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[ That. Stings. There's a long period between messages where he gets caught up wondering just what exactly she thinks he'll actually do (and why that's such a fearful reaction when all he'd wanted was an answer). The forced distance that sits here suddenly is a mockery of the trust they'd once shared. And frankly:

This is heartbreaking.

It takes too long to find the words--hell, even the wherewithal--to respond the way he needs to. ]

I'm not upset yet. [ He is, but not in the way she means it. But on top of that sadness, that doubt that sticks so deep down he wonders where and when he'd failed her so completely, there's an exhaustion, too. Agitation. ] Do you want me to be?

[ Who in the hell does she think he is? Her fath--?

Oh.

God, that's exactly where this comes from isn't it? ]

Jean, there is NOTHING you can do that is going to make me give up on you. Ever.

But, sweetheart, I need to know.

[ She doesn't respond to the first two messages. Responding to Peter's messages are a good distraction, her own anxiety and upset coming out easily in the form of caps at the young man. By the time she switches back over, she sees the latter messages and needs to take longer just to get herself composed.

Closing her eyes to try and squeeze back the tears. She hadn't even realized... being left like that was a gaping wound that she thought had closed up with time. Time spent with someone that accepted her and cared for her in ways her own father never would. Not after what happened.

So much grief she had buried down, it was no wonder she took it so hard when people left. She never saw the connections until now: there is NOTHING you can do that is going to make me give up on you. The way he says it is like a blow to her chest.

Charles leaving before, followed by Logan, all she had wanted was to stay angry at them when they turned up again. But she couldn't. And now, she has to face the losses and actions of the past. ]

What is the very last thing you remember from back home?

[ Because it's going to be a long story. ]

Edited 2017-11-10 05:29 (UTC)

[ Home feels almost like a lifetime ago, and he has to take a moment to think about it. Not internalize what Erik told him the first time, nor what he's been able to piece together bit-by-bit. He doesn't need a false memory to color what is one. ]

Alex destroying Cerebro. It all fades somewhere after that.

[ She tries not to think of Alex. She didn't know him well but she felt Scott's love and grief over his passing and that's not something she has ever really forgotten. ]

Scott, Kurt, Jubilee, and I went to the mall before all that happened. He wanted to get out of the house, show Kurt what a mall was. We were on the way back when the school exploded. Peter had shown up in time to get everyone else out of the mansion.

Except Alex. I don't know what happened or how it happened but Alex didn't make it and you were gone.

[ Alex didn't make it.

Christ, he'd really asked for it this time, hadn't he? There are few things that could bring him to tears near instantly, but this settles on an age-old argument with Erik, one still raw when he (but not him) had dragged this same subject up seemingly so recently. His first class is a failure he's never quite reconciled with. One he's reminded of every moment he wakes and moves and breathes.

But aside from Hank who had never left, and Erik & Raven who both qualify as "complicated," Alex had been the last of them. Alex, who he thought he'd lost to his own anger, then Vietnam, then time and space and the fading of once-close relationships. It had been so easy to fall back into an easy pattern of amiable conversation, like they'd never been estranged at all.

"Upset" barely begins to touch on how wrenching that news is. Suddenly, he's very glad Jean can't see this, and that she's too far away to receive the full empathic brunt of how awful that feels, especially when...well, he had asked for this.

But that pause in messages is apparent and telling on its own. ]

I'm glad you weren't in the house.

[ First things first. He doesn't touch on how they'd gotten to said mall, or the implications therein. Right now, that doesn't matter. And he owes Peter something of an apology, from the sound of it. ]

"Gone?"

[ The worst part is that it's only one thing in a list of much more. ]

Yeah, you were taken. Hank, Raven, and Mrs. Mactaggert said you had been taken by Apocalypse. An ancient mutant who had woken up after being asleep for centuries. Turns out I felt him wake up. It triggered the nightmares I was having.

[ It was only something she realized afterward, that the times matched up. ]

He had four other mutants with him. Storm was one and Erik was another. They were his "Horsemen". They took you to Cairo but we didn't find that out until later. After the mansion had exploded, men came in helicopters and knocked everyone out near them. I heard them coming and got Scott and Kurt out of the way. But they took Raven, Peter, Hank, and Mrs. Mactaggert. We couldn't let that happen so we snuck on the helicopters with them, planning on using Kurt to get them out, right? But then we couldn't get back out, not even with Kurt's teleportation. They had some kind of shield up. So we ended up at this base up north with the others. It was someplace they were experimenting on mutants, I think.

