2010-07-02: Heads And Tails

Players:

Heather_icon.jpg Connor_icon.jpg

Summary: Heather and Connor have a heart to heart about their eccentricities.

Date: July 2, 2010.

Log Title Heads and Tails

Rating: G


Xavier Mansion - Recreation Room

What was once the Parlor has been turned into a Recreation Room for the students. A nice plush carpet meets the light blue walls giving it a homey feel. A pool table at one end, a foos ball table at the other, and entertainment center with video game systems, movies, and of course, cable TV. Big comfy chairs and couches surround a coffee table for comfortable loafing. Long glass windows with a pair of French doors line one side of the room bringing in plenty of light during the day. The main rule in here is to clean up after yourself.


It's 2am or so New York time, and almost as if expected, the lights in the Rec Room are on… or at least there's the cold glow of the large television illuminating the place. The screen has on it one of the many console RPGs available in the game library, and sitting on the floor is Connor, staring at the screen with almost hypnotic intensity. The room smells clean, freshly vaccuumed and dusted, and in front of the young man is a tray with a bowl of chips, a few of the spare crumbs having been caught. A three-set of Dr. Pepper cans are next to it, two open, one closed.

Heather rounds the corner of the rec room and peers in at noticing the lights are on. She is usually up at all hours of the night, since she requires several catnaps a day in order to keep moving. "There you are," plays Heather, taking a few more confident steps into the rec room. She eyes the screen for a moment and looks down at the boy, "You look very intent upon the screen. Did I offend you earlier?"

He doesn't look at he replies to Heather, "No… wasn't you. It was Lucas… it was the situation… allright?" Still not even meeting her eyes as Connor ends up dying on screen, and with a sigh and a grumble he sits back, and rubs at his eyes slowly. Blinking several times he looks around the room, and then up towards the clock on the wall, "Ummm… what time is it?"

Heather checks her cheap digital watch that somehow manages to endure all the punishment entailed by being hers. "Two twenty six. Almost eleven fast world waking hours." The latter is information meant mostly for herself, but she broadcasts it anyhow. "And that's alright. I did not mean to call you strange. But you are strange. It is what makes you special."

Looking up at her, Connor says softly, "I'm… strange. I used to write about things I dreamed about. Until I found out those things I was dreaming about were ME. And then I found out that I have a disorder… one that means I'm always going to end up worrying people don't like me, worrying that I can't do things right, or I can't be what I'm supposed to be. But for me it's worse… because I end up doing things to make those voices stop." He stands up, "And then every time I go to sleep, I see how it might have been… and it scares me." Finally he stops, and turns his head away, "I thought… Lucas… well… thought we had a thing… a… you know… and it bothered me."

Heather tilts her head at Connor and says, "I am sorry that you have a disorder." While Heather is technically diagnosed with severe soliptic delusions among other things, she does not believe there is anything wrong with her. "People think I am strange, too. If you have to make the voices stop… sometimes, I close my ears so I do not see the hums and sounds while I sleep. They are still there if I do not look." She scratches her head, idly detangling her hair as she tries and come up with something to say, "If you have to make the voices stop, I understand, and I am sorry about your dreams. Are they the dreams from your spaceslips? Sometimes those are strange and I wonder. It is hard for me to know what is and is not dreaming. I hope that your thing with Lucas resolves itself." She is trying to be sympathetic, but the delivery through the tape recorder may come across a bit cold.

Digging into his pocket, Connor sighs a moment, "Stop that, you'll just pull your roots… your hair's always a mess…" And walking around behind Heather and reaches up to begin trying to sort the hair out and find the tangles, "Lucas lives in denial… in denial of himself, and everything he wants. It doesn't make him a bad person, but it does make him sometimes assume things he shouldn't. You want to like him, but ultimately… unless you live life by his rules, you can't get along with him. It's… not really selfishness… more like… overly cautious." Slowly he begins to work the comb through her hair, just standing behind her quietly.

"In the white prison, I did not use a hairbrush. Every time I try to make it less tangly it just tangles more now," says Heather after a moment. "I do not know Lucas well. He seems nice. He said he would make me a mixed tape. What do you think he is cautious about? I think many people here are too cautious." She crosses her arms and tilts her head slightly forward, allowing Connor to search through her damaged tangles.

Connor almost blurts out, "This is going to hurt a bit, but neatness… it's a thing. When I was young, cleaning up always made my parents happy… it became habit, then it became like this. My half of the room barely looks lived in, I iron my own clothes… people just don't get it. But yeah… Lucas…" Stopping a moment as he holds the hair to pad the scalp and begins to tug at a snarl, "He told me. Everything good in his life has been taken away from him… so he's scared to have good things. He's scared to try in his own life, so he pushes others. Weird… because it makes you want to push him more, but then he goes distant on you."

"I like things disordered. It is natural for me, and it feels like a message, there is a message in everything, and if the disorder is destroyed, I lose something I could have known about it forever," says Heather after a moment's thought. She winces slightly at the snarl being pulled. "I do not believe in good things. They are only transitory. Fleeting. Eventually they become bad again. But bad becomes good. I do not believe in bad things." She feels the edges of her tape recorder for a few moments and says, "I hope that he will learn to try even if he is scared."

