CHARMER.

if you take your hunger in your arms it will never let you go. take your hunger in your arms.

CHARMER, or Mila Simons. — introduction / pinboard / threads / skeleton.

↪ tldr under the cut

When Charmer slides next to hear, Julieta wants to sigh. She truly does not have anything against the Oculus team as a whole, but Mila Simons is a bit of an exception from the way she had tried to rocket into stardom on the back of the fame her team had gained by saving people. Julieta wouldn’t say she hated the other, but she is rather like a mosquito, buzzing around and attempting to suck the blood and money out of others to survive — Or so do her prejudices tell her, but well. They are in Harold’s funeral and treating the former of Oculus with anything with kindness wouldn’t do.

“The silk would have been helpful, but I suspect it might have been a bit too rich for our blood back then,” she admits with a dry tone and a shrug, eyes still wandering around the wake for another moment before settling on the other’s temple. To anyone else, it will look like they are making eye contact but with a mutation like hers, Julieta has learned how to fake it. No need to meet people’s eyes more than it’s necessary. “Seven children who also were vigilantes, remember? And who happen to have been mutants. We ate a lot. Our budget likely went there and not to silk masks.”

Her eyes do fall on her glass of wine, briefly, and she is glad to find that it is a red. She had thought she preferred those, after some research on her instagram, but it’s good to have a confirmation. Carefully, she moves her gift backs to one hand, and then Julieta offers her own hand for a firm handshake —  a skill she had learned after years as a lawyer — .

“Charmed,” she quips, head tilted slightly to demonstrate her amusement, as the other can’t see her face. “You can call me Fearmonger.”

Then, she is looking down, browsing through the simple gift bags until the finds the correct one and offers it to the other.

“I am sorry for your loss,” she finally tells her, voice soft and unbelievably kind. “I am aware is not much, but I wanted to bring something small for y’all. As both an apology for showing up because Gorgon asked us to, and just, because you all deserve kindness after your loss.”

She lets out a sound of amusement. “Sure, I get it. Could’ve lined it with cotton, though, at the very least. If you care ‘bout your skin, that is.” Mila hums in thought, before latching onto something the other had said: “Actually, no, I don’t particularly remember. It wasn’t like your organisation was particularly transparent. For all I know, you were funded with loads of blood money, hm?” Not that she cared all too much, but as a retired Oculus she ought to on principle. 

Truth be told, there was something attractive about the way the Enigmas had functioned, even if Mila would never settle for living in the shadows. Still, a bit of moral ambiguity would’ve done the academy good, she thinks. Not that she’ll say that, with Harold’s body only recently buried, when his ideals had laid the groundwork of the organisation. It had also been him that had fed the fires of the rivalry that sat lodged between herself and this Fearmonger, of course, so — if the old man had anything to say about her current bitterness, it would be hypocritical.

“I’m sure,” she finishes, offering a small smirk. “Fearmonger, quite a name. Indicative of your power, or just meant to spook?” The scales were unbalanced. With the Oculus as publicised as they were and the Enigmas as enigmatic ( pun intended ), it made for an unfair playing field. “I mean, you know why I’m called Charmer. Enlighten me.”

tepid   condolences   are   met   with   practiced   grin.   fundamentals   taught   throughout   childhood   are   yet   to   hold   any   significance.   it’s   a   constant   battle   for   quinn,   a   leader   who   made   haste   attempts   to   reconstruct   himself   in   the   image   of   their   headmaster.   naively   promise   that   it’s   no   problem,   rectify   the   inconsistencies   like   smudges   on   a   mirror.   yet,   what   to   do   when   his   absence   creaks   cracks   in   said   mirror   ?   what   training   can   he   survive   on   in   this   moment   ?

quinn   keeps   his   glass   steadily   full,   allow   cool   droplets   soothe   the   discomposed   energy   that   burns   at   the   fingertips.   dirty   blonde   eyebrows   knit    at   the   sight   of   the   mingling   crowd,   mind   working   through   detailed   lists   of   who   he’d   recognise   both   as   himself   +   bladebender   -—   as   if   the   two   weren’t   interchangeable.   it’s   the   way   senses   could   feel   mila’s   presence   serpentine   nearby,   instinctively   taking   a   sip   of   amber   liquor   as   a   form   of   a   hello.   

