optimouse' nest

the doubleclicks--There are no fake geeks, only real asshats

optimouse — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 01:40:10 GMT

So this is a first, two posts in one day. I think I've gone months without posting one post in one day....

Ah. Points. Being pointy.

I follow Feminist Frequency on Facebook. I follow multiple organizations, but lately Feminist Frequency and that lovely woman who does videos on women & tropes in fiction and games have captured my eyes.

None of this makes sense if I don't preface this. I discovered filk music in college, a natural progression following my father teaching me to read with the Hobbit, aged 5. This is the father that I last saw watching the 3rd XMen movie and the 7th Harry Potter movie at the same time. Last night it was Dark Shadows with Johnny Depp. I come by the speculative fiction obsession honestly. But yes, filk in college. I eventually found Leslie Fish, Heather Alexander & others.

Tonight, I'm scrolling to check on my friends in South Korea--one is headed to a music festival, the other will be home alone, and given the time difference, I can have much fun chatting...but I digress. There it is...a link. The name seems fun. And I click.

Wait a minute. John Scalzi wrote a blog about this music video. And I was watching it, and thought... This is awesome. And then I composed a LJ to send it out to my fandom friends. Because I have said this before, and I'll say it again. Women, both cisgendered and not are wonderful, and have just as much sense to be geeks as anyone else.

JPEG Manip

optimouse — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 17:51:57 GMT

thanks to keiramarcos , Wil Wheaton's twitter, SUITS[ on USA] and NCIS [on CBS]...It's all in good fun. And much more fun than cleaning/packing. Which I need to get to. And the vet.

Title: union

optimouse — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 22:41:13 GMT

Title: union
Author:optimouse
Fandom:Justified
Pairing(s): Boyd/Raylan, former Bowman/Ava
Warnings: Angst, Soulmate AU
Summary: Sometimes, it isn't perfect.
Disclaimer: Justified & it's characters are FX' and Elmore Leonard's property.

Everyone knows that the alpha's soul mark comes in first, no matter where in the world they might be. Raylan's had come in at night, while he slept in the sloppy heat of an August summer with a small jar of apple pie not three feet from his head, left mostly untouched. Aunt Helen had tucked a sheet over him, even though the screen of her porch should have kept him from the worst of the flies.

He thinks that it's a horse fly at first, a burning needle carving into him, and he wakes up swatting at himself. Raylan's hands had met flesh steaming with it.

Helen finds him when he whimpers in her bathroom as he presses her curling iron against his arm, against the brand of a name too familiar to him,

Her wrist is also marred, a soft denim cuff hiding words from the world.

Twenty some years later, Raylan tips his hat back, looking down at the file in front of him.

“So?”

“Your witness said 'Fire in the Hole?” Art Mullen's an old hand at this, watching Raylan mull things over. When they'd taught together at Glencoe, they'd spent too much time once planning a training session for some recruits they'd thought particularly unpromising.

Art had been quite happy to be returned to the field. He found it much less stressful.

Right now, he was wondering if that would change.

“We think it might be connected to a Boyd Crowder.”

“I can see that.” The file is open now, and his new marshal's running fingers over the picture.

“What did you think?” Tim's been with the Marshals too long to think that Rachel wouldn't ask the question. They'd a fair read on each other, partnering as they did. That didn't mean they were perfect. “He seems--”

“He seems like he's got a live wire running through him.” Rachel answered, finishing the question even. “Did you see how he was rubbing his wrist?” The mark above her heart, hidden by the underwire of her bra burned as she thought of it.

“I got a good look at it. He's taken a fair bit of damage to it over the years. His file said that he followed a man to Nicaragua, and the men who captured his target caught him as well. They—burned it.”

“Close.” Art rarely sneaks. “You do know that it's rude to discuss these things about someone else behind their backs?”

“Chief, what do you know?” Rachel's boots are now up on Raylan's desk as the unit chief slumps down in the absent marshal's chair.

“I know a great deal.” Art grins. “You won't get him to talk about his soul mark unless he's stinking drunk and not much of it even then. I know that his ex-wife's soul mark greyed out before they met, and she never met her mate. I know that Winona divorced him about his soul mark.”

“So you basically,” Tim grins, and the sight of it warms Rachel's belly, makes her ache for his mark to appear so she might know if she should make a move. “Know nothing at all.”

“What does Art not know about?” Raylan's through the doors with a reckless grin on his face, and Rachel's hopes fall. She'll not have her curiosity salved today. “How to read a map?”

“How was Harlan?”

“I hate Kentucky.” Raylan dropped onto the desk. “Boyd definitely blew up that church.”

“You found him okay?”

“Yep. Right where his address said that he was.” Raylan pulled at his shirt sleeve. “Easy as pie. Only had to follow the map.”

“Of course.” Art shoves back in the chair. “He give you any trouble?”

“No. He's got one ugly piece of art on him, but no trouble.” Rachel watches him, doubting that. Perhaps Crowder hadn't given him trouble, but the man had troubled Givens none the less. “Unfortunately, I don't have proof of it.”

“He'd be stupid to give you proof.” Rachel agrees with Tim.

“Boyd's many things, but stupid's not one of them.” Art's eyebrows arch up tall.

“No, Ava.” The kiss, Raylan admitted, had been nice. “I can't.”

“And why not? I'm not in trouble with the law, you're a free man.” Ava gasps as Raylan grasps her around the wrist, turning it over and running a thumb over a mark already turned to grey in the days since Bowman's death. “Don't tell me you're one of those that think fucking with someone not yours is wrong?”

“No, not that.” Raylan drops her wrist, shows her the faint lettering already darkening through the scar tissue, warped and stretched and a constant burn. “I'm a man who that some things are a terrible idea.” Ava's eyes trace the letters, barely legible.

“Jesus, Raylan.” She traces it gently, turning sad eyes up to him. “Was this why you left?” She feels the nod rather than sees it, and removes her fingers. “Well, you're still invited to dinner tonight. You know his mark still hasn't come in yet?”

It was one of the reasons she'd thought he was creepy. Everyone knew that everyone had a soul mark. And those that didn't, well, folks whispered on them.

“I did not, though it has come to mind.”

Boyd's sitting in Bowman's chair, dinner in front of him, and Ava's speaking.

He'd watched her name write itself over Bowman's heart when he was but fifteen, and wondered what it meant to be the alpha partner. Bo’s body had remained ever free of a soul mark, and Boyd’s Mama had said to him once when he was a child that it was because the man was without a heart.

His heart is sizzling, and he asks her about Bowman. Boyd had never quite understood how Bowman could cause so much pain to his soul mate, and he without a mark would be called heartless.

Why does it hurt?

Boyd’s hands go to his neck, pull at his shirt, and he feels the heat rising from it, even as Raylan joins him for supper. It's then he knows.

Tim joins Raylan sitting on the stoop of Mrs. Crowder’s house, watching the ambulance pull away.

Raylan’s wrist is open to the air, a name visible through the warp and weft of scar tissue over gristle and bone.

“Damn, Raylan. Things always so bloody around you?” Tim can feel the prickle of time on his own wrists, and wonders what it is to know your soul mate and yet never touch them. “You still think you know him?”

“Tim, we dug coal together. There ain’t much that you don’t get to know about a man when you’re in the mines.”

Raylan’s wrist lies bare between them, a name left unspoken.

TITLE: FIREBALL

optimouse — Sun, 13 May 2012 00:45:45 GMT

TITLE: Fireball
AUTHOR:optimouse
DISCLAIMER: This is mine, please don't use ideas/characters without asking.

“You’re insane!” The octopus of fire that had been slung across the air above Julius’ Head was a great reason for the detective’s constant stream of cursing.

Frankly, “Stregazza, DUCK!” I agreed. My shields did jack shit against napalm, and this was one pissed off Mage. This was a courtesy call, a Mage lending credence to the police trying to convey a neighbor’s complaints. “I did not sign up for this!”

“Gorka, you said that his family was not violent!” This was what we both got for agreeing to do this for the Captain instead of a pair of uniforms on a domestic call.

“I said no such thing.” Another fireball volleyed over the top of the detective’s car. “What I said was that they were nonaggressive. Stregazza, there’s a big difference. Like the difference between a therapist and a meatball!” Which was what we would be if… I reached out and grabbed him, dragging him behind the car as a fifth or sixth stream of fire shot over our heads. “I’m sorry about your car.”

The roof of the car was smoking, and I could see the rivulets forming inches from my nose behind the glass window. ICK. Melting plastic stunk. “So what do you think, as a therapist?”

“I think that the complaints that the neighbors had against Mr. Creal were valid. I also think that Mr. Creal is losing a battle with dementia. He will calm down, and then you can call for backup.” The furor was already dying done, and a door had slammed.

Stregazza was now standing up, dusting off his pre-divorce era suit. The neat pinstripes were singed, but he resolutely pulled the jacket on. My detective hid his gun and badge.

