[open] a friend in need's a friend indeed

[nedofpies]

Who: Ned and OPEN
What: Random encounters & fallout from dream-walking tomfoolery
Where: House 20, the garden, anywhere around town
When: Day 89

It's been a long week. A long, mostly-sleepless, weird week during which Ned has seen far more of his friends' and neighbors' subconsciouses than he would have liked to. Plus, a creepy city made of crystals that everyone seems to have seen, but no one will claim as their own. Shady stuff. Today, he is determined to wear himself out. Perhaps if he's tired enough, whatever mojo the men behind the curtain have put on him won't be strong enough to stir him out of a deep and dreamless sleep.

It's probably a futile tactic, but he can't just do nothing.

So he is a bustle of activity - cleaning the house, walking around town, checking on the crops to see if they are holding up well (carefully, with an eye for any enterprising tigers roaming too close to the edge of the forest), keeping an eye out for new faces and an ear out for rumors of missing ones.

Comments

[nedofpies]

"It's not boring," Ned says at once, indicating with a gesture that Charles should have a seat on the couch, while he goes to cut them their slices of pie. It's a quick job and in a minute he is returning with two slices of pie, on two small plates, and a fork for each of them. He hands Charles his and sits down, glad for the moment to think that fetching the food had given him.

"I think you should do it." Charles didn't ask his opinion, but he's going to give it all the same. Fervently. He doesn't know what kind of danger Charles might be referring to, or what kind of training, but those are minor and unimportant points to him. "If I'd known there were other people like me sooner... I mean, if I'd grown up around them..." he doesn't know how to finish that sentence. He'd be happier? More stable? Less of a tangled-up neurotic mess?

Ned prods the bright orange filling of his slice of pie, leaving gentle impressions of the fork's tines. "There have got to be plenty of mutant kids out there with no idea what they are and with nowhere else to go. If it's in your power to make a place for them... I don't see how you could bear not doing it."

[mentis]

"I don't think I could either."

He studies his pie but continues talking. It's different, but rather refreshing to be able to speak all of this outloud. "I met my sister at the age of eleven. Before she came into my life I'd thought I was the only one with a set of peculiar abilities. Then Raven appeared and she could change her shape and I thought that the world had been opened up. But neither of us found anyone else like us for a long time. Not until Erik."

He neatly cuts off the edge of his slice, not really registering the warmth in his tone. It's something he's sure Erik would be furious with him for, but he's never really thought to cover it, "The first mutant either of us had met in person after sixteen years of hiding what we both could do. The first at all who had been so frank and open about his mutation. He didn't hide. In fact I think sometimes he revels in it. Both Raven and I would be different now had we that influence. I want our kind to have that openness, to be free of the constant fear of discovery."

That makes him look up, aware of the implications of his last word. But he doesn't let it cut him off.

"Children wouldn't have to grow up thinking they were alone anymore. I'd like to be able to give that at least."

[nedofpies]

Ned tries to imagine what it would have been like, if he'd met another mutant at that age. He doesn't question the fact that Charles' sister is someone he met, rather than someone who was born from the same parents. After all, River is as good as a sister to him. Blood isn't the only thing.

The affection in Charles' voice is clear to Ned, now that River has given him the information he needs to put it in its proper context. Otherwise, he thinks, he'd just have dismissed it as a very fond friendship, the way he had up until recently. He's heard the story Charles is telling, too, from River. It's different hearing the way he relates it, the emphasis that he puts on Erik's frankness and pride in his nature.

"I've seen him reveling in it," Ned concurs. He'd wanted Ned to revel in his own powers, encouraged him to work towards accepting the whole of himself, rather than merely scattered pieces. Whether or not that is going to be possible is still something he isn't so sure about. Erik doesn't have all the information, after all. He doesn't know the sorts of things that Ned has done with his powers.

"You know, I can't even imagine it," Ned keeps his voice light, but he's betraying how deeply the conversation cuts in little ways - the way he's sitting, the way he's poking at the slice of pie without taking a bite, the way he isn't meeting Charles' eyes, "Growing up without that fear." Fear has been one of his fundamental impulses, since he was nine years old. It's woven into every part of him, now. Probably inextricably.

