kore_logs | i need a resurrection

Entry tags:

i need a resurrection

WHO: Erik Lehnsherr and Ned
WHAT: I CAN'T STOP WANTING TO CALL THIS "Total Power Exchange" but really they're just going to show off their respective mutations to one another
WHEN: Day 72, evening
WHERE: The edge of a convenient patch of woods
NOTES: Warnings for small dead animals :(

Prior to recent events, Erik would have elected to send Ned a commanding single sentence in order to meet his purposes for the evening; he's ~~an arrogant jerk~~ efficient that way. Judging, however, were he in Ned's shoes (and frankly he doesn't often feel as though he can fit in those of anyone else, let alone walk a mile in them), he would meet cryptic summons with a well-placed epithet if not a pre-emptive attack, he appears on the man's doorstep instead.

Of course, in this case it's with no prior arrangement, so while in some respects this option is the more courteous, in others ...Erik will never really trouble himself to meet societal standards of politeness even when he's adopting the baseline of civility. He looks faintly irritated by something, as he almost always does; in this case it's no more than the usual and unfortunate state of his tailoring--he tells himself should he be appropriated again by scientists in the sky, if they're going to poke and prod they could at least have the decency to afterwards provide a shirt that fits.

So this is the image that will greet Ned when he answers the door, Erik's tall, dark and disgruntled self, still looking a little pale, dark circles more prominent than usual, but visibly on the mend. For once, in what is probably the exception that proves the rule, Erik does not intend to instantly draw him into a conversation that weighs approximately as much as an elephant wearing an anvil.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When Ned opens the door, his initial reaction is one of undisguised surprise, but it is quickly replaced with a warm smile that is undaunted by Erik's (he is now beginning to realize, habitual) rather dour expression. He still looks as if he's feeling ill, but Ned, once again, has the good sense not to mention it or give any sign that he notices.

"Erik."

There is still a hint of puzzlement in his expression as he steps aside, allowing Erik access into the house, his hospitality and politeness overriding his confusion about what the other man is doing here. Somehow, he gets the impression that Erik isn't one for frivolous social calls.

Ned might as well not waste the syllables, given that Erik's response would be a 'Fine' so clipped it could cut hair. Since they're not obliged to that awkwardness, he inclines his head and eyebrows in acknowledgement, but waves off the offer of entering the house. "Thank you, but no."

It's not quite dismissive, just disinterested. "I won't insult you by suggesting I was in the neighborhood or want to borrow sugar."

Because ...why would he waste anyone's time that way. "I thought you might like to see what I do. I know I'm interested in a more immediate display of your own talents, but if not--" he shrugs, also uninterested in forcing anything.

If he were American he could make a BYOB (Bring Your Own Body) joke, but tragically it will have to stay here in narrative.

Ned doesn't need to ask what Erik means when he says what I do. The two of them don't know very much about one another - concretely, anyway. One of the only things he does know about Erik is that he, too, is a mutant. He must, therefore, be talking about his power, whatever it is. It occurs to Ned, belatedly, that he doesn't know. Has he merely forgotten? No, no. He wouldn't forget something like that. Particularly not when it was Erik who introduced him to the concept in the first place.

As for his request of a display of Ned's talents, his immediate reaction is wariness. Having his power witnessed against his will had been... awful. Telling everyone about it had been harrowing, too, even if some of the consequences had been quite positive. But showing off, intentionally? He isn't sure about that.

But curiosity wins out in the end. He does want to see what Erik can do, and after all, if he changes his mind, from the sound of it Erik won't hold that against him.

"Sure," he says, stepping outside and closing the door behind them. He buries his hands deep in his pockets, asks, "Are we, uh. Going to your house, then?" Ned keeps as much significance out of that question as possible, but is afraid that it becomes heavy with the sheer weight of light casualness he forces into it. The last time he'd been invited into that house, things hadn't exactly gone very well for him.

The look this earns is ...dry, but not mocking; it takes some time to suss out the minutiae of Erik's facial expressions, given that they have to be of a certain volume to show on his face. Realizing he looks habitually dour is probably the first step, and, for a person interested in as much, what a rare moment of joy actually induces a laugh. Amusement is easier, though, his formidable brows hiking and mouth twisting like a lemon curl. "No."

Which is all there is to that. "We're going to the greenhouse."

Or where the greenhouse will be, anyway, Erik has been told and spent some time learning it should face the South and run East to West. So there's a patch of ground that wants tilling, and gravel - if it can be found - to be scattered, all of which he can do, it's just not his speciality. This is.

