driftfleet | (no subject)

Communications. I assume I got it for the irony factor.

[ Not that he minds and he can poke good humour at himself. ]

Irony seems like a good enough reason as any. Our ship doesn't have one anymore, but Kurt—my Kurt—is trying to transfer to the Windrose. [As if replacing their communications officer was her main priority.]

Is he? Well, so long as he's not near Hank.

[ Charles doesn't really care if Kurt needs to follow him, though his point stands - he won't stand for being stalked around to prove his "innocence". ]

Kurt's a good man. He's not going to attack someone for things someone else did.

...I am sorry we put Hank [look at her even using his preferred name now] through that. [Her feelings are still...complicated. She doesn't want to hate him, but she also doesn't want to like him and he's annoyingly likeable.]

But you kind of had to be there to understand. [The atrocities, the monster the Dark Beast was, and the losses all X-Men had suffered that made them want to protect whatever they had left.]

[ Charles has his doubts there. Mostly because while Kurt may not attack, he is mistrustful and paranoid. Never a good combination in a person. A good man. Charles has met good men. He knows what it takes to make good men sour. ]

Oh, make no mistake. I understand. What happened in your world made you who you are. Asking you to dismiss that would be rude and downright impractical.

[ He pauses, softens a little. ]

But none of us are in our worlds anymore. It is the first thing I learned when I moved over. It's my choice if I want to carry parts of my world over to the next.

[ He has no reason to trust, except for the one: that not trusting would change the world he is now and he's not willing to sink back into that role. ]

The choices are what separate us in the end.

[They are probably some good doubts to have. She may have a few of her own, but if she's going to err it's going to be on Kurt's side. She knows what he's capable of—what they are both capable of. She's had a year of relative ease and peace to reflect on everything. He's had a month.

She listens to what Charles has to say and appreciates the understanding and what he's trying to impart. It's not so different than her own take on things had been in the prison as she ran the Defense Force—an inmate-run group to protect other inmates and fight against the wardens. When people came to her with concerns about people from their world she understood and took note, but she wasn't going to act against someone if they'd done nothing there. As far as she was concerned it was a fresh start. Sometimes that worked out and sometimes people slipped.]

Like you said, our worlds are what make us who we are. Kind of hard not to carry some of that over, being me and all. But who needs extra grudges?

I ran into him in his lab a couple of days ago.

[ He nods. It is a part of them, after all. And none of them are perfect. ]

How did it go?

Oh, like he's someone I'd want to be friends with, which is [She pauses, putting this thought into words for the first time] not really easy for me. It feels like that should be too far.

[ He's quiet for a while. ]

Erik and I . . . had a complicated history. We were friends, equals. I taught him how to use his powers, to access them without the anger.

It ended badly. Very badly. And it might have stayed that way permanently.

What happened? [She wonders both parts—what went so badly and how did things get back to a good place, but if he only wants to answer the last one she probably won't push it.]

[ He smiles, though it's not a pleasant one and he pats his legs. The meaning is clear. ]

After that, we parted ways. None of us willing to budge. It took a lot of time for either of us to realize that we weren't wrong. But we weren't right either.

[Her lips part in surprise and she barely follows the rest of what he says.] Wait, Erik did this? He's why you can't walk?

...Accidentally?

It was an accident.

[ Charles doesn't believe that Erik meant for it to be deliberate. It wasn't. It never was. But that entire moment is what they boiled down to. ]

[She nods. That's easier to accept. She knows some of the pain and guilt her world's Erik went through losing his friend when the man saved his life. She knows this Erik is a different person, but it must have been hard for him too. And of course for Charles.]

Did you come back together at home or in one of the other places?

Not at home. But obviously, we changed things around because we realized that the choices we made from here on are ours to decide.

[ That is his creed now. ]

True. We get enough of those choices taken away being brought to places like this.

Mmm. And in some places more than others.

[ He pauses. ] I believe in him. We both had to work at it.

[She nods. Her own stays had been lucky ones even if the prison did have its moments.]

That's good. Maybe that's what he didn't have in those other worlds. [The ones she has a harder time understanding with their villainous Magnetos.]

We didn't have a lot of things back then.

[ Time, for example. They had both been trapped in respective prisons that slowly ate away at them. ]

[~~Like the internet?~~]

Back then meaning back home before you started your tour of kidnapped paradises? [Sarcastic about "paradise" but by some measures this and the prison could count as such compared to home.]

Back home.

[ This could get complicated quickly. ] After all, you don't get a chance to pause when things are happening back home.

[She nods.] Yeah, life could be pretty packed not to mention basically everything was an emergency. Adjusting to not that took time and a lot of growing pains. [And mistakes.]

I suppose I am a little grateful to the places I were before. They helped give me perspective, something I sorely needed before.

[ Being a telepath often comes with the ego - the knowledge that you're always right. ]

Yeah... That's not fun. Being grateful to people abducting you, but I get it. Kind of hard not to. [What with the being alive because of it.]

I guess it would be more accurate to say I'm grateful for the chances it gave me.