| abstract
| - Early afternoon sees Harry's nearly empty and its staff still engaged in the dreary task of cleanup. Post-lunch, and post-rush; the remnants of meals and littered tables give the pub a disreputable air, alleviated little by the lazy progress of busboys and waiters. Into this darkened, air-conditioned sanctuary rolls Charles Xavier, dapper in his inevitable suit -- pale grey and tied with blue, appropriate to the season -- and touched with springtime color. Harry lifts his head from a desultory cleanup of the bar, expression warming in a cautious welcome. One meaty thumb jerks towards the back room, mutely inviting. Privacy. Xavier inclines his head. "Thank you, Harry." Magneto is somewhat less with the dapper and more with the snazz - Charles' light grey and spring hues in direct contrast with the near black of his own suit. Highlights skimming over broad shoulders as he steps in out of the afternoon sun suggest a base color somewhere north of wine and south of blood. A powerful red. Not at all suitable for the season. Several steps behind Charles, Erik does not particularly seem to care. Scruffy head still lifted to the door, Harry is not as pleased to see Erik as he was Charles. Even cautious warmth fades into cooler cynicism - his general lack of a greeting acknowledged with a glance. And then, onward, invitation assumed where it isn't granted. There is no need to place orders, at least for Xavier: monarch-like, he assumes his whims and tastes known, and passes beyond the bar towards the indicated sanctuary. Seclusion, with all its attendant safety and dangers. Conversation is reined and hobbled until that haven is reached, an open door leading to a dining hall better suited for dozens than for two. Charles's head gleams under the brighter lights of the room. "It is rather early in the day for whiskey," he observes, paused beyond the threshold to survey this new scene. "But then, I have heard some rumors you are engaging in more modern hobbies, of late." Far from gleaming, Erik does not hesitate to carry on past the paused wheelchair - the dull dance of light off the faintest of metallic sheens to the fabric of his suit hardly registering as competition when set against the beacon of hope that is the peak of Charles' polished skull. Erik's own crown is looking a little dull, in the meanwhile - and for all the effort put into his clothing, he apparently did not see fit to shave - a layer of grizzled stubble joining forces with the dark hollows at his eyes and cheeks to provide an indication of how he has feeling where he offers none. He pulls out a chair for himself at the head of the table and takes a seat, politely ignorant of Charles' nattering. The wheelchair, overtaken by Erik, curves its way into the harbor of the same table, leaving wood between them; like Switzerland, if lacking that country's assets. Charles curls his hands around the ends of his seat's arms, strong face grave. Well-fed, well-dressed, well-groomed: he embodies privilege and civilization. Eyes shadowed by their own deep set gleam in awareness of the picture he presents. The door thumps open even wider, pumped back by Harry's long-armed push in. Service with a smile. That is to say -- service, at any rate. The expression lost with recognition of Erik has settled into a more cautious deadpan. A tray balances bottles and glasses: whiskey for the one man; scotch for the other. And in between, a little bowl of mixed nuts. Care is taken in settling bruised ribs and spine against the hard wood of the chair back, while Harry's progress is studiously and very nearly imperiously ignored. Erik has already reached for and retrieved a fork from a place setting across the table - abandoned at some earlier event. It is this that he chooses to occupy himself with now, posture remaining as rigid and proper as it is likely to get. The current difference measured out between Charles' health and his own is registered in the hollow of his mind, and brushed aside. Delicate courtesy marks, measures, then mutes the telepathic contact -- and in any case, more important things are afoot. Harry doles out whiskey and scotch with a practiced hand, one for each, plants the bottles on the table, the nuts between them, and tromps out. The closing of the door is an exaggerated affair, meticulously locked from the inside and drawn shut. Silence follows his heavy tread. Xavier eyes a folded napkin. He has gravitas, and refuses to fidget. Magneto has gravitas as well. He has so much gravitas, in fact, that he can sit and pretend to be perfectly normal and proper whilst he is prodding a fork prong down into an uneven crack in the table surface - cool gaze flicked down to study the utensil's gradual downward progress. His left hand closes around the napkin before him, but does not yet pull it neatly into his lap. His right remains curled around the fork. A frown hints at the other man's disapproval, darker gaze touching on the foreign hand over the napkin. Xavier's napkin, claimed by glance if not by proximity. A