| abstract
| - Jean's home is not her own. Swarmed by investigators forensic and journalistic alike, full of traumatized children she has no answers for, and with the Great Hall still stinking of blood, fear and cordite, the mansion Xavier built is no fit place for anyone. Certainly no fit place for Nate, who screamed in terror at being taken into the house, and was thusly removed. A drive initially aimless turned attentive when an idea caught hold, and thus it is that Jean arrives at Lennox Hill Hospital far outside of visiting hours, with eyes sunken in a drawn face, and a listless toddler drooping in her arms. The sidewalk cracked beneath her feet, she turns dull attention to not tripping, unawares of anyone else out in the night. Deliberate and measured, long strides fall into a military pace at Jean's back, and then at her right shoulder as a grim-faced and rigid figure matches her step for step. The black of his overcoat furling wide around the backs of his knees, he says nothing, and does not glance aside to seek her gaze - his telepathic presence as inscrutible as the hard set of his jaw. Jean turns a look on Magneto aged more appropriately to his years than her own, staring slow and long and eventually giving him nothing more than a nod of acknowledgement before she continues walking, turning a corner and into the pool of light streaming from one of the hospital entrances. Nate is jostled as she reaches for the key card granted her with her consultation privileges, parting with an indecipherable noise and watching Magneto with wary solemnity at a faint flicker of tension from his mother's mind. "He's in overnight for observation." A slight dip of Magneto's chin beneath the high flip of his collar is the only indication that he's heard and understood - cold eyes flicking idly up into the alien stretch of the hospital's interior before them. A sick-sounding fizzle sounds from the first security camera. Nate twitches at the sounds of destruction, a querulous "Mommy...?" rising from him as he tenses against her shoulder and watches Magneto all the more cautiously still. The mind of a three year old doesn't particularly recall an old man who once let him play telekinetic games against his father's wishes. Jean's answer is a soothing shushing noise, and a few choice sentences considered and abandoned with lips parted and a jaw working fretfully. She keys open the door, and holds it with two fingertips to let Magneto follow her in. It is, perhaps, enough. "It's all right, Nate." The quiet rumble of his voice not quite reassuring, if far from threatening, Erik looks sidelong to the boy without breaking step until he must pause to allow Jean through the door first. He reaches to take the weight of the door, and then steps after her in silence. Jean laughs at that statement, a short, flat bark just a little close to the edge. "Oh yes," she agrees, with an uneven slide to her tone. "Everything's -peachy-." Confused, Nate questions "Mommy... izzit okay?" in a tone more worried than before. He's cuddled for his pains, Jean burying her face in freshly-washed little boy hair in an attempt to settle herself, before she's reminded of just why it's so freshly washed. (Nate, safe at Harry's Bar with the other evacuees, but still with Jones' blood dried in sticky sprays across face and hands and hair. Safe, but terrified into silence and unnatural stillness. A lump rises in her throat, a nod across the hours to a brief collapse into tears.) "Peachy," Jean repeats, tone still odd. A duty nurse looks up, looks to Dr. Grey, and then looks back down to her Solitaire game, not bothering to identify her companions for reasons unknown but very easy to speculate on. A slow exhalation borders upon a sigh, but Erik says nothing further - focusing his attention evenly upon the path ahead. There is another fizzle, accompanied by a sparking flicker. The duty nurse is ignored. It's a silent trip to the elevators, broken only by another flinch and a diffident "No..." from Nate as another camera dies, muffled and buried in Jean's shoulder. The doors roll open. Jean hits a button for the seventh floor, and private rooms. In the quiet and relative privacy, Jean stares fixedly at the wall before her. "He'll probably be pleased to see you." Magneto's turn from the back wall to the arrangement of buttons along the side of the front is a slow and somewhat reluctant acknowledgement of the fact that firm acknowledgement of conversation is inevitable in such a confined space. He watches the metal of the wall rather than Jean. He doesn't blink, and he certainly does not smile. Nor does he make any effort to smooth out the wind-ruffled visage staring back at him out of the polished steel ahead. "I suspect otherwise." "Oh?" The metal wall is feeling quite pleased with the attention its getting. Normally, the only love it gets is when medical residents think that Gray's Anatomy is an accurate representation of resident sex lives. This happens once or twice a decade. Jean stares at it some more. Erik swallows, and his jaw resets itself as he resettles his weight evenly between the black