Edited (now with the correct name 8U) 2017-11-10 07:53 (UTC)

She's divorced, Jean. It's "Ms."

[ Honestly, it's more a reaction than anything he thinks too hard about, or even really cares about. Moira is important, to be respected certainly, but he has bigger priorities than this. Arthur. This entire conversation. But the correction is an organic reaction that he doesn't bother trying to rein in once it's there.

He can worry about what it really means (if anything), later.

The rest of his response takes longer to parse and put together. Helicopters and bases are distinctly military, but he isn't sure why that's involved at all. Hadn't they moved past this with Trask when they'd averted (supposedly) Logan's terrible tales of an even worse future?

And then there's the whole idea of Storm and Erik. The former he'd met here, rational and grown up and moved on and certainly no sort of Horseman at all. Erik is...

More complicated. And not a consideration to throw at Jean. He'll just make a note to ask about it later directly, even if it's possible that he ruins whatever tenuous working friendship (or at least companionable silence) they have now. ]

Up north? But we--

[ Do you really want to talk about the 70s with Jean right now, Charles? ]

took great pains to avoid that in the states. Canada? YOU WENT TO CANADA?

We didn't really have much of a choice! It was either go with them and try to help or be left stranded with the others and still have no clue of where you were.

I believe you.

[ And he does. That much is imperative to tell her, upset and all. ]

So who are "they" and what does ending up on Canada have to do with Cairo?

One of them - the guy giving the orders - was named Stryker? William Stryker. And was keeping the others in this cell. We couldn't get to them with all the soldiers around and the shield they had up. That was when Apocalypse sent out this message using you to relay it to the whole world. How everything was going to fall and the world ending. But you sent me a hidden message and told me where you were and to come find you.

But the soldiers found us and we had to hide. The only reason we were able to get out alive was because of Logan.

[ Stryker? Oh for fuck's sake. He groans the entire way through reading that message, uncaring if she picks up on it or anyone else. Of fucking course. ]

He can't do any of it in America, so Canada must have been the next best bet, I suppose.

[ Of course "best bet" is something he wishes he didn't even have to think about. His kids in this situation is something he wishes he didn't have to think about, but here they are.

The idea of Apocalypse using him makes such startling, sickening sense, once he pieces that together with Cerebro that he has to push along lest he get caught up in an endless litany of apologies for failures they all know he realistically has no control over (or failures that are not actually failures at all, even if they always feel so resoundingly similar).

That must be how Cairo is involved. But how--he can barely sense other people in the periphery of the same space station right now, how had he given any sort of message from Egypt to Canada?

And then there's, of course: ]

Wait, LOGAN?

You know Stryker?

[ What the fuck. ]

William Jr.? No, I can't say I've had the distinct personal pleasure. But I know him well enough.

[ Through Raven. Through Trask. Through Logan, (though he's barely aware of how much that all fits together). ]

His father worked at the CIA in the 60s.

Well, his son is a bastard. I don't know what they did to Logan in that place but it was horrible. They took so much from him and turned him into some kind of weapon. Took his past, his name, all of it.

I let him out of the cage they had him in and he took care of the soldiers.

[ Sorry, Dad. She can't feel too bad about that, all things considered. ]

[ Good lord. That was everything he'd seen when Logan had damn near begged to have Charles communicate with the future in his head all those years ago, isn't it? Conversations with an older visage of himself that he barely recognizes aside (and that still feels like a fever dream, or at best really bad acid), he'd seen enough of the experimentation, the labs, the hurt, the torment...

It has to be the same thing. ]

I know, Jean. I know.

[ It's the best he can really do to be comforting about the gravity of Logan's situation. It hadn't been done to him yet--not when they'd last spoken ten years ago, but to consider the very real possibility that this is why he'd disappeared during the failed attempt on Nixon and Trask's lives?

It's awful. ]

His son had, to the best of my recollection, once been part of Trask's failed Sentinel initiative. Unfortunately, this horror is...

