for Charles was because he thought, or wanted to think, Charles was capable of recognizing that mutants being hunted down and slaughtered like animals was not something that didn't deserve at least some fear. "Neither one of them was particularly effective at anything but getting in each other's way."

That was a lot of wasted effort and energy, and maybe Scott shouldn't be thinking of humanity as a whole as an enemy right now, but he's still alive and anyone who couldn't see how he'd gotten there wasn't paying attention.

He poured the soup into two mugs and cut the burner. He took Rogue's to her, and gave it to her by holding it at the bottom and leaving the handle for her to take hold of. He sat down on the floor near the fire with his own, back against a wall, one knee bent up and other out straight. He wasn't as cold as she was, but he was cold enough.

"Hindsight's 20/20." He took a careful drink from his cup. "Going forward, however far we can go, we've got to change how we do this." There weren't enough of them not to, and they weren't dead yet. Speaking of doing things differently - "You know I'm not letting you go back out there without some kind of range attack onboard."

The heat from the mug slowly seaped into her hands, sinking through skin and muscle and bone and still she felt like she was made of ice. Now that her thoughts were a bit calmer, Erik had always helped with that surprisingly, she carefully made her way back to the fire, mindful of the edges of the blanket as she resumed her former seat near the fireplace. She was lifting the mug to her lips when Scott made the proclamation and everything about her froze in a completely different sense.

"You got someone stashed in the closet I don't know about, sugar?" she asked quietly, tentatively, not at all sure what she thought about where this was going. Not sure she wanted Scott to finally join the rest of the psyches in her mind.

Edited (phone typos) 2015-11-13 14:24 (UTC)

"If there's somebody in the closet, they'd be well advised to announce themselves and come out slowly or stay put until we leave." Otherwise they might find themselves in an unpleasant position and their safe house might lose most of it's structural integrity.

That was a joke. There was no one hiding in closets.

"I don't like it, either. If you'd rather you can just stay with me until we find somebody else, but I can't let you go out there alone with nothing more overtly offensive than whatever's left of Jono's power."

She wanted to laugh at his joke, at least give a smile, but such things were beyond her for the moment. It was easy to see the reasoning behind his suggestion, she knew it was practical and probably the only one to keep herself from getting killed, but still. There were so many people crammed into her mind already, to add a completely new one... But she could already feel Jonathan's power fading, and who knew when they might run into someone who would even be willing to let her tap their abilities.

Sipping at the mug of soup, she watched Scott with dark eyes smudged with deep shades of purple from too many sleepless nights, thinking over her wording before finally responding. "Things are just kinda crowded in here right now. I've taken in a bunch of new people the past few weeks, and I'd have to take a lot from you to get any lasting power." Maybe not a lot in terms of energy, but his mind...

She faced him a little more fully and jumped right into the deep end. "You know it's not just powers I get from people, sugar. Your thoughts, your secrets, your grief, are you sure you're willing to let me know all that?" He wouldn't be able to hide much from her, and she couldn't even consider going forward with this unless he had all the cards in front of him.

Scott really, really, actually hated the idea but he hadn't started talking about this from a place of ignorance. He knew damned well what he was saying to her, and what it involved. He hated the idea with every fiber of his being. He didn't share like that with people - not voluntarily - and especially not after Jean had died.

Even the mention of grief made that well up again, which said nothing good, but.

"I wouldn't have brought it up if I wasn't willing." That was more neutral than outright saying he hated the idea. "You aren't a child anymore. I couldn't tell you what to do when you were. " He took another swallow from his cup and tilted his head to the side. "All I'm saying is I'm not leaving you without a team and little to no decent offense. I don't give a damn how we make that happen at this point."

And that right there was why there had and always would be a place for Scott Summers in her heart, in one way or another. Over the years, he had taken so much upon his own shoulders, carried them all through the madness of a crumbling world, and he'd done it seemingly without any thought to what was best for him. The burdens of leadership were so ingrained in his being that he'd kept going forward even after Jean's death, and they'd all been able to see how deeply wounded he had been in those following months. Scott Summers represented everything good in Rogue's world, and her heart broke for him because of just how far he was willing to go for her now.

"We'd have to test it first," she decided, glancing away from him and gripping her cup a little more tightly. "I don't want to put both of us through that if it turns out I'm not strong enough to handle just a tap."

He was right, she wasn't a child anymore, and she hadn't been for a long time. And if she could use the knowledge she gained from his psyche to somehow find a way to lessen his burdens even the tiniest bit, it would be more than worth it, so long as she managed to stay in one piece through the transfer.

Edited (typos -- need more coffee) 2015-11-13 18:58 (UTC)

Scott was who and what he was. It was all he knew how to be, and he wouldn't have known how to change it if he'd wanted to. It rarely made him any friends, but it usually got the job done.

If only getting the job done meant that he lost less, he would have had an easier time living with himself.

"Finish your soup and warming up, then we'll test it."

He didn't want her falling apart, either. That would have been the opposite of useful for either of them and he, at least, knew enough to not think of Rogue as reckless in any regard.