“Follow my lead.” His arm went under my armpit, lifting me up, and he left his arm under mine in support. “We’ll go right by your cane, pick it up from where you dropped it. You were really booking it.”

“Have you ever seen the end results of catching a fireball?” I did not like the way the skin split in that roasted reality. “There are many better ways to die.”

“I know.”We reached the door, and Julius knocked. “Mr. Creal? This is Doctor Gorka, and I’m Julius Stregazza. Your neighbors were worried about you. May we come in?”

The bird-boned man’s thatch of snowy hair nodded, and he spoke with a flute like voice. “From the Department of Social Services? I’m fine, though I may be running low on groceries. Would you like to share tea?”

Two minutes ago, he was firing fireballs off at The Man, now he’s smiling at us and having us for tea? “Am I the only sane one here?”

Chicago & Travelling & Projects

optimouse — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:04:44 GMT

Wednesday April 25^th 2012

I’ve spent the last two months on and off the road, travelling to and from Chicago for job interviews.

I have no qualms about admitting that I have more than a light wanderfoot. I am rarely more happy now that I’ve reached my maturity then when I am travelling. I am more creative, less hidebound, and a lot more active. For someone who has been described by a hiring manager as being ‘shy & retiring,’ this may be odd.

The travel that I’ve done recently has corresponded with my first published work in years. I collaborated on the Life of Pine, available through the Riverside Arts Center or the artist, Dennis Gordon. I am currently editing another professional project.

My personal projects are also on the rise. I’ve decided to participate in one of the BigBangs over the summer, as well as work on book II of my Marchaue series. I have two other projects on my plate, neither of which are developed enough to mention.

Yes, I’ll readily admit that I’m interested in a beta for the Justified fandom. My editing skills are beyond my own reproach, except that over time I’ve realized that aside from SPAG, I’m useless at seeing minor plot issues in my own work. Someone else’s work, not a problem. But as the author, I often have back story that I may not have included that apply to a situation.

I’m working on it, but given the BigBang project’s requirements, is anyone interested in working with me as a beta on a Justified fandom story.

Title: Bruise

optimouse — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 07:58:58 GMT

Title: bruise
Author:optimouse
Fandom:Justified
Pairing(s): Boyd/Raylan
Warnings: Angst
Summary: And it was behind glasses, where it hadn't been the night before.
Disclaimer: Justified & it's characters are FX' and Elmore Leonard's property.

Boyd can see the blues and purples under the dust. The lid on his friend’s eye is swollen, even behind the safety goggles, and Boyd can remember echoes of the pain from a fist years before.

The bruise is new; they were at Laurie’s last night, and Raylan’s face had been free from a shiner. In fact, they’d graduated from the bourbon to a bottle of shine, parked out back in the woods. He’d tilted back Raylan’s face with a hand, and his hair had tangled in Boyd’s fingers as he’d pressed Raylan flat in the bed of the truck.

The shine had spilled from a misplaced knee as he’d gnawed lust onto a collarbone, and they’d decided to head home for the night, and he remembered Raylan’s face, tired and streaked with dust in the porch light. It had been clean of markings, and as Boyd had pulled his truck away, he’d heard the shouting inside the house.

For a moment, Boyd looks away from his friend. He forces his eyes back, staring at Raylan. The other boy has the makings of a stare, and even through the bruise, he gets caught up in the man’s gaze.

Title: honor

optimouse — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:05:28 GMT

Title: honor
Author:optimouse
Fandom:Justified
Pairing(s): Arlo/Helen, Arlo/Frances
Warnings: Angst
Summary: It was a wedding, and there was a tight collar, and words left unsaid.

There was something about honor.

When he had stood at the court house with his Aunt Helen, watching her marry his Pa. His mother was barely dead three months, and now he heard the words going through the air.

“Do you so swear to love, honor, and cherish,” The justice mouthed the words, and he could feel the echo of the words skitter along his skin. His collar was too tight, the justice looked practically green, and he knew that handful of fifties that had been his father’s gift to the man was the only reason they were standing here together.

There would be dancing tonight. There would be moonshine, Crowders, Ellises, Tripps, some others of a similarly loose nature would come over. No Bennetts, even if he thought that Richard Bennett was nice. They’d played ball a few times, and the kid wasn’t all that bad.

No, honor meant that there wouldn’t be Bennetts at a Givens wedding. Honor meant that he didn’t say a word when he thought that his Aunt Helen shouldn’t marry his father, even though the justice was asking for objections.

He held his peace.

Justified Table

optimouse — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:27:15 GMT

001.	nutty	002.	yawn	003.	“and you spend your life digging coal from the bottom of your grave”	004.	threat	005.	honor
006.	falter	007.	bruise	008.	morals	009.	lightning	010.	court
011.	neglect	012.	hidden	013.	I shot people I like more for less.	014.	strength	015.	prayers
016.	“You didn't happen to bring your rocket launcher, did you?”	017.	untouchable	018.	lightning	019.	remorseful	020.	union
021.	Writer's Choice	022.	Writer's Choice	023.	Writer's Choice	024.	Writer's Choice	025.	Writer's Choice

optimouse — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:05:49 GMT

I'm running a test to see who's reading my posts. So, if you read this, leave me a one-word comment about your day that starts with the third letter of your LJ USERNAME. Only one word please. Then repost so I can leave a word for you!

borrowed from lorrainemarker : TTFN

PS: I'll be using the words, one each, in short little blurbs... Thanks!
Yes, I am battling a crappy case of writer's block.

New Story: Five Things about Boyd Crowder, and One about Raylan Givens

optimouse — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:40:34 GMT

Title: Five Things about Boyd Crowder, and One about Raylan Givens
Author:optimouse
Fandom:Justified
Pairing(s):Boylan/Ava, Boyd/Ava , Bo/ Elsa [OFC, Boyd's mother]. Bo/OFCs, Winona/Raylan , hintings of Boyd/Raylan
Rating:T
Warnings: Angst, Yet Another Five Things story, RACK-AU [in particular, D/s]
Summary: Five Things about Boyd Crowder, and One about Raylan Givens

He’d been his Pa’s boy, a little bit of spitfire tempered with a lot of common sense. His mama had been a bit more loving than some of his brothers’ and sisters’ mamas, probably because she’d not turned to the bottle from Bo’s anger, his derision.

Maybe that’s why he hadn’t tried to be exactly like his Daddy, ‘cause of his Mama. She loved him, and only liked his Pa enough for a few scenes, and then letting him meet his boy.

Maybe it was ‘cause his Mama wasn’t some silly little spoilt sub. His Mawmaw and Pawpaw were down to earth, had a farm in a holler, not in town. She’d grown up hauling wood, riding horses, and using their old Ford tractor.

Mostly, Boyd thought that his Pa had liked that he knew enough words to match Bo, but he didn’t talk back much.

He’d thought he might be a Switch until his Mama had sat him down at the kitchen table at her parents’ place.

She’d gone through thirteen words before he was begging her not to say any more.

Elsa had made her point. His submissive tendencies were survival tendencies around his Pa. He was definitely not a Switch.

Boyd might be attracted to strong personalities, but that was because he wanted to be matched emotionally and mentally, not just in dynamic.

Ava was a bit of sunshine in coal country. That she was another Crowder’s was a problem. That he hit her without her consent was a larger problem.

He’d been trying to figure out how to kill Bowman without it blowing back on him. Ava taking care of it herself was a surprise.

Perhaps he should not have had carnal relations with Ava. They had been enjoyable, but not wholly to his taste. Their sole attempt at negotiations for a scene had ended in frustration, sighs, and sex full of regrets.

Ava had sighed, her eyes dark.

Perhaps he could offer her a guardianship collar?

Dewey Crowe was a sub. Definitely not his. Poor bastard was almost a pet, if anything.

Boyd knew that the words he spun called the man into his orbit, made him believe things that he might not have believed otherwise. Boyd knew he certainly didn’t believe, but the words, that carefully nurtured belief in others gave him the gift to manipulate others.

In another life, he might have taken Dewey as his sub, his pet, even though they had no dynamic match. Boyd found it pleasure-full, the man’s near worship.

In a different life, he might have set Dewey free, let him find someone to keep him safe and cared for.

In this life, using the man was his joy, his place. Maybe he’d consider doing the second later. But not now, now they had work to do.

He had wanted the tight ass, big shoulders, and vicious mouth on Raylan since high school. One of the words that Mama had said had to do with that particular Givens.

Elsa had told Boyd that there wasn’t a chance in Harlan that he’d ever want to sub to Raylan, and used particularly pointed phrasing as to how he wanted the man.

Silk ropes criss-crossed on arms, legs, torso, the man unable to move as he’d moved him, that was what he wanted. Not to be on his knees, a hand on his shoulder with fingers pronouncing ownership.

Seeing Raylan’s face now, time having stolen what coal had not, that scared him. His time in Kuwait had taught him a great many things about war and kinship that Harlan and his Pa had not.