"Generally speaking I don't think it's a good idea, taking kids away from their families or their homes. But I'm sure-" he chips away at the pie crust with his fork, "-some young mutants end up without families or homes, because of their powers. Giving them somewhere to go would be... a pretty good way of making the world a better place, if you ask me."

It would probably be obvious even to someone without Charles' powers that Ned had once been one of the kids he's talking about.

[mentis]

"Yes."

It's clear all right. Charles feels like he's getting an insight into Ned previously unseen. Ned's power is so much like theirs that both Charles and Erik seem to regard him as more mutant than not. To know that Ned himself has suffered the same fate so many of the children had, well, it makes it easier to attempt this reconciliation.

"Until recently I hadn't considered the house I grew up in to be anything more than that. A house, walls, a roof. Looking at it now I can't imagine it not being something more. It's ... large enough to hold dozens upon dozens of people comfortably." That he comes from money is no big secret, but as ever Charles is mildly cautious of being judged. He remembers Erik's reaction to it quite vividly.

"I've given some thought into doing that here. Not on the same scale but - finding some way to hold a community center. We've had an influx of young mutants and I'd rather like to give them that stability."

[nedofpies]

Ned hears that tentative note in Charles' voice when he describes the size of the house, but he had already called it a mansion once in the conversation, so Ned doesn't really see why. Besides, at the moment, Charles' wealth is the last thing on his mind. He's imagining a place for that many mutants. How good it would be for them. How much better their lives would be, with just that place to call their own.

When Charles starts talking about setting up a community center for young mutants here, Ned brightens. It is not, perhaps, quite so urgent (there are no orphaned nine-year-olds, here, no one all that young or homeless), but it's still very promising.

"I think it's a great idea. Bring them all together, introduce them to one another. Let them ask you and Erik questions, if they have them..." He tilts his head to the side, then, curious, "I know about Elizabeth - are there more new arrivals who would, ah. Qualify for the community center?"

THAT WAS MY FAULT I FORGOT ABOUT THE MANSION I AM DUMB FORGIVE ME

[mentis]

"Two young mutants from my world," he responds with a quick upturn of his mouth, "Or actually, the world where Charles Xavier is far too old, has absolutely no hair, and uses a wheelchair."

It's the first time he's mentioned the last word out loud, but as long as he keeps thinking of how far the two universes are he won't panic about it too much. "Though I am rather jealous of his car collection."

He flashes Ned a grin and then finally takes a bite of his pie. "Oh, this is good."

AHAHA oh god, it's cool? That happens in real convos constantly, IT'S UNINTENTIONAL REALISM, ilu

[nedofpies]

Ned gives Charles a surprised look. "Freaky. If I met someone here who said they knew me from another world, even if it was a future version of me, I'd be weirded out. A lot."

Like, Charles seems really really calm about the whole thing. Maybe it's just his personality, or just his Englishness, or some combination of the two. But Ned can't even imagine.

The compliment about his pie makes him grin and duck his head, but he's still not ready to let the topic go, if what Charles was going for was a subtle change of conversation topic.

"How do you know it's another world, and not the future of your own?"

[mentis]

"Because I absolutely refuse to be bald."

Charles offers him up a cheeky grin, one that speaks volumes of the man he used to be. Here, he is often wound up in a feeling of responsibility. But people like Erik know the soft, ridiculous creature he had been merely a few months ago. He looks boyish, conspiratorial.

The fact that he had been ... chair bound would also trouble him if he let it free from it's steel trap within him, "I've been told by a certain mumber of ladies that my hair gives me charm, I intend to keep it."

[nedofpies]

The sheer indignation - over something as superfluous as whether or not he'll go bald! - earns a laugh from Ned. He doesn't laugh often, or loudly, but when he does, it transforms his whole face, makes him look like a different man entirely.

"A certain number, huh?" he echoes, voice rich with amusement. Ned is one of the people here who has never really seen that aspect of Charles. He's seen a few sides (pedantic, nurturing, tea-loving, terrifying, apologetic, determined) but never flirty or Casanova-ish.

"I'd say it would take more than losing your hair to deprive you of charm."