"But you're strong enough to handle whatever you have to handle."

That one earned him a smile, small but heartfelt. He'd always been on her side in the past, pushing her when needed and trusting her own measure of things where some of the others had assumed her capable of too much or too little. She knew that despite his confidence in her, if she said it was too much to handle, he'd take her word for it - he'd seen what happened in the early years when she'd reached too far, when other personalities threatened to overtake her own and it had taken days for her to recover. They didn't have that kind of time now.

"Thanks, sugar," she murmured, her attention turning inward as she continued to sip on the warm soup and prepare her mind for another new tenant. Years of training with Xavier had provided her a system of compartmentalizing the stolen psyches; some wandered free, like Logan and Erik, but most were locked behind doors that became brittle if not regularly reinforced. That was what she focused on until the soup was gone and there was nothing left to delay the inevitable.

Setting her mug on the floor, and stood and walked the few feet to where he sat, sinking to the floor by his outstretched leg. "Last chance to back out," she offered, trying for a joke but ending up far more serious than planned. She wouldn't blame him if he did.

Scott let her have her silence.

No, he wouldn't push her to do what she couldn't - he would just have faith that she could until she told him otherwise. He pushed, yeah, he'd pushed them all. He'd also gotten some of them killed, but there was always a bigger cause. Breaking Marie in the name of saving her wasn't who he was, or what he did.

He needed her to live, though. Tonight, more than ever, he really needed to be able to do something to see one of those kids - who weren't kids at all anymore - make it.

So, he stayed quiet and gave her the space she needed to do what she had to do. He drank his own soup, soaked in the heat of the fire and let the heat from the flames sink deeper into him. He didn't really seem to be thinking about anything at all, but he was. He was looking for a way to end this, thinking about Charles and Erik and kids they had lost.

Thinking about the kid Marie had been, when she'd been begging to borrow her bike or showing just a little too much Logan. Just - thinking, but steering well clear of thoughts of Jean.

When she spoke he put his own (empty) cup down and pushed it aside.

"When was the last time you saw me back out?" there was the same 'trying to joke' there for him, but he wasn't pulling it off either. He'd made a commitment, he was keeping it. "Let's see what we've got to work with."

[I have to say, I absolutely adore your Scott.]

She'd known he wouldn't back out, it wasn't what Scott did, but she'd had to give him the chance. He was the last person she wanted to hurt, and this wouldn't be pleasant for either of them. Her power drained people of their energy, exposed everything they held dear, and could hurt like hell if she held on long enough. That was why she wasn't jumping headfirst into this, why she'd called for a trial run, so to speak.

Rogue unearthed one of her bare hands from the depths of the blanket still wrapped around her and settled a little closer to him, within easy reach but still giving him space. "I'm just gonna take a little off the top," she explained, hold her hand out near his but not yet touching him. "Enough to get some of your energy and thoughts, but not much of your power - whatever I do get won't last more than a few minutes."

She started to lower her hand to his, but stopped suddenly, frowning. "If there are things you don't want me to get, concentrate on anything else. Hard. It doesn't always work, but it's worth a try." It was the only solution she could offer to try and let him keep even some semblance of privacy as she stole everything in him. Hopes, dreams, fears, regret, she couldn't pick and choose what she took, but he might at least be able to point her in a particular direction.

Rogue took a deep breath, held it, and let her fingertips brush the skin of his hand. The pull of her power was instantaneous.

[And I *adore* your Rogue! ]

He held his hand palm up for her, gave her access to exposed skin, but otherwise let her control it. That his impulse was to reach up and make contact himself so he was in control of a process he was worried about and unsure of didn't factor in - not in this.

He'd had a lot of people in his head over his life - for all his life, really. From Sinister to Jack to Charles and Jean. He knew damned well that his ability to really psychically shield under any circumstance was basically non-existent and he didn't try now. She had seen enough of him through other people that there was little there that he could hide, anyway.

For her sake he kept not thinking about Jean, and pushed his steadfast determination and faith in her to the forefront, but that was really it. There wasn't much else he could do to help her, here.

Besides not try to flinch away from her and the discomfort that came with that touch. 'Discomfort' - because what it was was fairly indescribable, anyway.

He kept his eyes on her face to monitor how she was doing with it, though.

[<3 Anytime you want to get these crazy kids together, count me in!]

Over the many years she'd had her powers, Rogue had easily absorbed hundreds of people in the course of borrowing powers, gathering information, and taking down enemies. She was used to the feeling of siphoning someone else into her mind, of feeling the spark of their life ease into her. But Scott still took her by surprise. The sheer strength of his emotions, the clarity of his thoughts, the force of his energy, all of it rushed into her like an ocean wave crashing onto rocks.

Three seconds. That was all, just three short seconds of contact before she was pulling away with a gasp, falling backwards from her kneeling position and edging away from Scott until she hit furniture, as if the physical distance would put distance between their minds as well. Her eyes burned as his power flooded into her and she squeezed them shut before any damage could be done.

He was so damn strong.