Raylan’s war hadn’t stopped in years, and he fought it alone.

And the one thing about Raylan

He had worn Winona’s collar until she’d taken it from him as they divorced. The remnants were in a box in a storage locker in Florida.

That hadn’t hurt, not really.

What had hurt was her saying to him once he found himself in Lexington, was that she’d play with him, but she’d never collar him again. That he was too damaged to be wanted by anyone.

He knew he didn’t want her, but that wasn’t the point.

Raylan had barely managed a relationship since the divorce, and she was blaming it on him?

It made sense, since Boyd had never wanted him.

B0R3D or WR1T3R5 8L0CK

optimouse — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:33:18 GMT

I have a writer's block problem. It's really in two parts: first, I have the basic outlines for a short story [written in academic format] in the same universe as my novel. It's in need of a second reader who would be willing to ask insightful questions about the mythos as it's written.
The second part involves Nanowrimo, and it's indecisiveness interfering with my usual preparations. I have a multitude of options to write, not all of which I'm sure I want to write now.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the ideas listed?

Sequel to Last Year's Nanowrimo: This time it's hunting down the political minds behind assassinations in Athens. Hephaistion's finding out new things about himself and Alexander's trying to negotiate being the Son of the Hegemon who is in favour, in a place that is distinctly unhappy with Phillip of Macedon. The scheming courtesan, his father's ambassador, the war with various Thracian tribes, and that bloody sheep plague isn't helping anyone.
Sequel to Cracked DiamondsI have no idea where to start from here.
The eventual sequel to the Duology that is Number 1 and last year's Nano entry. It takes place in Aleskia, and deals with the tri-sexed issue that the Duology raises. It's the story of a grand-daughter [several times over] and her realizations about womanhood in a place where manhood is 2/3 more prevalent. There's court intrigue to boot.
A random RACK story placed in a hierarchical world, dealing with that hierarchy and equality spasms: legally, emotionally, intellectually. Also, what would the Holocaust have looked like in that setting.
Book III of my Marchaue series. Book II is 1/3 of the way finished, about Maria, an OFC in the Highlander'verse. Except she isn't young, pretty, or dating a MacCleod or Methos. In fact, she's rather abruptly the whole of Book II, which isn't very attached to Book One, E Fatto. They are supposed to tie into each other in book three. I even picked up the original Highlander movie for research purposes. I'm quite interested in Sunda Kastagir. Also in the Kurgan. Other than that, I have random snippets of now-apocryphal stories in a folder on my hard drive. They call quite loudly.

If anyone expressed interest, it might influence my decisions...which would be quite helpful.

Blog!!

optimouse — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 23:54:01 GMT

So without further ado...I've gone on holiday. I'm in the UK, and it just occured to me that I've been blogging about it, and didn't post anything about it here!
This is a fandom and writing LJ for me, whereas the blog I've linked to below is read by my family, so no incredibly inflamatory remarks, please, but I wouldn't mind feedback on my writing style and such. Would anyone be interested?
http://atravellingmouse.wordpress.com/

Ta!!
optimouse

Art for AU_BigBang

optimouse — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:02:42 GMT

Image Manipulation/ Digital Art
for the Star Wars: A New Hope story written by elizabeth_hoot

Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS

optimouse — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 19:03:50 GMT

Originally posted by deathpixie at Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS

For those wanting to know more about the recent DDoS attacks, yes, it looks like it was the Russian government trying to shut down the dissidents again.

As I said last time, while it's frustrating not to have access, LJ is a lot more than a social network platform. From the article:

"LiveJournal isn’t just a social network. It’s also a platform for organizing civic action. Dozens of network projects and groups mobilize people to solve specific problems — from defending the rights of political prisoners to saving endangered historic architecture in Moscow."

So while I know many are considering the move over to Dreamwidth and other such sites, supporting LJ is a way we can help support those who use it for more than a writing/roleplaying/social venue.

Also, as a FYI, LJ is giving paid users effected by the outage two weeks of paid time as compensation.

Cracked Diamonds MasterPost

optimouse — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:24:56 GMT

Title: Cracked Diamonds
Author:optimouse optimouse
Fandom:X-Men First Class
Pairing(s):Erik/Charles
Rating:M
Warning:Graphic Sexual abuse of a minor, rape, domestic violence, implied violence, implied m/m sexual relations, and death.

Word Count: 16,574

Summary:Emma Frost learned at her mother’s knee that if a woman wanted to get anywhere, she was the only person with the power to make that happen. Telepathy was quite helpful to those aims, including the manipulation of men. Cleavage or cortex, both helped her make her own way, often by changing the thoughts of others. She wanted to rule the world, but it is a man’s world. By playing with the minds of everyone, she thought she would take over the world.
Charles Xavier disagreed.
An AU-verse in which Xavier and Magneto are tempered by a diamond’s views of supremacy, and not a Mengele’s, even if they didn’t quite figure it out.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 and 6

Part 7 and 8

Part 9 and 10

Part 11 and 12

Part 13

Or you can use an alternative link to a more formatted version on An Archive of Our Own:

Ao3 Linkage

Betaed By:maggiebloome maggiebloome:Thank you so very, very, very much!

Lovely Artwork by chosenfire28 : chosenfire28Links below!

Pretty Shiny Things!!!

Chapter 13/13 Cracked Diamonds

optimouse — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:30:52 GMT

Chapters 11/13 and 12/13 Cracked Diamonds

optimouse — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:29:33 GMT

Chapters 9/13 and 10/13 Cracked Diamonds

optimouse — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:27:51 GMT

Title: Cracked Diamonds
Rating: M
Warnings: Graphic Sexual abuse of a minor, rape, domestic violence, implied violence, implied m/m sexual relations, and death.
Summary:
Emma Frost learned at her mother’s knee that if a woman wanted to get anywhere, she was the only person with the power to make that happen. Telepathy was quite helpful to those aims, including the manipulation of men. Cleavage or cortex, both helped her make her own way, often by changing the thoughts of others. She wanted to rule the world, but it is a man’s world. By playing with the minds of everyone, she thought she would take over the world.
Charles Xavier disagreed.
An AU-verse in which Xavier and Magneto are tempered by a diamond’s views of supremacy, and not a Mengele’s, even if they didn’t quite figure it out.

