Players:
Summary: Nicholas temper gets the best of him again at Kieran's expense.
Date: March 10, 2012
Log Title: Lonely Nights
Rating: PG
Xavier Mansion - Japanese Gardens
A large area of the grounds is landscaped with a Japanese Garden. A river filled with coi fish runs through the middle with a wooden bridge. There is even a small waterfall splashing on the rocks. Bamboo can be heard clacking on the rocks. A small statue of a Buddha can be found in various places. The trees hang over the area and when the flowers are in bloom, it brings a variety of color to the peaceful landscape.
Even though it's later at night and it's not exactly warm weather, Nick is out in the garden with his back against a small tree. His knees are hugged to his chest and he looks up at the night sky just looking at the stars. Where he might not be the easiest to spot, the horse is hard to miss. The large animal sits on the ground next to him resting. "That's the constalltion you're named after up there." Not like Orion knows what Nick's saying to him.
Sometimes a walk helps clear the mind no matter the weather. It might not be freezing but it's close to it. Kieran has his hands in the pocket of his jacket. Humming softly to himself as he sort of meanders through the Japanese Gardens. The blonde's hair has gotten perhaps a little bit on the shaggy side as it sticks out from under the flat cap that's perched on his head at a slight angle. His blue eyes go up to the night sky occasionally as he lets out a soft sigh after a time.
Nicholas doesn't realize that there's company approaching so he keeps on talking to the horse. "I wish I knew what to do Orion, I just wish I did." He reaches over and strokes the neck of Orion a bit and the horse lets out a small huff of breath. "At least Ahmed's all…." He stops at hearing the humming and starts to look around for the source of it knowing it's hard to pretend you're not there when you're with a giant animal.
It's not like Kieran's hard to spot in the space, his blonde hair pretty intense. The teen does notice the large animal and is rather surprised to find it there. His blue eyes blink slowly as he focuses on the beastie. He's never seen that sort of thing wandering the grounds before. You'd think that he would be used to odd things but apparently not so much right now.
Once his eyes find Kieran, Nicholas stops talking and just watches the other student for a bit. "Damn, there's too many people here." He mutters under his breath. Standing up, Nicholas reaches into his pocket and pulls out something to feed the horse. "Maybe it's time to get you back to the stable tonight." His eyes keep flickering back to Kieran, Nick's not the most social of individuals.
"Did I interrupt something? I'm just sort of wandering about." Kieran says casually, hands still in the pocket of his jacket,"It's a good night for walking about. Not too cold." He says taking a deep breath of the cool night air.
The taller blond shakes his head. "No, just, spending the night with my horse is all." Nicholas says as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "I'm used to it being colder so it's not to bad just, wish you could see the stars better." Though Westchester does have a pretty good view of the starts at night, especially compared to most suburb type places.
"Compared to what I'm used to these are clear. It's beautiful the way they sparkle in the dark blue black sky." Kieran says sighing a little bit,"It's not too cold right now. It's cold but not as cold as it could be." He says in a serious voice.
"It's different in North Dakota, a lot darker at night." Nick says as he'd love to be back home in his small town. "It's never as cold as it could be though." He points out quite bluntly. "It's just..nice out. Need some fresh air, help sort through thoughts and crap."
"Oh I don't know. When it gets to negative forty the way it does some places, it is about as cold as it could be." Kieran says with a little smile."I'm from Cincinnati. We get a lot of light from the city making the sky hard to see the stars if you're close to the downtown, but even suburbs allow for the sky to be seen pretty nicely, but this is better than there." He says looking towards the sky,"Yeah. Fresh air is a good thing."
"There are no cities to get this much light from back home. Not like I lived near Fargo." Nicholas says since Fargo is pretty much the biggest city in North Dakota. "I guess just looking up at the sky, knowing that it's the same sky scene from back home, just makes me hope everyone's okay."
"Why not call them sometime if you're worried? I keep in contact with my brothers back home every day. Mostly just through emails but occasionally there are calls if it is important." Kieran says seriously,"I am not sure how I would feel if I were in a vast open area. I'm used to hills."
Nicholas looks at his horse for a bit and seems to ignore Kieran's question for quite sometime as he focuses more on Orion than anything else. Finally just one word escapes his lips. "Can't." There's a definite bitter tone to his voice. "Things are just really messed up back home and there's nothing I can do about it." He snaps.
"Ah." Kieran says without saying anything more about that. This isn't the first time that he's heard of someone unable to call home for various reasons that led to them being here,"I'm Kieran by the way."
"Nicholas." He responds with that hint of frustration still in his voice. "Or just Nick. And even though I've been here a couple of months I still feel like the new kid."
"I think we always feel that way around here." Kieran says grinning a little bit,"I know that there are times I still feel like the new guy. So many people to keep straight and knowing who can accidentally hurt you without ever meaning to do so is another hazard."
"Well, I've never hurt anyone with my powers." Nick says with annoyance in his voice as if it was taking Kieran's words as an accusation. "And this place is bigger than my old High School which is just crazy. Then the weird crap that seems to always happen here, and the best friend I have here going missing, this place just sucks."
"You should be thankful. I have and so have a bunch of others." Kieran says seriously,"Welcome to the World of the Institute. Not long after I got here the first folks I met ended up trying to kill me." He adds with a bit of a shrug,"Don't stress over what you cannot change and focus on what you can do… There are worse places than here to be. I've heard of a lot worse."
"I should be thankful? Well screw. that." Nichoals says as sometimes just the wrong words can set him off. "The reason I can't go back home talk to anyone back home is cause a bunch of mutant hunters tries to kill me and my family. They only failed in not killing me, so okay, yeah, I'll just not stress over that since I can't change that fact."
"Look. You can feel sorrow, pain, anger, hatred, but when you start thinking about how bad a place this place is, guess what, it's going to suck. We cannot become normal humans. So we have to accept what we can do and this place protects us." Kieran says says looking at Nicholas,"I'm sorry to hear about your family, and if someone killed anyone in my family, I'd probably be trying to kill the person who did it, and it would probably take a hell of a lot to stop me."
"Yeah well killing the group that did it wouldn't do anything. It wouldn't give me what I want, it'd just make me be the monster they think I am. And you know what, I said it earlier, I never hurt anyone, -anyone-, with my powers." Nicholas says as his temper hasn't really settled. "And right now, things do suck here, cause I'm going to live this life of being seen as a threat when I don't want to. I just want to go home and have things go back to the way they were."
"No it wouldn't change anything about how they viewed us, just make them right." Kieran says nodding his head a bit,"Most people here in the school don't view others as a threat unless they're someone that has a power that is uncontrolled. I don't swim or touch people often because I tend to shock them, usually not bad but it can hurt if I get overly worked up or something. People /here/ will accept you."
Nicholas has to take a deep breath to try to keep his frustration under control. "My powers aren't uncontrolled, I got control of them years ago. They started to show four years ago. No one cared back home until those Purifiers decided that /I/ was a threat for doing nothing." Then as if Orion knows something is wrong the horse walks over to Nick and starts to chew on the shoulder of his jacket. "It's..it's not about being accepted, it's about just wanting to live the life I want to live." He reaches a hand up to rest on Orion for comfort.
"Well you can eventually." Kieran says shrugging a bit,"The only way though that people will stop listening to people like the Purifiers is if there are people who can live openly and show that they're not actually harming anyone." He says with another slight shrug.
"Yeah, fat lot of good that did me." Nicholas says as he still isn't over the death of his parents. "I'm gonna go put Orion away for the night and stuff, later." He says as he starts to walk off with the horse in tow almost seeming anxious to get away from Kieran.
