jade ☃ harley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
basslines) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bakerstreet2016-09-08 02:14 pm
basslines) wrote in bakerstreet2016-09-08 02:14 pm
thursday pic prompt
the picture prompt meme
i. COMMENT WITH CHARACTER
ii. OTHERS LEAVE A PICTURE (OR TWO OR THREE....)
iii. REPLY TO THEM WITH A SETTING BASED ON THE IMAGES.
THIS POST WILL BE IMAGE HEAVY.
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Suzanne would explain as much as she knew - registering guns so it was known who had weaponry and who didn't, but it wasn't as heavily enforced as it would be in decades to come. Guns were more deadly than a sword and far more common and more easy for anyone to pick up and use. There was an uncomfortable look between some of the older children who had learned about the second world war already and confusion in the younger.
"...there was a... tyrant who decided that only his people were worthy of living, and there was a war that encompassed the whole world between the people who agreed with him and the people who didn't. A lot of innocent people were killed in the process and a whole lot more military. Some of those people were forced to register themselves as a people and eventually, they were taken into camps and killed by the thousands." It was clearly not an easy topic, not only emotionally but to describe to someone in such a short manner who spoke of being from another world all together. The children seemed to take it better than Charles and Hank did, more in stride, but they didn't exactly know what to do with it, either.
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And OMG NOT YET but I have an old friend from Potter fandom who loved it and is recommending it strongly, so I want to go soooon! Did you see it? Was it great?]
Aurus’s frown grew deep. To really understand this history he knew he would need to ask Charles to explain it. Suzanne was trying, but he felt he should not push her farther. For the moment, though, it was Glint who most helped him put what he was hearing into context:
"Aurus, remember the Chosen," her voice sounded in his mind, and a moment later his expression changed, realizing that if he thought of it that way then perhaps, yes, he could understand.
The Chosen were, some centuries in Kryta's past, human common folk identified each year by a theocratic military order called the White Mantle, an order that had ruled the nation and was beloved by its people. Selected by a magical ritual seeing that identified them, the Chosen were told that they would go for training to become Grand Masters within the order--it was meant to be a great honor. In truth, though it was only discovered years later, they were taken deep into the Maguuma Jungle and sacrificed upon a bloodstone—sacrificed because the White Mantle knew what no one else then did: that the Chosen had been prophesied to bring about their downfall.
It did not seem particularly wise to share this story with children already troubled by his descriptions of the Nightmare Court, so Aurus skipped explaining it to them. He did, however, think Glint was right: it certainly could help him to judge the situation that was being described to him.
"I think by the sounds of it I ought to learn more of this war if I want to better understand your world. Perhaps, in a way, I understand the idea already though. And my first thought is this: it seems to me that identifying yourselves to those who construe you as a threat..." he shook his head. "No, that I would not trust. Not here and not in my own world either.
"It matters not whether you truly threaten anyone. People in power will often go to any lengths to assure their power is maintained. They will speak with silver tongues and promise benefits of any kind, but you cannot know the truth of their minds or their real intentions in advance." He paused a beat here and then amended slightly to try and lighten the mood: "Well, at least those of you without telepathic abilities cannot.
“Even if the events of the war you describe could never be repeated, I still would say that it is not wise to put your trust in powers that see you as a threat. It is not a concession that will win their trust anyway. That must be done in other ways."
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"...so do we fight to protect ourselves?"
That came from a young man, maybe late teens, who looked very serious about his statement. None of these children knew about the X-Men that had once been, whose deaths had hurt Charles and Hank so badly as to keep it quiet since everything had gone down. It was a few years before the children would get their chance to learn about it, about the chance there was to actually fight back. Charles didn't want more children hurt. Not again. That didn't mean they didn't need an outlet and would possibly find it without his guidance otherwise.
The young man's statment brought more murmuring, some agreement, some not. From the look Suzanne gave him, she clearly didn't agree. "Fighting doesn't solve anything except make them scared of us."
"So you'd rather lay down and die like this Ventari guy?!" He snapped back.
"They're not going to kill us!"
Which was getting more people involved as they either agreed, disagreed, or were trying to calm the two down. Elsewhere, Charles frowned as he felt the general sensation of the crowd turning towards something less than pleasant.