❛   cheers,   mila.   ❜   tone   mimics   hers,   periphery   watching   her   actions.   it’s   certainly   one   of   the   nicer   comment   quinn’s   heard   over   the   years,   a   bittersweet   graciousness   for   double   -   edged   honesty.   ❛   don’t   you   reckon   kickstarting   a   comedy   career   in   the   middle   of   a   funeral   is   a   bit   gauche   ?   ❜   hues   finally   flicker   to   meet   hers,   a   ghost   of   his   sardonic   smirk   curling   at   the   edge,   ❛   sure   knox   would   appreciate   the   ambitiousness   of   it,   though.   ❜

If identity crises were a thing Mila Simons subscribed to ( and she did not, either out of denial or a fundamental strength in identity — you decide ) then this entire ordeal was sure to create one. What happens to the members of a disbanded organisation when its former leader dies? What happens to that team’s captain? If she was kinder, she would seek out Quinn in a quieter moment and ask him about these things, crease her brows to figure out if he was okay.

Perhaps okay wasn’t the goal any more. It’s not for her, anyway — mental stability was never priority, not when she had higher goals to chase after. In the face of this, she doesn’t think she’s okay, but she’s capable of jabs and japes and grinning at Quinn as he smirks at her. Never mind the flood of memories, the way grief makes her an even more ugly creature and how Mr Knox obvious lack of presence makes it both easier and harder. Never mind it all.

“The middle? Babe, we are reaching the end of it here, and if you ask me, that’s the perfect time for a career change.” Words fall easily, tumbling from her lips as if she’s hardly thinking about what she says. “Hm, you think so? I did always like his approval.” She says it jokingly, but there’s truth to it, Mila not having been immune to Knox’ guilt tripping and ethical ways. Most of the time, that was. “If I ever manage to get myself a comedy special, I’ll dedicate it to him.” She gazes around the room for a moment, then back at Quinn. “Do you think he’d have appreciated their presence?” Which was to say: I swear to God, Bladebender-leader-almighty, if you know a thing about why they’re here, you’d better spill. 

“Oh!” It’s not surprise exactly, that makes her voice pipe up, as she’s not surprised to see Jac in the building, but still. She’s seen flashes of the other across the day, yet no proper opportunity to pull her aside, speak with her. Until now, her lipstick recently touched up and eyes taking in the other, as if that would give her a hint on how she’s doing. Mila closes the distance, presses a kiss on the other’s cheek. “Hi Jac. Nice and quiet here, wouldn’t you say? You doing alright?” She leaves little room for a response, “These Engimas are getting on my nerves.”

         Despite himself, despite his panic and the fact that he’s barely holding himself together in this horrible overwhelming room, Homura almost laughs. He breathes a soft little noise, a tentative smile there and gone again. He definitely wouldn’t serve as good decor, he knows. Not the type of decor that Harold Knox seemed to favor; elegant and made to be admired. No, he’s much better suited as decor that sits out of the way, unobserved.

         “I didn’t know him.” It comes out almost like a question, tone tilted up at the end. Homura’s never been all that good at lying, and this is probably the most obvious lie he’s ever told. He clears his throat. Tries again. “I didn’t know him.” That comes out… a little more believable. “No condolences needed.”

         Guilt swamps him so hard he almost sways on the spot, dark gaze darting away, unable to stay on the portrait of the Headmaster any longer. He focuses on the flowers instead. They’re nice.

         “I’m sorry if we’re… distracting,” he offers, barely louder than a whisper. Because he’s seen the glances that the former Oculus team is giving the former Enigmas. Some curious, some dubious, some annoyed. “But… I think it’s only right that we pay our respects. We had our differences. But he was a good man.”

She learned this when she was twenty: that people tend to flock towards the epicentre of grief like moths to flames. Her father’s death had triggered plenty of people to suddenly reintroduce themselves in her and her family’s life, offering stories of the man they hadn’t spoken to in years, pretending to share in the sorrow when there wasn’t really any chance that they could. This reminds her of that. She wonders if he brought a casserole, like they often did.