It doesn't take very long to walk anywhere on the Cape, and Erik's strides are both long and clipped; he hasn't been in the habit of matching the way he walks to anyone else in years. Ned is tall, though, keeping up shouldn't be much of a feat. "I could just tell you," he points out in the course of this, grinning slantways again. "Although it wouldn't be nearly as impressive."

Please, Ned, you know you want to be impressed. Erik, if the slow sparks at the corner of his eyes are any indication, would much prefer to be impressive.

The greenhouse? Ned isn't aware of a greenhouse, or of any plans to build one. One more little mystery, adding intrigue to the whole outing. If Erik were constructing such a thing, it would explain why Ned had last seen him liberating a building of its window panes. It's only logical that he'd want to do so; there's only so much they can do, growing things out in the open.

"I'm all for impressive," Ned responds, trailing a few paces behind Erik, hands in his pockets, speculating what it could possibly be. Something related to growing things? Or is the greenhouse an arbitrary location, and the power is something unrelated entirely? The suspense is, for the most part, quite enjoyable. Erik is smiling, seems almost... cheerful, in his dry way, about the whole prospect. Ned can't imagine what that must be like; once again, he finds himself envious. When he'd brought himself to show off his power to River it had been tentatively, apologetically, fearfully. Erik is making confient production of it.

He stops when Erik does, looking at what seems to be an open area with various supplies. Panes of glass, tarps, a huge heap of scrap metal. Ned glances over at Erik with undisguised curiosity.

"I thought you might be." Ned may enjoy another dose of that dry humor, and the fact that his observation is absolutely correct. Given its origins and development his mutation could be a source of conflict, but Erik is in love with that ability the way some people love their childhood sweethearts: a single-minded purity nothing can change.

The ground for the greenhouse is, as mentioned, still in its natural state, but here they're not necessarily bound by that step before the frame can be built. Erik has never crafted such a structure before, but he understands enough about a building that must support its own weight to construct the frame. He stands easily in place, arms loose at his sides and certainly more serene than Ned has ever seen him, or ....probably more so than has anyone on the Cape, in fact. "We'll build it here. I'm only doing the brute labor," he shrugs, unbothered, as that falls easily within his skill set, and the world needs masons, "hands better equipped will take on the agriculture."

Aware that Ned did not come here to learn the rudiments of horticulture (he used the wrong word, slightly; fluent in English, yes, but that doesn't mean he's ever needed to say horticulture, when would that have happened), he moves swiftly along with this demonstration, kneeling next to the pile of scrap metal and sifting through it, casual in a way most people might not be about tetanus or cuts. He's careful with his hands, as they are his second best weapons, but he also knows what he's doing. If there's a rusty nail or jagged shard waiting, he'll feel it.

"The problem we face is that most of this is barely useable, at best. It could take months to gather enough metal for the necessary framework. Or," he grins, turns up his hands and shows Ned the way they hold a long piece of rebar, "it would for humans."

He twitches his fingers slightly, like a person coaxing, and the cylinder flattens in his hands, slithers out like a twisting iron snake and goes liquid before reforming itself into a much flatter piece. Once he flipped up his wrists he stopped looking at Ned; he knows the other man is still there, of course, it's just that only this matters, like that first love. "Charles calls it magnokinesis," he murmurs, the word slightly unfamiliar on his tongue but spoken gently just the same. "I just call it mine."

Ned does not fail to note that calm, or to note the way Erik refers to humans as if he were anything but. It reminds him of his conversation with Daneel, goes towards confirming what Daneel had guessed: that Erik considers the categories of mutant and human to be entirely separate, mutually exclusive.

But he has little time for this train of thought; all other considerations leave him when Erik begins manipulating the metal. He stares in awe, mouth falling open, wonder and confusion and admiration written all over his face. Nothing had happened, when he'd first lifted the metal; this ability was not a response triggered from the outside, but a conscious action. It is clear how completely Erik is in control of his power, how he can use it to reshape the world around him to fit his design. He can take an unsuitable bit of scrap metal and make it into just what he needs.

"That's-" he says, a little dazed. "You can control magnetic fields?" It isn't the sort of thing Ned would ever imagine someone being able to do. Of all the options he'd considered as they walked here, this hadn't been anywhere on the list. And at the same time, he immediately grasps how fundamental, how powerful such an ability would be. He remembers enough science from school to know that magnetism is one of the basic forces that holds the world together. Being able to control it is an astonishing feat.

"Are there restrictions?" This, of course, is one of his first questions. Ned's power is inextricably linked, in his mind, with the rules that govern its use. He doesn't know enough about the nature of other mutants' abilities to say if the same is true for everyone.

