xp_logs | Log: Tuesday night, Marius and Monet

Marius is just having a bad day, isn't he? Following his conversation with Jennie, he has a chat with his darling sister.

Monet lent over the table, passing the folder across to Marius. "Here. It's him, in all the gory details. Amanda put a summary in the front." She opened it and pointed that page. It's ... everything, as far as we know." Her voice tried for neutrality.

He hadn't known what he was expecting of his brother's record, really. Between remarks from his father and the long timeline of mounting drug-charges didn't come as a surprise. A few early notes of arrest here and there, many of the charges predictably dropped. And, though there was an understandable omission from the summary, he was aware of a certain appropriation of funds that had more than likely been the last of the many straws piled on their father's back. But the early stuff -- the stuff before the fall, and leading into it -- that was new.

Reading Amanda's summary, Marius realized it had never occurred to him that, once upon a time, Cartier might actually have been proud of his eldest son.

"Well," Marius said as he reached the end of the summary, "explains a bit, I suppose."

"Yeah. He was cunt-brained fucker before it all went wrong and stayed that way," Monet snarled. "And he was far too happy about getting rid of the worms every so often."

Marius opened the folder. There wasn't much need after the summary, but he didn't know what else to do. The first contents were the elder Marius' academic records.

"Understandable," he muttered without thinking, yellow eyes skimming the list of extracurriculars. "When you've things eatin' away at your grey matter the impulse is generally to clean house." He flipped a page and furrowed his brow at a team photo. He would be a footballer, wouldn't he.

"And what part of that makes it understandable or okay? He was using those things to eat people?" A small part of Monet's mind was also busy insisting that the part where he'd played rugby union also made him detestable.

"Didn't say it was okay, just . . ." Marius grunted in frustration and snapped the file closed on the picture of a smiling young man who'd been far less charming when threatening them with a bat. "Look, he's a twat, right? Undeniably, unequivocably somethin' fit to be scraped off one's shoe and tossed to the nearest gutter. But--" What was he trying to say? "--you can see how it might've happened, right? All this, it's not as if his life was rife with options."

"He had options. He had lots of them. He just decided to use the one that involved him using his powers to eat people's brains. So, yes I've got buckets of sympathy for him. Oodles of it, in fact."

Marius had been fairly calm until now, but the blatant disdain in Monet's voice was beginning to erode his commitment to reason. "Ah, right," he said, pushing away from the table and its file, "Pardon the error. Forgot I was talkin' to the only one of us to've come up aces in the genetic lottery."

Monet shrugged. "Oh yeah, that's right. You were unlucky in more than just your appearance, weren't you, baby?" Marius, both of them, and everyone's apparent acceptance of what he'd done had shaken her, badly.

"What, you perhaps mean in that my mutation has in the past inflicted multiple near-death experiences?" Though they were still in his lap, Marius' hands were tightening into fists. "Yes, when one begins suffocating on oxygen, rational thought is at the absolute forefront of one's concerns. But I'm sure you've had comparable experience in those long and harrowing struggles to set your hair just so."

Monet just stared at him for a moment. "Oh, I'm so hard done by. Poor me, poor me. Well, fuck you!"

"Fuck you!" Marius' hand slammed hard against the table. "You haven't idea one of what you're on about. Do you have any idea how easy you got off? Charming little spells aside, where's the downside to your life? Perfect mutation, and never any question as to whether Dad shows up for a school conference. While I was dying in hospital you were pissing your way through Xavier's!" He thrust out his hand, exposing the white oval of scartissue that marred the palm. "You got that, I got this. So forgive me, I consider your ability to think beyond the confines of your perfect head severely compromised."

"Oh, poor fucking you! Everything is so horrible and hard. Go and have a fucking cry, emo boy!" Monet was shouting by this point.

"Cheers for the permission, but I didn't. Not once." Marius stood and regarded Monet coldly, all pretence of affected speech gone. "But even if I had done, at least it would've been fairly come by."

Knotting his twitching hands into fists, the boy stalked towards the door so swiftly the papers on the table rustled.

"At least we always knew Dad loved me most," Monet muttered, the words lost under the sound of the door slamming.