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"The question is not 'do you fight,'" Aurus said, raising his voice loud enough for it to cut through the bickering before it could gain too much steam.
The sylvari could, when he wanted to, have quite a commanding presence--he was, after all, a person of some seniority and authority, and he could present himself as precisely that when he wished to do so. So he was absolutely not going to let this discussion devolve into a back-and-forth between two sides in a debate that was obviously already well entrenched.
When he had the children's attention again, he continued: "The question you need to be asking is how you can fight so that your actions do not inadvertently undermine your goals. If the fighting that has been done so far has made the non-mutants fear you more, then it is fighting of poor tactics, poor strategy, poor vision.
"That does not mean, however, that fighting itself is wrong."
Given the very mixed audience he had before him, Aurus was aware that he needed to speak carefully here, but he also believed in being honest and frank. The older students in the group were easily the age that Hakkyuu had been when Aurus began to teach him. They were very well old enough to hear things said bluntly which would likely upset their younger peers.
"I have no wish to frighten you when I say this, but Suzanne, your faith in the safety of your lives is clearly not so self-evident to everyone here. That does not make you wrong, but it does tell me that there is a seed of doubt. I suspect," he looked around the assembled group, "that it is there within you all.
"You must be very careful of that seed. When it germinates, when it ripens, it can grow a fear which can strangle your heart. You begin to feel certain that your enemies are bent on destroying you and that your only option is to destroy them first. If that happens, the seed of doubt becomes a seed which grows the tyrants we were speaking of before.
"But that seed can also be cultivated into something insightful, something sharp. It can help you learn to stay alert and aware. That is a skill you will need to see the real threats evolving early on, to differentiate them from the distractions, the chimeras. There may be times when you will fight with your bodies, with your powers, but you can also fight with your wits.
"'Never leave a wrong to ripen into evil' does not mean that you scorch the earth. And it does not mean that you ignore how wrongs might ripen to evil or sorrow within your own hearts. These are dangers of which you must be mindful. Remember them in all your actions."
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Aurus' words did cut through the rising tension, leaving both initial parties to look at him. They had their respect for their elders, either learned or forced into their heads by teachers and parents, and they stayed silent as he spoke. The boy's fingers curled into fists in his lap, his knuckles almost white, before in the end, when Aurus was finished, he said quietly, "I don't want it to be too late for us to realize something's coming for us." He stood up, walking away from the group and standing there, clearly trying to calm down.
"Andrew..." One of the girls said, biting her lip before she went to follow him, sighing.
Suzanne, though, looked thoughtful about everything Aurus had just said. "I think you're right, for what it's worth. I don't want to fight. ...I don't want others hurt, either. I'd rather fight than letting anyone here get hurt. Professor Xavier tells us that we're supposed to stand up for our beliefs without treading on the beliefs of others."
"...I don't want to fight anyone!" A very young girl from nearby, frowning up towards Suzanne.
"That's why we'll fight, so you don't have to."
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Aurus followed the boy's retreat from the group with his eyes, not moving his head but still tracking him closely. He couldn't tell if the reaction was a willful misunderstanding of what he'd said or simply an expression of a frustration that had no place to go.
This Andrew, he thought, was someone who he should speak to further--speak to without his peers around. It would have to be Charles' decision if that meeting took place, of course. Aurus was not nearly so presumptuous as to interfere without his permission. But he already had it in his mind to speak to ask him about the boy. From Hakkyuu, Aurus had gained a fair bit of experience dealing with angry young men, but his tactics in no small part involved utilizing the anger rather than trying to mollify or defuse it, and admittedly some of his strategies were a little...unorthodox. Charles might not approve of that. Asking the man to trust Aurus with himself was one thing; asking him to trust him with one of his students could be something completely different.
For the moment, though, he still had the rest of the assembled group to focus on.
"Professor Xavier is right," he answered Suzanne, presently shifting his gaze back towards her and the others.
"Where I come from there is a group with a saying: 'Some must fight so that all may be free.' It's not a bad adage. In my world, it's the elder dragons against which free people must come together and fight. There is no ambiguity about the elder dragons: they awaken to consume and destroy all life in the world.
"Here, your foes are much less straightforward, and your 'fighting' may never need to be with armies. I hope that it is not. Wars are terrible things."
