tampered | (no subject)

(no subject)

When; Late evening, the 25th.
Rating; PG13 probably.
Characters; Nick & Remy
Summary; Interrogating the new telepath will obviously go much better if he's hammered first.
Log;

Nick's Christmas has been quiet, really; he and Ein meandered down to midnight mass behind the Pied Pipers of Merriment on the eve before, was startled to receive a book about chess from Jean Paul and otherwise largely ignored the holiday. (Except for the parts of a party upstairs that were hard to miss even when you weren't attending.)

When it's quieted down all around, he leaves the corgi to his own devices a while and makes his way to meet with Remy, as per previous arrangement.

(People that'll understand explanations he'd give if he were inclined to have been few and far between; his actually giving the explanation is even rarer. When any sort of ability of the sort is generally considered to definitely not exist and be the realm of hoaxers and the delusional, and on top of that half of yours is invasive by nature, one gets out of the habit of volunteering much. He's pretty sure this'll be interesting from either side of the conversation.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One would think you'd take Christmas off from work like this, but there's no room for slacking in the X-Men (or the Marauders, a voice in Remy's head reminds him, and he pauses for a second to keep himself from charging the cup in his hand - his powers have been unstable in a way he doesn't like, since the coma). With someone named Magneto running around, he can't justify putting off looking into the man that's looking into Wanda's head.

Even if he has to do it while he's still cleaning. Seriously whose shirt is this?

It's force of habit that Nick glances over the top of minds around him; he thinks better of it under the circumstances, but unfortunately (probably all around) not quite in time to avoid the abrupt stabbing headache for his trouble after a glimpsing attempt. Well. Definitely not trying that again.

Ow.

"...need a hand, there?"

Remy feels the static spike in his mind just as he hears someone approach the open apartment door, and when he looks up, he's chuckling, a grin on his face.

"You don' wanna go tryin' that wit me, homme. I don't take kindly to it."

It's a useful ability; using the bio-kinetic energy within him to generate so much interference that not even telepaths like Jean Grey could get in. (He had to let Emma in. And that went over great.)

"Yeah, you could help, if you like."

"Habit," he says, easy and a little apologetic, "I'll remember in the future."

Nick, on first impression, is...sort of boring, actually. British, blue-eyed, blond, fit and of roughly indeterminate middle years, wears a lot of blue and when preoccupied, he doesn't breathe. He's comfortable, competent, observant, and probably blends into the background more often than not. For the moment he's setting about making himself useful in the clean up.

"Where we come from, telepaths tend to be kinda pushy 'bout it. Entitled. After too many years if they're operatin' without morals they get weird. Monitorin' whole cities kinda weird."

He puts a half-empty bottle on the counter, and sticks a fully empty one in a box on the floor with the other fallen soldiers.

"Merry Christmas, by de way."

"And a merry one to you," Nick replies, absently, while he runs through Remy's first comments in his own mind, turning them over and shaking them a little.

... "I think these are Faye's." He sets a pair of shoes to one side. "Where I came from, we don't exist, and anyone who says otherwise is delusional at best." Which is and is not convenient, depending on the day. It didn't really work out well in the end, considering.

"Give it a few years," he says with a shrug. In his experience, all universes get mutants, eventually.

... This pillow is beyond saving. Sigh.

"So what do you think of Wanda?"

'Give it a few years' gets a non-committal sound and a roll of his shoulders while he collects up bottles, and...he's not sure he wants to touch the sofa on principle of having been to a few parties in his time. It's shameless cheating to check under it with his powers, but hey - that's never stopped him before.

He considers how to answer that, down on his knees to shove the couch back and fish a few things out from under it, "I think she'd have benefited from trained psychiatric care and a good support network a decade ago at the very least and outside." This comes said about as mildly as anything else that comes out of his mouth.

"Well, everybody knows that," he says, straightening up and giving Nick a sober look. "You know what she is, what she's been through. What do you think of her?"

"I'm impressed she's standing up at all after going through the wringer that way," he says, after a beat, rocking back on his heels where he's kneeling. He was expecting to be put on the spot, but inability to be straightforward is the habit of decades and it's taking him a bit here to work through something that isn't shaded in half-answers.

He rests his hands on his thighs, contemplative. "She's a good person in an unfortunate set of circumstances. Complex."

Unfortunately for Nick, telepaths are kind of run of the mill back home, for Remy. If you can read minds you are more or less expected to cough up any worthwhile info or suffer being shanked on the astral plane.

