thisavrou_log | (no subject)

No, it isn't.

[He sighs, and doesn't even make an attempt to hide it, fixing her with a glance that says more to how unwelcome the flippancy is than his words might.]

What I want is you happy and safe, and before you can tell me as much, I'm well aware of the spectacular failure I've made of both.

[This isn't why he'd come out here. And he really shouldn't be giving into this teenage maudlin, but the whole of their pseudo-family unit has been caught up in this constant negativity, loss, upset, and depression, and he's finding it increasingly difficult to not get swept up in all of it, despite his firm belief that it can't and won't stay this way.

His expression softens then, for all the good it does.]

Why was it always a horse, anyway?

[ She crosses her arms at that look, giving back one of her own and then rolling her eyes at his words, unable to help herself. It's not like he could've stopped her from being abducted in the first place. This whole fucking thing has been her life for almost two years now and she's come to the realization she might very well end up killing people that she loves thanks to... whatever is inside of her. She doesn't want to get into an argument about horses. ]

Why are you getting mad when I'm agreeing with you? We don't have a place for them. They will need food and space to run around and with how shit keeps happening, how safe is it for them?

[ Yeah, she didn't even try to hold back her language on that. She's too frustrated to. ]

[At that, he knows--instead of simply waging a good guess--that this has very little to do with the horses themselves. He keeps that tired, slightly disparaging glance fixed.]

You want to tell me what that's really all about?

[He couldn't give, pardon, a lesser shit about her language at present. Were this less volatile, he might pry at it, but not now.]

[ She keeps her arms crossed, brow furrowing at the direction he's trying to steer this conversation. ]

I just told you. This planet isn't safe.

[Sorry, baby girl, he's not buying that. All that earns is a skeptical single-brow raise.]

Home isn't always either, Jean. This distance isn't-- [right. He's lived through the worst of her teenage moodswings, as much as she might very well want to forget them. He doesn't judge, but he knows she's better than this. That this means something much worse.] This isn't about here either, is it?

[ Her jaw clenches at that and she slowly shakes her head. She's silent for a long time before the words finally come out: ]

Don't do that. Not here.

[ Not now.

She knows what he's trying to do and she doesn't want to go down that road. She doesn't because it feels like all she's been doing since she woke up was either feel like shit or cry. This constant dread eating away at her. She doesn't want to admit any of it out loud because saying it makes it truer. Saying it gives it life.

Even when keeping it inside is leaving it to fester. ]

Jean--

[The huff of breath that follows, with the air just cold enough to make it visible...tangible, is given with such a look of sorrow and regret and painful sincerity. But as that puff of breath outlined in the air dissipates, so too does his will to push this into territory that is only going to rend the hearts inside of them both.

Maybe not today, not when everything is so fragile in its instability, but this won't be the last of this conversation. Not by a long shot.

This glance melts then from something disparaging to something on the verge of pain, and...tears? He blinks to push them back.]

What can I do?

[His voice is raw, showing hairline fractures where it's starting to crack. He's desperate.]

Edited 2017-06-20 05:16 (UTC)

[ And just the way he says that brings her own tears forward. She tries to blink them away but has to reach up to wipe them away. She's still shaking her head, having to avert her gaze. It's times like now she wonders if it would've been better if she hadn't woken back up. Maybe everyone would be a lot safer that way.

The words that come out are strained, something she doesn't want to admit to but they come out anyway. Shoving their way out past the lump in her throat. ]

You can't fix me.

Not this time.

Who said anything about fixing you?

[The fractures in his composure widen and crack open into fissures. He continues to blink those tears back, disregarding how it might look.

Gently:] Look at me. There is nothing that needs fixing.

[Even with all he's seen. All that's happened. All he's heard. He believes this. Wholeheartedly and unquestioningly.]

[ The laugh that comes from her is more like a sob, bitter and disbelieving and pained. She finally looks back at him, ]

I have something inside me that can kill people I care about. That wants to destroy. It is living inside me!

[ She jabs two fingers to her chest, not even bothering to stop the tears from coming now. ]

It possessed me like some kind of demon and it'll do it again! And what then? Are you still going to say the same thing to me then?!

Edited 2017-06-20 15:49 (UTC)

Jean Elaine Grey.

[He doesn't say anything after for a long moment, letting that settle in the air and speak for itself. The tone is sharp, even if nothing else can be.]

I don't have a perfect answer for this. No one is going to have a perfect answer for this. But I am not going to let you eat yourself alive to prove a point that never needed it. What is this self-flagellation going to accomplish? You are better than this.

[~~She can be mad at him all she wants for this. Being mad at least means she's still here.~~]

[ She goes silent when he says her full name like that. The number of times that has happened, she can count on one hand. He's rarely had cause to in the past. Her jaw clenches again, lips pressed into a tight line as she breathes in harshly through her nose. All the harder when crying. The tears stinging her skin in the chill air.

