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Embers in the cold places; tag: Idie
Topic Started: May 16 2015, 01:39 PM (203 Views)
Ted Kaplan-Altman
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Mutant Skrull Physiology
May 16, afternoon

It had been a month since the Nigerian mission which had ended with the relocation of the young girl, Idie Okonkwo, to Xavier's, and while Ted had been receiving intermittent reports from Billy about how she'd been settling in -- which mostly added up to better than some and worse than most -- he hadn't actually found any time to visit the Institute until now. Which he felt a little guilty about... not that he was under any obligation or anything, but he figured she needed all the support she could get, and she was in a new school in a new country with no friends or family, and a load of trauma he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy.

(Actually, on consideration, that last part probably wasn't true. Ted wasn't really sure who his worst enemy was; he tried not to think that way. But Omega Red was certainly in the running after trying to kill Billy in New York, an image that was still just as vivid in the agent's memory as it had been at the time. And, well, there wasn't a lot he wouldn't wish on that psychopath. Or on the Purifiers who'd planned the destruction of Xavier's. But that wasn't really the point here.)

He'd found himself with some free time this afternoon, and running some errands not too far from Westchester, so he'd decided to visit with folks, among other things to see how the girl was doing. They offered to call her down to see him, but he waved that off... he didn't want her to feel like this was any kind of official thing, he was just dropping in to say hi. And he certainly new his way around the place, even if it had been rebuilt from ashes since his student days.

So instead he made his way up to her room, where she seemed most likely to be, and knocked on the door. "Idie? This is Ted..." He considered adding a qualifier about which Ted, but couldn't think of anything that wouldn't be incredibly thoughtless under the circumstances. Besides, he had a feeling she wouldn't be forgetting him any time soon. "You're not in trouble or anything, I just wanted to see how you were doing." He'd feel a little silly if he were saying all this to an empty room or to her roommate, but, well, he had some experience with her side of this situation and didn't want her to panic.

"Can I come in?"
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IdieOkonkwo
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Idie had been studying, since that's mostly what she did these days. Eat, sleep, study, pray. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was boring and monotonous, but that was better than the alternative. There was a reassurance in routine, in keeping the status quo. If things stayed the same, at least they couldn't get any worse.

Pushing back from her desk, Idie put a bookmark in her place and closed her book before answering the door.

And sure enough, there he was. Yankee Ted. There was something wrong about seeing him there. Like seeing your teacher at the market or your preacher at the post office, Yankee Ted in her hallway was jarringly out of place. She remembered him larger than life, but now he was just... normal-looking. For a moment, Idie got the bizarre notion that someone was playing a trick on her, but of course they weren't.

"Oh," she breathed, looking up at him in the doorway, not entirely sure how she felt about this.

"You need your jacket back, yeah?" Idie asked, rationalizing why he was there. Because even if they said they were just stopping by, a SHIELD agent never just stopped by, and that was the only thing she could think of.

The coat was currently draped about her shoulders—Idie was easily chilled, even indoors, and the jacket was warm—and she started pulling it off. Her fingers brushed her neckline and the hard metal there, and Idie froze as she realized the other thing he might want.

"Or do you need—I'm not ready to give back the power inhibitor," she said, trying to sound firm and assertive and all those things she mostly wasn't, especially while wearing a schoolgirl uniform and a jacket so large on her that the sleeves hung over her hands. "I still blast things. It won't end well."
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Ted Kaplan-Altman
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Mutant Skrull Physiology
When Idie opened the door a little bit of tension dropped out of Ted's shoulders he hadn't quite realized was there.

The last time he'd seen Idie, there hadn't really been a lot of casual conversation. He'd tried to talk to her a little on the trip back to SHIELD's holding area, but it was really more comforting noises than real conversation; she'd been exhausted and traumatized, he'd been distracted. Plus, while she'd been cooperative enough, she'd also been scared and angry, like anyone would be in her situation, and while she hadn't actually been trying to hurt him the possibility was always there with uncontrolled power activations. Not to mention that technically speaking he had been violating any number of laws... unauthorized border crossings, assisting a mutant within Nigeria's borders, being a mutant within Nigeria's borders, probably several jurisdictions' versions of kidnapping, and so on. Which, sure, SHIELD would have worked something out had he ended up in police custody, but it would have been messy.

So, yeah, things had been a little tense, and despite his attempt at preemptive soothing he wouldn't have been too shocked if his presence had triggered a panic attack or a flashback, if her reaction had been to run out the window or blast him through the door. That sort of thing happened from time to time at Xavier's; you learned to roll with it.

But no... she opened the door readily enough, and while she didn't exactly seem happy to see him, she didn't seem particularly angry either. He smiled warmly when he saw she was still wearing the jacket he'd given her, and he shook his head when she started removing it. "No, no... that's fine, you can keep it." Undoubtedly there was some obscure SHIELD regulation he was violating here about sharing field equipment with a civilian combat unit, but one thing Ted had learned during his time with SHIELD was that he was always violating some obscure regulation or another. It was part of the job.

