#burdenedxtelepath

It wasn’t the kind of thing you expected to hear from the stuffy British dude whose house you used to crash in as a teenager, but Rictor had learned to expect the unexpected around the time his mood swings started shaking the planet. He was good at rolling with the punches, good at shrugging his shoulders and accepting whatever weird shit came his way. That was what he did now, too. A tilt of his head, a quirk of his brow, and a snort. “Accidentally?” He repeated, shaking his head. “Shit, man, I only went to one session but if I ever had to go back, I’d be getting high on purpose.”

( 📩  → remy )   you’ve been pretty quiet all day ( 📩  → remy )   and you’ve kept to yourself ( 📩  → remy )   is something wrong? ( 📩  → remy )   if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine ( 📩  → remy )   i just can never help myself. you seemed…withdrawn. its natural for me to worry

She can’t go home. She’s been in a coma for twenty days and apparently that makes doctors nervous. But they don’t really mean home anyway, they don’t mean back on Birch Street. They mean some penthouse in Manhattan, some TV-star she doesn’t even like, some life that they keep saying is hers now, but it doesn’t make sense. Goddamn doctors won’t even explain half of what’s happened to her, and Jessica wants to care a lot more than she actually does about that. They say she can’t go home. She wants to tell them she already goddamn knows that, but they never stick around for very long anyway. 

There’s only one nurse she likes. Irwin, according to her name tag. She’s got glasses and big thick bangs and she talks about doing something called ‘gumball shots’ at some Irish pub on the corner. Says she’ll take Jessica there when she’s old enough, even though Jessica never says anything back. She barely even looks at Irwin, or at anyone who comes into the hospital room. (Paparazzi keep ‘sneaking in’ when Dorothy and Patsy visit. Irwin is very firm when she tells them to screw off.) 

Irwin isn’t there when they take the cast off her arm. It’s doctors that Jessica doesn’t even recognize, maybe even interns. They keep telling her how lucky she is, how she’ll make a full recovery, and then they give her a little list of exercises to do at home. Physical therapy suggestions. Jessica tosses the list aside the second they leave the room. 

It’s still on the floor hours later, when Irwin walks by with her coat on and bag slung over her shoulder. She was just stopping in to say goodnight, like she does every damn night she’s on shift, but when she sees the paper, she stops. “Well these are just un-inspired,” she declares. 

“That’s one word for it,” Jessica mutters before she can stop herself. She keeps her eyes on the sheets, not sure what she’d see in Irwin’s gaze, but knowing she wouldn’t like it. She expects to hear those shoes squeak as Irwin leaves, but instead, a ball of yarn is dropped into her lap. Grey and dark compared to the stark-white hospital sheet. A wooden pair of needles falls beside it. 

Jessica picks up the yarn and glances up, brow arched. Irwin is pulling up a chair, and pulling out her own ball of yarn, yellow this time, and another of needles. “I’ll show you how,” she says, as if Jessica has already agreed to this. She doesn’t even know what this is. “You hold the needles like this... And then you loop it like this, see?” she asks, demonstrating the motions slowly. “Your turn, little one.” Irwin stares pointedly at the yarn in Jessica’s hand. 

“I’m fourteen,” Jessica snaps. She lets the yarn fall back to the bed, slumps back on the pillows. 

“That attitude says it abundantly,” Irwin replies, but it’s not an admonishment, not really. It sounds more like a joke among friends -- if she had any goddamn friends. She loops another stitch onto her needle, and motions for Jessica to pick hers up.

Sighing irritably, Jessica picks up the needles. She tries to imitate what Irwin did, but her hand is shaky and her fingers clumsy from lack of use. “It hurts,” she complains, clenching her jaw in frustration.

“It’s gonna do that,” Irwin says, nodding. “That’s part of healing. The hurt.” She reaches over, re-positions Jessica’s hands. Guides her through the motions, helping her thread the yarn onto the needle. “It’s a process, see?” she whispers, looping the yarn again. It takes all of Jessica’s concentration to follow what’s happening. She doesn’t realize at first, that Irwin’s practically hugging her like this. And when she does, she doesn’t say anything. 

If Irwin notices the way Jessica stiffens, she doesn’t say anything either. She helps Jessica through the next two stitches, then sits back down. “It’s hard at first. And it hurts. And to be honest, it never really stops hurting. Just gets easier to push through,” she says, casually, like she really is just talking about the yarn.

Jessica doesn’t reply. But she does the next stitch on her own. And the one after. 

They stay like that for a long time. Jessica isn’t sure how long, and she has no idea what she’s making, but she keeps making those stitches. Irwin interjects once in a while to give her a pointer, or teach her the next step, but it’s repetitive enough that after a while, they don’t have to say anything at all. 

Finally, Irwin stretches her arms above her head, and tucks her project back into her bag. “Beats ‘finger stretches’ and stress balls, right?” she says, smirking at Jessica. Jessica just rolls her eyes and holds out the... whatever it is she was making. Irwin shakes her head. “Oh no. We’re just getting started. It’s gonna be a cold one this winter, you’re gonna need a good scarf,” she says, and then she turns on her heels and her shoes squeak as she walks out the door. 