Daneel, surprising absolutely no one, has deferred to Erik's desire not to be referred to as human regardless of the robot's internal classification. That concept is buried at the bottom of a chasm filled by the kind of complexity that struggles for its own articulation, but right now only one thing matters: a human couldn't do what Erik's doing now.

He lifts his head, expression sharp, pleased that Ned has understood it's magnetics and not metal; given the name perhaps this is obvious, but 'magnokinetic' is a new word for Erik himself. Until he met Charles he thought it was metal, since the ferrous responds to him most easily. "Only my imagination."

A ...bold statement. For just the space of an instant, maybe too quick to catch unless a person is really looking at him (and given the circumstances Ned might well be doing exactly that) his expression goes far away and strangely warm--when you can access all that you'll possess a power no one can match. Not even me.

That doesn't really answer the question, though, much as he likes the concept and now believes it will happen for him. "This sort of work comes the most naturally." The fine and small; if he were ever going to settle down and have a normal (human) life, he'd make a good jeweler. "The limitations of the body are always variable."

Having honed and shaped the metal he's currently working with to his satisfaction he sets it aside and focuses on the next; the fact that this involves looking up at Ned's entire giantness doesn't phase him. He knows how to command presence regardless of inherent positioning. "Volume. Density. How much I want to change. Those matter. But," have a toothy, sloe-eyed grin, "I'm working on surpassing them."

Edited 2013-05-24 08:27 (UTC)

There is a warmth, a zeal to Erik's voice that Ned has never heard before. He'd noticed a strand of idealism in Charles, over the course of their friendship, but now, for the first time, he sees traces of something very similar in Erik. It's focus is different, but some ineffable quality is exactly the same.

That Erik is passionate about his power is all too obvious, and Ned doesn't blame him. It doesn't strike Ned as dangerous, like his own powers, or Charles' or River's or even Galen's. Of course, it could be used for harm, but the potential for unintentional harm seems far more remote. It is a beautiful force to be augmented and mastered, rather than something awful and out of control to be contained and limited as much as possible for the good of everyone.

Erik can choose when he wants to use it, and to what degree, and for what. Ned imagines that must have made keeping it hidden much easier than his own ability. Erik can touch metal without molding it, the way he is doing now. Ned doesn't have that option, with dead matter.

Just underneath his admiration, unacknowledged but increasingly powerful, is an undercurrent of envy. How different would his own life be, if he had Erik's power? He would not have been able to bring back Digby, true. His mother would have still died in the kitchen that day, but Ned wouldn't have been responsible in any way. And Charles Charles would have lived; Chuck would have grown up with a father, even if Ned's own had still abandoned him. A thousand other things that his power had kept him from doing would be possible. It is not necessarily the idea of himself as a mutant, as different, that Ned hates, so much as his specific ability.

He swallows back this bitter tide, because he knows how inappropriate it is, how pathetic. But he can't help saying, a little tightly, "I'd give anything for a power like that."

The bulk of Erik's experience has been with hiding, but he's also given himself that subtle outlet since his twenties. It had been a strategy, then, as well as a pleasure, to inspire that fear, to take that fear of difference and point the bladed end. Once hiding was all he knew, and it had never, as far as he could recall, really protected anyone in the end. He knows the stories of those who survived in attics and basements, who changed their names and crossed oceans, but that's all they are to him. Stories. Those survivors might as well be unicorns.

So now, no more hiding. If he had been born with the ability Ned has, if he could conceive of himself as something other than magnokinetic, he would have taken one of their lives for every one of his people, and done it gladly. That the child he was once would have suffered from this either doesn't occur, or--maybe he was already angry by then; when it was the alternative to constant freezing fear, maybe kindling that spark kept him alive.

Still. This is what he is, he hasn't wanted to be anything else in years. The tightness in Ned's voice doesn't go unnoticed. Ned lives, he thinks, in a way that suggests if he could claw his way out of his own skin and leave it behind like a caul, he would. "You dislike your own."

It's neutral, phrased like a statement, but his eyebrows are questioning. He isn't surprised, just curious; it's not as if he hasn't just come from a whole flock of adolescents who felt that way. Sean had been the only one who really reveled, and his gift was like Erik's: nowhere to go but up. "It's not only the fear of discovery, it's the fear of what you are, what you do. You want to be accepted, but you haven't been able to accept yourself."

His eyes go a little far away; there is obviously something about this that is memory, not just speculation.

Edited 2013-05-26 09:41 (UTC)

When Erik half-announces, half-asks if he dislikes his power, Ned folds his arms across his chest tightly, answers at first only with a bare shrug of his shoulders, a vague and nonverbal yes.