"Knock this vague shit off, man," he says, though he doesn't sound hostile, just a little tired.

Nick's laugh is short and rueful. "Would you believe me if I said I'm actually trying? Though I'll be honest, I'm not sure exactly what you're asking me. I didn't read her mind, I gave her somewhere to put it for a while. I don't honestly know her very well."

"Whatever you wanna call it, like I said, I've known a lot of telepaths." He's even been one's personal hit man, but let's not go there.

"Start explainin' that whole bit, there - gave her somewhere to put it."

"I can read her mind, but I haven't gone that deep," he says, shrugging his shoulders backward. "When we first met, she had a set of surface thoughts that acted as a sort of - barrier, if you like, she was hiding the rest of her mind underneath. I'll look if I can, but I don't break barriers without reason, so I haven't."

The explanation is...hm. He exhales, sitting down properly. "I refined it a bit from something that was used to hide Ann- someone from me. It's like building a tower in someone's head. They're in there, but they can't be touched. Like incredibly effective compartmentalization. I can't sustain it the way Rose Red could have-" he didn't exactly mean to say that, but he doesn't bother taking it back, "-but for a couple of weeks, sure. Three at the outside."

He pauses, shrugs. "The side-effect's that no one else can read her mind right now. What I refined it from was designed to keep nosy telepaths from cocking up plans."

...he's a little bitter, there, but it's private.

He can accept that. Non-psychics get taught how to make lock boxes inside their minds all the time. And it's true Wanda could have done with some intensive therapy a loooong time ago.

"Okay. Why?"

"Why which? Why did I do it?"

"This is a free talk exercise," he says, gesturing. "Just go on 'bout whatever aspects."

Remy gets a wryly amused look for that. "Wanda asked nicely and I owed her one. I'm in the habit of making myself useful when I can - I'm a psychiatrist. The primary use of my powers before I took the sabbatical was geared towards finding the best possible treatment plan for my patients. Wanda's certainly not my patient, and I don't treat friends for professional reasons-"

He shrugs. "I owed her one."

Remy seems to accept that as he wipes up a spilled something or another from an end table. He's not a reader, but he's good with impressions, when he sets his mind to it. It's half sensitivity and half 'real world experience'. You hang around people long enough, you start to be able to get a sense for them.

Nick's a weirdo. But Remy doesn't think he's a threat.

"You want a drink?"

Nick's always been odd, a little off; he jokes that his dad used to think he was a changeling, but it's not really a joke. A distant sort of regret, the kind that doesn't hurt, but he thinks it might've been easier in Marske if they'd been able to understand each other better.

He means well, though, even when he's holding onto standing steady by his nails and the skin of his teeth. He's a pain in the ass and he can be a bit of a bastard, but he's well-intentioned and even helpful.

"Good Christ, yes." He's considering looking around for a vacuum cleaner, also. "You mind if I smoke?" He theorizes 'no', by the way, but it's always polite to ask. He does have manners, somewhere in there.

There is a vacuum cleaner lurking in a closet, but somewhere in the apartment, Threnody is probably still sleeping it off, so let's not. Remy fiddles around in the kitchen-

"You want... uh, a beer, what's left of de tequila...?"

You have choices, Nic. "An' yeah, go ahead." There are ash trays somewhere - or there were. He thinks he saw one with limes in it earlier.

Edited 2008-12-26 03:32 (UTC)

Even Nick's not going to try drinking, smoking and vacuuming all at once (as entertaining as that could end up being, let's not pretend). "I'll take a beer, thanks," he says, fishing out his cigarettes and a lighter.

"I think Wanda was a bit concerned about how this'd go," he says, exhaling smoke. He got this impression from how many times she repeated they'll be nice! and because he is not an idiot. "Had I ever actually met anyone's parents, I'd probably make a really tasteless joke here."

Remy hands him a beer. It's Canadian.

"Well, I'll be honest, these sort of things have gone different with me before. I haven't dropped you off a buildin' or nothin' yet."

"I've already died," he says, the weariness half mocked up for laughs and half...genuine, for assorted obvious reasons including actual failure to sleep very well. "I really appreciate your restraint in not giving me more post-traumatic stress." And, for the beer: "Ta."

"Hey, I would have caught you." Probably. He gets a beer for himself. "Sorry 'bout the whole death thing. It sticking?"

... Because, uh. Sometimes death doesn't.