"Lord, Scott, you pack a hell of a punch." Had it been that way with Jean and Charles, with the other telepaths he'd dealt with? Had it been different for them because they were outside his mind looking in, whereas she'd assimilated part of him into herself?

She wanted to say more, to explain what had happened and that she was alright, but then the memories were sorting themselves out, the emotions floating to the surface, and she couldn't speak as her throat tightened and she began to cry. It was overwhelming, the firm believe he held in her, his anger and grief from the war they were fighting. Everything bubbled up around her and for a moment, she feared she might drown in it.

Rogue pulled her knees up to her chest and curled inward, hiding behind a curtain of dark hair shot with white as she struggled to pull herself together.

[ The same goes for me! ]

Scott couldn't have answered the question of why telepaths liked him - but they always had, even if they sometimes had a really, really funny way of showing it. Maybe it was the relative clarity in his head. That was as good as his guess could be, because he didn't find much about himself remarkable.

Not that he thought about himself at all very often.

He gave himself and Rogue both a second to catch their breath and for him to make sure he was steady before he moved slowly after her. He did not make contact not right away, but stayed close enough that he could have if he'd reached out. "You're okay."

It wasn't a question, but she nodded her confirmation of the statement, lifting her head a little but keeping her eyes closed. She was okay, it was just... a lot to handle.

The waves were already beginning to calm, leaving her trembling while the tears subsided. She felt like she'd been wrung out, stretched and twisted and left to reshape herself. But despite that, she hadn't lost control - never had Scott's psyche overridden her own, and that was what was truly important. She could take in more of him and not lose herself in the process.

"How do you do it?" she asked him quietly, turning her face in his direction even if she couldn't risk looking at him just yet. "How do you keep all of that inside you?"

It wasn't a question, but it might have been reassurance. That she can confirm it is good enough for him, anyway.

He left her in quiet, waited for her to be or at least seem steadier and then put a hand on her back - over fabric and rubbed her back slightly. It wasn't the most natural gesture in the world, maybe, it was sincere.

Then he stopped in honest confusion.

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about." He wasn't lying. "Keep what in? Emotion?"

Rogue leaned into his touch ever so slightly, the physical pressure in the real world helping to anchor her so she could pull back from the tumult of her mind. His power finally faded enough to open her eyes, a reddish filter of over her vision for a handful of seconds before the power was gone entirely.

"You're in so much pain, sugar," she told him softly, her tone akin to that used when trying to soothe a distressed animal. Gentle, quiet, smooth. "And so incredibly angry. You shouldn't have to deal with all of that on your own."

She wanted to take his hand in hers, this time to offer support and comfort, but she didn't have her gloves. They seemed so very far away in that moment, instead of just a few feet off.

He watches while she steadies, her eyes open and the red in her eyes fade. He watches in silence, giving her the time. He stays silent beyond that to give himself the time.

Except his response, when it finally comes, completely side-steps everything she's just said. It's a beautiful, nice moment or could be but there is no response he is capable of giving to it. He can't deny it, and verifying it won't achieve anything. There isn't anything either of them can do about it, anyway.

Especially not right now.

He's... strangely grateful, though, almost relieved to have that recognized by someone. Uncomfortable, but grateful and something near relief all the same.

"The good news is, you should be able to exercise control over my mutation that I can't." He takes his hand slowly away and gets up to grab her gloves for her. "It might not be perfect, but don't have the luxury of worrying about precision. All you need is a crude on-off switch."

Rogue couldn't help herself. She laughed at that, the sound bitter and coarse to her own ears, but the humor real despite the thick darkness wrapped around it.

"Oh, that's rich," she told him, her voice a little more gravelly than usual, perhaps a bit of someone else leaking out from the depths of her mind. An old enemy, or maybe a jaded friend. It was hard to tell. "Being able to control your power but never even coming close to controlling my own. I'd give my right hand for an off switch for this curse." The phrasing there was definitely not her own.

But the sentiment behind the words was real. Yes, she'd come to accept her abilities, to appreciate them for what they could do in the field, and hell, she'd even relished being useful to the team that wouldn't be possible without her unique set of talents. The resentment would always be there, though, that hatred of the way her mutation kept her apart from the rest of the world, even her own kind. So many mutants over the years had been afraid of her, of what she could do... That wasn't the sort of emotionally damaging baggage you could shake.

"What's one more layer of irony in our lives?" His tone was as dry as hers was dark, but so is the fact that there is real humor in it.

"They're afraid of us; we're afraid of ourselves. They hate us; we hate ourselves. They want you dead for not being 'normal', and you'd do anything to be normal." He snorted, inelegantly. "I wonder sometimes if they'd just left us the hell alone if we wouldn't have taken care of their problem for them."

And no, it wasn't the baggage she could shake. He got it. He knew it. His baggage was different, but there were still issues of seeing himself as dangerous and a lack of control and being a weapon for as long as he could remember.

It wasn't surprising, though, that at least three of the survivors were exactly that. People who saw themselves as weapons and had been used as exactly that. Some for good, some for ill, but. Weapons.

THE POST-APOCALYPTIC MEME

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