reproachful look marks the fork, already taken and soiled by Erik's idle play, and Charles settles his hands more securely in his lap. Long fingers lace, shaping a latticed basket. Empty. Snap. Erik's hand is redirected a little aside as the prong in torn away from the rest of the fork. It remains standing, proud and defiant, lodged halfway down into that crack. Fist turned over so that the amputee fork can be examined more closely, Erik scowls faintly down at it. Cheap metal. He broke it. Reproach deepens, focused under an increasing frown that knits the high forehead and seams it with reproof. Xavier stares at the prong. Then, for variety's sake, he stares at Erik looking at the fork. Master of Magnetism. Hah. Someone prone to accepting defeat would say that the fork has lost a prong. Erik, on the other hand, recognizes that there are three viable prongs remaining, though the structural integrity of those that are left may be in serious question. This does not stop him from reaching to poke another prong down into the crack after a moment's careful and tired consideration - left hand pushing past the napkin to reach blindly for his glass. It is Charles who speaks first and at last, unsurprisingly, though admonition mingles equally with an aloof amusement in the cultured accent. "If you simply must break Harry's forks," he says, "you might at least spare the table. Physics aside, practicality suggests we'll need it to hold up the peanuts. And ... cashews, I believe they are." Irrationally, and also unsurprisingly, when Charles speaks first, Erik registers the broken silence as a victory for which the fork has paid with limb, if not life. He releases his grip and abandons it to stand of its own apparent free will, decidely upright with a pair of prongs still imbedded deep in the woodgrain. Magneto ignores it, and looks up - left hand securing itself around his glass at last. He cannot help but allow for a very, very small half-smile. "I'm not hungry anyway." "Really, Erik," Charles says, and the words are rich with familiar exasperation. So might a mother chide her rebellious son. Xavier's own scribe's fingers fold around his glass, his scotch glowing in stripes of amber sunlight between paler, earthier fingers. "If that doesn't move you, then at least consider the drinks." Lacking the energy necessary to maintain itself, it doesn't take more than a moment or two for Erik's smile to fade back into more serious distraction as the glass in his grip is tilted and examined, much like the fork. "You're right. Emaciated as your bank account is, I would hate to pressure it past the breaking point with such petty waste." The Master of Xavier House corrects his companion over the steeple of fingers and ice-drowning alcohol. "We do strive for a certain amount of environmental awareness, from time to time. The legacy of one generation to the next, they say." Charles's mouth quirks, a match to the ironic warmth of his baritone. "Eat some peanuts. It's possible you need the protein." "You are not," Erik reminds, cold blue eyes lifting starkly away from whiskey to settle upon Xavier's, "my father. Or anyone else's, for that matter. Nor are you my physician, or my caretaker. The great legacy of 'Xavier' will end when you do." There are two points being made here, and even in the process of making them, exhaustion wars to muddle his glare aside. The thoughts go on in silence, incomplete. Erik sips his whiskey. "You may eat the cashews instead, if you feel so strongly about the matter," Charles says mildly, unmoved by the prediction -- or accusation, his shoulders and spine molded to the wheelchair's back. Eyes drop to inspect the small bowl of nuts, changeable hazel claiming some hint of the tie's patterned blue. "Someone must tend to your health, as it seems none of yours are overly concerned." A number of replies are considered and stricken neatly away. This takes time. Time in which nothing is said. Ice clinks, and Erik takes another slow sip - savoring the warmth burning down into his torso, if not the taste. Eventually, honesty is settled upon. "Things are not going well, Charles." "No." Honesty meets honesty and, rare still, succinctness. Charles's gaze sweeps up. Laughter lines deepen at the corners of eyes: not in laughter. He toys with his drink, fingerpads made plastic and quixotic through the thick angles of glass. "I can't imagine that they are." Something very much along the lines of relief rattles out into a slow exhalation at truth spoken, and accepted in turn. But that single admission is where free thought meets a blunt end, short of accusation. Short of solutions. He looks down to refill his glass in relative quiet. Solutions -- solutions for /Magneto/ -- are not Charles's department. He finds his in scotch for the moment, a long draught that leaves ice cubes desolate and clinking against the wall of lip. Like a gravid twin to the gaunt Erik, he also turns his attention to refilling. He is less practiced than Harry; the flow of liquid warbles, trilling across the