xp_logs | Holiday drop-ins

x-juggernaut.livejournal.com posting in

This takes place during the preparations for dinner, sometime in the early afternoon

Laughter echoed from the kitchen as the students prepared dinner, and Charles smiled as he turned down the hall toward the main dining room; laughter had been in short supply over the past week.

A flash of thought from the grounds arrested both his attention and his forward progress; the chair slewed over and nearly ran into the wall. The mind outside was unmistakable, and yet . . . impossible? Surely. But he whipped the chair around nevertheless, and headed for the front door as fast as its electric motor would permit.

Outside, the massive visitor tapped his foot impatiently until the oak door swung open. His initial words of sarcastic greeting froze on his lips as he looked down to see Charles peering up from his wheelchair. Both men remained silent for a moment, until Cain gave a noncommital shrug. "How you doin', Chuck?"

"My God, Cain, it is you . . ." Charles shook his head in wonder. "Although I must say, I wasn't expecting the Ghost of Christmas Past for another month. . . . Where have you been all these years?"

Cain gave a quick laugh, glancing over his shoulder to the men in Marine dress blues, currently ducking their heads from the slow drizzle of November rain as they returned to their van. "Depends on who you ask. Hospital, decided I didn't like staying, they thought I should. You know me. So I've been just..." Cain's hands dug into the pockets of his oversized military-issue field coat. "I've been around."

Xavier backed his chair out of the doorway and waved an inviting hand toward the front hall. "Well, come in--we can go to my study and talk about it--and about how you don't look a day older than when I last saw you; I would have taken you for your own son if I hadn't sensed your mind first."

Cain raised an eyebrow. "Your study? YOUR study?" His face reddened with a quick burst of temper, then he paused, taking a long, slow breath. "I guess it would be, now. Yeah, all right." Cain stepped forward, the top of his head barely clearing the high doorway. Standing in the foyer of the mansion, Cain paused with his hands on his hips, closing his eyes and breathing in deeply. "Home," he whispered, lost for the moment in memories of years gone past. Then he blinked away the reverie and turned to face Charles. "You and I got some things to talk about."

"Nearly forty years," Charles mused, "But I expect you mean something more specific? And would you like anything to drink?"

"Beer if you've got it. Otherwise... well, whatever you got." Cain followed Xavier down the hall, taking measured slow steps behind the motorized wheelchair. Upon entering the study, Cain paused. "Forty years? Shit, yeah. You probably want..." he glanced around briefly, his eyes falling on a wicker chair, then meeting Charles gaze as both men shook their heads. Cain finally allowed himself a small smile as he settled himself on the couch as delicately as his seven-foot frame was capable of. "First things first, I suppose. I ain't exactly here entirely of my own - whatchacallit - volition." Cain reached into his coat, tossing a manila folder onto Xavier's desk. "Make a long story short, I'm sort of on parole."

Charles raised an eyebrow as he passed Cain a small glass of bourbon that seemed like a shot in the larger man's hand, then drew the folder across the desk and perused the first few pages. "I see. Well, you're welcome here, of course, but there are a few complications--roughly forty of them, at last count; I converted the house into a school for mutants in the early eighties, and it's been rather successful."

"Yeah, they told me about that. Can't say I'm thrilled, but-" Cain looked around the study as he tossed back his drink, focusing on the old photographs framed on the walls. "-they said you're training them to be a little less dangerous, that sort of thing. It's... not the worst idea. Keeps them from falling in with that guy who tried to blow up the Statue of Liberty a ways back. Goddamn wacko. Anyway - I figure if these are kids like you were, they need the help." Cain swallowed briefly, then looked at the ceiling and mumbled under his breath, barely audible. "I could use the help."

"That's what I'm here for, brother," Charles said softly, then shook his head. "I can't get over how young you look. And it might just be the chair, but I don't remember you that tall."

Cain chuckled to himself, then stood up and dropped his coat onto the floor as he stretched to his full height. "Some stuff's changed, Chuck." Tentatively, he drew the hem of his shirt up over his chest, revealing the crimson ruby protruding partly from his chest, strands of scar tissue and bone visible around it. "I don't know what the hell I am, Chuck. Something happened to me in that jungle - and I woke up in some hospital under armed guard a goddamn DECADE later... so I ran." Cain tucked his shirt in self-consciously and cracked his knuckles loudly. "I've been running since '77, although I think they gave up about ten years ago. Then a few months back, something sticks in my head - get home, get Chuck. He'll figure things out. So," Cain continued, "the last thing I wanted was to show up and bring a troop of tanks to the doorstep chasing me. I walked onto an air force base and got their attention. Turned myself in, and eventually some general decided you'd be the best place to stick me."

