sixthiterationlogs | i've fallen out of favour and i've fallen from grace

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i've fallen out of favour and i've fallen from grace

WHO: Jean Grey
WHERE: The fountain, the village roads
WHEN: 2 December
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Jean is a telepath - her powers are diminished but she can feel strong emotions and loud thoughts/surface thoughts. If there's something you would like her to pick up in specific, let me know on Plurk. She also has the ice power, so as she's coming out of the fountain she is freezing things around her. This isn't normally what happens in the fountain and she's not freezing over the surface of the fountain itself, just the lip of it.
STATUS: Open to new threads.

Everything was black. It was black and cold, bone chillingly cold, and Jean couldn't understand why she felt like she was being pushed upward through a passage when she'd just been in Egypt where the heat was dry and hot. None of it made sense, really, but did anything make sense lately? There were people out to kill them because they were mutants, there were mutants out to kill them because they weren't the right kind of mutants. Down was up and up was down and she was currently swimming in an abyss she didn't recognize.

She reached out with her mind first. Charles had always said that her mind was her greatest gift and her finest asset and not feeling him, not feeling that familiar answer back shook her to the core; had he died? He'd been there. He'd told her to unleash her full power, to fight back, to be everything she was capable of and to stop restraining herself from fear in order to save them all. Why wasn't he answering? She tried again, harder, and then out loud. Surely he'd hear her if he screamed, wouldn't he, even if he couldn't hear her in his head?

"Charles!" she screamed, choking down water in exchange for her troubles. She scrabbled up through the water and bumped up against what felt like solid rock and then, only then, did she chance opening her eyes. It was a fountain, similar to a fountain at a school or a museum, and she had no idea why she'd be half-drowning in a fountain with snow on the ground when she'd just been in Egypt with hot, dry air swirling around her and searing her lungs.

"Charles! Professor! Charles, please!" she screamed again, fingers slipping on the edge of the fountain. She kept trying to clear the snow away but there was more and more, almost as if her efforts to get rid of it were multiplying it instead. What was happening? How was this happening? She'd always been a telepath, had always had this ability and this gift? How was she suddenly locked away from hearing anything but a low, faint buzz and making snow pile up beneath her fingertips?

"Answer me! Someone! Anyone!?"

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"It seems that way so far." The fireplace and the furnace help keep the inn warm, and the excess of bodies staying there add some small fraction to it as well, Ren was sure. He had no intentions of lingering there longer than necessary, but the warmth and food were a draw.

"The others who are trapped here with us seem set on working together to create a survivable community." He had a small level of disdain for their insistence, but Ren knew well the importance of survival, and he did his part if only to ensure he could also continue to make use of their habits.

"They seem inclined to make this place livable." Something that felt like a waste of an effort to the eager to escape former Jedi. He sighed and pushed the door shut with a shove from the force, rather than his hand, before he stepped further into the room.

"There are rooms, and a meal a day of something edible here. Several other buildings are empty, though. Most, if I had to guess." He doesn't have to. He had been scouting the village for a while now. The weather made getting further with his state of supplies a foolish endeavor.

"You can change out of those clothes into something dry. The fireplace is good for somewhere to get out the chill of the water from your bones."

"Other people are a blessing and a curse," Jean said. She voiced the thought out loud, too tired to try and use telepathy to do it, but she felt like the sentiment might be shared. Considering Stryker had just rounded up a bunch of mutants and paralyzed her entire school, she wasn't feeling too friendly toward anyone without her particular skill set at the moment; while she'd never be anti-human, she was certainly human-wary right now.

"Other people don't tend to trust people like me. People who can...do what we do. They don't trust what they don't understand." Jean swallowed a bit and gave him a wary little smile, shrugged, and tried again inside his mind. These were dangerous politics, depending on the population, and she didn't want to take her chances.

Other people try to attack what they're afraid of. Is there anyone else like us?

You're the first I've encountered besides myself. I have neither hidden or advertised. My strength is not what it should be.

It's a dangerous risk to admit to it, but if she tried she could find out soon enough, and of all the people he had met, he found her far less grating and he needed the possibility of having her as an ally over an enemy. He could keep his opinions of the Jedi locked well and deep in favor of his relief at another user of the force nearby.

"I find it's best not to over share." His voice is firm and warm, and despite missing the ability to disguise his face and voice to be taken more seriously, it is still the steady voice of someone determined to keep control of his situation. The less these people know of what we can do the better our power can serve us.

"The people of this village seem" He put a heavy emphasis on the word, and his gaze moved around the inn before he focused back on her. "Interested and invested in helping one another survive. How long that will last, or what it is that determines who they consider an ally or an enemy is impossible to gauge, but from what I have seen, temperaments and personalities are widely varied, and I don't see this peaceful cohabitation remaining stable indefinitely."

"It's hard to keep people that way for long without some kind of leader," Jean agreed. It was something she'd been lucky with, having been with the professor for so long but without that kind of guidance, she would have been lost. Here, she already felt adrift and it had only been a short while.

But there was at least one other mutant, one other mind she could touch and communicate with in the way that she'd been used to doing with Charles. That was a touchstone and a comfort, even if she was lost and confused about her current situation. She would just have to take this for what it was and try to piece together some sort of life here while she found her bearings.

People need someone to look to. It doesn't work without that. At least not in my experience, anyway.

I agree. Though earning or giving trust here is an effort I don't yet know how to approach. Some seem to give it to easy. Others look like they would like to slit anyone's throat in their sleep just to watch them bleed.

