xp_logs | Immram: Sanctity

Wanda and Jean go to Trask's home and find the good professor in quite a state after her experience in Nathan's mind. They also find out the rest of the story - and it's not a happy one. After they return to the mansion, Wanda checks on a now-awake Nathan and they talk about what it all means.

Wanda paused and looked at Jean over her sunglasses. "So, should we make a list of what we can or cannot do?" she asked idly. "Though I think the list of what we can do is probably the shorter of the lists." They walked together, getting a few appreciative stares as they neared the door. "Is dangling her out of the window on the do not list?"

"Hmm," Jean said, considering. "I think that depends on who might be passing below. No sense causing a scene. Threatening to dangle her out of the window, though, we can totally do."

Trask paced her house, her mind... elsewhere. Storming. It was storming. Except, of course, that whenever she went to look out the window the sky was beautifully blue.

Perhaps she had reached Askani's memories again, been drawn across time and pulled in by the magnetism of that fierce, singular mind. It had stormed a great deal in the future. Would storm. Will.

Her hair was crackling, as if she had caught little bits of lightning in it.

There was thunder, but only a little thunder. No, that wasn't right, of course. She ran a hand through her hair; it crackled and strands tangled and snapped off. That was the thunder. Someone was knocking at her door.

If she had been thinking clearly, she never would have opened it in such a state. Since she wasn't, she did, and looked up at the two very tall women.

She knew one of them. Aha. That was right. "Wanda!" she cried, holding out her arms to embrace the other woman. "You've come at last."

That welcome got nothing more than a dead stare over the sunglasses. "I am not here in joyous reunion," Wanda said dryly. "We are here to...protest, I suppose, what you have been doing the last few days. Or however long you actually have been doing this. And we can protest quite loudly when we want to."

Jean never would have picked up on the familiarity on her own but now, facing the woman she could make out resonances to the presence she'd encountered in Nathan's mind, which was doing nothing to help her mood. "Indeed," she said, voice cold. "We are far from pleased."

Trask sighed. "I'm sure it's difficult for you at this point, Wanda," she said, making an effort to be kind. "It was difficult for me to understand at first too." She ignored the third party, who wasn't supposed to be involved. Focus on the relevant.

Don't listen to the wind.

Looking between Trask and Jean, Wanda simply cocked an eyebrow. "I do not need to "understand"," she said slowly, speaking as though she was speaking to an idiot. Well, she was. "Nothing is difficult to understand, really. You? Are insane. You? Attacked Nathan. I? Wish to kick your scrawny butt across campus but my friend here might not approve." There was a long pause and Wanda smirked. "I take that back, she very well might approve. You know the temperament of redheads better than I do, after all."

"I would certainly be entertained, Ms. Trask. Given I got to listen to Nathan's daughter's crying for an excessively long time, it might even improve my mood. I really do not take well to strangers messing about in my friends' heads, and it's time for you to stop."

Trask's eyes narrowed. This wouldn't do. She wasn't at her best for it, but she stilled her body and threw her mind at the redhead's.

It bounced. She never bounced. She staggered a little with the recoil, recovered, and lunged for Wanda instead.

It was instinct that had Wanda's powers snapping on and she certainly couldn't feel the psychic impact of Trask slamming against the shields that came naturally with use. She did, however, see the shock in the woman's face and felt her own jaw tighten in anger. There wasn't enough to actually use her power against the other woman but what Trask had just tried to do certainly lent itself to something she'd been wanting to do since they arrived.

A second later and Trask was sprawled out at Jean and Wanda's feet, hands reaching up to craddle her nose. Wanda stared down at her as she uncurled her fist. "~Do not ever try that again, you undignified whore,~" she spat in Askani, and then straightened her shoulders.

Jean had too much pride to actually kick the woman when she was lying on the ground. She'd wait till Trask stood up. In the meantime, she scowled and said, "~You caught Nathan off guard. You will not do it again. You will not catch me, or Wanda. If you are smart, you will not try.~" Her accent wasn't as neat and clean as Wanda's, but the point came across.

Trask didn't quite get up; she sat up, looking intently at Jean. "~You are among us? But I never saw you!~"

Jean scowled. "~I would not count myself as part of whatever you are part of. I don't know what you saw, and I do not care.~"

"Leave us, including Nathan, out of your schemes," Wanda added firmly.