Connor spends several moments working on that one snarl until it's finally broken loose and pulled out with the comb, "Just don't try that order in disorder stuff on me… I know a little about chaos theory… I read Jurassic Park. Orderly system become inherently unstable the larger they become, and yet maintain their order. Something like that anyways…" Getting the first of the locks undone, he moves on to the next heavy tangle, almost eerily intense as he seems to be able to apply just the exact pressure and movements each time, ritual and formula, "I don't believe you really believe that… that's something someone tells themself to make themself feel better about not believing in something they think they should anyways."

"I do not think that disorders are orderly. I think they are designed, especially when I design them. It's hard to understand. People here think I am crazy, but I'm not crazy. They just don't understand," says Heather, sighing softly afterward, though it doesn't come out of the tape recorder and comes out a soft squeak. "I believe that there are things that seem good and seem bad but they turn into each other. But in my experience, more things seem bad. I moved to the white prison from the mad house I am scared here, that this is another illusion, a joke that will disappear when it's done being told. It is strange to meet people who seem almost real…"

Connor grumbles out softly before he realizes it, "We're complete opposites… I want to be alone, but I know I can't or shouldn't be… they forced you to be alone, and now you're afraid you're still alone… all of that isn't fair." Getting to another snarl, he begins working the comb as gently as he can, but one of the teeth breaks, and he ends up fishing it out before dropping it onto the tray below, "Theo once said he was jealous of how cool my powers look… I wish he could see the other side of it. Some days I can't go to class… It's so bad from the night living through those eyes I can't face the world. Most of the time Robyn can coax me out, but I know he knows when it's bad… and it hurts him because he knows there's nothing he can do about it."

Heather gently feels the side of her tape recorder again and plays, "I have noticed that we are opposite. It means you are significant in some way, but I don't understand it. You are meaningful for it." She shrugs weakly and raises her hand up to touch her hair as it's tugged again. "People do not tell me that they are jealous of my powers. Even when I am talking like this, it feels like I am waiting and lonely. I think of things the whole way through. I think about things too much. I like sleeping because when I am sleeping, it makes no difference anymore, I cannot tell but it feels more normal. I am glad you have a friend who can help you. Chloe helps me. She understands it a bit, but she is different from me still."

The second snarl comes loose with a truimphant exhale, and like it's sister is dropped to the tray below before once more he starts to comb and smooth out that part he's freed up. Connor then says, "People like you… Chloe… Jinx… and James… because the signs are so obvious… they don't want to hurt your feelings. When you look and act like everyone else, it's easy to say it. It's easy to be jealous of Robyn, until you find out he can't live without feeding on psychic energy… or Lucas, until you realize his hands constant project radioactive heat… You lose their differences because by comparison… they seem normal. Which sucks. It's prejudging people."

"There are people I am jealous of here for their abilities. But there are some I would be afraid of having. I have no frame of reference for what is normal. When I first came here everyone was a fairy tale. I guess that was not normal, but it felt normal to me," says Heather, shrugging her shoulders a couple of time. She plays with the strings on the neck of her sweater quickly, "My mutation could have been anything and it would have been another day for me. This is normal for me but it is not normal to others."

Connor gets halfway done with the hair, and then stops, "I can't do more without a real brush… but seriously… your hair could be neater. It'd be nicer, and it could be something normal for you to do. Or for Chloe to do. She's wanting for something to keep her normal too." Sighing once, he steps away and looks down and around him, "My mentor… Yuri… he's my dad's best friend back home… told me that God is infinite and in all of us… therefore if you have superspeed, God as superspeed. I can teleport, God can teleport… therefore we are no different in his eyes, than we are in others. Infinite diversity to infinite discovery. He also said that he thinks our mutations are expressions of ourselves, just like Chloe did. Maybe you move so fast because you feel like the world is passing you by, so you're trying to catch up."

"I sometimes try to make it neater. My teeth are getting whiter, though, I am using all of the products for that," says Heather, turning and baring her teeth at Connor, "I wonder if it is an expression of myself. I always felt like I wanted the world to pass me by faster. I wanted to rush through the world, not catch up. I want to get to the end of every appointment. My power is an opposite of expression, it deepens my desires." She crosses her arms over her stomach. "My body does not age like I age. I should be twice your age. But inside of my head, I wish that you were older than me. So I could look to your experience."

The answer to that seems almost cryptic as he replies, "You're only as old as you think you are, Heather. Maybe something happened… you missed a part of something the rest of us got. But my experiences?" And sighing once more Connor goes and picks up the tray, "I spent my lifetime trying to be someone else for everyone else, because the one thing that was mine scared other people. I've given up on that here, because every day I get forced to see the world as myself, and not as someone else. I come off as booksmart to others, or too mouthy, or just talk too much… but words are my best friends. They always have been. Words mean that something outside of me remains… because a part of me believes I could disappear and no one would care. Words are the weapons that started and then ended wars. That gave us great things. Words can change people, by showing them new ways to think. It's more beautiful and more dangerous than anything else Man has ever invented."

Connor mumbles as he turns towards the door, "The word of God was Mighty, but man had to speak it in order for it to achieve that might." As he reaches out and carefully floats the tray and the items on it to his hands.

"I like words. They are my best friends, too. Even when I am alone, they are still there for me, they give me thought and that is never an illusion. Every word I write is my mark, and every word I read is my message. I hope that you have a good night, Connor," says Heather, nodding once at him and then sitting down on the couch, since she still has a couple more hours left before her next catnap.

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