IX
“Three cleaned bedrooms for any new inhabitants.” Sean walked into the office, the cleaning rag still bundled in his hand. “If one of the new children is coming with his mother, won’t we need two bedrooms?”
Most likely not. Charles was tempted to speak into Sean’s mind, and did it, ignoring the woman across the desk from him for a moment. I think that we may need more rooms, it’s just that I do not want us to do any more cleaning than we need to do, right now.
Oh? Sean was staring right back at him, at the slender blond woman across the desk from Charles. Pretty face, long with an angular jaw and a gentle smile, she had eyes as blue as the Professor’s. Who’s she?
“Miss Diana Spencer, I would like to introduce you to Mister Sean Cassidy, Banshee.”
He took her hand, for a moment struck by her kind eyes and their warmth against his skin. In fact, it was more than warmth, almost as if a small light bulb was trapped between their palms, sparking between them.
“You have the most lovely emotions.” Her statement was spoken in parallel to his.
“What a pleasure to meet you today, Miss Spencer.” Banshee found himself awestruck.
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance as well.” He couldn’t think for a moment.
“Miss Spencer is an empath, Sean, a tactile, passive empathy. She is also here to interview about taking a few classes, or rather, tutoring them.” She would look lovely, he realized, dropping her palm from his, in a teacher’s frock, perhaps she’d even…Sean! She may not have my range, but your face is all the words she needs to realize your thoughts. Ah well. “Miss Spencer,”
“Call me Diana, please.” She assured, and the Professor nodded to her, eyes at the open window, and the road that snaked through its view.
“will be joining us here several days a week to help us bring those of us behind on our literature and composition skills up to the level of those who can and have graduated from high school.”
“School?” Sean whined, he’d hated it before he’d joined with the Professor and Magneto, and he doubted he would like it now.
“Yes, Sean, school.” The Professor was definitely distracted, a car chugging up the driveway to the house, Sean could see it in the man’s eyes.
The thought is in his mind, and that presence is familiar, as familiar as Raven, a fingertip drawing up a bruised chin with such a look in his eyes. Cain, brother, stepbrother, the one who stayed, but could not stay without the violence, did not stay to clean up the mess that they had lived through, the mess that ran through Charles’ mind every night like the ghosts of the dead. The professor’s thoughts blew through his mind, their taste distinctive and foreign.
Cain?
“Professor, is everything all right?” The professor is pale, far more pale than a man under thirty and in relatively good health has any right to be. “Is it the man in the driveway?”
The phone on the professor’s desk rings, a phone that was placed in the Foyer when they had realized that some form of communication would be needed, that the mansion itself was too large to make communication within the house easy.
“Banshee, would you pick up the phone, and tell Cain to come upstairs?” The Professor’s skin looked almost waxy. “Tell him, the old office off of the library. Grandfather Francis’ library.”
“Professor?” He conveyed it to the deep voice on the other end, a deeper crack of a whip with the American accent on the voice, not the British. “Are you sure that you are all right?”
The three of them can hear the footsteps on the stairs up to the second floor, and the Professor is making his apologies, arranging a phone call. “Sean, would you show Miss Spencer the house? I know that you and Alex are handling hiring, would you want to go over the options that you have found so far after dinner?”
“Sure.” It’s with a worried glance that he leaves the room, brushing shoulders with the man, broad of shoulder and body, and dark of hair and eye. Little recommends the man to the memory, except the scarring on his arms and neck, probably the result of fire. Alex had similar, his body caught in the explosive creations of his mutation. “Professor, if you need anything…”
“You’ll hear him clear across town, kid.” The gruff voice ripples through his ears. “Aren’t you going to stand up and give your big brother a hug?”
The conversation between the two fades into murmurs as he and Miss Spencer, Diana, walk away.
“How did you manifest?” He asked, pulling away from their conversation. If the professor could make an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency forget where she had been for months on end, he could take care of himself, even if the man that he was facing was large and physically imposing. “Me, I was about fifteen. There was this girl in my choir class, and I was still singing soprano.” As a matter of fact, he still could sing soprano, but what he meant was that his voice hadn’t dropped yet. “ I was singing an aria, gorgeous piece, and she thought my voice was gorgeous. Serse’s, in Serse.”Diana was looking at him with an indulgent smile, and he explained. “I was a treble, and my voice cracked. And by cracked, I mean that I broke every window in the room. The choral teacher was dumbfounded, and the girl was certainly impressed.”
“Good story.” She was smiling at him. “Did you ever regain control over your voice to sing again?”
“I’m a counter-tenor now, Miss Spencer, but I’ll never sing in a hall again. My voice is beautiful, but even with the breath control that my sonic scream needs, the amount of control that not using it in a theater would need wouldn’t be worth it.” He was grinning though. “My mom wanted me to sing opera. I like singing for friends, a drunken serenade at the bar, everyone gathered around the campfire with a guitar best.” He exhaled. “So how did you manifest?”
“My family is from Nevada, near the Yucca Flats.” She remembered the time period quite well. “My father worked with the scientists out in the desert, and one day I was playing outside with friends. It was as if I was being lifted off of the ground by an ethereal wind, and pushed inside out. They never quite found what caused it, but two weeks later, I told my dad to go hug my mother and apologize, that she was crying inside.” She smiled, remembering that day. “My mother was starting to hear voices, and she was going to kill herself. She thought she was going mad.”
“She’s a telepath?”
“No, my mother is schizophrenic, but until then, she didn’t know that. Father took her to the doctor, and they prescribed pills, and she got better. Father and I sat down, and we did some experiments, and figured out what I could do.”
“How do you know Hank?”
“Hank was one of my father’s students: Father had him for undergraduate physics when we moved to the east coast so that my father could take a position at New York University. He took me to several dances while I was in high school, and escorted my father and I to several colleges when I was looking at an appropriate place to go to university.” Diana smiled, and the slightly plain face became stunning with joy. “He was so happy when he got into the graduate studies program at Columbia, and the research position with the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“You know about that?” He wouldn’t think that most people would know that their friend was working for the CIA.
“My father was a government scientist, for a time, under a General Stryker, and I have a very good memory.”
X.
Cain. The voice whispers through his mind, his synapses, like a man silencing worries. I thought that you would never come home.
And I had thought that you were forever abandoning the Xavier home when you left, little brother. Little brother was tinged with the whole of his memory. Little brother as the child that he had angrily hit when Father had been angry at him. Little brother as the child that he had tucked to his body and rocked when he had been bloodied himself by Father’s anger. What happened to working for government factors, little brother? I thought that your mind was happy as the pampered pet of some intelligence agencies.
Erik. It was a name, a face. Steel bending, the glorious weight of a submarine aloft in air, a child lighting candles with his mother, sobbing as his mother’s corpse lay dead on the ground, and Cain could feel his brother’s sorrow tinged love pealing through his mind. His name was Erik, and they came for the Jews and captured mutants as well. Stepfather was a dilettante in pain, but there was a man in the camps, Sebastian Shaw. Do you remember him?
Vaguely. The man had danced with a woman in white, her long gown classically fashioned rather than new-fangled, and she had smiled with ice picks. Her name was something else, and he remembered her worse. She was the woman, the woman that you hated.
She took my older brother from me, Cain. Charles whispered. He barely remembered the woman, a cloud of malice and self-based pleasure seeking. He hated her for her consummation of Cain’s pleasure, offering him none of his own to enjoy. She reminded me of Stepfather.
Why? It had been consensual, and he had enjoyed her ministrations. Changing their direction of thought was a redirection of thoughts and cares. Sebastian Shaw?
He worked on the bodies of those like us, like Mengele did. He had systems, purposed, things to learn. It was his mistake. He decided to see what he could make a mutant do, and then saw that he could make a mutant, and then made sure that he understood them thoroughly.
Shaw experimented, then? The words were harsh. There had been experiments on soldiers during Korea, during the second world wars. Experiments to see if they could make soldiers go faster, fight harder, take longer to die. His own change had been the result of an accident. Father had decided to see what lengths Charles’ would go for the protection of himself and Raven. Did it end him?
Yes. Erik stood at the side of a beach, a corpse in his hands, the man falling to the ground as the military fired. It did. Now they hunt us, looking for mutants to either kill or use. I feel them crawling on the edges of my range, looking for mutants to use.
There is a man called William Stryker. He remembered the man, curious, always curious, and curious in a way that reminded him of a surgeon that cared not for the health of his patients, but instead only for the way that things are put together and how he could change that. He works for the United States Army.
You think that he is involved? Charles’ was in his mind, and images of Stryker flashed through his mind, like his younger brother trying, desperately trying to understand consensual sex. That had nearly broken his heart, so many years before, and this absent minded comprehension of his mind now scared him. Yes, I have changed as well, brother. Your mutation is gorgeous.
I could have protected you from Father. In the late sunlight of the afternoon, his brother is shaking his head.
“It would not have mattered.” It is for but a moment, and their minds are still mingled, but he realizes that he has yet to even cross the room, to hug his brother. “Come here and give me a hug?” Charles offers, and before Cain knows, he’s walking across the hardwood floor and to his brother, sitting underneath the open window. “No, I didn’t pull you over.” It was a worry thatr he had not even voiced, remembering the accidents of his brother’s youth, the small things that had happened only in times of stress, but there had been so many stressful times.
“I had not realized that I was worried about that, Charles.” Cain can feel his boots on the hardwood floor, and he realizes that he is not quite what he should be, for the studied wealth of Grandfather Xavier’s office. It was his boot knocking against metal that made him take a closer look at his brother.
Charles’ lap is covered with a quilt, one that he remembers from their youth. Sharon had thought duvets more appropriate for their status when she was sober, but her sobriety was fleeting, and Charles had convinced the new housekeeper to air out three of the family quilts. They had been a part of the trousseau of Francis Xavier’s first wife, Charles’ great grandmother, intricate, sewn by hand, and gorgeous shades of blue and silver, also long and obscuring. “Charles, why are you in a wheelchair?”
It hits him like a bullet. Pain/loss/grief. Erik is leaving, and he cannot say goodbye, cannot beg him to stay. That helmet is like a bullet to the brain, killing the man in front of him, cursing him with silence. Silence, a gaping hole where his mind had once danced lightly around the thoughts, always familiar and always loved, and now gone. PAIN/Agony, the hurt of feeling another die was wrong enough, but he did not need this, that Erik is gone, gone, gone, and he can not feel him. It is worse than that. What he had thought to be a missing heart, a missing body is that, but the mortal frailty, something is missing. “I can not feel my legs.” Erik is gone, he cannot feel his heart. Charles, Charles.
“The bullet created a spinal cord injury, a bullet shot at Erik.” He sighed. “It is only my body, Cain.”
“No!” The anger is his own, anger at the words that his father had created through abuse and neglect and rape. Charles’ mind was his worth. Push a cup with his mind, not receive a thumping. Get raped for being good, with coos of how brilliant he was for knowing what Father wanted. “Charles, you live in that body, no matter how much time you spend with your mind.” He breathed out, expelling the anger. “Charles, you want to protect the other mutants here, correct?”
“I will protect them, Cain.” Cain knew that. “They deserve far more than I can give them.”
“But what about what you deserve, little brother?” He knew that it would happen. His brother would push his own needs aside. He had done it so that Cain and Raven would have money, financial stability. He had saved them from the fire in Father’s lab with absolute control, born of terror, but control. “The military will come Charles. Can you save them from the surgeons, scientists, and soldiers if you don’t have confidence in your own worth?”
“Cain.” It’s a heavy sigh, an acknowledgement of correctness of assumptions.
“I’m staying.” It’s a decision. “Magneto came to me, asked me to join him. William Stryker was nosing around, had heard rumors about what I did in the war. You, Charles, didn’t ask me for anything. You, I’ll help.”
“Thank you.” A pause. “So how are you finding students? I know that you can identify us by our minds, but how are you reaching that many minds?”
“There used to be a machine, but when Shaw attacked the Central Intelligence Agency, the machine was destroyed. So far, people that I had contacted while we still had Cerebro are whom I’ve spoken with, but other than that, no one, other than those who I have been able to find the old fashioned way.”
“The newspaper?” It had been a game for them, as children, to try and figure out which events in the newspaper could have been caused by some one with a similar power to Raven or Charles. There was another way. “What about using water to amplify your abilities?”
“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.” The man in the doorway was tall, broad, blue, and a bit furry. His feet were gripping the floor; the dress pants that he wore looked to be Grandfather Francis’ clothes from years before. There were some things helpful in having multiple wings, each with their own attics. There was always something for someone to wear, should they need it, and that something was usually quite helpful in case of an emergency. “How would water amplify Charles’ abilities?”
“Hank McCoy, my step brother Cain Marko. Cain, Hank here is a graduate student at Columbia in engineering. He built the machine that enhanced my brainwaves, allowing me to find mutants across the country.”
“When we were young, Mister McCoy,” The man is smiling at him, the glasses an incongruity on the blue face, but apparently his mutation did not enhance his eyesight. “Charles hated bath time. Not because of any of the usual silly reasons that a child usually has, but because the water seemed to capture the brainwaves of everyone, and concentrated them. It was as if the water was the lightening rod for every thought. He would come out of the bath screaming every time.”
“Is that why you had me rig the shower in your bedroom?” Hank asked Charles, and received a nod in return. “Remarkable. Perhaps it has to do with the transmission of electricity by water. Brainwaves would then also have an electric current, meaning that your ability to read minds has to do with electric fields,” Cain listened at the beginning of a ramble, bemused. Hank and Charles must be quite a sight together, speaking on the intricacies of science. “I wonder if that means that you could read machines kept running with electricity?” Cain remembered the blond woman who had taken his virginity, her interest in Charles, in what he could do, and how he had told her so much, but not that.
“They would most likely be rather boring to read.” Charles’ exchanged a glance with Cain, and Cain realized that his brother had already done so. “What my brother is wondering is if we could amplify my skills with a water tank.”
“Saline, perhaps. That summer we went to the seaside when Father and Sharon went to the Hamptons for Father’s attempts at social climbing, you had a fit in the ocean.” He also remembered the tanks full of precognitives, one of them with familiar blue eyes.
“I think that would certainly help.” Hank was nodding, jotting down notes on a notebook pulled out of a pocket with a pen dwarfed in a large blue hand. “Oh, Alex called from the pub. He thinks that he’s found a family member of someone who used to work here who would be perfect for housework.”
“Oh?”