No one's ever asked him that. Before he came here, he didn't discuss his powers with anyone. There was no one to discuss them with, no one who knew. Once he'd arrived, River already knew, from the first second she met him, how he felt and all the reasons why. He and Charles had discussed mutants in general, and the parameters of his power, but nothing more. Even Daneel, just last night, said he only saw Ned's mutation as a tiny part of the whole: a detail rather than the guiding principle.

But Erik appears to understand without needing to be told how fundamental Ned's mutation is to his identity. And he can see that Ned dislikes it - what a mild word that is! Hates it, more like. Fears it, certainly. If he can see that, Ned thinks, he'll see how, by hating and fearing his power, he hates and fears himself.

How does Erik have such a knack for finding the precise things to say to make him extremely uncomfortable? None of it is aggressive, or malicious - in fact, his intent is almost friendly, or some variation thereupon - but the end result is the same. Ned cannot answer him properly without telling him everything, and at the moment, he can't bear the thought of telling him anything.

"What I am and what I do are worth fearing," he murmurs, not looking at Erik. It is easier to explain in the abstract: not stories of his own life, but general principles, vague statements. Suggestive, but not quite as confessional. "It's complicated. You can build things. All I can do is... is pervert the natural order. And what's more important, I'm not like you or Charles. I can't control it, not even a little bit. For me there is no working on it and there's nothing to surpass - believe me, I've tried. For years. It works how it works and there are no exceptions, ever."

His voice has been gradually picking up speed, unravelling into a litany of words that he is barely aware of, because it's not enough. What he's said is not even a fraction of the reasons - all perfectly good - why he ought to hate his power. He is hardly even speaking to Erik, anymore, "You get to choose, and I don't. For me, a tiny slip isn't just a tiny slip, it's life and death. The best I can do is try to make as few mistakes as possible, and... and atone for the rest."

To most effectively engage with the stack of metal Erik had gotten down on his haunches; it's interesting positioning for this conversation in as much as looking up at others is a rare experience for him. He could stand, it would be more natural, but his understanding of the movement of the body is such that regardless of his intent, he knows there is no way for Ned not to interpret that as aggressive, as being advanced on and closed in.

So he stays down; what works in concert with the contrasts Ned is highlighting is that Erik can be comfortable in his body anywhere. It took him years to arrive in a place where that was possible, so he guards the idea as closely as he does--well, his physical space. To be let inside it is a privilege, to keep others out a right. Extending that to Ned isn't difficult, or anything beyond the most basic of decency. "I don't envy you," he returns, as unsparingly honest as ever.

Then again he doesn't envy anyone, except maybe Charles, who seems to effortlessly understand his mutation better than Erik does himself. As much as he's grateful, absorbs and uses the things the telepath has taught him, a part of him chafes at the idea that he'd worked for two decades to accomplish something that could apparently be learned in moments once plucked directly from his head, but that's neither here nor there, most certainly not here.

What is, easily, is the familiarity with Ned's fathomless autophobia--he doesn't feel it (anymore), but he's seen it. "What do you want to hear? That you deserve your own hatred because of what you are?"

Not 'what you can do.' "If so you're telling the wrong person. I've had it forced on me too often to swallow easily. I haven't always called myself a mutant."

The corners of his mouth twitch slightly at that; he knows his own presentation inasmuch as he cultivates it very deliberately, that he was always this. Unbreakable and shored up with iron. "Before that--let's just say they were names unsuitable for polite conversation." Now he's smiling again, but it is a sharp and ugly thing, a blunt and glaring contrast to the euphemism he employs.

He doesn't stay on it, anyway. "Are you to be feared?" That's a different question, and clearly rhetorical from the loose shrug that follows. "Yes. All of us are." As much as Erik sometimes revels in that, here it's just fact, as dry as two plus two. "To feel otherwise would be the worst kind of stupidity."

Which doesn't just apply to the world at large; he's also passing on the understanding that mutants as whole should be at home with that idea. "But trying make as few mistakes as possible and atone for the rest--that's no more or less than any of us are striving for."

Including Erik; he calls what he's looking for vengeance, but that lies just on top of the idea--well. Maybe he can dig deep enough to put a little of that forward, for once. "It isn't enough. You see this, now--"

A stray scrap of metal floats apart from the rest and then drifts gently down again, Erik closing off the gesture by curling his hand into a fist. "Now that's easy. Once I couldn't so much as lift a coin, and it cost me everything. There are always costs. Always losses. I'm not kind enough to tell you differently." Another shrug. "Or I just won't lie to you. Your choice. You make yourself out to be the stuff of nightmares, but you are--what any of us are. Control and intent are irrelevant."

