bow in the presence of greatness

[morethanhuman]

Erik stands in the middle of the shuttle bay, one hand extended palm-up in front of him. Far overhead, almost at the top of the shuttle bay, Lwaxana’s shuttle hovers in midair. His eyes narrow, Erik curls his fingers in a little come-here gesture. A rush of power that's lain dormant in him for over a year surges out through his fingertips, and the shuttle hurtls toward him. It swoops down, passing so close over his head that the breeze from its passing ruffles his hair.

He can’t rein in a laugh-- it's been too long since he’s felt this, the full depth of his power wholly at his command-- and it bubbles up in him, exhilarating and wild, spilling out as he sweeps his hand out in another long gesture, sending the shuttle flying back up to the ceiling.

There's a sigh behind him and he turns, grinning, while the shuttle zooms around the room. “If you’re bored already, don’t let me keep you.”

"I'm sorry, did that read as an I'm bored sigh?" Mystique asks, sidling up to him with an uncharacteristically playful smile. "This is admiration. This is 'my god, you look good with ten tons of metal hovering over you'."

She crosses her arms and watches him hurl the thing back up a second time.

"But you're missing something...”

Erik looks back up to the shuttle, feeling through its component parts-- he could take it apart and reassemble it, melt it down into slag or send it flying out into space. He’s almost forgotten what it feels like, this power. But he can’t even be angry at how long he’s gone without it-- not with it burning through him like this.

Mystique’s comment makes him raise an eyebrow, though he's too busy sending the shuttle through a series of aerial maneuvers to turn and let her see it. “What’s that?”

She doesn't say anything, just changes, and it's not the stagnant, flickering change he's used to, but fast and perfectly smooth. One moment Raven's standing there, and the next… he is.

"Unless you want Charles perusing your mind like the Sunday paper."

The shuttle goes still and so does Erik, turning a sharp look on her, his heart suddenly beating quick for an entirely different reason. This vision of himself-- it's one thing to see photos and illustrations, another entirely to see his future in the flesh before him. It's fascinating, but deeply unnerving, especially since he still can’t be sure if he'll still become that man, or if coming here has changed him too much.

But then it dawns on him-- Raven is right. He’d be wise to protect himself from Charles, who is now more than capable of rifling through Erik’s mind and finding out all about Cuba. And now, with his own powers restored, his helmet is no longer out of his reach.

The shuttle lowers gently to the ground and Erik’s eyes go fierce, a wide grin breaking over his face. “Come on,” he says, striding toward the door.

. . .

They're not even thirty feet from the door when Raven sees it start to tremble in its frame.

Then all of a sudden, it stops. She glances at him and sees he's changed his focus: he's disregarding the door entirely, peeling layers off the wall, the metal rolling up and crumpling like paper until she can see the inventory shelves through the frame. There's a mess of wires, smoking and spitting sparks, but it doesn't stop Erik from stepping through.

Sure, it's petty, but Raven can't resist swiping her comm in front of the half-dead sensor; it gives a sad, bleating no access beep just as she lifts one white boot over the jagged wall.

How do you like me now, HAL?

"They're organized by serial number," she says with a frown, eyeing the tags on the front of the shelves. She pulls open one at random and sees a stack of filthy, bloodstained clothing: nope. Another: a pink vest and a cell phone covered in stickers. Another-- ooh-- has a duffel bag labeled STARK TECHNOLOGIES-- definitely worth checking out once she's found her stuff.

Finally, she pulls open the right drawer. She locks and loads her Glock with a look that's somehow both affectionate and smug, then glances over to see Erik holding his helmet up to the flickering light.

“I’ve always said it takes a very special guy to inspire fear in red and purple,” she says dryly, applying a fresh coat of lipstick in the grainy reflection of the shelves. “I think I just got goosebumps.”

[see the OOC post here before tagging.]

Comments

[wise_ass]

She's already savvy, so he just comes out with it.

"I'm not sure what all I had with me when I raised from the dead like Talitha," he says, with an especially odd emphasis on 'with me', "but since I asked you to be my eyes when I first arrived, it seems a kind of poetry to ask again now."

There's a heavy load of levity and self-mockery covering up, yes, some trepidation, but mostly shame. He's unwilling to just do it his damn self, even though he knows what's likely in there (and what's not). Mayhap there's a tiny part of him that hopes if he leans on Sharon hard enough, she'll let him fall, and then officially take the role of his new Roland.

[withmyshield]

Bert's customary verbal potpourri doesn't influence Sharon in either direction; she understands that he wouldn't ask if he thought he could get away with doing this himself, and God knows he's propped her up enough in the last week to have earned a few no-questions-asked favors.

"You got it." She hands him her own belongings without so much as a warning against going through them. She trusts Bert not to do something like that, and even if she didn't, the fear of finding ladies' underthings would likely keep him in check.

The one thing she knows she's looking for is a pair of guns. She doesn't bother with anything already open, because if Mystique had found them she'd already be wearing them, just to show off. Sharon starts at the end of the row and works her way back, as they might be in order of arrival. Cuthbert's is the fifth drawer she pulls open, and she winces at the amount of dried blood crusted on most of the clothes. She shuts the lid after confirming she's got it right, and gets to an out of the way spot.

Jesus, you really are a cowboy.

Utilitarian gear for a gunslinger, she assumes -the guns, ammo belts, his clothes, and the little leather bag with everything else he needed in the world. Sharon stares a minute at the photograph but absolutely doesn't touch the little journal. At the bottom is a horn that looks significantly older than the rest of his stuff. An heirloom, possibly. Though she can't imagine anyone in Cuthbert's line needing a way to make more noise...She walks back with the box lidded.

