driftfleet | eins (video/action)

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eins (video/action)

Who: Darkholme and whomsoever dares.
Broadcast: Fleet-wide
Action: Marsiva
When: March 4th

Broadcast (can also be an action option for anyone close enough to hear the racket):
[The communicator comes online in the middle of clattering to the floor, bouncing and skidding until it ends up wedged against something that props it at an odd angle. Most of what it shows is a bland view of the ceiling, though the audio of a heavily-accented German voice grumbling is clear as a bell.]

Goddammit, what part of let me d--what the? [There' s a loud implosion of air, with a similar bamf sound echoing further away. The voice mutters something, words indistinct but tone harsh. The clarity increases with the volume as the owner of the voice begins to swear emphatically, lapsing halfway through into truly inventive German, punctuated by the sounds of clattering and movement. Someone just realized his swords are missing.]

Action:
[Sometime after he's calmed down (and hopefully found the communicator/been given a heads-up on the situation, Kurt temporarily gives up on retrieving his swords and goes exploring his temporary home. Feeling vulnerable without his weapons and with a distinct lack of shadows to blend in to, he opts to scurry along the ceiling on fours in lieu of using the floor like a normal person. It also lets him inspect the ceiling for visible cameras, ventilation shafts, wiring, or anything to give him information about their captors' technology level.

Occasionally he stops near one of the huge windows, the view catching his attention even after he's given up on recognizing any of the stars. Kurt's been in space before, but never for long and always too busy fighting to get a good look at the sky. His own world is so polluted with the aftermath of two wars that the stars are hazy--and that's on the clear nights. It's not a good time to catch him on the floor, but it is a good one to catch his attention without interrupting anything.]

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[Rogue blinked, a brief expression of surprise flickering over her face. The concern in that question... it wasn't the sort of thing she expected someone to ask her, even someone who knew her well -- unless it was someone who knew her really well. After all, she was the rogue; she adapted, she survived.]

I get by. [And she realized - that might just be a nice way of figuring out this place.] Ain't much danger in this place, 'sides boredom.

[There was the Other Fleet, but... meh.]

[In his world, they spent half their lives together as adopted siblings, fighting against the same evil. He'd been there when she gave birth to her son, and he was there when she buried him. His Rogue danced at his wedding and held him when his wife died.

So, close enough that he raises an eyebrow when she says she's getting by.] That's not what I asked, Rogue. I know you'll get by. [And then he pauses, realizing belatedly that he's doing the exact thing he'd snarled at Weapon--Wolverine and the rest of X-Force for doing. His mouth twists in a scowl as he realizes that not once has she called him by name.] I apologize, my Rogue and I were.. speaking with you is a great deal like talking with her. This must be very strange for you.

[...were. Hard to miss. Dangerous to assume.

She never thought she'd live to see thirty anyway. She's not surprised that another version of her didn't make it. Hope she went out well. Hope she burned and flared and died like she had something to live for.

Dangerous to assume.

So Rogue doesn't say anything. Doesn't ask. Doesn't think she has the right.

Instead, quietly:] You've got no call ta apologize. It's strange, but it ain't unfamiliar. Some things go beyond space an' time.

[Family is one of them.]

[Oh, she did. From what he's been told, she went down fighting for a victory even as her life bled away. Erik joined her within a few minutes, and the romantic in Darkholme finds that soothing. They'd loved each other very much.]

Some things do. In my case, the bonds of family. [His mouth twists in a smirk, and he raises an eyebrow.] Which I'm hoping is the same bond you share with yours, or this is going to be very awkward.

[Her heart ached a little for him.

And there was something so familiar and yet foreign about that expression, her own turned wry and a little bit soft.] What's a little awkwardness between family?

[It was going to be strange, in many ways, but to see a Kurt so ready and willing to claim her as opposed to what had happened the last time? She certainly wasn't going to deny him. She hoped she could help him -- adjust, at the very least.]

[He chuckles at that, gesturing with his free hand and his tail.] Oh, nothing at all--until one of us reveals that the relationship they had with the other's counterpart was marital instead of familial and the other poor sod needs copious amounts of alcohol to drown the unwanted images.

Und by poor sod, I mean me. Gott, I need a drink as it is. [Drown his sorrows over still being among the living.]

[Let's face it, after finding out that she was married to Magneto in another life, Rogue's eyes originally widen with startled alarm. But he's laughing and she does as well - warm, but brief, cut off too soon, as her laughs usually are.] I reckon we just need ta take it the other way -- ain't no call ta mind a little bit of awkwardness when families [yes, repeating that word again] are so full it their own selves. As for a drink, I don't recollect the Marsiva servin' that, but they do have coffee. You'll just have ta wait until ya get down here an' impose on an alternate universe relation ta treat ya.