glass's mouth before its flow steadies. "How is Raven?" he asks. Magneto is slow in answering, as he has been since he arrived - cool glass rested up against a sunken cheek before it pushes up against the ridge of his brow. "Unwell," is the word he decides upon eventually, eyes closing as the chill of his drink begins to sink in through his skull. "Human, for all intensive purposes." "I imagine that does enchanting things to her mood," Charles remarks. He replaces the bottle with a hand before splaying his fingers across his glass, long digits spidered in angled symmetry over alcohol. Blocked shoulders ease, shifting to adjust his seat in the chair, and his gaze draws pensively across his companion, weighing again that tired visage. "Knowing Mystique, I imagine that means charming things for you, as well." The space between his brows tensing briefly into a knit, out of a vacuum, the fair complexion, the swastika banded arm - a mere flash of an image sears against the dark screen of his closed eyes. Like a flash of lightening, it leaves a negative of itself behind, and Erik's eyes roll wearily back open to be rid of it. "Someone is hunting us, Charles. Something. A telepath." Charles's expression flickers, blinking swiftly across the afterimages traced not in the impressionable ink of eyes, but in the indelible print of mind. "Hunting you?" he puzzles, only to answer himself on the elegant flex of habitual power. "Hunting the Brotherhood. What leads you to this conclusion?" "I was attacked, shortly after the...incident with Raven. I fear that I might have suffered similarly, had the situation not erupted into something more volatile." Fear and frustration mingle deep beneath the surface, and spell failure. Again, images flicker. Memories, chaotic and in no particular order - painted in magnetic perception, rather than any of the five proper senses. "If Raven cannot recover from this..." "I have never found Raven's mutation the most compelling component of her nature," Xavier murmurs, a courteous niggle quizzing at the peripheries of Magneto's mind, while mental fingers gather the rattle of surface thoughts onto his spindle. "You live a violent life, Erik. Is it possible that what you consider a conspiracy -- or hunt, if you will -- is mere coincidence?" "Jason has also been attacked. Telepathically. His control was all but eliminated." Erik doesn't quite mutter, right eye easing closed again in lazy comfort, while his glass continues to cool the same temple. "Emma Frost, seeking revenge. Tempted as I am to make a connection there, the mechanism appears to be entirely different. Jason still retains the use of his mutation. Raven..." He doesn't shrug, but a pair of fingers lift away from the side of his glass. "This is not idle paranoia. Nor is it any better to think that we may be facing ruthless telepaths at every corner." Erik's memories of this select event, encoded as they are, are difficult to translate, beyond a feeling that is well past inexplicable for someone who has never experienced it. Then again, Charles probably has. "Your children seem to be doing well." "Some better than others," Charles answers absent-mindedly, releasing the glass to drum fingertips across the table. The echo of their percussion shivers in hollow ripples across the sturdy table. "We have had some ... difficulties with some of the children from the safehouse. As is only inevitable, perhaps. --Jason Wyngard without control is not a prospect I can contemplate with pleasure, I admit." "A memory thief," Erik recalls without difficulty, whiskey finally lowered so that he can sip from it, now that the initial glass has worked its warm way into his system. "Accompanied by the usual youthful lack of faith. Young people." The fork, for all Charles' drumming, remains stiff and upright, where Erik has worked his way into a forward slouch. The thrumming fingers pause, flattening to frame the base of the scotch glass. Charles's mouth firms, a set slash that digs deeper into the sweep of lines around the jaw. "We have had our own problems with memory thieving, of late," he admits, the rich voice dipping into the hinterlands of remembered displeasure. "However, I assure you; if it is the young woman I am thinking of, there is no motive behind it, beyond a child's selfishness and a dangerous indifference to consequences." "She hasn't yet worked her way to me. It's simply--" A weak gesture with his glass indicates nothing at all, "Ms. Villeneuve said more than she intended, I'm sure. They have a tendency to babble incoherently, when they believe they are in grave danger. Or whatever." The last is followed by a long swallow of alcohol. 