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Suzanne, though, was leaning in and talking with some of the older children quietly, a frown on her lips at whatever was being discussed. Finally, she nodded and sat back, leaning on her hands. It seemed like she was done with her questions, but had a thoughtful expression in her eyes. Maybe done with questions, but Aurus had definitely given them all something to think about.
More children began to come over as time passed, with the ones who had been there telling the new ones about what they had heard. In one of the lulls, it would be the little blonde girl who would come up to Aurus, the only one brave enough to get in touching distance, and in that way of young ones tugged on a bit of his clothing without fear to get his attention. "This one's for you," she said with a fierce little expression of pride, both hands coming out and holding a miniature version of the tablet, including the vines and the writing, all done in stone. It wasn't absolutely perfect, but it showed that she would be quite the artist when she got more skilled.
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Elder dragons were enormous, he told them, explaining how Kralkatorrik had been mistaken for a mountain during the years of its last slumber. These elder dragons had their dragon lieutenants and their champions which, though a fraction of their size, were still massively large. Save possibly for Primordus, who was not currently awake so no one really knew, they did not breathe fire per se, but their breath was powerful nonetheless. It could corrupt or freeze or entomb. And as for whether any were good, as a rule, no. Dragon lieutenants shared their elder dragon's will--all except for one.
Then he told them about Glint, about how she'd been freed from her master's hold by a powerful ritual and how she used her powers of seeing and perception to become a great prophet and an ally to the peoples of Tyria. He told them how she was the only dragon he had ever seen in person, and that was only after her death.
Would they like to see her? It wasn't something that Aurus had planned, but the topic seemed to captivate so many of them.
"Everyone sit down here," he told the few who were standing, knowing that anyone who remained on their feet for this demonstration would risk being knocked right over backwards. Then he dispelled the tablet with a wave of his hand and moved to a spot a few yards away.
Invoking Glint's power made the ground around Aurus's feet glow in a pinkish-purple halo, and the Facet of Chaos which he summoned gave off a sparkling bluish orbit around him. But it was the release of this facet that came closest to showing Glint's body in the world, like a summoning of her being (albeit on a much smaller scale than she had been in life). Her head reared back above Aurus's body, and her wings spread out in spectral blue, an echo of the motion of his arms. With one mighty flap of her wings, the specter sent out a rush of wind--a gust that momentarily flattened the grass and whipped through the hair of the assembled children, and then, like the image of the dragon itself was gone.
In its wake, all those the wind had touched would feel momentarily faster, lighter, quicker on their feet. It was a fleeting sensation though, and presently everything settled back to the calm quiet of the lawn in the moments before.
Aurus returned to his seat, once more projecting the tablet into its previous spot on the grass, satisfied that even a shadow of Glint was still adequately impressive.
And so he was seated just as he had been before when the little blonde girl with her miniature tablet came over to him. He didn't tease her at all this time, but took the proffered gift with great care, looking at it and then giving her a very genuine smile. "I don't think that the great sculptor Malchor himself could have done better," he said. "Ventari is very pleased with it as well. I have no way to make him visible to you, but I hear him speaking in my head and you have made him very happy.
"Are you sure you wish to give it to me? You've worked on it diligently."
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"Tell Mister Ventari I said thank you," she said, her smile growing. "I made that one for you. I can make a second one! If you have to go back to your world, you'll be able to remember being here. It's always nice to have a little piece of a place to remember it." Her fingers crept up to her neck where a pendant that looked like a small seashell hung.
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Aurus would have felt a little embarrassed for showing off if he'd thought about Charles watching just then. Actually, he could very well imagine Hakkyuu's voice accusing him of being a show off--Aurus did miss his former student from time to time.
At the moment, however, thinking of Hakkyuu (or at least of how Hakkyuu had been when Aurus first met him) served to remind him of the other angry young man he'd lately encountered, and though he was smiling and chuckling at the group's reactions, his eyes scanned the assembled students to see whether Andrew was still there, whether he'd simply left or whether he'd stayed and what reaction the specter of Glint had drawn from him.
To the others he patiently answered every question put to him--yes, that was how her crystalline body really looked; yes, she talked, in fact she spoke to him often and was listening to them all right now; no, in reality she was much bigger than the specter had been. He explained as much as he could about the ritual that had cleansed her corruption, though he had to admit that the precise mechanisms were now obscure, the city where the altar had been now smashed to ruins. And he asked them to tell him what stories of dragons were known in their world in return.