"Mm. I wonder if that was intended more to help you, or inconvenience me; I'm not in very good odor with certain factions of the military, of late. Whatever their reasoning, you are home." Charles cocked an eyebrow at the file again. "I see you 'got their attention' by hoisting a jet over your head. The gem, again?"

"Right. Short form - I'm stronger than a train, found that out in Oregon a few years back. Me and a CSE railway express decided to play chicken, and it wasn't pretty. I walked away without a damn scratch. I just went where I wanted to go. If something was in the way, I just went through it. Buildings, mountains - I walked on the bottom of the ocean, Chuck. I held my breath for an entire DAY. This..." Cain looked at his hands, turning them over like a child discovering his appendages for the first time. "I can't be stopped, Chuck. There's no prison they've got can hold me, and frankly, I'm tired of running. They don't know what to do with me, hell - *I* don't know what to do with me. I can't walk out into the world and pretend to have a real life. Here," he motioned around himself, "this is the only home I've ever had that wasn't some firebase or foxhole outside of Cu Chi. I ain't a teacher, that's for damn sure, and I sure as hell ain't a student. But..." Cain let the sentence trail off, then sat in an uncomfortable silence before continuing. "This is my home, Chuck. If I can't have a normal life, I can at least have this, can't I?"

"Of course you can." Charles smiled wryly. "In fact, the students won't blink an eye; they've lived through just as strange. The only question in my mind is whether or not I should introduce you as my stepbrother at Thanksgiving dinner tonight. What would you prefer?"

Cain laughed. "Yeah, right. You went and got old. Me... I'm sixty-three last March and don't look a day over twenty-six. I don't want... I don't want any special treatment from these kids. I was thinking, there's still a lot of space here, right? Someone's got to take care of it, you know. I know you've got teachers for these kids - but I'll be damned if any of them really see this place as their home. Not like you and me, Chuck." Cain leaned against the windowframe, peering out across the south meadow. "I just want to be here, to be me. Cain Marko. If you need to tell these kids something..." Cain searched for the words. "Tell them I'm your new groundskeeper or something. You run your school, Chuck. I got no beef with that. But I'll be damned if I see these wild kids chew up this land my dad left me without a care." He turned, somehow appearing almost humble for a second, then coughing and steeling himself. "If the job needs to be done, I'm the guy for it."

"I would appreciate that, Cain. Very much. We've already had to replant some trees just this year, and I'm sure you can imagine the kinds of things that happen around this many teenagers with half-controlled mutant powers." Charles tapped his chin with one finger. "I would, however, like to tell the staff the whole truth. Moira MacTaggart, who will likely be working with you during the therapy I see mentioned as part of your sentence, knew me when I was still searching for you; many of the others weren't even born when I finally began to believe you were dead, but explaining matters to them now will very likely save awkward questions later. I trust their discretion implicitly, and I am certain they will treat you according to your own merits rather than as my brother."

Cain nodded. "Thanks, Chuck. It's been... I gotta admit, I..." the words came out sharp and stuttered. "I was a real shit back then - and I ain't going to pretend a lot's changed. Still, I didn't expect... things." He motioned at the wheelchair. "What the hell, huh?"

"Ah." Charles smiled. "Backpacking accident in Switzerland in . . . seventy-five? Yes, because I was still in physical therapy during the bicentennial. Life goes on; I barely notice it anymore."

"Tough break." Cain looked his older step-brother over, as if appraising an antique. "I got a bag outside, if you've..." he paused briefly, "I suppose these kids have moved into my old room, up on the third floor?"

"Actually, the third floor is staff; the students are all on the second floor. And the man who was using your room . . . is no longer with us; you can move back in immediately."

Cain's face split in a grin. "Great. Looks like I'll be taking you up on that dinner. Funny how timing works out, ain't it?" Picking up his coat, Cain walked to the door, then stopped. Facing away from Charles, he spoke quietly. "It ain't easy for me to say, especially to you. But what the hell, I got nowhere else to go." Cain took a deep breath. "I... get angry sometimes. Real bad. And I'm gonna need somewhere to go, somewhere these kids ain't gonna see me or run into me. That old quarry still there, across the cove?"

"Yes, it is. I used it for training some of my more . . . explosive students, before I finished the new sub-basements; I shouldn't think anyone uses it now. If anyone heads in that direction while you're there, I'll keep them away. And if there's anything else I can do to help, please ask. We may not have been the closest of brothers, but we are family." Charles smiled. "I won't even attempt to insist that you dress for dinner."

Cain snorted. "Gimme a little credit, Chuck. I wasn't raised in a barn, you know. Whatever you've got has to be a damn sight better than the Corps mess hall slop." Cain stepped out into the hall, then turned around. "And Chuck," he said, "thanks."

With that, his footsteps continued down the hall, with a single pause punctuated by the exclamation "SUB-BASEMENTS?"