[Of course he's laughing, even if it sounds a touch rusty. The thought of being married to Rogue is strange and that look of alarm was hilarious. He almost wishes he had the energy to keep up a ruse, but hearing her call him family (again and for the first time) is soothing enough that he doesn't mourn the loss of a good joke.]

Only if this relation will allow me to treat her once I have my hands on the money to do so. Or once we break out of this asylum, whichever scenario presents itself first.

I never turn down coffee. [It was a personal quirk which had got her in the best kind of trouble, and she gave Kurt a brief, warm smile.] As for as asylum's go, I've seen worse. Doesn't mean I'm lookin' for a lifelong pass, mind. Just... sayin'.

I was thinking alcohol, but if you're insistent on being a cheap date, who am I to argue with a lady? Especially one who can put me back in one of those beds for an extended stay. [The grin he offers this time is rakish, even if something about the twist of his mouth suggests cynicism. It disappears when she mentions other places, his head tilting in an almost feline manner.] Other places like this, you mean?

I might insist on the really expensive coffee. With all the... fruffy stuff. [Yeah, she doesn't even know what that stuff is called. Your chances of escaping by paying for just plain black coffee are pretty darn good.]

[Something about his grin arrests her attention, and Rogue tilts her head slightly. He seems... very comfortable in his own skin. Very comfortable, but almost... on edge? As though he was living very close to his skin. She doesn't say anything about it, she just... notes. Considers. Remembers.]

Yeah. Another place like this. Better part of five years. You?

Fruffy things? [He's not even going to hide how amusing that description is, not that he could have done better. He sort of wishes she hadn't mentioned it though; he always translates the world 'fruffy' as 'fruity' before realizing. There'd been so little of the former for years, and his time in a world where it was comparatively plentiful had done very little to temper the cravings. He could kill for blackberries right now.

Noticing her scrutiny, Kurt raises his chin and offers a vaguely curious look, as though to ask if he's something on his face. He doesn't ask outright ~~yet~~ in favor of answering her question.] Not like this. It was a parallel version of my world, where someone who had died in mine didn't there. The effects were--noticeable.

Edited (I need to be more awake when I tag) 2016-03-15 15:42 (UTC)

[In response to his curious look, Rogue offered a brief half smile and shook her head. It wasn't anything worth mentioning, but that...

...that. Sounded really familiar. To what had eventually, supposedly, paved the pathway home in Luceti. They'd gone back in time, fixed a few things, and then time had changed for the rest of the world.

Her head tilted slightly more to the side, no longer considering him as much as what it was he was saying.] How'd ya end up there?

Someone, probably that bastard McCoy, discovered a way to travel between our world and their's. Some of our war criminals escaped into their world, tried to hide there. When a team that had splintered off from the X-Men came through to ours, I went back with them to extradite two of them for trial and execute the rest. [He's so blase about his purpose, rattling off the entire account like he's giving a field report.]

There's few things more disturbing than finding out your counterpart thought it was a wonderful idea to join an organization that you despise. [Like finding out he's also dead. Looking at the autopsy reports and photos just to be certain. He's very not going to breathe a word of that to this Rogue.]

Hank McCoy? [She wasn't sure she'd ever heard Hank McCoy referred to as a bastard. But that wasn't important, really, sussing out more about who this Kurt was was far more important to her.]

An' what organization is that, exactly?

The same. I take it he's one of the X-Men in your world, too? [It still stuns him to no end knowing that in any world, a monster like that was trusted enough to be one of them. He's been told, in these worlds, Hank is everything his counterpart isn't; moral, kind, trustworthy. Kurt still can't believe it.]

The Catholic church. [Even trying his best to keep the conversation light and polite, his upper lips twitches with the sneer that comes through in his tone.]

Yeah. [Hank was kind. It was a trait Rogue highly valued and attempted to emulate. She was not kind, not by nature or by nurture, but she could try to be. She did try to be.]

[And... oh. The Catholic Church, huh? That as very clearly a touchy subject for this Kurt (hard to think of him as Kurt; hard to think of him as anything else. He had their mother's eyes.), and it wasn't something she wanted to pursue particularly, more a thing she felt in defiance of than in connection to. Her drawl intensifies as she tries to fit this into a framework, but even though she thinks she may see an outline, she's learned better than to assume.] I was raised Southern Baptist, myself, though life's taken a few twists an' turns since then. Mostly, I believe in choices.

[Fate. Luck. Screw them both, really. Your life was what you could make of it, your choices all you had against the maelstrom of voices inside your head and the silence at the end of the day.]

Edited 2016-03-19 03:02 (UTC)

I think anyone who could see my world and still believe in a benevolent, omnipotent higher power is an imbecile. [Even his team-mates, though he loves them all fiercely. The years have dulled his blind hatred enough that he can understand why good men and women would cling to the idea of an afterlife for hope, but he can't. He couldn't even bring himself to believe in Linda's flawed gods, even after she died and he was grasping at straws to console himself.] Choices, we can agree on. That and the capacity of people to be greater than the gods they dreamed up, that I believe in.