'Whatever' indeed. "Curious, how often you seem to inspire that emotion in people," Charles observes, focus skewing wryly back to Erik. Amusement remembers itself again, relaxing the stern mien, and he claims his glass -- only to pause with it at his lips, eyes made stolen amber above. "Do you suspect Emma of coordinating attacks against your people, then?" Another long swallow, and Magneto is well on his way to needing another refill. He reaches for the bottle, just in case, having nothing better to do with his hands at the moment. "I don't know. I really don't, old friend. It could be anything." Paranoia lilts into the edge of his voice, washing less subtly through his glare when it flickers upward. "I am trying to help these people. I fight for them." Xavier's glass is replaced with care on the table, fitted to the ring left behind on its coaster. "This is an old argument," he notes, planting an elbow on the ledge to pillar his temple on his fingers. At his throat, the tight knot of tie pulls the collar awry, and is pulled in turn by an idle finger. Charles lets his hair down. So to speak. "We will neither of us satisfy the other through words, Erik. Let us, for the space of an afternoon at least, think of those we lead rather than the causes we espouse." "Raven and I are hardly speaking. She is, as I have said, a human. One of them, Charles. Useless. She may never regain the willful use of her mutation. I may have to kill her myself, if there is no change." Again, there's that frustration, with himself and with the world, lancing dangerously close to a bulge of molten fury lurking deadly and suppressed just beneath the surface. "Jason cannot control himself, nor can he be trusted." THUMP. Erik blocks a fist down against the table, and the glasses and peanuts perched atop it jolt accordingly. "I am losing a war that has not yet really begun, and my own people are attempting to kill me." "Loss of control hardly changes her genetic makeup," Charles says with a leavening of skepticism through the swift reply. Eyes shadow their thoughtful, speculative expression under the twitch of brows, pressed low over a blink. "Nor do I recall that her genetic state prevented her from attempting to harm you even when she /did/ have control. Internecine battle, Erik. It is possible that mutants are their own worst enemies." "We are what we are, Charles. Raven is a metamorph without the ability to morph, and while she as a woman may not be defined by that genetic determination, her life has certainly been built up upon it. Her personality. Her being, and her beliefs. I will not allow her to become perverted by...I will not allow for anything to change that. She would despise me if I did. The real Raven." His bruised fist curled into his opposite hand, Erik knits his brows helplessly down at the table. "Everyone is dead or dying. You have no comprehension." The hand that settles across the yawn of glass bears the marks of age and wear, liver spots soiling the fine tapestry of veins and bones under thinning skin. "We are not defined solely by our powers, old friend," Charles says, gaze turned down to that mortal flesh. "She may have been shaped by them, to be sure -- but we are not static beings, to be limited by our definitions of ourselves. Give it time. Give /her/ time." "No. But we are the sum of our experiences. How long should one wait before coming to terms with the potentially inevitable? How long should the illusion of hope be maintained? No good has ever come of turning a blind eye to reality. I fear you shall learn that soon enough, if it takes you until the very moment they reach to burn that blasted number into your forehead." Erik's voice begins to rise towards anger, finally, but with a ring of defiance that stays violent action just yet. He seems to realize what he's doing after a few seconds of silence, and drops his gaze again. Down to his glass, and the hand he has caged over it. Squared and strong. And marked by years past as much or more than Charles'. "I am trying." Eyes, tightening through the challenge of that crescendoing, strident voice, ease at the reprieve of silence. Tight-curled shields unfold and open with wary care, loosing a feather's touch to taste the hum of emotion behind the new restraint. "I know," Charles says: acknowledgment without sympathy. His mouth crooks anew. "And I am trying, though you may not like the means. Each in our own ways -- one of us will find a new future for our own. There is room in my future world for yours, Erik. Is there room in yours for mine?" "In the end, you are my brothers, and I do not harm mutants that have sense enough to stay out of my way." Most of the time, echoes blandly in the back of his mind. He tilts the bottle aside and refills his glass with a level of expertise that falls somewhere between that of Charles, and that of Harry. He doesn't spill, anyway, a mild sniff gruffed to himself in delayed reconsideration of an earlier dispute, over protein. "Realistically, however, I sincerely doubt either of us has any reason to discuss success as if it may actually be reached." "There are times when I suspect reality may be vastly overrated," Charles says dryly, taking up his drink again. "Though perhaps your uncontrolled illusionist has given you greater enthusiasm for it of late. It may not be achievable in our generation, but we will at least seize a foothold for the next