Mila stares at Harold for a moment, who would surely berate her for her poisonous thoughts and barbed-wire words, but well, she had never been very good at heeding his advice. “But knew of him, I suppose?” Of course the other did, presumably the same way they knew of Gorgon and Bloodhound.

Grief is ugly, so why some flock to it, Mila doesn’t get. It only makes her resentful. “You are. Walking around with your masks, grieving all anonymously when you could do that by, I don’t know, sending out a tweet with the designated hashtag. It’s not like this is the only place you could go to pay your respects, after all.” Her gaze rips from Harold onto the masked figure. If every person touched by the Headmaster’s kindness was to be here, the house would burst at the seams.

It’s an ugly thing, to feel like this. Restless in her lack of sadness, restless in her frustrations, restless in the way this house seems to breathe with the past and Mila thinks she would rather choke. It isn’t as if she looks back on her time with the academy as bad, but life has taken such a turn since her years of donning superhero clothes that it’s hard not to wonder if Harold would judge her for it. The unadmittable truth is, of course, that she cares for his judgement.

Either way, she is itching with it, the pressure for goodness and the desire for bad. When there’s yet another masked figure entering her peripheral, Mila gives in. Pheromones spread, like muscle memory or riding a bike, the mental flex of it so natural. How often had she done this before, in this exact room? Letting the chemicals spread, treating the power like a toy rather than something deserving of responsibility. How often hadn’t she been chided by the recently deceased for misusing it?

“You know what I’ve always wondered,” Mila begins, moving over to yet another masked figure, a glass of red wine dangling from her fingers as she does. Her voice is a drawl, not outright hostile but not kind either — does she owe kindness, to these strangers? One might say so, if one were to interpret their presence as an act of good faith. But Mila has always leaned more towards the dramatic, and doesn’t think there’s such a thing as a person without an agenda.

Anyway, continuing on: “How those masks are for your skin. I mean, what’s i made of? Leather? Latex? It can’t be very breathable.” Inching closer, she tries to have a look at the eyes beyond the mask. “Or is there a silk layer under there, to make it sit a little more kindly against your pores?” Maybe they slept with the things on. Mila found it, frankly, incomprehensible. 

When her father had died, the house had filled with people too — but it had been a less extravagant house, with less extravagant people and yet all of the tension. Mila does not consider herself a nostalgic person and yet she feels herself pulled back to those pre-Oculus memories, of being twenty and grinding her teeth. Here she is again, then. Reunited with family, pulling open the kitchen cabinets to see if they kept her favourite mug.

Mila does not consider herself nostalgic, but here she is all the same.

Head whips at the sound of footsteps on the tiled floor, cabinet closing. The mug is still there. (Mr Moe’s doing, she assumes. He does seem the nostalgic type.) Her gaze falls on Gabriel. Reap, if you will. A hand rises, fingers scratching the sky in a wave. “Midnight snack?” As if they were kids again, as if Mila had shared a portion of teenagehood with him when they both knew she hadn’t. As if it was midnight, which it wasn’t.

         After twenty minutes in this manor, Homura’s already finding it to be excruciating.

         It’s not the first time he’s been here, unlike the rest of his team. After Oculus had disbanded, after Homura had come back two years ago, Harold had occasionally brought him in. He’d needed to be here to finetune the power suppressant he’s on; every other time they’d met, it had been elsewhere, in ever-changing locations. But Homura has just enough memories of this parlor that he sees Harold everywhere.

         From arrival to precisely one minute ago, Homura had been practically skulking on the edge of the room, doing his damndest to be ignored and left alone, noise-blocking headphones clamped over his ears. But without thinking about it, his feet had moved, and he finds himself standing in front of a table display with a massive picture of the Headmaster wreathed by flowers. In the photo, Harold has a small, reserved smile, and Homura hates him. Hates him for helping. Hates him for dying. Hates him for going and leaving Homura without one of the very few tethers he’d allowed himself.

         A faint noise next to him makes him jerk, head twitching sharply to the side as he takes in the appearance of one of the Oculus ex-members that’s come to stand beside him. Charmer, he thinks. Mila. He’d read up on all of them. She’s put out a few albums. Homura liked them.