Chapters 7/13 and 8/13 Cracked Diamonds

optimouse — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:26:07 GMT

Title: Cracked Diamonds
Rating: M
Warnings: Graphic Sexual abuse of a minor, rape, domestic violence, implied violence, implied m/m sexual relations, and death.
Summary:
Emma Frost learned at her mother’s knee that if a woman wanted to get anywhere, she was the only person with the power to make that happen. Telepathy was quite helpful to those aims, including the manipulation of men. Cleavage or cortex, both helped her make her own way, often by changing the thoughts of others. She wanted to rule the world, but it is a man’s world. By playing with the minds of everyone, she thought she would take over the world.
Charles Xavier disagreed.
An AU-verse in which Xavier and Magneto are tempered by a diamond’s views of supremacy, and not a Mengele’s, even if they didn’t quite figure it out.

VII.
Cain had worked hard in the Army. It wasn’t that his step-brother had not worked hard, it was that he had never quite understood what or how Charles worked. Charles had been working with or for an Allied government, tracking criminals, and he had been in the same area as Charles for exactly fifty three hours.
That time spent in the same space was enlightening, and had started his migration from the Army and back into normal life. Someone had to help Raven with managing Charles, and while he might not be the best person to do so, he certainly didn’t mind. He was indebted to the little brat, which would be his name to him, at least for a few more years. Charles’ would always remind him of the first time that he’d met Charles, with Charles the youthful child holding tightly onto his mother’s housekeeper’s hands.
“Cain, I would like you to meet Charlie.” Father had said, and he had looked at Sharon with kind eyes, lying eyes, and he had felt it. Why lying eyes? Asked with shining blue eyes watching his face. “Charlie, Cain is going to be your big brother now.” Why Charlie? Daddy never calls me Charlie, and Mother doesn’t care.
“Come forward and give Cain a hug.” Sharon had said the words, and the housekeeper had glared at her. The little boy had come forward, and loosely wrapped his arms around him, eyes wide and frightened. He has thought for a moment that the child was correct to be frightened, especially of Father, and he had felt that questioning wave again.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He had wrapped his arms around the little boy, feeling Father’s glare on his skin. No, Charlie was his to protect.
Now, so many years later, the little brother had disappeared again. He had heard that Charlie was in Oxford with Raven, but after that, they had been inconspicuous. Charlie was so rarely inconspicuous.
“KID!” There’s a little kid, sitting in the middle of his garage. “How many times do I have to tell you not to play underneath the engines!”
“But I want to know how they work!” The Long Island drawl is in the boy’s voice, and Cain looks around for the other hooligan that the kid hangs around with. Where Davey Rossi goes, Ray Finnegan wasn’t far behind. “Dad said,”
“Your Dad said that you could come by twice a week so I could show you how to change the oil, other things like that. Twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 pm. Your father accompanies you and Ray with cookies that your mother has baked, or something like that lovely cake last week.” He could not cook, and while he and Charles had hidden in the kitchen a time or eight, only Charles had ever understood the cook’s lessons.
Father had fractured Charles’ jaw once, Charles having brought him a plate of cookies to try and please the man. The man had called him a sissy boy, even if the night before he’d called him his little whore. He and Raven had hugged together, frightened of the noises in Charles’ room, and the terror that was not their own, flooding their minds. “Today is not Tuesday or Thursday, and I am fairly sure it’s not 7 pm.”
“The man is right.” There’s a man in the doorway, slender and in black, what looks to be a cloak of crimson around him. Next to him is a woman, curved body, redhead, and eyes, familiar eyes. “Today is a Friday, young man, and it’s two in the afternoon.” Above the boy the car is moving, up and away from the child’s head and body. “You might want to leave.”
“Mister Marko?” Davey’s looking worriedly at him now, and Cain shakes his head. Another man like Charlie and himself and Raven, he understood, like another man in the program in which he had served just after they realized his skills. That blonde woman who had ridden his mind and body so long before, up in one of the houses in the mountains while he tried to hide himself from the damage his Father was doing to Charlie.
“Go find Ray, enjoy the weather.” It’s a rare sunny day, and the sun would have called the boy anyway. He steps backwards and down the ladder, watching the boy run out of the back of his garage. “Who are you?” He can feel the ground beneath his feet, and he’s tempted to start running, but the car is already settling down, back onto its stand. The wheels were off, and something’s now wrong with the chassis.
“My name is Magneto, and this is Mystique.” She’s melting into a far more familiar form, and he can feel her wrapping her arms around him. “I can see you’ve met in the past.”
“You need to go home.” She whispers into his ear. “Charles needs you, needs family.” She is pulling away from him, bringing the man closer to him with her other hand. “Magneto, Juggernaut. Or rather, Erik Lensherr, I would like to introduce you an old family friend. Cain Marko. Cain, Erik is looking for recruits.”
“Recruits?” He’s watching her more closely. “You want more of us with you, don’t you?”
“We do. As we are naturally superior to humans, the mutants must ascend to their rightful place, above the humans, perhaps even without the humans.” The words make him cringe, and he doesn’t want to say what he thinks, not immediately, and he looks at Raven. Raven, the sister that Charles had found in their kitchen late one night, and brought to him, showing her off. Cain, Cain, isn’t she pretty. She’s like us! Those words had frightened him for a moment, another one like them, victimized by Father, ignored by Sharon. Charles’ enthusiasm had almost bled into him, and for moments his joy had shown within Cain, a warm sun burning in his chest, trying to displace the pain of the bruised ribs with love and care.
Raven, do you believe what he is saying? It slips into her mind on the paths that had grown around Charles’ constant presence in both their minds, in the years that it took him to grow his own walls. This talk of superiority?
Cain, we are superior, that is certain. Charles wishes for peaceful co-existence, but Magneto knows that peaceful co-existence comes only at the end of a war. Charles…
Charles hates fighting. Cain thinks the words, remembers the birth of them. Magneto is watching them, continuing to breath his rhetoric, rhetoric that sounds wrong out of a body that has pushed up sleeves and a tattoo that he remembers from that meeting with his brother so many years before. I cannot find Charles, Raven.I know not the way to find him to go to him.
“No.” He says the words to the man, ignoring his sister. “I may agree with you about peaceful co-existence, Mister Lensherr, but I learned my lesson about subjugation before I could legally vote in this country.” Cain knew what the answer that he had for them now would be. “Worry first about those in the government that know about us, Mister Lensherr. Then worry about subjugating others, being mutants and supreme.”
“Who do you mean, when you say that?” There’s a metal bar around his neck, and all Cain can do is raise an eyebrow. “The Central Intelligence Agency?”
“Army, Mister Lensherr. Air Force. Navy. The military industry loves and fears us, and is certainly quite interested in mutation, for their personal ends.”
VIII
She holds them in her hand, their lives, loves, and thoughts. She owns them now, and she could resume her place at the head of their society. Men were weak, that was the thing that she had learned from her mother. Hazel had married well, and proceeded to be ruled by Winston and his violence. The family had followed her lead, but she, she had decided to be something more.
Emma’s first husband had been named Alexander Hood, and he had like to dress her in diamonds. They sparked, he had said, sparkled like her eyes. He had thought that they decorated her, his whore, so very well. He had eventually thought of her, thought and thought and thought of her. Alexander Hood had thought enough about his wife with the silken legs and the inviting eyes so much that he put her into his will, leaving her the whole of the moneys, and not even naming his sons or grandsons. He then thought about her as he proceeded to walk into traffic, managing to get himself run over by three buggies.
She had worn white to his funeral, and Emma had continued to wear it through the next three funerals. Meeting the Xaviers had been a stroke of luck on her part.
Brian Xavier loved his wife Sharon immensely. Sharon was a lush. That was Emma’s first impression of the pair, followed by the curiosity at the woman’s burgeoning belly. It was practically cooing in her mind, all wrapped up in warmth, coddled by its father. Barely even conceived, she can feel the little bits of the baby forming together, and wonders that she can. Looking back, she nudged a bit. A tiny push to make sure that the egg was fertilized, not by one sperm, but by two. A secondary plan never hurt a woman intent on experimenting.
She’d been in and out of the child’s life, and was practically infatuated with the child’s mind. Her interference, perhaps, with his conception had created what she thought to be the child’s gifts. Meeting Francis Xavier proved her thoughts to be erroneous. Hovering around a century of age, Francis Xavier’s hair had completely fled his head years before. Rumor had it that when he had come home from the Civil War, his title of General had replaced the luxurious head of hair that he had once sported. She attributed it to a gift of his own, the man simply not aging like so many did, like her diamond form prevented her from doing.
He was married, to a woman, his second or third wife. She had given the Xavier patrician no children, but Niamh Xavier’s love of her family was legendary, and she had taken to Emmeline Neige with great adoration. Francis had agreed, and it was through the pair that she was introduced to the power of the Hellfire Club.