He goes quiet for long enough that Ned may attempt to flee just out of self-preservation, but then--"I know a woman like you, back where we're from. Can't stand being inside her own body." A pause, warm and strange; it's not a romantic kind of fondness, but it's probably as much affection as Ned has seen Erik express for anyone. "Nature made her what she is, and she is perfect. That's what I see. But it's her skin, I don't have to live in it."

You know. Much like Ned.

Edited (damn you adverbs) 2013-05-29 09:17 (UTC)

Ned listens quietly to what Erik has to say. The better he gets to know this man, the more he realizes how limited his first impression of him was. The Erik of their first encounter was taciturn and curt. More and more, though, he is realizing the man's faculty with words, his ability to use them to say very little and a great deal at the same time.

Oftentimes Ned feels that the more he learns about Erik, the less he knows. What exactly does he mean, by 'names unsuitable for polite conversation'? Is he saying what Ned thinks he's saying - that even he used to hate himself for what he is? It's hard to imagine, looking at him now. How can that sort of thing have been forced upon him - unless, of course, others had known...? And can he really have come so far? The astonishing, sudden anger in that smile seems to say so, but Ned isn't sure.

There's something, too, in the way he says an inability to control his powers cost him everything that cuts deep; Ned knows, without any kind of anecdotal context, that he is not exaggerating. He states it bluntly, without hesitation or special emphasis, but Ned can tell. Perhaps, he thinks, it takes one to know one. He once lost what he thought of as everything, too. He ends up swallowing against a sudden lump in his throat. Costs, and losses. From the sound of it, he isn't the only one to suffer them.

That is chiefly what he gets out of Erik's words: a sense of solidarity, of connection that somehow does not erase the particularity and hardship of his own power. The ways Erik puts it, situation is unique, but also part of a continuum. He may be dangerous, but so are all of them. Erik manages to convey this, but he also admits that he doesn't know what it's like to live in Ned's skin, and that concession is something he needed, without even knowing he needed it.

"Did you... want to see it?" he asks, voice raspy with held-back emotion. It's the best way he knows how to say thank you, at the moment. To acknowledge that what Erik said meant a lot, to him. Without all that, Ned now knows, he probably would have held back, have insisted that they wait for his demonstation for another day. But now, he thinks, he can face it. "I can look for some dead leaves..."

Edited (sorry I just edited that TWELVE TIMES) 2013-05-31 01:11 (UTC)

Erik's mouth stretches in a grin that shows all of his teeth; it's perhaps worth mentioning yet again that his mouth shows a wider emotional spectrum than he'd like it to, sometimes. His smiles have shades: they cut with obvious menace or bruise with disdain, they unfurl in humor like a mouthful of myrrh--or this. This is one of Erik's rarer expressions, that untouched by calculation and having no purpose except itself. He wouldn't deny that most of what he does or says is calculated; in his mind it's the only way to navigate the world, by getting to it first before it can get to him.

The rasp in Ned's voice wends its rough way through the webs he keeps around him (so that he'll always have warning) and lights up that space in his mind reserved for those Like Him, the mutants he's met here and back where he came from.

"I can think of nothing I'd like more."

He's still grinning, approval thrown off his entire posture like heat from asphalt. "But I did have something more substantial in mind than leaves."

It occurs to Ned how strange it is to see Erik smiling like that. As if he really means it. As if there really is nothing he'd like more than to see what Ned can do. He doesn't think the other man is lying, it's just difficult for him to process that it's the truth. But then Erik is walking over to one of those tarps, and Ned realizes he's prepared for this.

He watches, heart hammering, as Erik folds back the tarp. The split second before he does Ned is convinced, irrationally, it is going to be a person. But then he lets out a tiny, relieved breath when he sees that it is a young deer and two rabbits: all dead, of course. With tiny steps, he approaches. Glancing over at Erik, he crouches down, fiddles with the device on his wrist. He'd found out that it could be used as a stopwatch on his first day here. He sets it to 60 seconds.

"It can only be for a minute," he warns. Stalling, now. Steeling himself up for it. The deer is lying stiffly on its side, its black eyes are open and still. The wound that killed it is small, the fur around it crusted with dried blood. Ned lets out a slow breath, bites the inside of his lip. "You should hold it. So it doesn't run away."