But with the little blonde girl he felt a special caring, not just because of what she'd made, but because of what Ventari's teachings meant to him, what they meant to all of his people. Glint might have been spectacular, but Ventari was in the sylvari's marrow. "I hope you will make one for yourself as well," he told her. "I am already sure I will never forget my time here, and your gift will help me feel closer, even when I am far away. I would like you to remember my time here as well--remember Ventari's words and the peace they can bring. You have a rare and wonderful gift.
"Here," he placed a hand on the ground and grew a single flower for her--a bright white daisy which he plucked and presented to her. "It won't last as long as your sculpture, of course. Tell me, what's your name?"
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While the other children started commenting to each other about dragons, trying to figure out what to even tell him (do we tell him stories about dragons? They're not REAL after all!), the girl beside him was much more focused on their own discussion.
The girl's eyes lit up with his display of his magic, a bright smile coming to her lips as she took the flower in return, promptly tucking it behind her ear so it sat vibrant against her hair. "Petra. You haven't even seen the best part! Watch this!" With both hands she covered as much of the mini-tablet as she could with her hands and concentrated. At first, nothing happened, but Aurus would feel the mini-tablet start to warm in his hands. Eventually, he would see the otherwise grey stone slowly start to crystalize, inch by inch, until it was no longer a piece of granite in his palms but one piece of elegant crystal, still designed and etched as it had been before.
When she lifted her hands and saw it had worked, she laughed, picking her gaze up with pride. See, muuuuuch better.
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Did I post in a meme lately? My brain is clearly total rubbish atm since I can't even remember. orz]Of everything he'd seen thus far, Aurus had to admit that this child's power amazed him more than almost all the rest. Not the power itself, perhaps, but the will and the spirit behind how she wielded it. His lips parted as he watched the miniature tablet becoming crystal in his hands, felt the heat of the energy Petra must be sending through it to make this change take place.
Letting the rest of the children and their tête-à-tête over dragon stories fade into the background, Aurus let his full focus narrow to this little piece of stone and the girl who manipulated it. "It's splendid," he told her with a broad smile when the work was complete. "Like Ventari and the spirit of Glint drawn together into one."
All that really remained then was for him to have an appropriate place to carry it with him. And for this, he had one more thing that he could show her, because as it turned out, his clothes didn't just look like leaves grown from his own body. They really were leaves grown from his own body. And this meant that he could grow more, or in this case, that he could grow a large dark purplish frond-type leaf that folded itself into a kind of bag--a sort of belt pouch, as it were, just the right size to hold her gift.
Where exactly within his clothes the leaf-bag stemmed from was a little unclear, but at the end of the minute or two it took to complete, it was its own independent object. He let her hold it open for him while he placed the crystal tablet within, and then he hooked it securely onto the leaves that formed the belt at his waist.
"Any time you wish to see Ventari's tablet again," he told Petra with a slight shift of his eyes to indicate the real tablet floating a few feet away from them, "you just come and tell me."
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Petra watched all of this with silent awe, gingerly tucking the now crystal tablet into the newly grown belt pouch before looking up to Aurus' eyes. "You really are a plant," she whispered, then grinned wide. "I wonder if Andrew could make you grow like he does the gardens." Then her grin fell, looking back in the direction the young man had gone. "Um, if he wasn't mad right now..." She frowned, then leaned in as if confiding, "he's always been kind of a grumpy gus. Don't let him make you mad."
With that she stepped back, looking back towards the mansion. "I've got to go meet Jess but I'm not hard to find, Mister Aurus." She smiled up to him, and with a wave, headed in the direction of the main building. Which left Aurus with the other children, some who seemed to have agreed on telling him about 'dragons', though that seemed to range from characters in stories to very real to this world lizards who definitely weren't dragons.
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"I am really a plant," Aurus confirmed with a nod. This was, he knew, a rather difficult point for many humans who assumed that, on a very fundamental level, walking was the purview of animals alone. He was utterly fascinated by her comment about Andrew though--did the boy have power over plants? How utterly fascinating.
