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Entry tags:
→ pull out the breaks behind the houses,
Who: Charles Xavier & River. ( C L O S E D )
What: Telepathic friends share everything even when they probably don't want to. AKA Charles is kind of sensing the brain breaking thing.
When: Day 78 ( afternoon )
Where: House 17
Warnings: As usual, emoting.
He's close to River, of course he is. She reminds him of many things, like stained glass in windows building up a picture, and he cares for her deeply. But today is the first real time he's aware of just how close they've become. There is only one other person he feels constantly, the tendrils of his mind entwined around the barbed wire of Erik's, and so to sense him every day is not startling. The thread of dissonance in his thoughts currently today though, that gives him pause. It's like the edges of a headache, a mind that isn't his barraging against the walls. He's not concerned, perhaps he should be, but there are many beings here that don't follow the same rules as those he knows. He goes about his daily business as best he can, to the library and back before he stops to genuinely poke at it a little bit. It takes him too long - far too long - to get the sense of who it is attempting this kind of psychic battery. Then once he realises he strengthens his own defences and deviates from his path.
He doesn't think River is trying to contact him, no. From the whispers of her mind he senses there's something she can't quite control. If she wanted his attention and could not get it, it would be far more likely that she'd go through Erik. So he's curious and a little worried as he picks his way through the town towards her house. He doesn't knock as he rambles up the path, his hands in his cardigan pocket, just brushes against her thoughts with intent.
River. Can you let me in?
What: Telepathic friends share everything even when they probably don't want to. AKA Charles is kind of sensing the brain breaking thing.
When: Day 78 ( afternoon )
Where: House 17
Warnings: As usual, emoting.
He's close to River, of course he is. She reminds him of many things, like stained glass in windows building up a picture, and he cares for her deeply. But today is the first real time he's aware of just how close they've become. There is only one other person he feels constantly, the tendrils of his mind entwined around the barbed wire of Erik's, and so to sense him every day is not startling. The thread of dissonance in his thoughts currently today though, that gives him pause. It's like the edges of a headache, a mind that isn't his barraging against the walls. He's not concerned, perhaps he should be, but there are many beings here that don't follow the same rules as those he knows. He goes about his daily business as best he can, to the library and back before he stops to genuinely poke at it a little bit. It takes him too long - far too long - to get the sense of who it is attempting this kind of psychic battery. Then once he realises he strengthens his own defences and deviates from his path.
He doesn't think River is trying to contact him, no. From the whispers of her mind he senses there's something she can't quite control. If she wanted his attention and could not get it, it would be far more likely that she'd go through Erik. So he's curious and a little worried as he picks his way through the town towards her house. He doesn't knock as he rambles up the path, his hands in his cardigan pocket, just brushes against her thoughts with intent.
River. Can you let me in?
no subject
She'd been doing so well, by her own measure, adjusting at a rapid pace through vanishings and new connections and reappearances and now she's cracked creaking at some artificial construct her mind and body are trapped in. It's not even natural, not even due to her own trauma. This is inflicted circumstance that she cannot circumvent, and part of her is very frustrated with that.
Whether this part is the same part that moves her towards the door (it's not locked because anything she would need to worry about could easily circumvent a simple metal latch) or if it merely steps aside in the same way she does, not quite looking at Charles but not quite avoiding his eye either, she doesn't know. She doesn't ask, because she's not sure she can answer.
Her throat hurts and her mind is a mess. Structured sentences are not easily formed, so instead of a come in Charles receives the intention of welcome and the hesitance to respond further.
... um, this was never in my inbox i am so sorry D: ignore if it's far too late for this ;;
Charles moves to her side immediately, as though bypassing the worn out groove that she's a threat. To him she's not. And though he knows she thinks of herself as a weapon he would never allow himself to treat her as one. His hands settle on her arms, his expression worried.
"What happened to you?"
He doesn't expect her to answer, just moves to clear a space for her to sit, tries to guide her as carefully as he can. "It's all right, I'm here now. I'll help in any way I can."
don't worry about it!
What happened? The Doctor attempted to break the barrier and he did, though River isn't certain if it was managed very well or for very long. He broke the barrier and it echoed it's failing resonance into the minds of everyone. They saw things from home, they saw but they may not have been real and it lit up the broken and fractured parts of River's mind like an old switchboard suddenly flooded with power. The circuits failed and her structure failed and her safety measures failed and she spent time almost but not quite driving her body to shock as it separated into various pieces in her own mind. People were afraid, were angry, were devastated and in that cacophony there was no room for one girl to be one thing.
So she went to Ned and he helped her, gave her a story to force her words into something she has a little more control over, but ...she's not entirely fixed. Not that she can ever be, really, but she's uncertain how long it will take her to recover from this. If she's to properly recover at all.
