Acumen: Phonecalls and Meetings

[x-traction.livejournal.com]

Marie gets back from a busy day and gets a rather unexpected and unwelcome phonecall from her past...which is becoming more involved with her future.

Marie flopped on the edge of her bed, dropping her bag on the floor. It'd been a long day and it wasn't even halfway over yet - the new school year would be starting soon and she'd be teaching an actual class. What had seemed like a great idea at the time was now freaking her out, despite Garrison's reassurances that she was more than qualified to teach an intro to psyc class. Of course, he'd then made a crack about how that was because she was crazy, not because of her major - but that was when she'd actually started relaxing. She'd spent the morning picking out a textbook and then looking for supplemental readings to keep the class interesting. She only had a few minutes to drop things off before it would be time to run and meet Amanda for their weekly pizza night and she was trying to make the most of her time. Bending over, she rifled through her purse until she found the list she'd made for the day and started going over it when the phone rang. Sticking her pen in her mouth to free a hand, she reached out absentmindedly to pull the phone off the cradle with a muffled hello.

"Hello, Marie." The voice was instantly, hauntingly familiar. "I can see you, child, you and your books." There was something almost like a hint of pleasure in Irene's voice as she went on. "There aren't many choices that open more doors than they close. The teacher's path is one of them."

It took Marie a moment to realize that the clatter that followed Irene's words was her pen hitting the floor as it fell from her slack jawed face. "You..." she whispered, eyes wide as her hand dropped her pad of paper. In the months following her last encounter with the precog, Marie had fantasized about what would happen the next time the two encountered each other...unfortunately, her shock wasn't allowing her to remember any of the things she'd planned on telling the woman.

"You knew you would hear from me again, child." There was nothing but calm assurance in the old woman's voice now. "I thought perhaps... but no matter. Our paths are properly entwined, yours and mine. Sometimes there's no option. Like today. I need your help to avert something terrible, Marie."

"And what if Ah don't want my path entwined with yours?" Marie said, anger taking the place with shock. "Why should Ah help you? Or even believe you? The last time we met..." Marie trailed off, fist clenching unconsciously. "Well, let's just say Ah didn't like how that went and Ah'd rather not have a repeat. What'll be this time? Ah'm really an alien from out of space?"

"You can hang up the phone right now, girl," Irene said, her voice more than slightly tart. "Nothing is stopping you. Hanging up is a choice. But do you want to make that choice?" Her voice grew more intense. "Do you care about those children, your students? About the thousands upon thousands like them?"

"Don't you dare threaten them." Marie barely recognized her own voice, the tone twisted through her anger. Because she knew Irene had her...if she was going to hang up, she would've done it the instant she heard the old woman's voice.

"It's not I who threaten them. I would rather die myself than do harm to a child, either with my own hands or by directing other hands to do so." The distinction was odd - overly precise, almost fussy. "Your choice here is whether to step back and allow others to do harm to your people."

"Yet you sit back and watch, pulling strings when it suits you," Marie shot back. "Which is not something Ah have ever done. Ah would never allow anyone to harm my students if Ah had the power to stop it, and you damn well know that." Marie's other hand drifted across her desk, coming to rest on her cellphone and she flipped it open to send a text message. The whole situation was getting to weird.

"Ah, but I'm an old woman, child. I'm no soldier, not like you and your friends. There's a limit to the action I can take." A faint, dry chuckle on the other end of the phone. "Shall we stop sparring, Marie? Talk about choices, and path, and weapons in the wrong hands..."

"You mean you're actually gonna speak straight for once, Irene?" The rancor in Marie's voice as she said the woman's name was clear over the phone. "Instead of rhymes and metaphors? Or are we going to discuss Schrodinger's cat again?"

"Straighter than you might expect, but not as straight as you might hope," was the response. Followed immediately by: "Do you know the word 'Sentinel', Marie?"

"Of course Ah know that word." Marie paused, her brain racking up all the information she could on the sentinel program that was in the X-Men's files as she added the word to her text to Garrison and hit send. "Why?"

"There is a man." A strange tone entered Irene's voice as she went on; it was faraway, almost dreamy. "I see him, but not clearly. Clouds of malevolence, all around him - he fears change, yet has wreaked it upon himself. Hands and feet of steel, binding him to the ground he hates. He hates those who fly. He'd bathe in the blood of our children if he could."

"How helpful," Marie said dryly. "That really helps narrow things down to let me do anything about this supposed threat." She hoped her casual tone was masking the fact that her stomach was doing flips.

Irene's tone returned to something approaching normal, but she went on as if the quip hadn't registered at all. "I've tried to focus on him, on what he's doing. But all I see is a locked box. A safe. There is something in the safe, something dangerous. I see the trail of bodies stretching away from it."

"Still, an address would be helpful. You wouldn't happen to see, Ah dunno, numbers or something? A city?" Marie had gone from poking at Irene's ability to foresee to an attempt to see if the woman was going to give her anything to work with. She couldn't exactly go to Scott and say 'Hey, there's someone out there somewhere that we have to find because they might kill a lot of mutants.'

"Boston. I know it from... well, I know it," was the oddly curt response. As if Irene had nearly revealed something, but then thought better of it. "Do you think interpreting precognitive visions is easy, Marie? Have you found it easy to understand the journal?" There was a bite to the questions, an edge of something close to anger before Irene went on. "The safe is somewhere near music. In this... space of silence, held inside music and young voices. Blue... not water. A symbol for water? A name... not just the building, but the street. A repeating water motif."