one." Another long, quite probably unnecessary draw is taken of whiskey. The ice is melting - hardly rattling, anymore. "Your blind optimism makes me nauseous, Charles. I thought you should know, in the event that I've failed to mention it before." Xavier's mouth curls -- towards a smirk, forsooth, a reflection of the younger man decades gone. "Small puppies and children," he reminds Lensherr, tipping back the last of his drink before reaching for another refill. The bottle balances, a broken bridge under Charles's arched brow. "Or was it kittens? I'm afraid I've forgotten. Something small and helpless, at any rate. And where are you in this portrayal of all things bright and beautiful?" "Dead, I'm sure." Dreary speculation muttered over the rim of his glass, Erik's glare flickers bleak and dry after it. Then down again, for another slow sip. "Perhaps serving a life sentence, if I'm supposed to be optimistic. I'm not entirely certain of what you're talking about." "No," Charles decides with a regretful twist to his rounded accent. "It's hardly surprising." His arm stretches, scraping the half-filled glass on its coaster across the plane of the table. Its cracks snag on the cardboard: bump, bump, bump. "You wage war against an enemy that doesn't exist, Erik. What use is an army that has no battlefield?" "None. This government moves slowly." Bump, bump, bump. Grey-blue slides back into weary focus after the coaster. "Too slowly. I feel as though I am fighting the advancement of an ice age, the weight of its fury falling so slowly upon the world that it is nearly impossible to perceive, for those who haven't seen the signs before." Having eased into a full slouch over the table, the great Magneto thumps back into his chair, bruised ribs numbed so that he doesn't feel the need to wince for several seconds. "I cannot do nothing. We must be ready, in the event that someone sees fit to act..." "Weeks of waiting." The scotch skirls in the glass, ice cubes clinking in the miniature charybdis of rotation. Charles sinks back in his own seat; even in repose, it is not slouch but lean, straight-backed and even-shouldered in the loosened knit of his suit. "Perhaps months, if not more. A long time for an army to wait and be ready. You could help people, with your powers. A war for hearts and minds." Mocking paraphrase; sober intent. Half-empty glass taken back with him, Erik is definitely slouching - broad shoulders kept rigid only by the unyielding seams of a suit jacket that is clearly supported by more than simple fabric, now that his own shape conflicts with its stiff construction. "Years. Decades." He sips, and his eyes roll closed once again. "I have raised a camp of warriors and valkyries. There is no place for them in this world, no more than there is one for me. I am Magneto." Silver splits across the deep-set eyes, a reflection of the hall's white-tipped lights. "You have made them," Charles says in his burgandy-dark voice. "Warriors and valkyries. Mystique, Toad, Ellen Dramstadt-- what will you do with them?" "I'm sure I will think of something," Erik says in a fashion that is not at all comforting - betrayed in a flash of black leather that would be meaningless if not for the undercurrent of malice that drags it past. "Humans are less patient than even I am. Something will happen. There will be a spark. A shot fired into an unarmed crowd. /Something/." Eyes swing to, focusing sharply: human eyes, mutant eyes. The eyes of the mind study that afterglow of malevolence, tracking it back to leather. Xavier wraps mental fingers around the memory, feeling its texture in his own captured interest; aloud, a warning note bridles under quiet musing. "Nothing is inevitable, Erik. Whatever you are planning, be careful. I and mine will always be there." Cool and stiff. Leather is leather. But the design is familiar, as are the hands that flex over the padding. Testing. Magneto's. Erik's. It's a recent memory - still clear, still marked distinctly by those flickers of superhuman perception. The box lid is tossed aside, and so is Erik's attention, as he downs the rest of the glass, unaware of any ongoing exploration. "Of course. Professor Charles Xavier and his hammer of righteousness." Familiar. Too familiar. But juxtaposed with Erik Lensherr -- with /Magneto/ -- confounding. Charles touches his mouth to his glass once more, wetting his lips if not his throat. The hooded eyes are hard and speculative over the thick silicon curve. "A mighty hammer," he says with abstracted irony. "I wield it with great mastery. Well enough to foil disaster, at any rate. Our time will come eventually, Erik. You were always lacking patience." Magneto chuckles, low and dry - genuinely, if darkly amused at Charles' expense, with a pinch of smug superiority at his own clandestine wit. Which is, perhaps, less clandestine than he would like to think. His empty glass lowered to his chest, he tilts his head back over the brace of the chair at his shoulders, eyes still closed. "I've always thought you would be far more