Looking back, she had abandoned her pursuits into creating a pet out of a fellow gifted human for the Hellfire club and the power inherent there. She had removed Francis’ claim on a seat quite steadily, having to resort to the indignities of poisons. Apparently those that could breed a telepath were less likely to be influenced by one, and she hadn’t wished to warn his family that his death was both imminent and at her hands. They might get suspicious, with such a change in the man, that he would have a fatal accident. Experience taught her that men who had fatal accidents and left something of import to someone near them meant that the aforesaid heir was then annoyed. Irritated by unhappy former benefactors.
No, poison had gotten the job done satisfactorily, and she had stepped into a seat at the New York Hellfire table.
Emma had left in a hurry, several years later. The reason was immaterial.
His name was Sebastian Shaw, his ideology was perfect. Of course mutants should rule the Earth. Her gifts made her the most superior thing on Earth. It was his vision that was problematic.
Interest in why things ticked, tocked, and continually spun the way that they did was certainly a valiant pursuit that helped the need for supremacy, but this consummation of energy, this complete obsession with it was taking away from the ability of Shaw to use the ruthlessness that he applied in service to his beliefs. It started, for him, with the seed of an idea.
What about seeing if I could make a mutant out of someone? Multiple someones?
He had already realized that given the appropriate trigger, he could trigger latent mutations. Erik had proven that mutations other than his own existed, Erik, and Tanya, and Tzipporah, and other names. Leah, Avraham, and Benjamin had been three who had helped him prove that he could trigger latent mutations, and they all had proven that he could identify them once he had them. The problem was the trial and error. Were there things that made certain people more likely to become mutants, similar to the ways that certain illnesses ran in certain families?
Like hemophilia in the line of Queen Victoria, it had flashed in his brain. Mutations in bloodlines, superior bloodlines. Perhaps the bloodlines are proof that the man is fit to rule? Emma had triumphed as the wording, calling back to the Aryans and their silly beliefs that they would inherit the Earth based on the merits of their past knocked on the walls of Shaw’s mind. You’re able to use any force used against you against your enemies, use it to power yourself. You deserve to rule them. If he had not failed she would have ruled through him, and now her plans changed. With Erik, she would have access to Charles, heir and experiment together and she might rule in truth, enemies disintegrated by Charles’ strength of mind.
Shaw was a sanctimonious idiot, who thought she looked gorgeous in a cocktail dress, and gave her pretty things. Shaw just wanted to rule the world, proof of the superiority of mutants. What would he get out of it, other than the stroking of ego?
The White Queen would rule the world.
William had already started her war for her, his anger and arrogance brewing into a stew of attack, and he would bring her Charles, even if he did not know it yet.
Emma snorted into her cocktail, the sweetness of the cherry in the grenadine sweetening this moment. William Stryker did her bidding. The thought had been Shaw’s, to research on ways of manipulating and creating mutations, on being able to track those mutated through genetics. She was the one who thought of how it could be used. If Magneto won the world, following in Shaw’s footsteps, she would be the one to bring him a way to find all those who needed protection from the rabble, the humans. If the humans, Stryker’s ilk, won, they would help eliminate her rivals.
Magneto had been speaking the night before, the others listening to him, and she could let her mind try and prod. She had found that she could sneak through the helmet, spinal cord and nerves pulling her along. Shaw had been easy, his arrogance making her job so easy. Erik was also glaring at her, as if paranoia made him know that she prodded at him.
“Emma, I thought that you had ideas on which mutants we should recruit?” He had tested her, and she had known that she would fail, not knowing what was said. Her memory was imperfect. It was why that she, in the here and now worked so hard to commit the words that William and his hatred said to her memory.
Erik Lensherr’s beliefs were in the protection of mutants from the humans, and for that, she would keep him stolen from Charles Xavier. Francis’ grandchild, her little creation was stronger than she was already, and she wondered for but a moment on that. If she could go around that helmet with Shaw underneath, did that mean that he could have gone through with time? With Erik?
“Sebastian had found a young gentleman in New York City. The young man flies, and will inherit a sizeable fortune from his rather healthy father. The man would bring funding and influence among the elite for our cause.” Warren Worthington the Third would bring her a great deal of power, and they had already met several times. Worthington Junior, his father, had thought her gorgeous and a gorgeous lay. He would be easy enough to seduce into death.
“I shouldn’t see a problem, then.” Magneto’s voice had served as a rebuke. “Emma, if you don’t care to be here, would you prefer to leave?” She had left for her trip to Washington, where Warren was on business with his father, ostensibly to scout out the man. She was really here for William.
She had extended an apology last night, a demure rejection of his thought, but hoped that Magneto is soon less than his current position at the head of their table. The man is not as pliable as she had first thought, planting the seeds of rejection in his mind, training him to disdain pacifism.
Is his telepathy my creation? She thought of Charles, retreating from the conversation again. He wasn’t normal, he wasn’t. He had dived into her mind, not bothering with persuasions, or even brute force, and his presence had tingled. Is his telepathy stronger than mine? Certainly, but is he more skilled? Erik lived on her whim now, believing in her need for superiority. Well, she wanted superiority for herself.
The woman at the top of the table was the most powerful woman, and she now sat at the hand of the man who had taken the seat that Sebastian Shaw had once created. Her work on William Stryker, his eyes mesmerized by her and mind bewitched burned new pathways for her agendas.
Wind rustled through the trees overhead, and the street outside the café was filled with cars. Emma scanned briefly. Curiosity! Oh, this sex is horrible. What did my wife make for dinner? Some blank spots, but some men and women were idiots, and she had learned years before that the idiots of the world did not bear further investigation. It would only bore her.
Pressed pant legs of the waiter returned, their dinners in his hands and an apology on his lips about the length of time that it took him to deliver the salads. Apparently there was some sort of situation in the kitchen, Mary’s sobbing into Raul’s shoulder, Lana was horrible to the girl. Woman should not be working as a hostess if she is that mean to, and Emma pulls away. “Your entrees should not take more than fifteen minutes,” he assures them. “And would you like your drinks to be refreshed?” No more thoughts of Erik and his obsession, they served as too much distraction from her goal.
“Yes, I would. Would you put a splash of vodka in mine as well?” It danced along the lines of being Un-American, but at times she found herself missing the cold of Russia. Besides, today she celebrated. “William, would you like another glass of wine?”
“Yes, I would.” Marcy would have just had them pour me another, William is thinking now of his wife, swollen stomach and crazy ways. He’d bruised her arm this morning.
“Do you like the salad?” It’s crisp, with a taste of something new, and again, something catches her attention out of the corner of her eye.
There, in the crowd, there’s someone watching, and she cannot tell for the moment their identity. Perhaps Cain? She would remain thankful that the man had not taken up Magneto’s offer.
He had been a mistake, the older stepbrother of the Xavier telepath, and she had taken him into her bed for a time. Unable to control him for lengthy periods of time, perhaps if he spent much time around her, he would have realized what she had done to his mind in the past, the incident that triggered him enlisting in the war.
No, it was better for her personal cause, that Marko never be around her for too long again. If he realized what she had done to him, well the man had been great fun in bed, and breaking him in had given her insight on Charles. Big, muscular, aggressive. The fun had been that she would not be able to control him if he got too angry, and she supposed, it would be best if she rarely tested it.
Unfortunately, she had a suspicion of what would happen should she test it. That kind of mental violence could be interesting, physically. Not aimed towards her, though. Diamonds would not keep her safe from the Juggernaut.
“Are you well?” The human is asked, and Emma nodded, absentmindedly. “You look, distracted.” Of course she was distracted, she thought to say.
“My apologies.” She placed her hands upon his. “I find myself much to pieces now that I no longer have Sebastian to help me, help give form to my life.” William Stryker is a fit man, and she supposes that the Army will create that of a man, no matter his original physical shape. He also thinks that women need help, and she can use that. “I try my best to continue in his footsteps, keep doing the work that he wanted me to do.”
“Mutants.” Pffah! William’s voice makes the noise of disgust and she echoes it at him. He is a tool, unable to realize that he is being used. “Your nation thanks you for your patriotism.” Saving us all from the mutant threat, both foreign and domestic. “Your husband’s belief in our cause was well placed. We are making such steps forward. Even the research that we’ve done on mutants, things that we’ve found that haven’t led us towards mutants have helped us more than mere science for science’s sake.”
“But we won’t be safe until your accuracy improves.” It’s quite true. He’s also found other things, more interesting things.