[ Par for the course? Awful enough that he's not...as upset about those soldiers as he rightfully should be (or may have been, twenty years ago, convinced it was all orders and that the choice to submit to them was not as present as it also should have been)? ]

Hardly new for him.

Edited 2017-11-11 05:10 (UTC)

Pretty sure he got away. But Logan did, too. We caught up with him before he left. I tried to give him back what memories I could. His name and a few other things, at least. I couldn't reach much more than that.

I don't think he remembers any of that, though.

You did what you could. No one can ask for more than that.

[ As Logan would say: Your best is enough. ]

He had his own path. He always has. Try as we may to change that, he can ask for help but we cannot walk it for him.

And speaking of paths, I think we've veered off ours.

[ She sighs heavily at that because he's right. As much as she wants better for Logan, then and now, there's no changing what's been done. It just hurts because of how much she cares about him. Looking back on how he had been then hurts twice as much now. ]

I know.

[ And he's also right about the latter bit. ]

After he left, we went back to get the others out. We showed them the hangar we saw earlier and the plane they had. Hank said he could fly it and we changed into the flight suits - they had this kind of armor in them - and took off for Cairo.

I don't know how it happened but the city was pretty much destroyed, a huge pyramid at the center of it. Erik was creating all these magnetic fields everywhere and through our connection, I knew Apocalypse planned to transfer his consciousness into you so he could control every mind on Earth. He had you in the pyramid so we split up to get into the pyramid to get you away and back on the plane. Peter and Raven went to try and get through to Erik.

Edited 2017-11-11 05:47 (UTC)

[ The one time he makes it to Egypt, and it's falling apart. Of course. He sighs a little sadly, trying to parse all of this, and it turns into something more frustrated at the news that it's Erik doing it.

Something had to have changed from then to now--there's a stability he hasn't seen in some time, but it had to come to this for them to get there? ]

I'm sorry, Apocalypse wanted to...what? I can't do that without Cerebro.

[ Of course he can't just send mental message across continents either. ]

And he was...good lord. Moira had said something about it, transferring consciousness, when Alex and met with with her, but I hadn't

[ Assumed it would be so literal. Or be him.

This really is his fault. ]

Jean, you never should have been dragged into this, I'm sorry.

[ ~~Which is easy enough to say when the full gravity of it isn't quite present. Keeping her away wouldn't help anything at all.~~ ]

You would've done the same for me. You would've come for me if the roles had been reversed.

Of course I would have. That goes without saying. But this isn't supposed to be you taking care of me.

Why not? I thought that's what family did for each other?

It is. [ And this is dangerous ground. Where good intentions and ideals turn into a force he's less comfortable with and one that's far harder to control. For all of them. ] Sweetheart, it is. But that hardly negates how unfair this is to you. I'm responsible here, for you and your well-being, and putting all of that in jeopardy--

You deserve far more than a simple apology.

I don't care about the apology.

[ She stares at the screen for a long moment before typing the only thought she can think of with regards to what was driving her. It wasn't just to save the world. ]

I couldn't save my mom. But there was a chance I could save you. That's what was important to me.

[ God.

He stares at this for what seems like minutes, reeling. It feels as if his heart has shattered and threatens to expand and burst all at once as it sinks down into depths he isn't sure he'll drag it back from.

Charles sits with a hand clamped over his mouth for a good, long time, the beat of his heart drumming under his ribs sounding harsh and unkind.

God, she deserves so much better than this. He's known for a long time that her mother's death and the circumstances surrounding it, especially in terms of her father's inability to control his own anger, has weighed heavily. But until now, he's never quite grasped how much. ]

Jean, I--

[ I'm sorry? No, Charles, she knows. And that sentiment is useless right now. She cannot do anything with empty platitudes and apologies for her own hard choices. Because that's what this was, a hard choice. As isn't the whole point of teaching being able to watch a lesson take form and shape? To watch as it's understood? ]

Thank you.

[ (After all, it isn't as if he could profess--ha--anything better in her place. He'd raze the world for her if necessary). But painful for not... ]

And you're right. No matter how much I wish it otherwise. Did it work? The pyramid? Getting through to Erik?

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