Once Erik complies Ned rubs a hand over his mouth, throat suddenly dry. His resolution isn't waning, but he's had so many years of precedent telling him to never, ever, ever let anyone see him doing this. He draws in a quick and deep breath. Then, moving quickly, he starts the timer, reaches out, and touches the deer's side lightly with the very tip of his index finger, flinching a little as he does so. The change is immediate, both audible and visible. Ned knows the signs very well, but they are strange to him, now, imagining how they must look through Erik's eyes. The animal's body glows faintly gold for a brief moment and there is the sound of a spark, the tiniest jolt that Ned and, he's sure, the deer can both feel.

The animal starts from its rigor mortis to life as if waking suddenly from sleep, its sides moving up and down with quick breath. The deer raises its head and blinks its eyes rapidly, trying to take in its situation. Alive, once more, instantly warm and alert and without pain. Ned moves back, no longer looking at the deer, but at Erik.

Saying he wanted to watch, that Ned's power is a beautiful gift, is one thing - maintaing that same position after witnessing it is quite another.

In another first Erik - as he rarely allows himself to display vulnerability even as innocuous as surprise - startles quite visibly when the carcass he's holding--lights up, for lack of a better word (he certainly doesn't have one for it), floods with the unique kind of heat that signifies healthy life. His shoulders go up and his eyes widen in just two quick rapid blinks, a shade greener than they were before.

As driven as he is to pull apart everything and understand it from the inside he doesn't check his impulse to touch the deer in a more active way, laying a hand on the side of its neck and confirming there is a pulse thudding determinedly away. It jerks out once and he's obliged to hold it still more forcefully, although not enough to engender real panic, at least not yet. He can't seem to decide where he wants to look, at the deer or at Ned, taking in the taller man's expression and watching his hands as if they might start glowing at any second. "I don't--God," he ....blasphemes, abruptly, a little hoarse. Such is the impressiveness of the situation.

The irony in that he has just witnessed genuine resurrection (if only for sixty seconds) will have to be absorbed on a religious level later, and then he'll probably make a terrible joke about it. "I didn't know it would be like this, to see."

He laughs in low baritone that rumbles through his chest (and further startles the deer, so it's probably best that it's been nearly a minute) a note in it like a shout for joy. "Ned. You truly are extraordinary."

Erik recognizes the power of saying another person's own name in their presence--it denotes a desire for attention, but more than that it conjures up importance. Purpose. It makes a person real. His look now is all expectation; as fascinated as he is by the still living (....reliving) deer, having seen this he's as eager to witness the process in reverse.

That laugh startles Ned; firstly, because it seems such a strange response, to him. He'd imagined any number of responses but that kind of rich, surprised laughter certainly wasn't one of them. Secondly, it surprises him because he realizes, right then, that he's never heard Erik laugh before. At least, not like this. That laugh, and the way Erik says his name (he isn't aware of the power it has, but that doesn't reduce its impact in the least) both contribute to inspire a strange, budding feeling in his chest. A tentative, tiny burst of happiness, even pride.

He doesn't want that happiness, doesn't want that pride. It's dangerous to feel those things. Because the numbers are getting lower and Ned knows what needs to come next. He's had too many moments of false hope in his life to welcome it. By now he's familiar with the pattern: break his own rules, do something risky in the hopes of making things better, feel hope, end up making things worse, feel disappointment. As often as he can he tries to stamp out those little sprouts of hope in himself, before they take root. That way it will hurt less, when the consequences come, as they always do.

Ned can't wait any longer. Erik's eyes are heavy on him as he comes forward again, touches the deer with the same finger he'd used the last time, in the same place. The minimal amount of contact. It is more than enough. There is another electric sound, noticeably different than the first. The deer glows once more, a pale blue, and goes instantly stiff and motionless again. It feels even colder to the touch, now, by contrast.

This has always been more difficult for Ned. He doesn't particularly enjoy the first touch, but the second touch is... awful. Seeing and feeling the way that a tiny amount of contact with him can kill, instantly and irreversibly. The sound of it, the look of it, inescapably recalls to him the first time it had happened. He has gotten better at keeping the memory at arm's length, not letting it creep up and swallow him whole, but the presence of it is there at the corner of his mind.

Most of the time, when he uses his powers, it is merely on fruit. He never touches that fruit a second time. When he'd brought back Laura, he had avoided this half of things. Ned of course, hates it when something or someone else dies in exchange, but it is distinctly easier than feeling something die under his own hand.

He knows he's been crouching there for some time without saying anything. Erik is looking at him; he can feel the weight of his eyes, but he can't look up at them. Instead he continues to look at the deer, resting his whole hand on it, now, smoothing down the short hair over its ribs. There is a tenderness in that touch, and a regret.