It's clear Ren's trust has not been gained by many in the village, if any. And extended use of the force seemed far more draining than it had ever been for him. He moved to the fireplace, taking a seat beside its warmth.

"You should change into something dry before the cold gets too far into you. I won't go anywhere." He offered, concerned he would lose the only glimmer of possibility to something as foolish as the wet and the cold. It was at least warmer in the inn, and he had yet to see the people within it try to attack anyone, not that it helped with his trust issues.

"There's a bathroom behind the door over there."

"It won't take me long," Jean promised. It was harder to sustain a conversation in her mind with as cold and wet as she was and she was certain that he might be able to understand that, at least a little. Once she was warm again, she might be able to regain more use of her ability; then she could start working on piecing together some more about this place.

"I'll meet you back out here when I'm done, all right?"

"I will be here." He meant to keep an eye on the fountain, but he had never seen people arrive so closely to one another, and no one had ever been as worth his time or as interesting as Jean was proving to be.

He took a seat by the fire, welcoming the warmth. He gestured for her to go ahead, and allowed himself a moment to let go of the cold he kept surrounding himself with every day.

When Jean came back out in dry clothing, she was much more amenable to actually being able to talk now that she wasn't half frozen and lost. It was still a frightening place but Kylo, at least, seemed to be a person she could relate to both as a person and a fellow mutant and that made it seem like a less daunting prospect.

"How long have you been here?" she asked, settling in a chair across from him. "Did you just arrive like I did?"

"Not long." Ren stood back up near the fire when Jean returned, and leaned back against the warm wall beside the fireplace, just off from in front of her chair so he could watch both her and the room around them.

"Enough days to know that some of the people here are too complacent with the situation they have found themselves thrown into. I have been told to make the best of it, and that there is no escape. Neither is smart or productive to believe it. Never let yourself get that comfortable. There's no mistaking thee intent behind this place, and it is not for the good of us." His last words held anger in them, sharp and venomous. He let it slide away with the words, the tension forcibly removed from his shoulders, and his slouch against the wall corrected to stand tall and proper instead.

"We will escape this prison."

Jean perched on the edge of her chair and listened to his words. They had a harsh edge to them, yes, but she sensed protection in them and a sense of caring, of wanting to see them safe. That helped relieve her, to some extent, and she let some of her own tension bleed away.

"Complacency is dangerous," Jean agreed. "I have heard that before from...other people but I never thought I would be the one saying it myself. I just think it would be a bad idea to instantly trust this place when it took us from what we know. It seems to be collecting people with abilities since it got the both of us, right?"

"At the very least us. I haven't seen or sensed if there are others, but they could be wisely keeping it to themselves." He didn't like that it was so hard to sense the force, or power in general. Everything was dull, muted and took considerable effort.

"Whoever it is has somehow limited me." He finally offered the answer, reluctantly. He didn't like to admit the weakness seeping through him, but he had to to get the right answers from her, and to learn whether she felt it too.

"I can feel the weakness but not the source or a way to shake it."

"It's the same for me," Jean agreed. "It's like I can't sharpen my focus the way I'm used to, like I'm ill or something is just weighing me down so I can't actually do what I know I'm capable of. It's frustrating because sometimes if I get angry enough, I get bursts of what I know I'm capable of but it never lasts."

Jean looked at her hands for a moment, wondering why they still seemed so blue when she'd been indoors for a little while now. "And I have another mutation. I've never been able to do anything with ice but just now? I was making ice along the edge of that fountain. I was making it harder to climb out because I was creating more ice."

"You were making ice?" Perplexed, Ren reached out a hand expectantly, waiting for her to let him take one of her wrists so he could look closer. He had not yet dealt with other people acquiring new power, only the dulling of his own. She said mutation, and the relevance of it was lost on him, but the implication behind it was not. He had heard of the Force being used to create and control lightning and electrical energy, but never of it creating ice.

It was possible she was delirious from the cold but he didn't think so. She had seemed perfectly sensible so far.

"Emotions, especially powerful ones like anger and fear, are the key to unlocking more power. But here even that influence is far weaker than it should be. Everything is muted." Even the call of either side was nothing but soft whispers that sometimes rose to his mind.

"It was cold out there. Ice is on a great many things. It's possible it was just forming itself but, perhaps there is something more to it. Come over here." He tried to lead her to the kitchen. If she was creating ice from touching the water, perhaps she could do so at will with the water from the faucet.

Jean had no fear when it came to him and she let him take her hand, let him lead her over to the faucet. She didn't know if she could replicate the ice power from before but she thought it was worth a try. If it happened again now that she was calm, maybe it was some sort of secondary mutation.

"I'm happy to try and show you," she said. "I don't know if I can replicate it but if I can, I will."

Ren turned the faucet, letting the water flow and stepping back enough to gesture to it, encouraging her to give it a try. He was interested to see if she had just been unaware of how cold weather worked or if what she claimed was actually possible.

"Go on then." He suggested, moving out of the way and leaning one hand on the counter. He was expecting nothing, but if she showed him something that went beyond his experiences, it was worth the time spent to see if she could. Perhaps it was something he could figure out for himself or use in the future.

Edited 2017-01-14 16:58 (UTC)

Jean brushed her fingers against the water from the faucet, concentrating a little and jumping back in shock when it froze all the way up to the opening of the tap. There was still frost on her fingertips, as well, and she looked back to Ren for confirmation.

"Does that answer your question? I definitely have just manifested a new mutation. I've never been able to do this before. I've only ever been able to use my mind."

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i've fallen out of favour and i've fallen from grace

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