milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

This time, Raven marches into the Bar, sans her brother.

A napkin appears to greet her moments later.

"Really?" Beat. "Sure I will."

Specials
Mai Tai
Manhattan
Margarita

(And then a little further down - )

Blue Colada

It is her favorite color, after all.

[ tiny tags: charles xavier, raven darkholme ]

[ ooc: Tag in, tag each other! ST/LT welcome and appreciated. ~~Open for tags until this reads otherwise.~~ Closed to new tags. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I've been worse things," Jean said, halfheartedly amused, pulling the drink to herself. "It does smell good at least."

"I think that means I made it right," Raven replies, smirking slowly as she goes back to cleaning a glass.

She picked up the glass, lifting it to her mouth to take a drink.

She nodded, thoughtfully, while swallowing. "I'm Jean."

She sets the glass down slowly, glancing over at Jean.

Only her smile lingers.

"Raven."

Darkholme.

"It's nice to meet you, Raven." Jean tilted her head, a little more birdlike than not. "Aren't you a little young compared to the normal bartenders?"

"What, there's an age range?"

She shrugs nonchalantly.

"I'm older than I look."

"Me, too," Jean said, oddly quirked part-smile.

"Really."

She tosses the cloth aside.

"What's your secret?"

Jean tilted her head, thinking.

"Honestly?" Did she really want to know the truth?

Her brow furrows lightly.

"Honestly."

Seriously, how bad can it be?

"I'm very different from anyone you've ever met."

From her. From her brother. From his friends and students to come.

"Lots of people are different."

What goes unspoken is: what makes you so special?

"Especially here." Most of the ones here didn't go back to a place outside of time and space, when they left this place, too. Jean raised her right hand, turning it over in a smooth motion.

Easy, graceful, and by the time her palm was up a small bird of fire bloomed from her palm, from her skin to hover above it. Green eyes a flicker of the same fire. As it rose, wings wide, several inches into the air, beginning to fade as fast it was formed. Yet so bright, so alive, even as it went.

Her eyes widen slowly, taking in the fire before it rises and disappears - but by the time her gaze returns to Jean, her expression is neutral, the shields slowly rising back up as easily as the one she always wears does.

"That's different," she agrees, with a conceding nod.

Jean doesn't say that for what she is, the girl is still human. Thin as glass, and just as transparent. She doesn't need to. In part because she doesn't need to point it out, and has no reason to ever do anything with it.

"I'm that, except much-" She swirling the drink in her glass, with a faintly predatory quirk to her smile at the slushy blue concoction. "much bigger."

Big enough invent, and destroy, and remake the universe.

She wants to ask what that is, but a part of her is convinced she may not want to know, either. Equal parts fear and curiosity, mixed.

"Sounds pretty big," she adds, leaning against the bar.

"And yet," She looked up at the young girl, green eyes calm and almost the barest hint of amused. "It is all still just me."

A woman who might or might not be a woman, in a body that might not even be a body, sitting on the stool of a bar that would never be just a bar. And yet. Still. Still she would remember.

Him. His words.

(Who are you? He asked.

....Jean.

That's right, you're Jean Grey. And always will be.
No matter what happens, no matter where you go,
or how you grow, or what the cosmos tells you.)

"And yet." Her eyes are still narrowed, still brown (except when they're not), a faint line creasing between her brows.

"And you still like Blue Coladas," she points out, murmuring faintly.

"Actually this is trading up," Jean said lifting the glass, as though it were in toast. Choosing not to defend or pursue the girl's arouses curiosity or confusion. She'll leave that to her to decide. "I usually choose Earl Grey tea."

A habit of so many years ingrained by a man who was still a boy here.

Raven wrinkles her nose at the mention of tea, shaking her head firmly enough to make blonde waves of hair move across her shoulders.

"I can't stand tea," she replies. "But I can't admit that out loud or my brother will disown me."

"He's a big fan?" This is mildly put, over the rim of the glass, before taking another drink of it.

"He's English. They start drinking tea at, like, age five."

It's not uttered with anything other than fondness.

Her affection is palpable. But in her tone, and from her mind, emotions, ripples outward. And Jean has to consider her. The odd memories of a completely different Raven, with a completely different past, all of it like flashes and flickers of an old stop camera, layered against the girl, those words.

She smiles, teasing, though distant but effortless. "How terrible."

It would take a little more than that for Charles to disown her - if it would take anything at all. They've found each other now. They're all either one of them has.

"I'll never understand it," she continues.

"It's an acquired taste," Jean agrees. "It was given to me to calm me when I was young."

When the world was too loud and too big and existing in too much of her.