"Ah hate precogs," Marie muttered under her breath as she reached for a pen and scribbled down what Irene had said. "Anything else?" Marie asked bringing her voice back to a normal tone. It was only after she said it that Marie realized she wasn't just asking about information on the location of whatever Irene was directing her towards.

A long, long pause. "He knows you and your friends," Irene said very quietly. "He's tried to do you harm, before, and he will again. I see him, haunting the shadows of the dark king's court..."

Continuing to scribble notes, Marie sighed. "Yeah, hurting us before, that narrows it down to. Not making any promises, but I'll look into it, see what we can find. So do I get a contact number?" Then we can trace where the heck you are.

"I'm old and probably crazy, by any conventional description," Irene said, almost wryly, "but I'm not foolish. I'll be in touch, Marie." There was a click as she hung up the phone.

Marie stared at the receiver in her hand for a minute before hanging it up. She really shouldn't have hoped for anything there. Letting out a sigh she picked it up again and dialed quickly. "Scott, Ah've got a bit of a situation..."

Heading to Snow Valley anyways, Marie makes a bit of a detour.

After talking with Scott, Marie had gotten into her car and driven into the city. She'd been headed to Snow Valley anyway to meet up with Amanda, but decided she had one stop to make first. Luckily, it was in the same building. Marie took a deep breath before exiting her car and entering the building, her feet leading her straight to the office of a certain French redhead. Knocking on the partially opened door, Marie waited impatiently.

Marie-Ange appeared at the door only a moment later, and her already slightly confused expression became even more confused when she realized who it was. She stood silently for a half-second and then opened the door all the way. "My apologies, I was not expecting.. that is.. "

"Irene's back," was the explanation Marie gave before walking into the Marie-Ange's office. "And she has another piece of cryptic fun for us. Ah was hoping you could help with the interpretation so we can stop the doom and gloom she's spouting."

"I really dislike that woman, and I have never met her." Marie-Ange said sourly. "I take it that she took it upon herself to send you some kind of message again?" While she wasn't quite so sure about Tante Mattie's practice of never interfering, Irene Adler went too far in the other direction, in her opinion.

"Cryptic as ever." Marie reached into her purse and handed her notes over to the redhead. "Doom and gloom, etc., etc.... Of course, no telling what's false and what's real from her. Ah don't much trust her after the last time."

A quick glance over the notes only gave Marie-Ange assurance of what she was going to say anyway. "This may take a little while. Do you want some coffee? Or tea, or.. I think Mark did not eat all the donuts from this morning?" It was only polite, after all. "Although I think Doug ate all the good chocolate ones." She added, with a small laugh.

"Not really hungry, but thanks." Marie's voice had grown suddenly tired. "Maybe coffee's not a bad idea though. Hopefully this won't take long to figure out, but after the diary..." Marie trailed off with a shrug. "Boston and a water theme. And information about the Sentinel program that's supposed to be long dead and buried. Not exactly the kinda fun I expected to have on a Wednesday."

"Coffee is never a bad idea." Marie-Ange said, getting up to lead Marie to the break room and the promised coffee. "More water... everything has been about water lately, it seems. I will not be surprised if Nate announces he has to build a very large boat." All jokes aside, Marie-Ange didn't sound amused, and any trace of it that was there vanished as she re-read the notes. "I could ask Mark if he knows of any clubs in Boston. It sounds like it could be a club."

"If Nate starts collecting animals two by two, that's where the real worry comes in," Marie replied back, but her serious tone didn't match the kidding words. Sitting gingerly on the edge of a chair, Marie twirled a piece of hair around a gloved finger. "If Bobby were here, we could ask him...not sure this is worth bothering him in Ireland for though. See what Mark knows...especially if any have any mutant vibes, since this guy is obviously anti-mutant, but not ruling anything with potential out."

"This may sound hypocritical, but I hate when things are vague." Marie-Ange complained. She eyed her mug of coffee, as if she was wondering where the contents had gone in such a hurry. "At least I try to make sense of what I see. A dark king's court? That could be... there are too many people I can think of that might fit that, and that is only even if we interpret it to be mean royalty. It could be a prisoner, or a tennis player... "

Muttering what felt like her mantra, Marie shifted to reach out and move one of the notes beside another. "Makes me think of the Hellfire club and Ah believe they were connected to the Sentinel program at some point...but that doesn't help us locate where the info is." Marie sighed and the girls continued discussing the few clues Irene had left them until they'd made a significant dent in MA's coffee stock. Rising to stretch, Marie shook her head. Unfortunately, they hadn't gotten any further then their first suppositions. "Ah think we're gonna have to go check out stuff in person. Let me know as soon as you hear from Mark and Ah'll talk to Scott about taking a time to investigate. If that's not it, we go back to square one."

"I... should talk to Tante Mattie as well, I believe." Marie-Ange said. "She might have some idea of what is going on, if it is serious." Or she could just simply give another lecture on the merits of not interfering, but Marie-Ange was prepared to ignore that. Again. "As soon as I know anything from Mark, I will let you know. At worst, he may have to talk to some people he knows, but that should not take more than a day or so."