He did very much appreciate her insight though, and he could tell her quite honestly, "Oh, it's all right. I'm not mad. I'm interested. Maybe he'll decide to come talk to me further."
Then he raised his hand to wave goodbye to her with a smile as she departed. "Goodbye Petra. I'm sure I'll see you soon." After all, the school wasn't that big.
As to the dragons...well, Aurus was very good natured about the whole thing, but he did tactfully try to point out to the children that some of the things they described seemed a lot more like drakes. Small drakes. Or possibly even skale or skelks.
He was actually quite interested in the made up stories though--the sorts of tales that people told could illuminate quite a lot about them. A story about dragons hoarding gold, for example, or about kidnapping princesses--these sorts of stories expressed something that seemed very cultural. Admittedly, though, Aurus couldn't quite understand some of the motivations, like what a dragon would want with a princess (or gold) in the first place, and he didn't for a moment hesitate to admit to the students that it didn't make much sense to him. Maybe one of them would be able to explain.
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epilogueand keep close the parts I do. I still always hope she'll write a Marauders' Era series, though. Though have you seen that fan film someone did of it? SO damn good.]Andrew was gone, looking around for the young man, but as Aurus himself had just thought, the school wasn't terribly big. Likely they would bump into each other again later. Aurus' words and what he had said was already spreading around at a speed only children could manage, which left him with quite the crowd gathered around him.
Some tried to explain, but it seemed like as far as they could tell it was just something dragons did. They hoarded. They were evil things that kidnapped princesses and burned down villages. Some things didn't seem completely different from Aurus' world but skewed as if viewing it through a lens.
Eventually though it would start to get later, children drifting away to hang out with their friends, do school work, or get a meal. The campus felt very cut off from the rest of the world, like a little piece of paradise tucked into a world Aurus had seen on the television was a much more populated and varied place.
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The whole experience of this was, for Aurus, quite fascinating--a real crash course in understanding children (and in particular, children in groups). When he'd met human children in the past, it had generally been one at a time and, save for the three years or so he'd had Hakkyuu with him as a teen, always for short amounts of time.
Now he was discovering that interesting things could potentially happen when you put open questions to children. Questions, for example, like whether the dragons in their stories ever kidnapped princes, and then the question of why they did not. The tactic of posing rhetorical questions was not a new one to him by any means, but the effect of it here was...novel.
At any rate, for his part he had plenty of stories (histories, really) he could tell about the Elder Dragons, and he did selectively share those, letting the children learn the lore of different races in his world through those tales. So he told them about the dwarves, and therefore about King Jalis and the battle against the Great Destroyer. But he also told them about the famous norn hero Asgeir Dragonrender who had marshaled the Spirits of the Wild to fight against the rise of Jormag, buying his people time to escape to the south.
And into these stories, he wove a consistent thread of reference that always lead subtly back to the teachings of Ventari, the beacon of the tablet pulsing with its soft light and breaths of ghostly flowers over the grass.
He noticed, of course, that neither Hank or Charles had yet made an appearance as the afternoon drew on, and he couldn't help but muse on the reasons for that, wondering whether the two men were speaking, whether Hank had indeed gone to warn Charles away from him and what had transpired between them if he had.
It would have been very easy to get distracted by that train of thought and anxiously excuse himself to go find Charles within the school. But Aurus did not. It took a certain force of will to keep himself from thinking (or worrying) about the topic too much, but he did it because he knew he had to trust both men.
And at any rate, given how much time Aurus had spent alone in the past months, even the relative seclusion of the school grounds still felt positively bustling to him. In the past twelve hours he'd already talked more than he'd done in the past twelve months combined. So even when the number of children began to ebb, he still resolved to wait patiently were he was for a time. For someone so used to being his own company, that was not any trouble.
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Aurus, willingly or not, had given both men a great deal to think about. Hank had to make a choice of morality as well as trust and friendship. Did he believe that Charles was capable of protecting himself should something go wrong with whatever this was that was happening that night as much as was Charles able to protect his own broken heart if Aurus tried to worm into it? Could he step in to another man's life who was fully capable of making his own decisions? Had he not done enough or had he already done too much?