"Don't know what will help." Her brain is still doing it, the abrupt start stop revise reevaluate spiral that has her either falling or floating she isn't sure. Only that it won't stop, and it isn't at all a comfortable state to be in, and now she has doubts. About the nature of this experiment and the limits it places on them, about what happens when so many people are frozen outside of time in its own bubble. Something went wrong when the barrier fell, something about time and movement and passage, and it's got River occasionally falling into a sort of feedback loop. "Don't know."
no subject
He takes her hand, squeezes lightly. River is very precious to him and Charles isn't entirely sure how to convey that beyond helping her now. So he holds her hand and thinks carefully about how he could help. She asked him before, didn't she? Asked him to help with the failsafes. Maybe this too, if she wants him to.
"Do you want me to see if I can ... well, turn it off, I suppose?"
no subject
So. "Yes." Wrapping her arms around herself. "Take care and tread lightly."
The last thing she wants right now is to have to call for Erik because she's broken Charles somehow.
no subject
So he shifts until their knees touch, something of a comforting gesture, and lifts his hand as though to touch his temple. Catching himself half way, Charles has a moment of disconnect. It was River who told him that this was his tell and he'd been meaning to fix it, hasn't he? So when his words next come they come to her telepathically.
If this hurts in any way or worries you, tell me.
no subject
Maybe it is a silly thing to think about, the what if she hopes will never come to be. Simon doesn't belong here, she knows that. She's fine with that. Now if it will only remain that way.
Either way, instead of allowing herself to wander too far down that path she tries to focus on calming down, on letting someone else in without the instinct to shut them out, to surround the intrusion with spikes or merely a heavy wall. It works, to a point; River's mind is difficult to influence directly, even for her own good at this point, which may make this difficult for Charles.
For there are the thoughts and voices of so many to contend with before one even approaches the reality that River holds on to these small echoes of the people she's known; the entire crew of Serenity exists in her mind, shades that aren't entirely three-dimensional but exist nonetheless out of the peripheral of her internal vision. There are others, as well - the ghosts of roommates past, as it were, pleasantly haunting the empty or re-occupied rooms of the house on the island that they're all trapped upon.
Those are all normal, for River, despite the fact that they would not be welcome or comfortable in the minds of many others. What is not normal is her understanding of the barrier, a multi-toned bubble that every so often shudders violently, sending River's entire mindscape into a fit that manifests as an earthquake, where everything gets jarred harshly several paces out of sync with where it should be.
It doesn't happen as often as it had been, as evidenced by the little scorch marks in the ground where things had been rattled around before, but it still happens. In the waking world, River flinches slightly.
no subject
"I know it's hard but just try not to think about me being here. "
no subject
On the other side of this barrier is something that Charles would recognize as a British police box only painted a rather ludicrously shaded blue as opposed to the standard red, appearing and ramming itself into the barrier, causing aftershocks that echo in River's mind and mental state before vanishing again. It blinks into existence in different locations along that same border, smashing into it again and again.
Every time it impacts, River takes a sharp inhale, but the ripples it causes are still intensively painful, the sound of the tides replaced by her own quiet babbling on the nature of time and space in it's various dimensions equalling more than three.
no subject
So the first thing he attempts is to strengthen the barrier, to cushion the impact as much as he can. It isn't going to be enough but it might stop it hurting while he figures out how to get rid of it.
no subject
It shifts. She blinks, and it shifts further. Somewhere there are treess blossoming, blooming in those stars as they rotate in strange patterns and just as suddenly, River knows that this is about to go terribly wrong. The police box represents the truth of the matter, huge and terrifying, only the edges of which River can properly articulate and comprehend. The barrier is what remains of the one time she hid a great truth from herself.
The one other time.
So as Charles strengthens this separation of self from permanently damaging truth, the barrier itself summons its own memory. In an instant the landscape changes to the great, hollowing emptiness that was Ariel and in that instance Charles can hear what River heard on that planet - the deafening silence of so many people dying, without suffering, without reason, merely choosing to cease to be.
They felt nothing, and so they died.
It's an oasis of terrifying calm in a sea of horror, because the police box strikes the barrier again and shatters into a million billion pieces that grow limbs and torsos and begin screaming at Charles. The barrier holds the Reavers from reaching them but River can't hold him and herself and them in the same place but never interacting, so she grabs his hands and push/pulls until he is back in his own body and she has managed to vomit up pie and tea without missing the sink.
Several moments and dry heaves pass before River turns on the faucet and cups her hands in water, rinsing her mouth and splashing cool liquid on her face before she remembers that Charles is here, not just in her mind but present in a physical sense, and so she glances at him over her shoulder.
"Thank you."
no subject
So the minute she speaks he's up and gathering her into his arms without a word. River is one of them, that is true, but she's also had a vast and significant impact on Charles' life that he cares for her as he would Raven, or even a daughter of his own. His hand curves around the back of her skull and he holds her close but gently.
"You are so brave," he whispers, mind extending to hers but not pushing through, it's more like warm water against the shore, comfort in the only way he knows, "And we are very lucky to have you, River."