Jean blinks and more follow the same path down her cheeks, ]

I don't know who I am anymore. I just keep thinking maybe it would've been better if I hadn't woken up. Maybe then this thing wouldn't be able to use my body to hurt anyone else.

[Or worse: she might have handed herself right over to this force neither of them properly understand. The thought is disconcerting.]

You're still you. [He can't believe otherwise. Refuses.] I know it's a lot. I do. But I have a feeling that giving up is only going to make it worse.

We will figure this out.

[~~If he has to die trying.~~]

[ Her arms cross again, almost like she's trying to hug herself, head bowed and trying to squeeze her lids against more tears. ]

I wish I could believe that.

[ But she can't. It just doesn't seem possible for her right now. She can't see any light at the end of the tunnel, just more darkness and destruction. ]

[Without a word, he moves to close that short distance between them. He has rarely been so thankful for the ground to be freezing over; it makes maneuvering around outdoors that much easier. He reaches for a hand first, giving a gentle pull. Come here.]

[ There's a swelling sense of deja vu at that pull, having experienced it when she was younger and crying so much at night she was falling asleep in her classes. And now, like then she practically fell into the hug, feeling like her heart was breaking from the weight on it. She was older - and taller - now so she didn't fit on his lap as well as she had then but her head goes to the same place, her arms around him as she returns the hug tightly.

She hasn't seen her biological father in years. Not since he dropped her off at the school and left her there. Ever since then, Charles had been there for her and it was here and now that she finally realizes he was more her father than her own was. Here, in the face of everything she had done, he was still accepting her with open arms. Something she wasn't even willing to do for herself.

Something in her breaks and her sobbing is muffled into his shoulder. The words 'I'm sorry' being repeated over and over again. Sorry for not doing this sooner after he had arrived. For being so mad at him. Sorry for everything she had done to her family on that outpost. Sorry for everything she might yet do.

Sorry to Peter for losing track of him -- would it have made a difference? Would he still be here? Sorry for leaving her world behind to whatever has happened on it in her absence. Sorry to Scott and Hank and Jubes and everyone she misses so fucking much that it hurts.

And sorry to her mother; she barely remembers her some days and then on the days she does, she shoves those memories away because of the pain and guilt that come with them. She doesn't want to keep doing that.

She doesn't want to keep doing this.

So, she cries until she can't anymore as if she were purging it from her body. Everyone has their breaking point and Jean Grey finally hit hers. ]

[That long moment, sheltered in the quiet of the stables as the afternoon light filters in with its soft, deceptively warm glow, seems to intertwine and melt into that everlasting hour in which the stretch to evening feels like an insurmountable infinity. It is all too easy to get lost in it, time moving around them like the undefinable astral plane, where nothing and everything changes all at once.

In that long moment, Charles' heart swells, then bursts, and finally breaks.

Jean's sobs are pressed into his shoulder with force, as if to tear down a wall. Occasionally, a forceful inhale will fall in time with the soft nickering of horses, they too bearing witness to this explosion of overwhelming upset. Charles lets the sobbing come, and with it, the endless litany of apologies he's not sure she owes anyone but herself.

The crying comes, and he continues to hold her through his own tears and unsteady, staccato heartbeat. He holds her as she cries, like he had that first night seven long years ago when she had so unceremoniously ended up on his doorstep and so easily and abruptly changed everything. Like he has through countless nightmares and upsets. He holds her because he has no other comfort to offer but this, an unspoken reiteration of his first promise here: I'm not going anywhere.

It's awkward, like this, now that she's no longer barely the height of the chair itself. Half of him doesn't even notice. The other half couldn't care less. He occasionally brushes a lock of hair back into place, and finally, as the force of that emotional hurricane begins to subside, a soft, chaste kiss is pressed to the crown of her head. Awkward or no, like this, she may as well be that same vulnerable ten-year-old girl in need of affirmation and support and love. And yet, she isn't. She's a young woman now, and he couldn't--frankly--be prouder of the fact that she cares enough that they sit here now. It's a testament to more than she even knows.

She may not be his blood, no. He may not have been the one to see first steps, or be granted the privilege of a first word, but that all pales in comparison to being here, now. Her...father had made his choice (and it had been very much a poor one, as far as Charles is concerned), and a first word pales in comparison to the principled, determined person she is now. Despite this vulnerability--no. This is what makes them human. At their core, despite mutated genetics, it's this shared empathy that means everything.

She is his child. In every way that matters.]

Edited 2017-06-21 06:26 (UTC)

(no subject)

GIRL

WAT SHE'S JUST AGREEING GOSH

GOSH!!!

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