         He tries to speak, and comes out with a small, awkward noise instead. Then tries again. “Sorry for your loss.”

The wake is more tolerable when treated as a networking event. There are interesting people here, to be sure – politicians with fingers in different pies, socialites that could boost her image as she boosted them – and if Mila took them at face value, ignoring the loss that tethered them together, it could almost be bountiful. Almost, of course. Not-nearly.

And then, these enigmas — literally. What good was an exclusive, closed ceremony when there were masked strangers? If there are two responses to grief in Mila’s world, then their presence makes her want to choose anger over numbness. A certain level of indignation on the Headmaster’s behalf, which she would realise was wholly misplaced if she spared a second on self-reflection. Unfortunately, it had often been the Headmaster who made her look at herself more critically and now he wasn’t here to hold that mirror up.

So, anger. Steps taken towards one of the Enigmas, staring at the picture of Harold Knox. His eyes might knock the breath out of Mila if she looks too long, so she looks at him in stead after noting that whoever chose the flowers had good taste.

A squeak seems to come out of the masked’s mouth and Mila files it away, ammunition for if she becomes venomous. If. It seems tasteless to fight in front of the portrait of the Headmaster. “Thank you.” The nod she gives is polite. She doesn’t say that this is the strangest thing about English: the apologising for things not ones fault. Her head cants. “Should I offer my condolences to you as well or are you just here ...” The sentence threatens to trail off as she shifts her balance from one heel to the other. “To be part of the decor?” A pause, then a small smile: “Either way, thank you for coming.”

It isn’t as if she hasn’t been here at all over the years, but still — it’s strange. No Headmaster, bursting in the room and demanding everyone’s attention, heads snapping at the sound of his shoes on the hardwood floors. It’s lacking. Half-space. Mila has little interest in it, the cliches of grief and the way her body seems to want to wrap itself around them, give into them, succumb to them.

In stead, she drinks wine and tries not to be angry with the intruders for being here. She moves, exchanging polite enough conversation with the interesting politicians and socialites, but feels herself pulled towards Quinn after an exhausting lament, ears ringing from having to deal with someone else’s grief. As if her own wasn’t enough.

“You look rough.” She says it dead-pan, with no consideration of whether it’s true or not. Mila is, after all, mostly occupied with how she presents. “What happened?” An impish quality reaches her eyes as she leans in, “Someone die, or something?” Around here, between them, this might as well go for how are you? 

Fingers reach out, through space and time and history and nip at Grace’s before interlacing with them. Taking them all, demanding five of them which is quite a humble act, considering Mila would like to lay claim to all of them, here. It’s a depressing affair. An angering one — one pulled out of another life, a previous one, a life left behind. And yet here she is, caught in a family affair of grief once again. 

It’s futile to pretend that she isn’t afflicted, as if grief isn’t banging on her doors wanting to be let in while rage guards the door. But still, she can reach out, take Grace’s hand, squeeze it. Because the other needs it — not because she does, of course. (She does, a little.) “Hey, you.” The ground beneath them is softened by the drizzle and maybe some of her black mascara tears, too. Mila stares at a gravestone, quickly calculating the age of the deceased stranger (78 years) before looking at Grace. “Do you want to grab the same car, on our way out of here?” 

The press will be waiting, vultures with flashing cameras. Mila can be the hero, Grace behind her as she basks in their lights. More importantly, she craves proximity. To keep an eye out or to rest her head on a shoulder or all at the same time. She offers a squeeze of her hand, gestures around with her free one, “This is a beautiful place, at least.” 

“I hear you’ve got a big project going on. Some deal with - oh what was it Prime or Hulu or Netflix? One of the big ones though! I remember that much!”

It is hard to keep her features from melting, fondness softening eyes and lips as her former teacher turns to her. Speaking of the new career, the one so separated and different from the previous one — save for the publicity, of course. “Where’d you hear that, teach? It’s just a pilot, supposed to be a bit of a secret.” Who knew if it would be picked up. Who knew if it would get a second season, if it was. “Netflix, though. For the record.”

There’s a small beat, a breath in, exhale out through the nose. A consideration, of whether she should offer cliche comfort or delve deeper in the intricacies of her work. “Are you holding up okay, here?”