daunting if you skipped over the violence and simply threatened to crush people with the distended mass of your hypocrisy." "I am not a violent man," Charles tells the bottles, primly. The sweeping voice expands then, released from the niggardly clench of propriety to add in wry admission, "I am, as you used to be, a pragmatist. You accuse me of idealism. How is that any different than you? I act -- /we/ act -- according to our natures and our means. I see no success clenched in the iron fist of Magneto." "I have scars that say otherwise, old friend." Erik rolls his head back forward, chin resting briefly against his chest with eyes open before he leans forward to reach once more for the whiskey bottle, one brow lifted all the while. "I am not the only man here who has been training warriors. They act upon your orders. Every time one of your overeager recruits applies a force beam to the back of my head, you may as well be standing over me with a hammer to deliver the blow yourself." Whiskey sloshes pleasantly from bottle to iceless glass, and this time, Erik does spill a little. "Excuse me. /Sitting/ over me. You are no more successful than I am." There is a small pause, a silence while Charles swallows a chuckle and shares it, instead, through the alcohol-loosened tangle of mind. Minds. "We count our victories in different ways," he manages at last, humor still rich and ripe in his voice. "I count the protection of the safehouse children as one. They will be trained to use their powers, and have opportunities they might never have known, without us." << Without both of us. >> A snort is Erik's somewhat less than sincere answer to that, the scattered image of Xavier (hammer and all) that he manages to produce scattered and unnatural. And though his humor threatens to cool back to rigid formality at the chuckle in his head, he no longer has the willpower to enforce his own irritation, and it fades quickly. "It isn't funny, Charles. You...you take a few direct blows to the head, and see if you feel like laughing then. /You/ have never been thrown through a window. You sit in your home in that damnable machine and move your beloved children about like chess pieces." << I would have managed it on my own. >> Amusement glitters at the last declaration, and imagery is paid for in kind: safehouse children clinging to Magneto's cape, mouths agape like hungry chicks. "I have less to shield my skull with than you do, old friend," Charles observes, running a rueful hand across his naked scalp. "Your helmet serves as better protection than you deserve. The enmity my X-Men direct towards you is a thing you earned. It was not of /my/ teaching." "By that logic, every action I have taken against humanity has been based upon enmity they earned themselves. Generations past and present." Erik blinks at the image provided, tired eyes reacting to images they are not actually seeing. His glass is lifted to the thin line of his mouth - sipped. Swallowed. Tilted away. "I can hardly be held accountable for your hair falling out. Perhaps you should have masturbated less as a young man." "Hair /growth/, Erik." Charles spins exasperation between them, the forestalled humor bleeding through emphasis. His hands lift, palms out to show their bare and hairless planes. "I also continue to have perfect vision, no matter how devoutly you rail against what you would call blindness. And your hostility towards a population is hardly the same as my students' against a single man." "Growth?" echoes Erik, brows lifted. He does not seem to have anticipated this correction, and takes a moment to consider it. The matter receives far too much of his attention before he pushes it into the back of his mind to stew, which is probably the worst thing possible for it. This way, he can eye Charles when he goes back to nursing his drink and still give the younger man most of his clouded attention. "I fail to see how it is different. So long as we keep math out of the equation," he says very seriously. Then there is a pause, followed by a chuckle. Math. Equation. "I was insulting you a moment ago. What happened?" "I diverted you with my formidable wit," Charles says kindly. "Have another drink." The splash of scotch is more disciplined than the last, more /practiced/, though the ice cubes are now anorexic slivers of their former geometric greatness. "You should have stayed at the house, Erik. You would have learned a great deal from the students, as a teacher there." "About what? Inappropriate hair growth?" Another snort, and Erik does take another sip, as instructed. "I care too much, Charles. I am too attached." Too what or who, exactly, is not specified in word or thought. He sets his glass down on the table and sighs. "I have wit. I created a pun. About math." Charles looks pained. "Yes," he allows. "You did." He lapses into silence, gaze lost behind the shimmer of his drink. They will not speak of it again. On its far end, he adds more soberly, "Passion has always been one of your greatest strengths, Erik. There