milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Charles has been taking advantage of the fact that time stops in Milliways to do work and learn more about the people who pass through here. There's such a variety to the minds and experiences that if he didn't have to finish his editing, he'd probably spend most of his time with his eyes closed and just listening.

As it is, one of his sections isn't going as he'd like and he keeps going back over a certain sentence until he's quite lost track of time.

When he finally gets it right, he looks up and realizes that took a while and allows himself a break, so he leans back in his chair and observes the Bar.

Tiny tag: Charles Xavier, Antinoos
OOC: If you approach him while he's working then he's not mentally listening except quite passively. After he's stopped working, he is actively listening to the conversations and minds around him. Feel free to interrupt him or wait until he's on a break. Please let me know what he'll encounter in your pup's mind. Thank you.

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"I do, yes. I'm Charles Xavier,"

Having a letter as a name is odd but that's not something he wants to go exploring unless invited.

There's a momentary flicker in X's mind.

A bald man, tall and not in a wheelchair, dead and then not, but always on the periphery.

Cyclops has been the only team lead that X knows. Cyclops and Emma, that is.

Then there is a beat of silence.

Two.

"Your world has mutants?"

It is an important question. For several reasons.

He blinks and holds his head at the flashes, they remind him of what Noriko talked around but not quite the same,

"Yes, I'm one."

"I am, too," X offers.

It only seems fair.

Then --

"You are okay?"

He is, after all, holding his head.

She worries.

"Yes, I am. I'm simply slightly surprised but in a pleasant way. Mutants aren't yet out in the open in my time. We're still finding each other,"

And he keeps learning that he's part of how they came out in some times or worlds, he hasn't figured out what causes the differences or what he shouldn't know.

"People are afraid?"

She sounds like someone who is hoping the answer is no, but is fairly sure the answer is yes. (That the answer will always be yes. Even if there are worse fates.)

"Of mutants."

"They don't know about us enough to be afraid. I don't want them to be afraid, but I'm not sure how to make that happen. Though I'm working on it and I'm going to find one,"

He wants to be able to be honest with people, it's how he prefers to live. He doesn't want Raven to have to hide her true self.

"I do not think you can."

X says that very carefully.

"It is okay."

Beat.

"It is good that you try."

It is always better to try.

Even if fear is useful. Sometimes.

He doesn't want to think it's not possible, not yet, maybe someday he will but he hopes to never come to that,

"I'm sorry that's what you've experienced. What year is it for you?"

X shrugs, one-shouldered and quick.

"You do not have to be."

Beat.

When she gives him the year, it's somewhere in the early twenty-tens.

Marvel time is nebulous time.

"I am allowed to ask when it is? For you."

"Of course you are. That seems to be the norm here and I've yet to meet a mutant from my own time other than my sister who I brought in,"

Though the ones he's meeting from the future leave him feeling off balance with the futures they speak of and think of. The year he mentions is in the early nineteen-sixties.

"Sometimes it is difficult to know," X offers.

Again, she says it very carefully.

Then --

"Your sister is not named Cassandra."

Cassandra Nova is not a good . . . . not-person.

X has heard stories. And run up against her altered Sentinels a time or two.

It sucks.

"No, my sister is named Raven,"

In truth she's adopted but that doesn't matter to Charles, she's the person he trusts the most.

"Oh."

Beat.

"Okay."

That is kind of a relief, inasmuch as X is ever relieved.

"You said she comes here too. She likes it?"

"I think my past might not match up with your future. That seems to be true of the other mutants I've met here. She does, she very much approves of having a pub in our linen closet,"

Her relief worries him but he's trying to make himself not ask too much about futures with mutants. He wants to know but he also knows he probably shouldn't know.

"It is not uncommon," X agrees.

And, because this seems like a conversation that will continue, X gets up from her chair and moves over toward Charles.

"Being from different times. Or timelines that do not overlap. I do not mind."

Beat.

"You do?"

"I don't know. It takes some adjusting to,"

When she moves, he shifts his papers into a neater pile.

"I have been coming here since I was small."

Never from the labs, though. Just on a mission.

Or two.

It was both more and less confusing when she lacked the capacity to understand.

"It is not confusing to me."

"Do you have any advice on how to handle interacting with possible futures and pasts?"

He wants to ask about what it must have been like to come here while young but that can wait. Her experiences were probably rather different from Fry Sandhu.

"Do not be surprised. Or afraid."

That is important.

"And do not be angry when people will not answer your questions."

"I can do that,"

It means keeping more of his reactions internal but he's been doing that for most of his life.

Her nostrils flare, checking his scent.

Biochemical tells are more useful for her than verbal or facial cues.

Go figure.

"It is easier when you know timelines do not overlap. Or worlds."

He's calm and thoughtful along with being slightly resigned to not knowing many things,

"How does that help? It would seem that would cause more problems."

X blinks.

Twice.

"You will not affect your own past, then. If you make a mistake."

Beat.

"And other people being careless will not affect your future."

"Because once you know it's one more thing to be aware of not saying and reacting to?"

That seems to make sense though it's not how Charles likes to live. He prefers to be as honest as possible.