of his boots. Ding. His eyes finally flicker over onto Jean as the doors slide gracefully apart. "Ladies first." Carried, Nate is the first one out the door. There's a brief protest of "M'not a girl..." that trails off into careful observation of his surrounings as Jean moves far less gracefully than the doors, out into the hallway. Three year olds are heavy things, and Jean is slight, but Nate persists in clinging. "He's in the room at the end of the hall. Worst lines of fire from other buildings--" Jean bites off the tactical considerations midway and mid phrase. Fzzzttt. "I suppose we had better close the blinds." This delivered with quiet cynicism, Magneto is quick to fall back into step at her side. Impossible to read, even as their destination draws near. Jean is making no efforts to do so, mind furled and shuttered as much to keep her own thoughts in as the rest of the world out. She makes no efforts to read body language either. Nate twitches a third time, but this time doesn't protest aloud. So far The Man has not attempted to hurt anything but camera-things. A short walk to the end of the hall, a turn of a doorhandle, and Jean peeks her head around and into the private room with a quiet "Charles... are you awake?" The room is dimly lit; the bed is shielded by a curtain. "Like Schroedinger's unfortunate cat," says a wan, slurred voice from behind it, deeper than its usual. "I am quite undecided." Stark blue eyes register the diffusion between aching flourescent coverage and its relative absence in the border that is visible to him between hallway and private quarters. The slur is noted as well. Out of sight against the outside wall, Magneto looks to Jean. "Tranquilizer," Jean murmurs, medically precise. For the first time, Nate wriggles to get down, and is permitted this, toddling swiftly to The Professor's bedside to peer up at him with concentrated worry on the small upturned face, as Jean remains in the hall and fills Magneto in the rest of the way. "At his age, it takes longer to clear the system, and from what I hear, they were using nasty stuff." With that, she says no more, following her son with a quickening in her steps and a heartfelt "Charles," as she reaches the bed. "I'm so sorry." "I am familiar with tranquilizers and their after effects." Somewhat colder than before, Erik watches Jean vanish into the room, and there is a distinct pause while he stares hard at the door frame before he moves slowly to follow. No eye contact is sought out - he turns to close the door behind himself. The figure in the bed takes less room than it should, diminished in stature and strength. Weak lights gleam on the occupant's skull, drawing merciless shadows and bruises across the drawn features. Every experience, every tragedy, every mortal pain shows revealed on the quiet face, the weight of years sagging the skin away from the bone. Tubes and leads bind him to an IV bag and a monitor. The most private information about his body blinks in cheerful colors on the screen: his heart rate (normal); his blood pressure (low); his respiration and SpO2 (acceptable). The bald head turns, slowly, dwarfed by the pillow. The sunken eyes are dull. "Nate," Charles says thickly. "Jean. Hello. How nice to see you. Is that Scott?" "Hardly." "Oh," says Charles, and his eyelids flutter, gaze drifting to the ceiling. "It's Erik. Have you brought me flowers?" Jean lets that unmistakeable voice speak for itself, stiffening in the spine and keeping further apologies silent and to herself. Leaving Nate to seek out one of Xavier's hands with a questing, querulous one of his own, she rises and turns and goes to fuss over monitors and measurements. Instinctive venom is swallowed on the very edge of being expelled, and Erik paces from the door to the blinds - already closed - before he is out of distractions, and so forced to move deliberately for the bedside behind the young Nate Summers. The line of his gaze narrows into an uneasy squint upon unfamiliar and uncomfortable weakness, and he turns his head enough to focus his attention after Jean instead. "You don't like them." A long finger pats amiably at Nate's smaller, pudgier digits, the palm turning upward to accept that seeking grasp. Charles's mouth curves, turning faintly towards a smile. "Ah, well. It's the thought that counts. You look quite peevish. I assure you, I am not as sick as I appear. This is purely for the media." And yet the shadows do not disappear, nor the lassitude of illness. "Jean will tell you," he adds, quaintly optimistic. "Of course, Charles," Jean agrees, trying for dry humour and not -quite- making it. Nate scrabbles insistantly, trying to climb up on the bed. He is, alas, short. Also, there are side bars. "If you were -really- having a rough revocery, Moira would be here terrorizing the staff." Moira is, of course, currently halfway over the Atlantic to do just that. Jean keep her counsel. Rather than stooping to offer his assistance to the scrabbling efforts of the boy next to him, Erik remains stiff and upright. He does, at least, look back down to Charles. He does not seem to be convinced. At