As much as Lucifer liked to see people indulging their desires, every so often someone in the club would indulge them a little too much. So it was always worth keeping an eye on anyone who was having a few too many. This man had had quite a lot, but since he was not being belligerent, Lucifer let him be. Still, he could not resist a little comment about much the man was imbibing, and his response was so perfect Lucifer laughed. "Oh, excellent! I'm going to have to remember that one!" He was currently behind the bar, and as he poured a drink for himself, he remarked, "I'm certainly not judging you. The only people who would call that a 'problem' are the ones who are denying themselves. And I would never tell anyone to deny themselves anything fun."

[ ✉ → Charles ] I set up the chess game we never finished.  [ ✉ → Charles ] I think it’ll be checkmate in twelve moves.  [ ✉ → Charles ] Come play it out with me anyway.  [ ✉ → Charles ] There’s too many things we left unfinished.

[ ✉ → Charles ] I didn’t realize how much I relied on your voice in my head until it was gone. 

[ ✉ → Charles ] I miss you.  I miss the kids.  I want to come home.[ ✉ → Charles ] This isn’t the same.

[ ✉ → Charles ] They looked afraid of me, today. [ ✉ → Charles ] Even Jeannie.[ ✉ → Charles ] Are you afraid of me?

The mansion was quiet. Ric figured that made sense, considering. Funerals were always quiet, always stuffy rooms where you could hear a pin drop, always silences broken only by the occasional sniffle. The mansion, right now... It was an ongoing funeral. It was death stretching on indefinitely, it was a haunted house where the people living there were the ghosts. Rictor had never much liked the quiet, and he sure as hell wasn’t an exorcist. So why was he here? 

It wasn’t a question he knew the answer to as he wandered the familiar halls, hands shoved deep into his pockets. He wasn’t watching where he was going, wasn’t paying much attention to the haunted house behind him. It was only a matter of time, then, before he ran into one of its ghosts --- literally. These ghosts, as it turned out, weren’t quite as intangible as their name implied. “Shit,” Ric cursed, wincing as he saw who he’d run into. Charles Xavier. Of all the people to run down, it had to be the guy the school was named after? “My bad, Professor.” There was a beat, a long stretch of silence customary for funeral homes. (Was that what this was now? It felt like it.) “Uh, you... Doing okay?”

She didn’t know what had brought her here, if it was her desire to see the Professor after everything that had happened or a new voice in her head that was reminding her that there were other people in Mystique’s life that had been family. People that might let someone like Anna in if she was around more than just a few minutes of the day. But no one seemed to question why she was there, at least out loud. They looked at her and in a horrifying way, understood where her head was at. Like there was no door between the outside world and her thoughts — and not because the Professor was a telepath — it was because it was just so obvious and Anna didn’t know how to make it less so. Didn’t know how to pretend to be okay.

No one asked and Anna never offered an explanation — it was easier to let them understand in quiet. But then moments like this snuck up on her where Anna wanted something that she knew wouldn’t be offered. No one looked at her and thought that she needed a hug or wanted to be touched, she had spent the better part of her life making sure people didn’t do that. Pushing them away readily.

Ask for what you need. Anna stood there in silence for a long moment, knowing that he wouldn’t shove her out the door — and knowing somewhere in the back of her mind that he’d let her decide where this went — what or who they talked about and for how long — he might not hav said it, but the way he was positioned and simply the way he was as a person, Anna knew. And so, after she took a long look around the room and took in all the changes from his last office — looked at the scattered notes that she assumed were lesson plans and the start of the school being reopened here — she finally asked for what she wanted. He seemed like he was done with working at least for the night, maybe he’d have time. (Was it pathetic that she was there — asking for company because for some reason it felt like his was the only one that could help? Maybe. But a greater part of her didn’t care if it looked that way.)

Wordlessly, he moved and had barely pressed the invitation before Anna was on the couch next to him, falling into the same spot her mother had in her memories — the same spot that Anna had taken with her mother countless times before. It was a spot of safety. Where she could hear his heartbeat like she used to hear her mother’s. He spoke in the way that he could speak, his words quietly echoing in her mind, barely sounding above the other noise in there. (She had so much in there — so many people who kept talking over her own thoughts — she wondered what it was like to read her mind.)

“I know,” she whispered out loud, wondering if saying it out loud was better or worse. (Either way, she was sure the crack in her words would have been noticeable.) “I saw it a few times, like a…” Mystique wouldn’t have felt it the way that Anna did, her and her mother were cut from very different cloths, but the way that Anna felt when she saw those memories? The small flashes of Charles reading his books while on the couch with her, existing next to Mystique in a way that didn’t ask anything else of her — it was relaxing. But mostly? It was safe. Anna felt safe when she saw those. “Like somethin’ that was safe. Ain’t a lot of that around, ya know?” Her voice was barely above a whisper, barely cutting into the air.