"It only works once," he says, voice gone a shade hollow.

It takes Erik some time to look up from the deer once Ned's touch has gone into it; he's felt life leave enough bodies to know that that is authentic, rather than the way he had to touch to confirm before. Ned's somberness doesn't tamp down his fascination much - it would someone like Charles, he knows, Charles would be sensitive, would say the right thing - which is just one of those things he comes by honestly. He understands the weight of life and death, but while his relationship to those ideas (especially the latter) is certainly unique, he doesn't feel it the way Ned does.

"If it worked more than once it would be trivial."

Mostly this is thinking aloud, Erik obviously turning the words over in his mind and mouth as he forms them. By this point though, he is considering Ned with much the same affect. "You do realize by now I don't often bother with politeness? By the same token it follows I don't make threats."

...it seems fairly likely Ned has gathered that, yes. Just scary, scary promises. He lowers the now cold body of the deer back to its position on the tarp and brushes off his hands; he's not markedly perfunctory, but there's no ceremony in it either. "When I said I was interested in a demonstration that was exactly what I meant. Not 'demonstrate or face the consequences.'"

His eyes flicker back down, black lashes covering them as he marks the outline on the tarp, the subtle ways it changed in that brief moment of life. "You have an extraordinary gift."

Speaking of just saying what he means; the repetition is obviously deliberate. "But it's not one I would have forced you to use."

Odd, that puzzlement would be the feeling to rattle Ned out of his momentary gloom, give him the impetus to look up at Erik with a small crease of confusion between his brows. Why is he talking about politeness and threats, at a time like this? What do they have to do with anything?

Gradually, awareness and understanding creep up on him. Erik is a keen observer, and some of his own distaste for what he's just done must have showed. There is a context for that sadness but, of course, Erik does not know it. So, once he'd picked up on it, Erik had started to worry (or perhaps that is too strong a word - consider) that he'd pressured Ned, coerced him into something he wasn't comfortable with. Which is funny, really, considering that, of the people he has met in this place, Erik has been in many ways the most respectful of his wishes.

"You didn't force me," Ned reassures, standing up as well. His voice is normal again now. He shoves his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunching, defensively. Not defending himself from Erik, though. "I'm the one that offered. I didn't have to. It's just, I'm not used to people seeing." Even that, though, doesn't quite encapsulate what he wants to say. He adds, "Nothing about it is trivial. To me."

How can Erik still say that? How can he still call it extraordinary, in that exact same tone of voice, after seeing both sides? Ned shifts his weight from foot to foot restlessly. Perhaps he ought to take advantage to Erik's professed (and demonstrated, in times past) rejection of politeness and just ask.

"You don't find it... disgusting?" To say that Ned is insecure would be a vast understatement. But extraordinary and disgusting are not mutually exclusive. It could be that Erik has a kind of respect for the potential of Ned's powers, but still finds them repugnant.

Continuing with vast understatements, to say that Erik is surprised would be one of those. He understands that Ned distances himself from his ability (or tries too, for as impossible as that is) but that he would be so sure that even Erik would look on this display and experience nothing but revulsion--

Well. At least his confusion is too genuine to be anything else, although after a second it skews charred with the blackening of experience. "'Disgusting.' No."

If there's one thing a person can always count on from Erik, it's honesty and concision in tandem. "I've been witness to every kind of atrocity mankind has invented." His smile is sharp again, eyes glittering like a spill of broken glass. "And they are endlessly inventive even in their banality. I know disgusting when I see it."

He might have had to make his voice soften to go on, but he's managed it, so at least his words don't have the quality of a thresher on high after that point. "What you do--what you are--it isn't that. Far from it. All your life you've been taught you have no choice but to hide, when that's the last thing you should have to do. You wield a power that would destroy a lesser man, and you have more strength in you than you know. More than I think you could ever have imagined."

Ned hears that changed note in Erik's voice immediately, the darkness in it. It makes him look up at him as he answers, make eye contact. That smile is nothing like the one from earlier - there is nothing joyful or pleasant about it. It makes something in Ned's stomach twist painfully, but at the same time serves as punctuation and contrast. He might not know the details, but he doesn't doubt Erik for a second, and it helps provide a perspective that is difficult - if not impossible - for him to provide himself. He trusts Erik's opinion, values it.