all. "I suppose an 'I told you so,' would be entirely out of line." "It would," Jean cuts in, suddenly sharp and bristling. Charles's reply is slower in coming, born in the wake of his small smile's death. "You're a terrorist, Erik," he says, and through the fog of drugs, loses something of dryness to betray real grief. "I believe you have lost the moral high ground." Magneto's jaw tightens at Jean's interruption, tensing in wary expectation of further punishment. Even after it seems unlikely to come, it's several minutes before the muscles there and at the back of his neck begin to loosen. "I came to offer my assistance." Jean seems beyond vindictiveness for the moment, simply staring Magneto down for a long moment before she rounds the bed again, scoops up her son, and pulls up a chair equidistant between father figures former and current. Nate, normally brassy, independant and just slightly bratty as befits most young things of intelligence, does not protest. She bites down on, but doesn't quite stop the thought of << God, hasn't there been enough death? >> from escaping, muffled to a fellow sensitive's levels. Xavier winces a little -- "Ow," he says, stoic little soldier that he is -- and lifts a hand trailing IVs to shield his eyes. In stark contrast to what will soon be a spectacular bruise down one side of his face, a tinge of green suffuses his pallor. Patched shields fray; a spillover of nausea skitters across the mental firmament like water drops on a hot pan. "Assistance," he says dully. "That is kind of you, but I do not know if-- that is to say, I am uncertain what kind of--" Behold the master tactician. Not ignorant of Jean's eyes upon him, Erik glances briefly aside to track her movements before resigning himself to Charles' doomed quest for savoir-faire. "Resources, Charles. Apartments. Money. I am not," his brows knit somewhat for the first time, "entirely certain of the extent..." Haunted, hollow, Jean's eyes keep peering at Erik over Nate's head, green irises nearly black in the dim light. She flinches at the nausea from Charles, a mental litany of self-chastisment kept -firmly- behind her shields this time, but pushes on past it to ask a "How many steps, between you and them?" With half the school sleeping on various living room floors about Westchester County for the night, the reluctant ex-headmistress is not -immediately- dismissive of the offer. Something like relief is visible on Charles's face, but it does not, cannot last long: the chemicals and the weakness still dull the edge of emotion, much as they strain the habit of control. He is relieved. And then he is touched. Hazel eyes grow shiny. "That's rather brilliant of you, old man," he announces, threatening to wax maudlin in the speech patterns of his youth. "Did you hear, Jean? Hotel Magneto. You don't monogram your towels, do you? I do. That is, my staff does. I can't seem to make them stop--" "False identifaction and information for some. Others -- old friends, with no records, official or otherwise." Consistently finding Jean the easier of the two to look at, Erik opts to address her before he tilts the leonine shadow of his profile back down to Charles, cold eyes alert in their searching trace around the lines of the younger man's face. "...No." A quick look at Charles' monitors reveals no heavy painkillers in use. Jean's lips purse, and she intercedes in Charles' trip down memory lane with a quick "Nate, I think The Professor needs a hug." Nate clings in response to this, traumatized baby panda style, but a three year old is still portable enough to be carried bodily and set at the foot of Xavier's bed. Bereft of human contact, he curls into a little wide-eyed ball, legs drawn up and arms hugging himself. He rocks. He stares. Jean returns her attention to Magneto. "We have some students who can't go home for the holidays who may need a place not the mansion to stay," she admits, slow and wary. "But..." One lip is caught in her teeth and worried slightly. The line of Charles's mouth twists awry, the scrape of hoarse baritone cut off by the other man's sense. "I'm babbling," he says, stirring painfully to adjust for Nate's presence on the bed. A hand presses light warmth into the small body's back, urging him closer with a silent whisper of comfort. "I must think. I can't think. How secure would it be? The media will be watching, now that this has happened. They'll be burrowing like worms." "As I managed to evade detection while residing in Manhattan, I daresay they are secure enough. If the children cannot be trusted to be responsible, I might be convinced to provide supervision." Quietly logical, Erik eyes Nate, and shifts his weight from one stiff leg to the other. His left knee pops. Nate is easily lured, although his lower lip trembles at picking up ghosts of pain from the movements. He pats anxiously at Xavier's blanketed leg, an earnest, silent entreaty to feel better encoded in his gaze. Jean watches carefully as the two generations bracketing her meet and greet. "If it came to that... I think their parents and State Services would be happier if some of