Trask did get up then, chin high and eyes wide, though she didn't attack again. "I do not scheme," she said, scorn dripping from her voice. "I have no need to scheme. ~The future yields itself to those who grasp it.~ I saw Nathan, I saw you," this to Wanda, "in Her eyes years ago. ~I have awaited you all this time, and you turn away from me as she did!~" Her voice rose to a shriek, then gentled abruptly. "~What is, is. She showed me all I would need, even if she would not listen or even speak to me.~" All those years watching, just watching, helpless and ignored... "~We will make our future of ourselves, of our strength, of our will, of our desire. The Askani can be now.~" Her eyes turned cold, though her voice was still soft. "~And those who cannot or will not walk the path, we will leave behind.~"

"If she would not talk to you, there was clearly a good reason," Jean snapped at the woman, then paused as something clicked in her brain and her eyes narrowed. The odd way she'd attacked Nathan, her surprise at not being able to get into Jean's own mind, there was a simpler answer here than she'd thought. "You're just an astral projector," Jean said, sounding more surprised than angry. A new variation on the standard psi mutations... But then she remembered who she was talking to. "You were spying on Askani."

"She showed me what the future will be!" Trask proclaimed, lifting her head. It was starting to penetrate, though, that she was at something of a disadvantage. Neither Wanda nor the other woman were persuaded; both were defended against her powers, had powers of their own, and were clearly in excellent physical condition.

So be it. ~What is, is.~ Even if she herself should prove to be among the weak.

It took Wanda a second to digest all this and then she looked disgusted. "You go about preaching an ideal that, quite simply, you stole," she said, shaking her head. "She never showed you, you spied on her and took what sounded good. Askani would never have approved of how you've twisted her ideology and twisted it for your own means. You speak as if she took her to her side and showed you this path but do you know something? I wonder if she would have taken you if she had known."

Wanda stepped in closer, towering over Trask. "Once more, stay away from us. We want nothing to do with your or your little group."

Trask scowled at her. She still envied Wanda, envied Nathan -- she could taste it, sour-green and bile -- for having had the opportunity to speak with Askani, but she was beginning to feel a distant kind of pity too. For all their close contact, they didn't seem to understand. And you could hardly go about spreading ideas and then complain when people used them. It wasn't as if she hadn't given due credit, even if it was difficult to cite something that technically hadn't happened yet.

Then again -- and this had not occurred to her before -- maybe they were right about what Askani meant and wanted. Maybe Askani had found the words, but had not understood their real implications, had not understood what Tara Trask had seen unfolding through her eyes. Maybe the real truth was only hers.

"I understand," she said coolly. Was that all? Were they just leave, if she said what they wanted to hear? She inclined her head to them slowly, real regret in her voice as she promised, "I will not seek to work with you again."

The future would come. She intended to be here for it.

She waited until after they were gone to whisper, "~I will wait.~"

--

It had been some time since the Box had been put to its designed use, but this was almost a textbook case of what it had been intended to do. Nathan was dozing, but his subconscious was busily at work, repairing the damage to his shields. They hadn't been destroyed, but the inversion had damaged them. Only the lack of pressure from the other minds in the mansion made regenerating them so easy.

"I feel the Box could do with a nicer color scheme," Wanda said, leaning against the door on the other side, legs crossed at the ankle. "A nice rug or two would lighten the place up. I hear it does wonders for healing processes."

It wasn't her voice that woke him up, but the appearance of another set of thoughts where there had been none, a moment before. Groggy, Nathan opened his eyes, then sighed, shifting on the bed. "I have no idea what you just said," he muttered, rubbing at his eyes. "But you just envisioned the Box decorated..."

"That was essentially the gist of it even though I suspect I imagine a great many things decorated." She stayed put as she got a good look at him, eye brows raising. "How's the head? Or brain, rather."

"A little off. That's what happens when your subconscious decides to take defense policy into its own hands... and gets creative above it." Nathan sighed and pushed himself up a little farther on the bed so that he could get a better look at Wanda. "Seriously, I'm okay. Light-headed, and I'm not supposed to step a foot out of here until tomorrow morning - and stop that, I am not dying my hair. I like the gray."

"Oh, I don't know. You are the odd man out in your family, see as you're the only one without red hair." Leaning forward, she pushed herself off the wall so she could walk towards him and the chair near the bed that was for the guests. She paused to look down at him and shook her head. "And I thought trouble followed me around."

Nathan gave her as close to a deadpan look as he could manage. "It does," he pointed out, with rather more truth than tact.

The bark of laughter echoed against the walls as Wanda finally sat down. "Yes, yes. But let's not make this all about me." She winked. "Trouble follows both of us around. It's a good thing we're so pretty or we'd be doomed."