are few of us left from those days, who remember things as we do. You, Moira, Raven--" Magneto is silent as well - the quiet giving him time to withdraw against the return of gravity to their conversation. "And empathy yours. With self-righteousness serving as a sort of secondary mutation." Slowly, he blinks, and Charles slides decidely out of focus. The thought crosses his mind that he should have eaten. Today. Yesterday evening. There was toast. He catches that thought. How not? "Erik." Exasperation is, for a change, held somewhat in abeyance. Charles says it gently enough, as one might speak to a skittish puppy or a particularly retarded chi-- or Forge. "Eat the peanuts." "No." Magneto is Magneto, and if he does not want peanuts, then he is not going to eat peanuts. This much is certain, though very little else is, at the moment. "I am on a hunger strike. Against my own life." "Then eat a cashew." Patience sinks like a stone through the other man's expression: long-suffering, martyred, self-deprecating. "Shall I order you a sandwich? Would you like a sandwich?" For all that Erik is having a difficult time with lining up his glare, he manages to give Charles a look that vaguely suggests that he's going to be wearing the peanut bowl around his neck like a salty bowtie if he doesn't back off. Xavier folds his hands in his lap and arranges his face to look innocent. Immaculate. Ineffable. A few seconds later, the door opens. Harry stumps in, bearing a plate that bears a sandwich. He eyes Erik. "Turkey," the bartender announces. "And cheese. And a pickle." Magneto jolts on a sluggish delay at Harry's entry, the stark blue of his eyes rounded and innocent and rather drunk as he leans away from the bartender. He seems to have forgotten about the fork stuck into the table in front of him, because he mutters something about Charles being utterly juvenile as the plate is set down on the corner of the table. As promised: a large hoagie sandwich, stacked high with assorted dressings in which turkey and cheese play a prominent part. The pickle rolls fat and jolly around the plate, bumping its nobbly self coyly against the fleshy white thighs of bread. "Thank you, Harry," Charles says. The bartender mumbles and stomps out. Once more the door closes. Xavier regards Erik benignly and does not tell him to eat his sandwich. Magneto is not yet so far gone that his mind is inclined to interpret his plate in a similar fashion. "Bastard," Erik decides finally, hands bracing flat over the table so that he can try to push himself up onto his feet. "You're drunk." "Hrnff," parries Erik elegantly, his grip on the table edge bleaching his knuckles white once he's managed to get up onto his feet. Charles watches Erik with grave-eyed interest. "You might as well take it with you." One of those eloquent, commanding hands gestures at the plate and its cheerful spread. Irony twinges in the dry baritone. "Emaciated as your bank accounts are, you shouldn't pressure them to the breaking point by refusing free food." First and foremost, Magneto is annoyed that Charles is still talking to him. The fact that he is doing it in a manner that is clear and rational merely makes it all the more irritating. He considers knocking the entire table over, and then considers that it's the only thing currently keeping him upright. He considers that his palms are smooth, so far as he knows, and that now is not the best of times to examine them just in case. He considers many things, and actually /does/ very little. Xavier's mouth does not twitch. (Precisely.) The smile lines at the corners of his eyes do not deepen. (Exactly.) He reclaims his scotch, hanging it by the fingertips over the padded arm of his chair. Hazel eyes consider Erik, darkened by the press of brows. What next, old enebriated malnutritioned friend? Magneto considers hijacking Charles' wheelchair. Briefly, granted. Not so much for the sake of Charles' dignity than for his own is the idea dismissed, along with a dozen others. And slowly, carefully, he reseats himself, and leans forward enough to rest his chin upon arms folded over the table before him. He will dry out here. For now. Charles ponders his drink, lifts his eyebrows in a mimicry of a shrug, and sips. Two old men, getting drunk and eating sandwiches in the back of Harry's Bar. What could be more innocuous? "Will you be eating that pickle?" he asks. Magneto's eyes roll slowly closed, and he relaxes, really, for the first time in a long time, the poke of shoulderblades at his back slumping. Tired old lion, in dire need of a nap. << No. >> He will have a cramp when he wakes up. Xavier's eyes go distant. Somewhere in the pub, Harry pauses, then shakes his head in an abrupt spasm of irritation. Don't be stupid. He runs a bar, not a bed and breakfast. There are no blankets under the bar. Charles purses his lips and returns to his scotch, one tipsy old telepath guarding a terrorist's sleep. It is a very juicy pickle. He eyes it and sighs.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)