the, um, more current faculty were watching them. No offense." Charles opens his arm to Nate, promising the gentle, unquestioning love of a grandfather to the young empath. "Trust is not the issue. They are traumatized." The hold of that crooked mouth quivers a little; a backwash of numbed grief and guilt laps gently at the other minds, seeping through the opening made by his offer to the boy. "We lost Jones, Erik." "None taken." The interaction between man and child is taken in without evident reaction, but there is a haggard hint to the slight tilt of his brows when he looks to Jean. His little presence remains unremarkable. For all that he registers telepathically, he could be a hologram, or an empty space of tiled floor. "You did not misplace him. He was murdered." Nate basks in the reassurance, curling himself into a convenient crook of Xavier like a frightened puppy. He pats at the old man again, tiny fingers reaching up to touch gently to the nnascent bruising on that wise, wasted old face. "You gotted hurt," he reflects, quietly and troubled, before the mention of Jones brings a freeze and full-body trembles. Memories flash, thick and intense and confusing, and Jean swiftly rises to project what soothing empathics she can offer, wordless and drawn. "Kids shooting kids," she mutters, querulous and lost. "We saw on CNN... I wasn't -there-." Charles's arm wraps tightly around Nate, the hand trailing tubes to cradle the dark head close. Safety cups the boy in an empathic blanket. Difficult to say who is truly comforting whom. "Murdered," he says. The husky baritone wavers. His free hand lifts to cover his face, an imperfect shield; under its shadow, his jaw sets into a tight line, locking to deny more treachery. "I had prepared myself for the possibility of -- with things as they were between the Brotherhood and the X-Men," he says at last, strained. "But not them. Not the children." "Humans," says Erik, low tones imbuing that single word with far more feeling than it would be capable of carrying under any other circumstance. Perhaps fortunately, however, he leaves it there despite the flare of his nostrils and the distaste curling at the corners of his thinned mouth. The beginnings of a sneer. "Murder is a trait that crosses genetic lines." Perhaps fortunately, however, Jean leaves it there despite the pinched set of her lips and the alternating weariness and glower to her eyes. "It should never have happened. And Jones-- I always have my doubts about some of the students' survival instincts. Never Jones." "It should never have happened," Charles says wearily. He lowers his hand; the gaunt face, drawn, turns to question Jean before refocusing -- slowly, imperfectly -- on Erik. "Foolish of me not to expect it. But," he adds with a ghastly mimicry of his normal deadpan dryness, "I am the one in the hospital bed, so you cannot task me with it at the moment, old friend. For a change, I have the upper hand." "Rest assured, old friend, I am not foolish enough to imagine myself occupying moral territory more pristine than your own under any circumstances." This parched return similarly lacking in real emotion, Erik turns his head darkly to Jean as he takes a slow step back from the bed's metal railing. Charles's eyes glimmer sweetly from under lowering eyelids. "You have the sense of humor of a pop tart, Erik." "Not foolish..." Jean murmurs, but then raises a hand, a sifting motion lettng her point drift away like discarded sand. She focuses instead on Nate, his eyes drifting shut more and more often due to the late hour and having found a secure nest in the crook of Xavier's arm. But whatever solemn pronouncements were meant are neatle banished by "...pop tart?" "Nor arrogant," Magneto proposes icily for Jean's benefit. Not without a half-smile either, though the curve of it does not even remotely reach his eyes. "You are far more tolerable when you are drugged." This considered ample farewell, Erik Lensherr turns to move for the door. "Small pastries," Charles says for the other two's edification, the words increasingly blurred by a mouth that no longer complies with his will. Eyes close completely, and gratefully so, face slackening accordingly on the slippery slope towards sleep. "With sprinkles. Appalling things. I will expect chocolates next time I'm ill." "-Sleep-, Charles," Jean advises, pulling up her chair close to the bed with a faint flicker of a smile. "Or I'll be tempted to set up a tape recorder for next time I want a raise." Weak joke made, she lets the smile run away from her face, and settles in for a night's vigil. Magneto's exit is not remarked upon. No comment spared for the inherent danger of expectation, Erik opens the door ahead of himself with a gesture, and closes it once he's passed in much the same fashion. It is possible that a single glance is cast back to the bed somewhere in this process, but highly improbable. Soon enough, he's gone. An aged hand caresses the small, dark head on nestled on his shoulder. Shadow tugs at Charles's mouth. He smiles. And then, he sleeps.
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