Chapters 5/13 and 6/13 Cracked Diamonds

optimouse — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:24:18 GMT

Title: Cracked Diamonds
Rating: M
Warnings: Graphic Sexual abuse of a minor, rape, domestic violence, implied violence, implied m/m sexual relations, and death.
Summary:
Emma Frost learned at her mother’s knee that if a woman wanted to get anywhere, she was the only person with the power to make that happen. Telepathy was quite helpful to those aims, including the manipulation of men. Cleavage or cortex, both helped her make her own way, often by changing the thoughts of others. She wanted to rule the world, but it is a man’s world. By playing with the minds of everyone, she thought she would take over the world.
Charles Xavier disagreed.
An AU-verse in which Xavier and Magneto are tempered by a diamond’s views of supremacy, and not a Mengele’s, even if they didn’t quite figure it out.

V.
“William.” She’s an icy maiden, each ankle laced into stiletto heels that make her legs look like they grew forever, and the skirts of her white dress are pleated and full. The bodice is fitted, and he can see the glisten of golden cleavage, almost the same shade as his wedding ring. Marcy was at home, pregnant with their first, conceived before the honeymoon and unhappy that he had asked her to leave her work at the Senate building as an aide. Oh, Elsa is gorgeous, one slender leg crossing over the other as she slid into the chair across from him. “How is your wife?”
“Marcy is fine.” How could he think about Marcy as his lust is rising and that woman is smiling at him? “How is Sebastian?” Her husband, a prominent businessman, he had met perhaps three times total. The man had not impressed him, but then again, he had barely the chance to meet him privately. Elsa brokered her husband’s money into his little research project, one that had grown from mild funding from the Central Intelligence Agency’s curiosity about the paranormal and into it’s current physical curiosity about mutants. The government allowed him his study and Elsa’s money allowed him the new microscopes, to convince high-level scientists to work for him. It allowed him more leeway with ethics, he supposed.
“Sebastian is no longer with us.” Indeed, the ring that had shone on her finger no longer adorned it. “How is your project?”
“I’ve found ways of identifying anti-bodies in blood that make identification of mutants, dormant or active, far more easily.” He could feel the elation of his discovery stretching his mouth from side to side, and she was smiling, demure and joyful across from him. “I have successfully managed to trigger mutation as well.”
“You have?” She’s smiling at him, and one of those pale hands, manicured with such a light polish is curled around his arm. Marcy didn’t polish her nails, but she keeps them short and neat. A doctor has no business with long nails, she says, and she had earned that right. One of the first women graduates to be certified by the American Medical Association from her class, Marcy’s smile had caught him in a military hospital in Korea. Elsa’s nails are lethally long, sharp against the skin of his arm, and barely breaking causing drops of blood to bead along his forearm as she draws it up and hugs her fingers around his. “Congratulations, Captain Stryker.” He feels something, like the urge to tell her more, those eyes are always so friendly, and kind, and she was after all, so helpful against the communists, the mutants, and what harm could come from telling her more about the experiments?
“I think that there are a greater concentration of mutants in blood type Rh, and O, both positive and negative, but it is impossible for me to get a large enough sample. I think that in a population of those outliers, you would be far more likely to find those mutants,” and Marcy would glare at him here, for spitting out the words. She doesn’t agree with him on this hatred of mutants, and he’s disciplined her for that before. He loved her, but a woman needed a strong hand, keep her in her place, especially with her education. He wondered at her family, letting her take so many classes. Elsa knew her place, worked as her husband’s hand. “ and I think that high doses of radiation will trigger latent and dormant mutation.”
Her smile is a lot more icy, and Elsa’s manicure feels like nails through the soft tissue of his hand. William feels himself stuttering. It is as if she wants more information, far more than he has to give her, and it is tugging at him, gripping at his stomach to give that information to her.
“You think that radiation causes mutation, sir? If radiation causes mutation, then those living near nuclear power centers, for example, are far more likely to have a dangerous mutation, than others?” William likes that she gets this. “Mutants could be created by the government, by the communists, to be used against us? Us American patriots?”
“EXACTLY!” Other patrons in their little café are starting to look at them, his outburst, and the table shaking from where his hands clapped against the metal of the table. Their glasses jump, one of the waiters stopping by to refill the water, condensed coolness on the glass in the shadow of the trees. The leaves are turning, and Marcy is due in a month, at Thanksgiving.
“Would you like to order, Mr. Stryker?” The waiter is standing there, pressed shirt and pants, holding a notebook and a pen that will be tucked into a black apron. “Ms. Sleet?”
“What are today’s specials?” Elsa is asking, the waiter leaves with their orders, his for a glass of red wine, he actually hates the stuff, but ordering beer at this café could hurt him politically. Coffee will be for later, following the dinner, when the darkness in the sky that threatens will become night, truly. “You were saying something?”
“I agree with you that the mutation can be caused. If nothing else, what happened in Cuba, the moment our two fleets turned away from each other, that was the proof of mutants being a security problem, making the world unsafe for us normal human beings.”
There comes the waiter, with his wine and her cocktail, something with grenadine, and she’s smiling. A sweet smile, which echoes her drink as a sickly pink confection, painted across such a gorgeous face.
“I think that they’ve already started, that Russia has created mutant agents, has recruited them.” His voice has lowered, and she’s leaned in towards him, her cleavage a long arc of flesh down the dress. “I know that one of the researchers in the Manhattan Project survived, and afterwards he could make any small item that he wanted in his house, come to his palm.” He snorted. “That was error. With trial and error, Elsa, they will have us, those mutants, and we will breed them. The question is, do we use them, or do they use us? And if we use them, can we stop them?”
She laughs at him, a tinkling laugh, and the diamonds around her wrist sparkle in the twilight as she draws her hand from his, cradling her chin in her hands and she continues to laugh before stumbling into speech.
“Bravo, Captain Stryker.” Bravo. It echoed in his ears, a headache full of spikes developing behind his eyes and poisoning the wine in his glass.
VI.
It’s not the best day for this conversation, but the injury is healing, and if he checked himself out of the hospital with a nudge to the minds of the nurses, doctors, and administrators, it wasn’t because he was bored. They had told him that there was very little left to do for him, and Charles had already lost the use of his legs. Mild telekinesis was useful for that, hiding that the wound was still healing, that he needed help.
Getting on with it would be time appropriate, Charles had made three successful phone calls, and he could hear Alex pulling into the driveway with the take out from the pub. It wasn’t that he did not trust Sean to pick up dinner; instead it was that he had not quite trusted him with his car. Moira’s leaving had meant that her company car was no longer something that they had access to, and he had let the staff take all of the household cars when he was closing up the house to leave with Raven for England.
His Austin-Healey BN7 was only borderline legal, here in the States. He was positive that the only reason that he was allowed to keep it was that he had placed pressure on the minds of those Customs’ agents in charge of his return to the United States. The CIA’s intervention could not have hurt his cause. It had smarted, leaving the BN7 in a lean-to near the now destroyed research facility, just for the days that he was there with Erik, working with Hank and Raven. When they had gone together to find mutants, the BN7, his lady-love, was what he had brought to the front of the facility. There were agents fawning over her, and Erik had raised an eyebrow.
“Ostentatious of you, Charles.” He could still hear the words in the air, a subtle rebuke. Charles remembered the temptation to dance through Erik’s mind and how he had only indulged himself in the wrap of Erik’s emotions around him. He could still bring that echo up, amusement tinged with disdain all flavored in Erik. Such a strong mind that Erik had, a mind that had still sung with the fingers of that steely woman, her disturbance of Erik’s mind pulling forward memories of his childhood, memories that didn’t always make sense.