[She tilted her head slightly to the side.]

Didn't mean ta get into philosophy 'fore I officially got your name.

Why not? Life is short, even in the better worlds. [He says this so nonchalantly, like they're talking about something as inconsequential as the train running late.

A smile touches his lips, and he bows his head in manners (thus proving he actually knows a few. Shock of shocks.)] Darkholme. My name is Kurt Darkholme.

[Whatever she might have said was derailed at the mention of his last name.

Oh. Oh. Well, shit.

At least she'd learned from Remy that Mystique had survived her fall; the crime of actually murdering her mother was no longer on her conscience, though the choice would remain a stain there forever.

At least he didn't seem to hate her, unless he was very, very good at disguising it. Michael Darkholme had; she didn't think that kind of vitriol would hide very well in those burning eyes.

And she wondered what it would have been like, to be raised knowing. She wondered what it had done to him, and what the twisted nature of his world had inflicted on one of the hearts she knew to be as true as a single, pure note.

And a very twisted and dark part of her heart eased, because no matter how she might try to deny it, might hate it, she was Mystique's daughter. Mystique had left her fingerprints in every part of Rogue's life, in her resilience and her practical ruthlessness and in the broken way she viewed the world. She wondered what it would have been like to grow up knowing, but there is no universe where she can imagine Mystique to be anything other than ruthlessly, deceptively, pragmatically deadly, and what would it be like to grow up with someone with those same fingerprints on his soul; what would it be like, now to know someone who could understand the parts of her she sometimes hid, the instinctive method of cost/risk/benefit analysis that took place as she formed her goals?]

Oh. [And she smiles a little, tentative, just in response to his, heart in a vice and doesn't bother to hide -- anything. If there's another thing she learned about life from their mother, through painful experience, it's that relationships built on lies are nothing at all.] That's - different. I reckon you grew up with her, then? An' I did too? Your me, I mean.

[Coming from her, that sort of silence stings. He's used to it, of course. In that other world, there'd been with most of his X-Force compatriots a tinge of horror the first time he corrected them on his surname. Once he dug into his counterpart's past he found out why; in their world, Mystique was a craven woman who threw her own child away to save her own skin when the bastards cornered her.

(In his, she'd been prepared to jump--and die--with him. In his, they were heroes; deadly, ruthless, and manipulative as vipers, but they were X-Men. She was his mother, and despite her many flaws never gave him a single reason to think she loved anything more than him. Not even herself.)

But seeing that pause in Rogue, and feeling it hurt, highlights that he's let his guard down. Seeing Kitty shook him, and this counterpart managed to exploit a crack in his armor. Sloppy. In the silence his expression closes off, his chin tilting upward slightly. He won't apologize for being who he is, because he's not sorry for it. Of all the things in life he's ashamed of, he's proud of being his mother's vicious son even when he mourns the loss of innocence that birthed the man he is now. Raven tried so hard to keep her son's dreams intact, even as she taught him how to survive in a world she knew would attack him. (He does, sometimes, let himself hate her for never telling him how strange he was formed. But if she had, would he be as comfortable in his skin as he is now?)

And then Rogue throws him a curve ball with that smile. He blinks and then smiles, a sharp expression not as cruel as it would have been without her tentative attempt at carrying the conversation. It isn't the smirk he inherited from ~~their~~ his mother, though the wariness in his eyes is.] I don't think this is a conversation we want to have here. Face to face would be better once I'm off here, unless you've other things to do?

[She sees the shutting down of his expression and regrets it, though she can't regret her own response. Whatever Mystique had been in his world, nothing changed what Mystique had been, had done, in her own. She was not her mother's daughter for nothing; some things can never be forgotten, nor should they be.

She couldn't disagree with his suggestion, though part of her mind remembered her confrontation and began to plan for Worst Case Scenarios.

The tentative smile doesn't fall from her face, though the corners of her eyes tighten a little before they relax again, her expression open and a bit rueful.] I reckon I can make the time. Fit ya into my busy schedule an' all. Let me know when they Shuffle you out?

[The cruel smile fades entirely, leaving a solemn expression on his face as he nods.] I will. [He moves to shut off the transmission, then pauses. Stupid to say what he wants to, she's not his Rogue and she'll doubtless take it as a threat but he can't just leave her on that note.]

Watch your back, Rogue. ['Be safe. I don't trust this place.' Kurt cuts the transmission after that, closing his eyes a moment after against the tears that threaten. She is so much like his sister.]

[Rogue blinks. That was - abrupt. And strange. But despite the words, the tone and context didn't seem to indicate a threat.

Watch your back, Rogue.

She whispers:] Don't I always?

[She will be looking forward with some anxiousness to hearing from this other brother.]

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