Charles had to decide if he was going to go through with this. It wasn't hard to realize that if he went to Aurus' room tonight or visa versa, it would end in things that he had not done in a long time. There was too much tension between them, sexual and vibrant, to keep it to merely seeing the Dream as Aurus was so intrigued in showing him. Even that short time to view Glint's lair had shown him the innevitability of it. What would it be for him to be a part of this, something parts of him dearly wanted as it was something approaching normal, but then to have Aurus leave when the man chose to return to the Mists and his home? Was it better or worse?
If Aurus didn't come back in on his own, eventually Charles come out to find him. The wheelchair glided smoothly over the grass, but he stopped a short distance away, not wanting to disturb the other if he was deep into meditation. It seemed quite natural to find Aurus out here on his own, tucked up in the grass, looking considerably more comfortable than he would have been after so long. He did take the time to appreciate the tablet up close, watching it as it pulsed and hummed, wondering about the centaur that had carved it.
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Aurus, to his credit, tried very hard to keep any telling looks out of his eyes when he turned towards the sound of Charles' approach. He already knew who it was before he saw him, the sound of the chair distinctly different than that of approaching footsteps.
But though he was now quite aware and careful (at least trying to be careful) lest his expression tip off any students still lingering nearby to more than they ought to know, there was no denying that his eyes lit up a bit when he saw Charles again. He tried very hard to assure that he gave away no further tell, but for him there was no mistaking how his pulse quickened, how present his own desire was--he wondered if Charles felt that too, or if he felt it from him. And of course he still wondered what had come to pass in the past hours, whether or not Hank had spoken to Charles in the end, and what conclusions Charles had reached. (Be patient, he told himself, and silenced any questions before he grew too tempted to voice them.)
The sun's angle had changed by now, but the glow of the tablet still felt like sunlight on the skin, and from his place in the grass, half reclined on his elbows, Aurus indeed looked perfectly at ease.
"You missed the excitement," he smiled up at Charles, watching him examine the tablet. "I think I must have met most every student in the school. I do hope I'll be forgiven if I don't immediately remember all of their names."
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"I didn't miss it entirely," Charles said a bit mysteriously, a little smile on his face as he watched Aurus. His own feelings he kept tightly under wraps for now, with the children about, who were excited to see their teacher out here. It was obvious that Charles was a favorite of theirs as the children who remained all greeted him, but also seemed to assume he was there to collect Aurus. "I'm glad to hear you met everyone and look forward to hearing from both sides how the meeting went." Complete with an amused cast around to the children who all grinned and nodded. Of course they'd tell!
"I think it's about time though that I stole Aurus so the man can get some dinner and the rest of you should be getting it as well." Charles made a shooing motion to the children, some of which laughed but they all got up, stretching, gathering their things. As they did, Charles looked back to Aurus and raised an eyebrow. "I hope they behaved themselves with you?"
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It was fascinating to Aurus to see how the children were with Charles and to compare that to how they'd been around him. (Slightly more casual with him, he thought, at least after a time, since his relationship to them wasn't formally that of a teacher. Their affection for Charles was clear, but there was also a distinct sense of respect, and with it a certain propriety. If Aurus had his guess, he would say that it seemed just the sort of relationship he thought Charles was likely to cultivate quite deliberately.)
"They behaved themselves perfectly," Aurus confirmed, not yet moving to get up himself but instead waiting until the students had withdrawn before speaking with more candor.
He waved goodbye to the last few to depart before shifting his weight and sitting up straighter. "There are some very talented young people here, as well as a few, I think, whose anger and bitterness at the world lingers, despite everything you offer them."
It wasn't meant as criticism, just as honesty. In truth, meeting with these students had made Aurus aware of how valuable and special a place Charles had managed to create in making this school. The man deserved a tremendous amount of credit for that.
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Aurus' guess would be fairly accurate - he did want to keep that level of boundary with most of his students. He was their teacher, they were his students, but it also went a little bit into the fatherly territory at times. There was just a knack with taking in children with him.
Charles' expression changed to not quite sadness, maybe a small bit of bitterness himself but tempered by experience. He gave a quiet sigh, looking over his shoulder towards the children making their way into the school, and nodded. "Unfortunately, that might be true for a while to come. We bring them in sometimes from... horrific situations. Neglect all the way to outright torture in one case. The best of the worst still means they're being treated differently by their own family and friends. We do get lucky and find the families who just honestly want a good place for their children and find it here, or who at least honestly want help even if they're beyond their limits. Sometimes... they just want to wash their hands clean of this monster who took over their child." Those last few words were spoken with a hint of spite, as if someone had actually said that to him at some point (they had).