"Yes, you are prettier than me," Nathan said, responding to the thought again, rather than the word. "But Charles told me about... her." A flash of distress crossed his face, there and gone again in an instant as he rubbed at his temples. "I really didn't know, you know. Even if part of me did. He's shown me how to adjust my shields, though, and he knows what to watch for, now. Apparently she's a very unusual sort of psi, not like anything he'd - you hit her?" Nathan gazed at her in shock, a rattled laugh slipping out.

"Of course I did." Wanda looked affronted. "The bitch tried her little trick on us when we got there--the telepathic shields from Jean annoyed her, my resistance shocked her enough she didn't see the physical reaction coming. I don't think she'll be trying anything for a while. And not how she did it this time." She paused and blinked. "I think she wanted to sleep with me. You as well. I'm glad I passed up this particular threesome. No offense, of course, even if you aren't as pretty as I am."

Nathan tried not to choke. "I..." Actually believed that, he realized. He'd thought that Trask was flirting with him at the dinner, after all.

There was a light snicker. "Don't you love me? Now you'll have those fun images all day." Wanda blew him a kiss and disolved into a case of the giggles.

Nathan's sense of humor was not in good repair, which was only to be expected given that his mind had decided to turn itself inside out this morning. "Thank God you didn't take Moira with you, is all I have to say." He directed an almost furtive look at the door, then looked back up at Wanda. "She's making arrangements. Apparently she and I and the munchkin are going to Santorini for the week as soon as I'm allowed to leave the Box." Nathan sighed. "Charles said I needed to rest. I could have done that here."

Wanda sighed and settled back, knowing she could look at this easier because it hadn't been her and she'd gotten at least a little bit in return. "No, you couldn't have," she disagreed, shooting him a look. "If you stay here, you will get distracted. Rightly so, as you have duties here--X-Man, teacher, Elpis. What do you have in Santorini? Your daughter to play with, your gorgeous wife to make love to and lots of sun and sand." She spread her arms wide. "Take it and run, Nathan."

"I am tired," Nathan admitted, after a moment. "I thought... well, I thought it was all the stress of the last several weeks, just kind of adding up... Charles thinks it might have had as much to do with Trask paying me nightly visits, though." He flushed a little, shifting on the bed. "Really glad you and Jean didn't take Moira with you. I think she wanted to rip out the good professor's spleen."

"And we probably would have let her. Which would have left me some explaining to do and I would rather not have to go in front of my supervisors because the new professor had her spleen removed."

Nathan was silent for a long minute, staring down at his hands. Before Wanda could conclude that he was dozing off again, he looked up at her, his gray eyes suspiciously bright. "Jean told me. About what Trask said, about what she saw... I can empathize, you know? Seeing through Askani's eyes nearly drove me insane those first few months. But that didn't mean I was free to... to twist things."

"The problem, of course, is once anything leave the original source, things like free will come into play. Most of the time this is good...when you happen to be insane, it doesn't turn out so well. You and I both would have reacted to what you and she went through differently but she has twisted this beyond belief." Wanda grimaced and rubbed her face. "And what worries me are the girls she recruits and what she's doing to their entire life outlook."

"A teacher is a dangerous thing," Nathan muttered, his eyes back on his hands. "Moira's maybe right, about me needing some time away," he said, and it wasn't a non sequitur so much as a confession that yes, he was badly worn down. "But when I get back... you and I, and Jean, need to talk. We need to decide how we're going to respond to this." He looked up at her, a spark of something almost dangerous in his eyes, just for a moment. "She's not Askani. And I'll be damned if I see her turn that legacy into something that my fucking uncle would have appreciated."

Wanda nodded, in full agreement with Nathan. "Between the three of us, we can certainly make her life miserable, plus whoever else we might need. As smart as this woman is, we are smarter. I doubt she was expecting what she found, to be honest. Maybe she was hoping to find a kindred spirit in you and have me eating out of the palm of her hand like the rest of her group."

"~She fancies herself a matriarch,~" Nathan said, slipping back into Askani. His smile was thin, tired, oddly sad. "~Maybe she wanted a general... and a chronicler.~"

"~I humbly refuse the position,~" came the wry response. "Or not so humbly, actually. I think she fully understood the refusal when I visited. She'll have to look elsewhere and I doubt she'll find anyone of our calibre...yet again, so humble...and I hope this sets whatever her plans are back."

"Mmm." It was barely a monosyllable. Nathan was starting to look pale - not in any alarming way, just in a way that suggested that it might not be a bad idea if he went back to dozing. Wanda's thoughts were disciplined, but they were still sharper than they should be, with his shields in this state.

"I think I shall leave you to your sleep and these drab walls," she announced, standing up. "While you rest, I'll keep a distant eye on our friend until we can think of what to do."