“Raven said that when I saw the car, it was as if I had fallen in love.” He had bought her on a whim, and while he could only drive her on the weekends in Oxford, she had been well kept. His stepbrother would have enjoyed her. Cain always had loved a skillfully built combustion engine. “It may be money that could be spent elsewhere, Erik, but it’s spending that I love.”
“It hums.” Erik had a hand on the steering wheel. He had swung into the car during their conversation. “It likes you, the metal does.” Erik was the second driver, and until he had allowed Alex to take her into town to pick up dinner, the only other driver of the BN7.
He would have preferred Hank, whose skill as a pilot was undeniable, but the car would not suffer Hank’s elongated limbs without mutual pain, and Charles would rather neither be tortured. It was something barely relevant, but as he took the lift in the library down to the first floor and out and across into the foyer, he could not let that out of his mind. He’d never drive the BN7 again.
“The man behind the counter at the pub was friendly.” Alex was commenting to Sean, who had apparently rode shotgun in the sports car. “Can you believe what he said about the Professor?” That he actually used to control people accidentally? It had seemed so out of control, and the woman that he remembered so vaguely, that fiercely ordered mind had seemed like a godsend
“He was right about that, Alexander.” He used the full name to throw Alex off kilter for a second, both of the boys turning to watch him wheel across the foyer. Sean moved away from Alex, and behind his chair, moving them both towards the kitchen. “I manifested as a passive telepath when I was very young, Alex.” He could hear Hank clattering around the kitchen, putting out places for them, making sure that both Charles and Hank would have the space to fit around the kitchen table. “That means that I could hear others’ thoughts, the surface thoughts, emotions, and that, before I was able to talk. He should remember when I began to manifest as an active telepath.”
“Why?” Hank had turned to them when they’d entered the kitchen. “Why would the man behind the counter at the pub remember that?”
“I manifested in terror, Hank.” Charles could remember that very well. “I made my stepfather save my stepbrother and I from a laboratory fire.”
“He wouldn’t have done it anyway?” Sean questioned, and Charles was shaking his head. Alex would understand, prison having honed what the loss of his parents and his younger brother and the following foster care had created. A boy was built of the metal, the man of the smelting and the sharpening of life.
“No.” The fire had killed his stepfather, freed him and Cain, and Raven could never know the true meaning of the terror that he and his stepbrother had had of Curt. “Anyway, I managed to broadcast my terror all the way into town. The fire brigade had left for the mansion before the housekeeper had managed to call for aide. It meant that the laboratory burned, but the house was safe.”
“So that’s why half of the sub-basements are marked as unsafe?” Alex asked. “Fire and water damage?”
“Structurally they are safe.” Charles replied. “However, they will need to be cleared. That’s part of the reason that we are sitting down together tonight for dinner. I have some things to bring up.”
“Would this have something to do with Amelie D’Amidou?” Sean asked. “I know that my parents didn’t care that I was a mutant, that I have skills, and hers didn’t, but there was another case on the news this morning.”
“Oh?” He fought the itch to merely read it from Sean’s mind.
“A family tried to drown their daughter.” Sean snorted. “Eight year old girl. She had gills, Professor.”
“It was in the New York Times.” Hank poured water into each of their glasses, and the dinner is dished from each of the carryout containers onto the plates.
“I see. I’ve received several calls from parents that Erik and I had talked to while searching for the team that we put together for the Agency.” Charles knew that these words were more important. “I’ve returned three of them, and they’ve all asked if I knew of a safe place for the children.”
“Professor?” Hank was watching him. “Are you thinking about making this more of a haven?”
“I was thinking about a school, Hank. A school for mutants.” He gulped in air, trying to force it down his throat through pure will. “Three students will be arriving this week. I know that we didn’t talk about it?”
“You are inviting strangers here.” It was an unhappy Alex, staring at him. “Bad enough that Magneto knows where we are, but now there will be strangers here, in our haven.”
“Havok.” He knew that he would have to explain the rest of it fully. “One of the children is a boy, and he can emit beams like yours, from his eyes. His mother says that he could control them until a man took him. The only reason she found him again is because her husband made a comment to her, that his boss was ‘seeing what the freak could do.’” He had heard her voice, her worry through the phone. She had been staying with her sister three states from her husband, having broken into the facility, and stolen her son from them. “I cannot in good conscience allow something like that to just happen when I can help.”
“I agree with the Professor on this.” Hank was rumbling softly. “Perhaps this wouldn’t have happened,” his arms were running the length of his body in indication. “If I had come here as a teen ager, not letting the demons of my mind control my body.”
“Alright.” Alex had concurred. “Beast’s right. Bad enough being a teenager, but a mutant like us? I remember puberty and manifestation. That wasn’t fun.”
“What are we going to need?” Sean asked. “It’s not like the majority of the house is ready for occupation.”
“Three new empty bedrooms, preferably close to the rest of us for now.” Charles knew the next step. “I’ll pull out the blueprints for the house, and we can start thinking about where to put people, and how. We’ll need certification for homeschooling. I have a PhD in genetics, and a Masters in physics and medicine. Hank’s skills with engineering and mathematics, we have teachers for the hard sciences. We are going to need teachers for literature, history, and languages.”
“I may know someone.” Hank was smiling, the white teeth almost feral in his blue face. “Her name is Diana, Diana Spencer. She has just finished her Masters program at Wellesley, and she is, I think, a bit like you.” Glasses were pushed to the bridge of his nose. “Professor,”
“Call me Charles, everyone!” It was an attempt to lower the tension in the room.
“We’re going to need a housekeeper, a staff. People who aren’t easy to scare. Sympathetic people.”
“Scott’s mother is interested in coming and staying, helping.” He remembered. “Alex, Sean, would you like to handle hiring?”

Chapter 4/13 Cracked Diamonds

optimouse — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:22:38 GMT

Chapter 3/13 Cracked Diamonds

optimouse — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:21:19 GMT

Chapter 2/13 Cracked Diamonds

optimouse — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:19:23 GMT

Chapter 1/13 Cracked Diamonds

optimouse — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:17:01 GMT

Travelling! Going Visiting! Going where No Gordon Has Gone Before [By Herself]!

optimouse — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 21:35:47 GMT

Travelling! Going Visiting! Going where No Gordon Has Gone Before [By Herself]!

Yes, you read that right!

Zee optimouse is going travelling, akin to taking a year on the Continent, I suppose.

I really should stop talking about myself in the third person. On Monday, I'm leaving the United States via Detroit Metro Airport, and flying to London, into Heathrow Airport. I will be staying with family in London for a few days, and then the true adventuring will begin as I head to Scotland. Glasgow first, then Inverness. I went to Leakey's the last time I was in Scotland, so I will be going there again. An extra-ordinarily sized used bookstore...let me say Au-Revoir to my positive bank balance.

From Inverness...perhaps to Edinburgh.

I will also be going to Chester, Stratford upon Avon, and maybe a swift trip through Bath. After that? I'm still trying to figure everything out. I will be spending time with a close friend in Switzerland for a weekend.

This means two things! One! I will be working on my second novel as I am currently working my way through the second chapter. Two! I will be needing advice on where to go! Does anyone have any thoughts on things a classicist and a political theory BA might enjoy in Northern France/Switzerland/England/Wales/Scotland? I'm travelling for pleasure through work so I can greater understand what I'm writing on.

Also of interest: extended family members have asked that I send out a travelogue of where I've gone and what I've seen. I'll be setting up a separate account, not on livejournal, to hold this travelogue. If anyone's interested I could either send the link to you or post the link here. I will not have a reciprocal link on that blog to my livejournal account.

Thank you!