"But it takes time to help the ones who come from bad situations. One of my staff is a trained-" he hesitated, thinking Aurus wouldn't know the word possibly, "-specialist who deals with helping children through difficult times and that's all she does. We try to teach them to handle their powers comfortably but safely even as we teach their minds, but it isn't a perfect program."
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"Yes," Aurus acknowledged on the darker topics of neglect and abuse, "there were points in my discussions with them where I began to gather as much. I'd gotten some advice from Hank on what subjects were likely to be sensitive, but I might still have occasionally misgauged. Not badly, I think, but," here he gestured towards the tablet, "there are some of Ventari's teachings that inspire questions of ethics--questions which some of your students seem more adept at handling than others."
He didn't say which teachings specifically, trusting that Charles would be able to judge for himself, looking at what was written on the tablet before him.
"I don't fault anyone for struggling with those answers, of course. I have to admit that I didn't necessarily do well with them in my youth. When a split formed among my brothers and sisters, the way I dealt with it was simply to leave."
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"Leaving something behind isn't dealing with something. It's running away. Eventually, it'll catch up to you." That... that was spoken in the tone that suggested Charles had lived this exact scenario at some point in his life. He had run away from the idea of the X-Men, from his own pain, but in the end, it was there, waiting for him, when Logan came and dragged him out of the depths of his pity.
"I don't want these kids to have to live that, but they need to deal with the problems that come from the lives they were born into. Struggling with these ideas now means they learn, but this is a safer way for them to do it. If we can teach them the right things now, they'll hopefully do it when they're older." He gave a small smile, but his eyes remained on the tablet.
"...maybe tonight I will have to ask Ventari myself about his decisions." It came out easily, freely, but it spoke volumes. It meant Charles was still in for everything they had discussed tonight, but there was still tension in his body despite the ease in his voice.
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"That's true," Aurus agreed, watching Charles' expressions, his body language. "Though I think there can be a value in distance too. What one learns by stepping away can be invaluable.
"Do you worry about the angriest ones though--that all these sorts of teachings become a yoke for them that they resent rather than feel comforted by?" It was a careful question, but an honest one, and the sort which, frankly, Aurus felt Ventari did not quite have the right answer to.
And thus while Charles' remark about talking to the centaur tonight did indeed speak volumes and it pleased Aurus tremendously to hear him say it, he felt that acting in good faith he could not merely filter out the less idyllic components of the afternoon.
"He will be very pleased to discuss the matter with you, I am certain. But there are things that I need to confess to you before we get that far. I hope you won't be too cross with me for them, but I won't keep anything from you regardless: Hank is...aware that there is something developing between us, and I think it's safe to say that he does not approve.
"I'm sorry, I never meant to break your confidence by disclosing something private that you might not want known. I had to deceive him or tell him the truth. I hope the choice I made was sound."
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"Unfortunately, that's still something we're learning to deal with, step by step. It's never the same for each child. There's no formula we can follow to try and help their anger. All we can try and do is work with each of them." And, one day, perhaps bring them into another fold if their anger can be redirected, tamed into something that would be safe to have on the X-Men, but that was still very... uncertain. The deaths still hung over Charles' head too much to attempt it again, but one day it would come.
Then Aurus decided to drop a bombshell.
Charles' expression fell in such an immediate way as to suggest that no, Hank hadn't come to talk to him about anything or hadn't mentioned certain parts of this. For him, all he could think was that it suddenly made sense that he hadn't see Hank for the rest of the day, but it wasn't so uncommon as to be hugely noteworthy. Still, what had happened between these two that Hank would have even guessed at such a thing!?
A hand came up, gesturing in the classic 'one moment' before he said flatly, "...what. happened?" What had Aurus told? Why was this even being discussed between those two at all!?
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Actual ambient dialog from the game in here
(ROFL)
:D
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GAG TAG
LMAO I woke up to this in my inbox first thing
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Cattlepult: a real GW2 thing...into which you must climb and get shot out of. No lie.
I LOVE IT.
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