"It looks good on you," he decided. Which was admittedly a goofy thing to say about a jacket that didn't even pretend to fit her, but it did... it made her look more like the little girl she was, and less like the young woman events had forced her to become. There would be precious few things that did that in the next few years, at least if her time here turned out anything like his own had, and they were worth holding on to. He didn't say any of that, though. She was clearly trying to project as much of an air of maturity as she could, and he remembered what that was like, and he respected it.

"I'm not ready to give back the power inhibitor. I still blast things. It won't end well."

"I don't doubt it," he replied seriouly, with a nod. "And the inhibitor is yours for as long as you need it. Though I'm sure these walls have seen worse." Which was technically speaking false, he supposed, since the walls themselves were newer than Ted's own high-school diploma, but the sentiment held... Idie was powerful, from what he'd seen, but Xavier's was accustomed to that.

"Do you have some time to chat? I don't want to interrupt you if you're in the middle of anything, but I'd love to hear about how things are going for you here... you know, how your training is coming along, if you're making friends, that sort of thing." Ted wanted to add that this wasn't a formal evaluation or anything, but decided not to... he was more likely to convince her that it was by bringing it up, than that it wasn't.

"I don't know if I mentioned it before," he continued, "but this is where I went to school after my powers first manifested, too. I was... well, frankly, I was pretty freaked out when I came here, but they took good care of me." He was careful not to let his easy smile falter when he thought about the Purifier attack... that had been traumatic, but he was mostly over it by now, and this wasn't the right time to bring it up.

"And I made some really amazing friends here," he added, and the warmth of the smile that came along with that was entirely genuine. "I even married one of them."
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IdieOkonkwo
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"No, no... that's fine, you can keep it. It looks good on you."

"Good. I like it," Idie admitted. She did, too. It was kind of like wearing a blanket. It was big enough she could wrap it around her tight and all but disappear into it. The sleeves draped over her hands for when her fingers got cold, and the pockets were nice and big and zipped shut nicely. And... if she was being honest, it was one of the few things she owned that wasn't school standard issue, and she'd gotten attached to it.

Then she remembered her manners.

"I mean, thank you. Yes, come in," she said. There was probably a rule against having boys in her room—and if there wasn't, there should be—but it was Yankee Ted, so it was ok. And she'd leave the door half open, just in case.

The room was a study in contrasts. In the few days since she'd moved in, Roamana managed to make her side of the room look personal and homey. Idie's looked positively barren. Just the basics, and even those neatly put away. There were only two chairs—desk chairs for each of the students. Roamana's had a shirt draped over it, and Idie felt weird about touching her roommate's things, so she pulled out her own chair for him to sit in. Mentally flailing for a bit, Idie ultimately perched on the edge of her bed, which wasn't really a proper way to receive guests, but there really wasn't anywhere else. She tried to sit up extra straight to make up for it, ankles neatly crossed.

Not entirely sure what she was supposed to be doing, Idie tried to remember what her parents did when they had visitors over. "Would you like something to..." Idie's voice trailed off as she took a mental inventory of her things. To offer him food, you needed to have food, which she didn't. No soda pop either. "Water? Would you like a glass of water?" Ok, that was lousy. She'd have to take food back from the cafeteria next time she ate, so she had snacks to offer. In case he came back again. Which he probably wouldn't. Or maybe he would, he said he had friends here. Or once had. Anyway, she should be prepared, just in case.
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Ted Kaplan-Altman
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Mutant Skrull Physiology
"You're welcome," Ted replied to her thanks, which were admittedly delayed but apparently no less sincere for it. He liked the girl's honesty, he decided; it would probably make her life more difficult in the short term, but if she could avoid having it squeezed out of her over the next few years it would pay off in spades. "And thanks," he added as she invited him in.

She left the door half-open, and he wondered briefly whether that was out of a sense of propriety or to make it easier for her to bolt if he turned out to be a threat, then decided he was being unfair. However freaked out she might have been a month ago, she seemed no less comfortable with him now than any other student. He accepted the offer of the chair, giving not a moment's thought to her sitting on the bed; he'd lived in a dorm room himself, and was acquainted with the specialized manners that evolved there.

"No, nothing, thank you," he waved away her offer of refreshments, "I'm fine. Really I can't stay very long, I just wanted to see how you were settling in." Which he'd already said, and he felt foolish for repeating it, but he was awkwardly aware that most of the questions he really wanted to ask he basically wasn't able to. Asking her how she was dealing with her family's deaths, for example, had to be on some list somewhere of things not to say. "You have a roommate," he observed unnecessarily; that much was clear from the room's layout. Ted saw no signs of particular emnity there, which was a good sign. "Is she nice?" He stopped himself before asking if she was accustomed to sharing a room, which once again seemed too close to potentially sore spots.

"When I first came to Xavier's," he said instead, "I couldn't really control my abilities either. I didn't have a nullifier, though... I changed shape uncontrollably, which was embarrassing but not actually dangerous, so they let me grow out of it normally. It drove my roommate nuts, but he was too polite to say so. Well, at first, anyway." He wasn't sure Idie even knew what his mutation was -- or, rather, what it officially was, he doubted she'd been here long enough to hear about his real heritage from the school grapevine, though no doubt she would sooner or later. But he figured if she was curious, he was giving her implicit permission to ask, as well as to volunteer any similar stories if she wanted.