"OK. There's a fair amount of blood, but I assume you expected that. Nothing worse."

[wise_ass]

The minute he sees her walking back, he knows it had been an insane idea to think that the captors might've saved his poor dead eye like the world's most disqueting souvenir, but once he'd had that nightmare vision he couldn't shake it.

He understands vaguely, in the back of his head, that these kinds of delusions he's been having lately, accompanied by a groundless sense of dread and a surety that he's long-damned and his recompense is right around the corner, are not strictly real, but what does that matter? Sincerely, in the long run... how could it matter? Maybe they're the recompense for staying alive after all. It's not a bad price to pay for resurrection.

Bert swallows, feeling relief (and maybe, maybe some disappointment that his eye is in a wastebasket somewhere) and takes the box from her.

"I did indeed. Well. Let's have a look, then, shall we?"

He sets it down and hunkers over it.

"Ye gods. Remind me next time to just wear red into a battle, or else go naked. This is a travesty."

[withmyshield]

Sharon snorts and gestures to the dishwater gray underpants at the far side of the box.

"From the state of those, you might be better off."

She crouches, picks up the suede gloves and pulls one on.

"Kind of like these, though. They've got a Mad Max quality about them."

[wise_ass]

Bert gives her a long-suffering look.

"I'd like to remind you those undershorts have been through unimaginable horrors," he says gravely, snatching them up and holding them in a ball to his chest before flinging them backwards over his shoulder.

Mystique looks less than amused.

"Oh yeah? I haven't seen that one. Look: my ma and da'." He hands her the picture, a sepia-toned portrait of a man and woman in their early thirties that's been taped to hell and back after having been (apparently) torn into many pieces. "We had a charged relationship."

She might sense he's fooling; Eldred Jonas tore it up after discovering the true identity of his tet many years back. Also pissed on his bedsheets and ripped the heads off Bert's pet carrier pigeons to further make his point.

Ah, Jonas. He'd been such a character.

[withmyshield]

Sharon takes the picture again, smiling just a little at the serious faces in it. They both look like Bert to her, in different ways, though it's hard to imagine his verbosity coming out of such dour expressions.

"Your mom's beautiful," she raises her brows at Bert. "What happened there?"

[wise_ass]

"So I take after the family horse!" he laments, sounding frustrated and not missing a beat. "Quit riding me!"

Bert adjusts so he's not quite within punching distance.

"Drink of water? Jerky?" Bert gestures into the drawer. "No? Or mayhap you'd like..."

He reaches in and pulls out an ornately carved, exquisite white horn, tipped with a silver mouthpiece.

"Horn of Eld? Priceless relic of an ancient kingdom? Passed down through the ages? Sounds like a dying oliphant?"

He demonstrates.

[withmyshield]

Sharon darts forward and drags the horn away from Bert's mouth.

"Jesus Christ!" He's just such a screwball -sometimes it amazes her that she likes him as much as she does.

"Passed down by who? I seriously can't imagine anyone thought it was a great idea to put you in charge of this."

[wise_ass]

He does a very slight double-take at that last remark before schooling his expression back to levity.

"Roland. He didn't have enough hot air himself. And careful with that," he says, a little more seriously. "It's important."

Bert takes it back, but gently, tucking it back into his things.

Finally, he picks up one of his guns. They're beautiful, huge, ancient-looking things with inlaid rosewood grips and scrollwork on the cylinder, and secondary smoothbore barrels for buckshot.

(Bert had liked to think of that as the boo! barrel; that tenth shot had a helluva lot of stopping power.)

Gods! Were they always this heavy?

He opens to mouth to make a joke but can't think of one, and just smiles at Sharon before he passes it into her suede-gloved hand.

[withmyshield]

She's not at all surprised that the horn is Roland's, with the care he takes with it. It's hard not to be a little jealous at the idea of having a lifelong friend your own age. Sharon wonders what the hell Roland is doing right now, without Bert. Probably just about as well as Bert does without him.

The gun is unreal; heavy, in perfect condition, super intricately detailed. She handles it comfortably and carefully, flipping the barrel open to check out the inside. It's loaded. What else would you expect? It's a funny parallel to the first time she met Cuthbert, hunched over another old timey gun.

"They don't make 'em like that anymore, huh?"

[wise_ass]

Bert likes to see her with it, and but that's too sentimental a thought to finish; instead, he finds admiration for the respect she handles it with.

"Beats your funny little peashooter, that's for damn sure," he says, grinning. "Speaking of. What's in yours?"

He nods over to where he set it down beside her.

[withmyshield]

"Just the usual girl stuff..." She carefully hands back the gun before reaching for her box.

"Climbing boots, grappling hook, little bit of tech, and your standard issue SHIELD kevlar bodysuit. All in a slimming 'ninja black', of course."

She holds up the garment and makes a face like hers is just as impressive as his.

[wise_ass]

"Very nice," he says enthusiastically. "...what's kev-lar?"

[withmyshield]

"It's tough: bulletproof, sliceproof most of the time, heatproof to an extent, it's sort of like a suit of armor."

She holds out the sleeve for him.

"It's saved my life many, many times."

[wise_ass]

"Ooh." He takes the sleeve and runs his fingers over it. "Really? Bulletproof?"

It's so thin and sleek. Bert runs his thumbnail over the ridges, trying to imagine a shot deflected.

"...will you show me?"

He glances up at her under his eyebrows with a smirk.