ways_infirmary | (no subject)

"Yes, I have for a woman here,"

He'd rather not tell Red's name if he doesn't have to, but she will speak for what he's done.

Urquhart follows them.

"If I do anything I shouldn't, Guppy," he says, "don't hesitate to shoot me with your stun gun. Experience or not, the last thing I would want to do now is harm Charles Xavier."

Again.

"Hang on a sec."

Guppy goes into the infirmary, and brings a pair of inflatable mattresses. He tugs on the cords, and they inflate automatically.

"Sit next to those, I don't want you falling over and hurting yourself."

Charles eyes the mattresses, "I will be inside his head and able to calm him from there."

"That is very considerate, in case you do have to shoot me, Guppy," Urquhart says. "I am dangerous, Charles -- I do believe you will do your best, but I really don't want to harm you."

So he is actually expecting to get zapped at some point, because he knows he's the kind of person that sometimes needs to be zapped for safety's sake.

"Yeah, he tried to kill me the first time we met because I called him Angus." Guppy says, totally deadpan. "Funny story."

"Yes, I understand that but not to put too fine a point on it. I am far more dangerous than you are in terms of what I can do with my mutation. Never mind, let's get started,"

He sits down and rubs his forehead, he needs to be calm and centered to make this work. His own feelings have no place in this.

Urquhart sits down.

"What do I do?" he asks.

"Sit across from me and open your mind to me. Then I want you to think back to the last thing you remember before you lost time,"

Once he feels sure of himself, Charles reaches out to put his hand on Urquhart's face.

Urquhart does as told, taking a deep breath and thinking of his rather hazy memory of seeing the figure on the top of the stairs, and the fear he felt, and the tentacles.

And how it couldn't possibly be fear...

"All of your emotions are real and valid. If you question them then this will be more difficult,"

Charles takes a quick breath to gain control, his fear can wait as he closes his eyes and focuses on the figure. Trying to push away what is blocking the memory.

Guppy watches.

He's no doubt that both of them could be dangerous. Though Charles hasn't shown himself to be yet, and the idea of him being so is slightly unnerving.

He sits on a sofa a little way away, trying not to interfere.

Urquhart takes a deep breath, and remembers the fear, and how helpless he felt, and how much he wanted to stop feeling anything of that sort, then.

How he ran away from the building.

The fear is familiar and Charles follows the trail of that fear to the next memory.

The next memory is the apparition turning up in the bar itself, and the sort-of promise Urquhart got from it, to free him from that fear if he brought him somebody else instead.

That is something Urquhart definitely has not remembered before now, and it horrifies him

And he struggles, for a moment, against feeling horrified.

And then he stops struggling, because it is horrifying, and he's horrified at himself.

"Yes, I know its a hard emotion but this happened and you have to accept all parts of it. He took advantage of you and that is not your fault,"

As Urquhart struggles, Charles readies a feeling of calmness in case any control is lost.

"I was ready to sacrifice any random person for the feelings to go away," Urquhart says, in a very small voice. "That was -- well, at least unprofessional. And cowardly."

"Your feelings are part of you, denying them or trying to get someone to remove them won't work out well. What did you do once he made his offer?"

Once they're within the memories, they're not deeply hidden. Charles doesn't have to uncover a lot but Urquhart needs to accept what he felt, that is the challenge.

"I----"

Long silence.

He remembers stalking among the foggy trees, just looking for any living person to grab and bring to the abandoned building, instead of himself.

Charles remembers that fog and hiding in those trees as the world didn't feel real.

His own fear and memories are kept behind a tight shield and the only sign of how this bothers him is a tightness around his eyes and mouth, "You're a hunter. What did you hunt?"

"Somebody," Urquhart says. "Just anybody. The next living human body, no matter who."

He still feels horrified, and wishes he didn't.

Edited 2012-11-17 02:19 (UTC)

"Who did you find?"

In the memory, Charles pushes away the fog.

Long silence, as Urquhart remembers catching a struggling person from behind a tree.

Any random person in the forest. And it was...

"You!"

"Yes, but I don't matter now. This is about your memories,"

His voice is steady, this isn't easy but Urquhart needs to remember it all.

Urquhart remembers grabbing the whoever-person and going off towards the abandoned building, to pay the tree-god the promised fee for freeing him from that fear.

Urquhart never wanted to feel anything like that ever again, and he was ready to pay anything for it.

Now, he is horrified. It was so cowardly of him.