"Eventually I accidentally broke his chair," he continued, "and he decided he'd rather switch rooms. We stayed friends, though." Until the Purifiers killed him, he didn't add. Some stories she could wait to hear.

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IdieOkonkwo
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Idie inwardly sighed in relief when he refused the glass of water, having since remembered she didn't have a glass. She just wasn't used to having people over.

"You have a roommate. Is she nice?"

"I don't know. Maybe," Idie answered, her gaze following his to Roamana's side of the room. "I don't know her well enough to know, yeah? But she has water powers, so she probably won't die." She didn't bother elaborating why Roamana's life would be in danger. Yankee Ted of all people knew what Idie was.

"She has parents. Not all the students here do, but she does," Idie added, looking at the worn quilt at the foot of Roamana's bed. "I don't get why she's here. Her parents still like her and everything."

He told a story about making friends and breaking a chair and how it had been awful and now it wasn't, and she nodded along. People often told her stories like that. They were supposed to make her feel better. They mostly didn't, but she tried to act like they did, at least a little. It seemed to be expected.

And now here was Yankee Ted, asking how she was. She thought about pretending everything was ok, like he wanted to hear, but somehow didn't think he'd fall for it.

"I am. Settling in, I mean," she said, looking at the floor and swinging her feet a little. "I go to class. I study. I go to church. My grades are good, and when the teachers worried and ask me to socialize with my peers more, I joined the fo—soccer team. I stay quiet and listen well and do what I'm told, if I can. But that's not why you're here, is it? What you really want to know is if I'm coping. Healing. Whatever it is that makes the teachers give each other these looks over my head."

She slid back on the bed so she could lean back against the wall, wrapping the jacket around her as she did. "It doesn't hurt as much. No," she corrected herself immediately. "It hurts differently. Like before it was a stabbing pain and you could set it off just by looking at me funning, and now it's... more like an ache, I guess. Less angry, more sad. Usually, at least," she said, glancing back over at Roamana's quilt.

"And then they tell me to memorize the American states and capitals, and I just don't care, but I don't care about anything else either, so I might as well memorize the American states and capitals."
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Ted Kaplan-Altman
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Mutant Skrull Physiology
"...she has water powers, so she probably won't die."

It took Ted a moment to make sense of that apparent non-sequitor, but when he put it together he nodded solemnly and didn't say anything for a while. He wasn't sure what to say; he was never sure what to say. So he sat, instead, and after a while he replied "Probably not."

It certainly wasn't the first conversation he'd had with young mutants worried about their powers getting out of control, scared of hurting someone. And given Idie's history, she certainly had reason to be concerned... or at least she would, if it weren't for the nullifiers. Which weren't a long-term solution, nor a perfectly reliable one, and Ted suspected Idie already knew that. Of course, ultimately the only viable long-term solution was establishing control over her abilities, but Ted was pretty sure that wasn't what she wanted to hear right now, and he didn't blame her one bit.

"I don't get why she's here. Her parents still like her and everything."

Ted didn't know anything about Idie's roommate, but he knew a little of what the girl was talking about: the gap between students' experiences at Xavier's could be dizzying. Ted himself had been extremely fortunate -- or at least, it had seemed that way at the time. He hadn't hurt anyone, his powers were pretty easy to control, and his family was completely unfazed by his turning out to be a mutant. (Of course, that was completely unsurprising given what was really going on, but he didn't know that back then.) Xavier's had been kind of a wonderland for him, a real-life Harry Potter. But he knew it wasn't like that for everyone.

"She's here to learn," he replied after a moment. He thought he was going to say more, but nothing else came out of his mouth. Which was probably for the best.

Of course she already knew that, but of course what underlay that question was something completely different, the same question everyone had when faced with such inequity. Why do some little mutant girls grow up in a country that hates mutants and accidentally kill their own parents when their powers manifest, while others grow up in the middle of peace and plenty? Ted had absolutely no idea, and -- like most people, he supposed -- he always felt a strong instinct to justify it somehow.

Which he never could.

So he'd learned to channel that instinct forward... no, the world wasn't fair, so he had to do what he could to make it more fair. But that, too, didn't seem worth saying right now. He wasn't here to lecture Idie; frankly, he didn't have the right. And she didn't need him to play therapist for her obvious depression; Xavier's had access to some of the best psychological and emotional counselors on the planet for precisely that reason.

Still... he could at least listen.

"Well," he said slowly, "angry and sad seem like pretty reasonable feelings to have in your situation. And nobody really cares all that much about American states and capitals," he added conspiratorially, "but don't tell your teachers I said so. We're all supposed to pretend otherwise. Also, I've never diagrammed a sentence or taken an integral outside of a classroom in my life. I do use algebra a fair bit, though, so that's something."

He looked down at the floor, then back up, and asked "What did you used to care about? Back home, I mean, before you came here?"
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