(Some part of him wonders quietly just what the hell happened to Erik, what can have possibly made him into the kind of person he is)

There is a certain quality to the way Erik speaks to him sometimes that Ned cannot think of a word for. Idealistic, but without the usual implication of optimism or naivety. Inspirational, but without the commercial or sentimental connotations. Whatever the name for it, it's powerful and unprecedented. Ned hasn't wasted his time on this particular kind of what if in years. He's had plenty of regrets and imagined scenarios: what if he'd lived a normal life without his powers, what if he lived in a world where everyone was like him, what if he had experimented with his powers before trying to use them on any humans, etcetera. But he hasn't conjured up a world where he didn't have to hide.

And it's important to him, the way Erik phrases it. Not that Ned shouldn't have hidden - Erik, Ned knows, understands the reasons for his hiding. What he says, though, is that he should have had to hide. The shift in emphasis makes a huge difference. It implies that he isn't wrong, but that the world is.

He doesn't know how to respond, brings a hand up to rub over his mouth. Ned knows all too well the destructive impact his power can have on others, but Erik is drawing his attention to the destructive power it has had on him. His power has corroded him from the inside, yes. Left him a rusted, tangled snarl of anxiety and neuroses and sensitivity and self-loathing. But it could have done worse. He has, at least, survived it, sometimes with effort. Is that enough make him strong? Can someone as strong as Erik really see strength in someone like him?

"I don't feel very strong," he says, hesitantly. Much as he might have wanted to, he didn't say I am not strong. It's thus not an argument, as such - merely a confirmation Erik's assertion that he can't imagine it. Ned cannot make that mental leap just yet, to figure himself as anything but weak, acted-upon rather than acting. "I never have. I'm not sure I even know how to."

Edited 2013-06-05 19:19 (UTC)

Erik raises his eyebrows, crossing his arms over his chest and looking perfectly at ease with nothing real to lean on. "You've survived."

That's enough, to him. He doesn't know the places Ned's mutation has taken him, and unless he sees specific conversational directions for them won't ask. It's the same kind of strength he sees in River, or Raven, or any of the small family he'd had a chance with in the world he and Charles left behind. Mutants are people whose mere existence means they bear up under a weight the humans who surround them can never understand. Ned has, he can see, been marked by that weight; it's nearly visible sometimes, in the hunch of his shoulders and his easy retreat into reticence. Where Erik wears his height and breadth in a way that eats space, Ned pulls in on himself, compacts what he has left to keep it holding him up. The kind of toll it takes is terrible, but sometimes that's the cost of continuing to move in a world which delights in othering what it can't understand, where the semiotic dichotomy of 'us' and 'them' is the simple fix. Acceptance is harder. Charles believes humans to be capable of it, but Erik--he didn't even believe that when he thought he was human. Ned is right in his perception; it's not mutants who should have to change, it's the world.

"At great price, I think." That's quiet, made with Erik's usual intense eye contact, but he doesn't hold Ned's gaze or demand confirmation. Mercy and pity are in short supply with Erik, but he can be gentle when he wants to be.

After that there's a moment where Ned might feel obligated to fill the silence, since that's often what he does - Erik has noticed - but then he looks back, considering. "I can't change the way you see yourself. That's your power to take, if you want it. But I have picked up a trick or two over the years."

Let him gently understate. "Knowing you can defend yourself as needed--it helps." He shrugs, a faint trace of bitter smile on his mouth. "It's either that or hope the world becomes an easier place to live in, and if you're looking for that you'd be better off asking Charles."

What has been the price of his survival, Ned wonders. There are all kinds of costs. Costs for others - the lives of the people and the animals and even the plants that he'd killed over the years - and costs for himself. All those measures, for all those years, keeping himself anonymous, keeping himself going, even at the bleakest times. Erik makes all that sound noble, instead of pathetic. As if there were something real and tangible he was struggling against, something valid and comprehensible and recognized.

He can't meet Erik's eyes for more than a few seconds, but Ned acknowledges his words with an almost imperceptible shrug. It's easier than nodding, easier than an explicit indication of his agreement.

Then Erik is making his offer - obliquely, but unmistakably. At another point in his life, Ned would have refused outright, without even considering. He has already hurt too many people; he doesn't need to learn how to do it in a new way. Sure, he'd spent most of his early years at boarding school getting his ass kicked, but that had stopped once he was suddenly a foot taller than all the other boys.

Since he's arrived here, though, he's been in more than one situation when, as Erik puts it, 'a trick or two' might have been useful. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea, to learn. Not that he ever intended to use the skills he might pick up. He trusts Erik when he says that just knowing he knows them would be helpful. It also occurs to him that it would be good to know how to fight, now that he has people he'd be willing to fight for, if they couldn't fight for themselves. Friends. Loved ones.

"Thanks. Um, I'll... let me think about it?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i need a resurrection

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject