Deep Like A Graveyard, Wired Like TV (open)

[Primer]

[[Primer post! Because you aren't allowed to kill him right now. Because you can't get back without him...or something...picks up during or after the camps mission, whichever works for reply-ee]]

They won’t give him his pheromones back. He’d taken the news calmly, silently, when someone had come to tell him that they were going on a mission to one of these ‘camps’ and leaving him behind, as good as crippled. There had been nothing to say to that, he was aware that he was most emphatically not in control anymore, and so he had said nothing, just continued scrolling through the archives they’d given him access to, the history of what had gone wrong with the world after 2007. He’s now convinced more than ever that Magneto had been right all along- if his old leader had been more successful in implementing his plans mutants would have been far too powerful a group to subjugate like this, if there had even been enough humans left to do the subjugating. When we get back into our proper time we’ll step up our efforts he promises himself, the imperative strengthening his resolve and the dull-edged anger that’s surging up in place of the immense sense of loss that had debilitated him in his first few hours without his mutation. Tempering those feelings is the satisfying thrill of superiority he’d gotten reading the account of his death- it follows to the letter the plan he has memorized in case it ever becomes necessary to fake his own death and escape somewhere. He wonders idly whether he ended up choosing Cyprus or Panama but dismisses it for the more satisfying realization that his self that belongs in this time period is enjoying life somewhere a bribe can buy all the security and comfort anyone could need while the rest of these fools are running around like cockroaches on scorched earth.

That knowledge is enough cushioning for his rather bruised psyche to allow him to get to his feet, venturing out of the small room he’s holed himself up in for the first time and wandering out into the corridors. There’s a bit of a commotion down the hall and he heads in that general direction, wondering if it’s the others back from their little mission yet, curious to see if they’ve recovered his daughter. While he obviously doesn’t feel any sort of emotional attachment to the girl it would still rankle to have something of his disposed of so carelessly by humans. As he finally finds the room where the voices are coming from he saunters in, looking as collected as anyone could hope, and leans against the door-frame, eyebrows raised and expression expectant.

[Bobby Drake]

(( OOC: I’m asserting that this is after the camps mission so that Bobby can be there. It also follows that Bobby gets back to the base after the camps mission, somehow or other. ))

Over the course of the last year or two, Bobby has lived through a lot of disorienting events, events that altered his basic relationship to the universe in fundamental and profound ways: being Cured... being tortured… falling in love and being betrayed… losing all capacity for emotion and getting it back again… falling apart and putting himself back together, both figuratively and literally.

He’d somehow gotten the idea that it gets easier with repetition. It doesn’t. As evidence of this, consider the degree to which he freaks out as he reads through the Brotherhood’s historical archives.

To make matters worse, apparently spiffy 2027 computers don’t just sit there and take it when their users say rhetorical things like "I did what?!?" and "No, no way did that happen.." No, they respond. They clarify. They expand. And Bobby finds himself yelling at them in response.

And when he finally stands up in frustration and decides it’s time to go do something else, it really doesn’t help matters any to find a familiar face smirking at him from the doorway.

No, that’s understating the case. It really, really, really doesn’t help.

"Oh, for crying out loud… just what I need. What, you want a do-over on the whole ambush-and-kill-me thing?" As witty repartee goes, it lacks wit… but Bobby’s too exhausted, both physically and emotionally, to care very much.

[Primer]

"Oh, for crying out loud… just what I need. What, you want a do-over on the whole ambush-and-kill-me thing?"

Primer laughs, a little more sharply than is usual, and his smirk deepens. Bobby’s worn down almost past endurance and it’s an almost irresistible temptation to take the unwitting invitation, grab the frayed threads of the boy’s exhaustion, and pull him apart like so much cloth. But really the fun is knowing that he could and he thinks that over with distinct satisfaction in his unhurried appraisal of his former patient.

“No, as usual, what I want from you is information. Though,” he pauses and holds up a finger, “for purposes of clarification the point was not to kill you. Rahne was about to stop when my daughter stumbled onto our little encounter. Despite what the Institute would have you believe we really don’t sit around all day devising ways to kill you. This sort of thing is all tactics- you needed some gentle reminders not to interfere with us in the future.” he pauses and smiles rather fondly remembering the way one half of Bobby’s face had sort of slid away from the other, even he hadn’t expected that one.

He shakes himself out of the nostalgia to continue, “What I really want to know is how it went at the camps. You’ve returned just fine I see, which is rather unsurprising because you seem to run the place in some future incarnation, but what about the others? While I’m very grateful to you for walling them off so that I could be teleported in their place I have an employer’s interest in Rahne that I would hate to lose, and of course there’s my daughter…” he trails off and subsides back into the same expectant pose, hoping the boy won’t throw too large a temper tantrum before he gets around to answering.

[Bobby Drake]

Bobby’s first reaction to Primer’s lecturing tone is the impulse to punch him in the jaw. He restrains that, reasoning that the best thing he can do around this guy is avoid losing emotional control.

His second reaction involves working out, as if it were one of Logan’s danger-room problems, the most efficient way of closing the distance between them, feinting an elbow-strike, and lodging a roundhouse kick in Primer’s groin. Which, while more controlled than a simple punch to the jaw, he ultimately discards as equally a mistake.

His third impulse is to argue. In particular, listening to Primer stand there describing the Brotherhood as misunderstood and misrepresented by the Institute, after what Bobby had suffered at Magneto’s hands and by Primer’s orders, is almost more than he can tolerate.

But there’s no point, really, and Bobby knows it. He’s spent hours talking to this man, after all, and knows how good his armor is… even without the pheromone support.

> " I have an employer’s interest in Rahne that I would hate to lose, and of course there’s my daughter"

Bobby flinches at that, and kicks himself for being so obvious. The truth is that Laurie and the werewolf had vanished during the raid, and Bobby has no idea where they are, or whether they are even alive. None of which he feels like discussing with this man.

"I don’t give a damn about your ‘interest’, Sean. And you don’t give a damn about Laurie. So you can go barking up some other tree for your information."

He indulges a brief fantasy of chilling Sean’s blood to just this side of hypothermia and threatening to pull his frozen appendages off of his body one by one if he doesn’t leave Laurie and Gail alone. The problem is, Sean knows perfectly well he wouldn’t do any such thing, and it would just make him look ridiculous.

Ultimately, he decides that first impressions are generally the best… and the way Sean’s jaw folds underneath his bare knuckles is just about the most satisfying thing he’s felt in the last six months. He smiles down at the man as he hits the ground. "Don’t take it personally, Sean. Just consider it a gentle reminder to stay the hell away."

[Primer]

"I don’t give a damn about your ‘interest’, Sean. And you don’t give a damn about Laurie. So you can go barking up some other tree for your information."

“So missing then, or maybe just injured. I imagine you’d be a bit more upset if death was a definite answer.” he says after a moment of watching Bob’s face. “And whoever may ‘give a damn’ about whoever else aside, no one likes to see humans and traitors taking what’s theirs. I'd venture to say I want them found as much as anyone else.” he adds, then cocks his head slightly to the side as Bobby’s face goes through some minute but interesting tics and tells. He’s about to do something emotional he thinks, and isn’t too surprised, a moment later, to find himself on the floor looking up at the boy.

"Don’t take it personally, Sean. Just consider it a gentle reminder to stay the hell away."

He laughs at that, massaging his jaw with no particular urgency, and grins back at Bobby with his hundred-watt media smile, pleased and anticipatory as a shark who's just smelled blood in the water. “That easy hmm?” he asks, “That’s why I wasn’t nearly as surprised as you about all that.” he adds, nodding towards the computer Bobby has recently abandoned. Years, a lifetime really, of rigid practice at control have given him an almost feline ability to look as if wherever he is exactly where he means to be, and now he pushes back any signs of pain, getting to his feet again almost languidly. “Don’t worry Bobby, I’m not seeking you out and I don’t plan on it, you’ve already given me everything I need.”

[Bobby Drake]

> " That easy hmm? That’s why I wasn’t nearly as surprised as you about all that. "

That freezes Bobby in his tracks.

What does he mean by that? I’m not… I mean, I can’t be… can I? He’s not entirely sure what it is he’s denying being, though the word “traitor” is floating disturbingly close to his conscious awareness.

In some ways it doesn’t matter, because whatever it is he’s denying, that computer terminal – not to mention the strange looks he was getting from Warren Sr. and the rest of this future Brotherhood – has made it pretty clear that he’s wrong to do so. Or has it? No, there’s got to be more to it. I wouldn’t just betray my friends like that, start running the damned Camps. I wouldn’t. Something else happened, something nobody’s talking about… mind control, or something like that. That isn’t me!

But Sean’s smile suggests otherwise, and much as the sane parts of Bobby’s brain are clamoring that the last thing he should be doing right now is listening to this man, he can’t help but remember that, enemy or not, at this point Sean probably knows him better than anyone alive. If anyone is in a position to explain to him how Bobby Drake, mutant adventurer and general fuck-up, became Colonel Robert Drake, security chief of a mutant internment camp, it’s Sean.

And all at once Bobby has to know, has to understand. If he can understand it, he can make sure it doesn’t happen. And, sure, maybe it won’t stop any of this craziness from happening, but at least he’ll be on the right side when it does.

> " Don’t worry Bobby, I’m not seeking you out and I don’t plan on it, you’ve already given me everything I need "

"No!" He blurts it out unthinkingly, the anger of a moment before replaced by a sudden driving need to understand. He knows that it’s a mistake to advertise his need like this, to give Sean a handle on his psyche, but he does it anyway. "Tell me what you meant by that crack, about not being surprised. What… how do I turn into that?!?"

(( OOC: *shakes head* oh, poor Bob. Poor, fucked-up Bob. ))

[Primer]

[]

"No! Tell me what you meant by that crack, about not being surprised. What… how do I turn into that?!?"

Primer laughs and shakes his head slightly. I couldn’t have asked for a better scenario. The boy’s been through the wringer so many times he’ll grab on to anything, he thinks and lets the disdain show on his face as he answers. “That’s the thing isn’t it Bobby? It’s always about you. What kind of person would put the entire Institute at risk to fuck some boy? What kind of person jabs himself full of an untried drug in the middle of a field mission that’s already going to hell so that he can feel better about himself? I had such an easy time with you that some sessions I didn’t even use pheromones. You’re weak enough to get injured in every possible way and selfish enough to be unable to see past it once it’s done. The exact mechanics don’t matter; there are a number of ways it could have played out. What matters is the potential.” Some of that is lies, and some of it he’d made up as he went along, but hopefully enough of it was true to make the boy squirm. He does wonder idly if there’s something more productive he could be doing but decides the answer is no- after all they’d refused to speed his recovery so he had to amuse himself somehow.

“And remember,” he can’t resist adding, “this is the Brotherhood you’re standing in right now. The Institute is rubble and the archives say I never lifted a finger against it. Maybe your pride and your scars were more important than what was right in the end.”

[Bobby Drake]

(( OOC: Yeah… he’s an inspiration to us all. That was brilliant, btw… * gives cookie * ))

> " What kind of person would put the entire Institute at risk to fuck some boy? "

But I didn’t put anyone at… The thought fades out before he can finish it, drowned by images of Josh in the medlab and Baker Mansion burning down and Josh and Warren and Toni breaking into Brotherhood HQ to rescue him.

He had. Not directly, but still… none of that would have happened if he hadn’t started things with John. But it wasn’t just for me!, he argues silently. It got John away from Magneto and back at the Institute!

Right. And I was so thrilled by that that I practically haven’t spoken to him for the last year. That thought almost floors him in its own right… it doesn’t seem possible that a year had already passed, but there it was. Well, OK, twenty years have passed, but that’s different.

> " What kind of person jabs himself full of an untried drug in the middle of a field mission that’s already going to hell so that he can feel better about himself? "

That one doesn’t hit as hard – not because it isn’t true, but because he’s already come to terms with it. Yes, it had been a stupid thing to do, and yes, he’d done it because he hadn’t wanted to be a “flatliner” around mutants, and – pathetic as it sounds to say out loud like this – because he’d hoped John would like him again if he regained his mutation. And he knows it, and he’s accepted it… ironically, in large part thanks to Sean’s therapy sessions.

“I am your enemy,” the words float through his mind from some half-remembered book, “the first one you’ve ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy; no one but the enemy will ever tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. I am your enemy, from now on. From now on I am your teacher.”

It takes him a minute to place it, as Sean keeps talking, and when he does he almost laughs… he’d expected it to be one of the dozens of works on tactics and strategy the Professor had made him study, but it’s actually Maezr Rackham from Ender’s Game. Laurie would love that, he thinks idly. Next I’ll start quoting Snoopy the Dog.

Source notwithstanding, though, it applies. Yes, Sean is the enemy. Yes, Sean is trying to hurt him, and is smart and vicious enough to do it well. But that makes him better-suited than anyone to show Bobby his own weaknesses. It means Bobby can learn from this, and maybe – just maybe – he can use it to avoid turning into the man he met at the Camps.

> " this is the Brotherhood you’re standing in right now. The Institute is rubble and the archives say I never lifted a finger against it. Maybe your pride and your scars were more important than what was right in the end. "

That hurts, but Bobby forces himself to hear it… and is forced in turn to admit there’s truth to it. The “Colonel Drake” he’d met, for all his bluster and his air of reasonableness, had been pretty badly hurt… Bobby had recognized that like looking in a mirror.

And no wonder, he realizes now, remembering what he’d read in the archives… everybody left him. He tries to imagine what that would be like, trying to keep the X-Men running as, one by one, they defected to the enemy. Or died, he reminds himself, imagining John’s execution, Storm’s defection, Josh’s death, Warren’s breakdown. He’s the only one left.

He can feel tears forming in sympathy, and freezes them with a thought – there’s such a thing as being too maudlin in front of the enemy, after all! – before glaring defiantly at Sean. This may be a training session, but that doesn’t mean he has to sit still for it.

"And what makes you such an expert on ‘the right thing’, Sean? Don’t forget, all of this got started because some nutjob psychic managed to do exactly what we stopped your old boss from doing, over and over again."

[Primer]

And now he’s thinking something heroic Primer decides rather wearily, watching Bob’s face as he works out how to respond.

"And what makes you such an expert on ‘the right thing’, Sean? Don’t forget, all of this got started because some nutjob psychic managed to do exactly what we stopped your old boss from doing, over and over again."

“Don’t throw words around like that boy.” he says, no particular anger in his tone but no warmth either, even the artificial kind that’s usually second nature. “Magneto was a great man, like it or not, even your ‘Professor’ thought so, but he was a zealot. Of course he did have a plan behind all that brimstone and fire, if Liberty Island or Alcatraz had been allowed to go through it wouldn’t have ended like this, but I’m not him.” he breaks off for a moment and laughs genuinely, though even that is calculated, a mark of how little he cares about this encounter while Bobby obviously cares so very much. “I’m a much better interior decorator for one thing, if you’d seen…” he trails off and smirks, “Well I suppose you did at that. Rest assured if you ever enjoy the hospitality at our new headquarters the accommodations will be different. Working plumbing is rather more important than atmosphere I think. In any case, whoever that psychic was he wasn’t one of mine, that may have been Magneto’s style but as I said it isn’t mine. I don’t expect you’ll ever see that I’m right, but no matter what you rationalize away the path we’re heading down right now takes you to the camps, overseeing interrogation and torture, and I die fighting for mutant rights. I don’t have much of a problem with you considering me inexpert on right and wrong.”

[Bobby Drake]

> " no matter what you rationalize away the path we’re heading down right now takes you to the camps, overseeing interrogation and torture, and I die fighting for mutant rights. "

And the hell of it is, he’s absolutely right. That’s exactly what happened… at least according to the records on Warren’s computers. And, sure, they might all be fakes, but there’s nothing implausible about any of it.

Which doesn’t make Sean right about any of the rest of it, he reminds himself. Sure, maybe Magneto’s path wouldn’t have ended like this, but only because he’d have destroyed most of the human race in the process. Instead of crazy bigoted humans herding mutants into Camps, it would have been the other way around, but that’s hardly an improvement.

On further consideration, the phrase of Sean’s that most sticks with him, though, is “whoever that psychic was he wasn’t one of mine, that may have been Magneto’s style but as I said it isn’t mine.” He mulls that over for a few moments before responding.

"All right… suppose I take you at your word about whoever it was not being one of yours. And suppose we can get back home, somehow. Would you try to stop whoever it was?"

[Primer]

"All right… suppose I take you at your word about whoever it was not being one of yours. And suppose we can get back home, somehow. Would you try to stop whoever it was?"

Primer raises his eyebrows and straightens from where he’s been leaning against the doorway. “I see where you‘re going with this.” he says mildly enough, his viciousness dropped like a child’s discarded toy as soon as something more interesting presents itself. “Yes, that was the plan as far as I’d thought it out. This isn’t a future I want any more than the next mutant and I have ways to contribute in stopping a massive attack of rage.” he frowns slightly, straightening the cuff of his shirt in the pause, “It’s troubling though, a psychic that powerful should have been detected by your people, and someone that deranged should have sought my group out,” he pauses to grin unrepentantly, “and been channeled properly. The archives don’t mention them ever having been located either, and who does something like that and then doesn’t take credit, or at least try something like it again?”

[Bobby Drake]

> " who does something like that and then doesn’t take credit, or at least try something like it again?"

Bobby nods slowly at that, a little ashamed to realize Sean has already been thinking along these lines while he’d been flailing about his own complicity in the whole setup. He’s right… I’ve been being selfish. It’s time to worry about something other than me for a while.

"Maybe somebody who dies in the attempt? Or maybe somebody who likes operating from the background." Nikki comes to mind… one of Magneto’s recruits who Warren had somehow convinced to join the Institute instead, and a subtle telepath, but not nearly powerful enough to pull something like that off. And there’s Emma Frost, of course, but she’d been missing and presumed dead ever since the Invasion. Both possibilities, Bobby supposes, but neither at all certain.

He shrugs. "Anyway… maybe we’ll find some clues before we go back. And…" he hesitates, not quite certain he’s really about to do this, then takes a deep breath and dives in, "look, I want us to be clear here. We’re enemies. I don’t believe we’ll ever be anything other than that. You and your people have no respect for anything outside your own little club, and that’s going to keep us banging up against each other probably for as long as we live, and you’d gut me in a second if you thought it would advance your interests, and we both know it. I’m never going to trust you."

He almost stops there, unwilling to continue, but he uses the momentum to bring him over the hump. "But neither of us wants this", and he waves his arm vaguely to encompass the entire known universe at this moment, "and I think we’ll get less done working at cross-purposes than together. So I suggest we work together on finding a way back home, and finding out who the nutjob psychic was, and stopping them. After that we can get back to business as usual. Does that work for you?"