4225/Secret Office, Secret History

Secret Office, Secret History
Date of Scene:	26 November 2020
Location:	Forgotten Office
Synopsis:	Jean and Jimmy talk about the school, raid Rogue's stash, and share some personal history.
Cast of Characters:	Jimmy Hudson, Jean Grey

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Jimmy Hudson has posed:
    If one is of the mind to wander, then there are a lot of secrets to be shared in the depths of Xavier's mansion. Some assuredly are matters of convenience, or simply aspects overlooked during one phase of decor compared to another. Some of it has to do with the cause that the team of mutants pursue. But there are other small secrets throughout that are perhaps a touch more innocent. Or playful. And one that's been discovered recently by one of the teachers.
    Assuredly other people know about it. Considering the small tell-tale hints of the occasional visitor here and there. Such as the one that drew James' attention as he was walking past during a brief time he had been looking for an equipment closet that one of the other instructors assured him was upstairs and just at the end of the hall. Though assuredly it wasn't this forgotten office that they meant.
    Because this office was hidden fairly decently. Hard to discern unless someone knew to look for it, or unless they had a nose for this sort of thing. A nose that could detect the tell-tale scent of nicotine that led the mutant to that bookcase. Led him to jostle it and draw it open. Then revealed to him the quaint study that was rather nice and out of the way. Though apparently someone had been sneaking up here for a smoke or two.
    Yet in the wild chaos of the mansion it did offer some small measure of solace and solitude. Which is why the last few days had seen James Hudson coming up here with a tablet to do his 'homework' of late. That being studying up on the past of the X-Men.
    Which, is what he was doing right now. Curved over the desk, tablet on the surface, his head in his hand as he casually swipes left to turn the 'pages' of various files. His thoughts wander as he perused and at times they even drifted toward the incredulous.

Jean Grey has posed:
Apart from the Professor himself, Jean probably knows the mansion about as well as anyone, considering how long it's been her home. There may still be a secret or two lurking in the place, although this one has probably lost much of its original mystery as time has gone on, particularly for the teachers who live up here. For the students, no doubt it serves as a thrilling discovery and potential place of illicit mischief whenever any of them stumble upon it. So Jean is used to there being people in there, now and then. Usually, it's Rogue, who seems to intentionally cling to that student/teacher line with great ferocity.

This time it is not! Though there's not much room for surprising Jean, as she happens to catch a stray thought from beyond the bookcase on one of her frequent trips through the hall outside.

She waits a moment, mentally making sure she's not intruding on anything important (people use that room for some -interesting- things), before sliding open the bookshelf herself. Stepping through, she closes it again so that the mystery will not be ruined for anyone passing in the hall, and then remains there leaning against the back side of the shelf-door.

"So you're actually using this place to study? That may be a first," she comments, with a light breath of a laugh. "Or at least, the first time in a while. Anything interesting?"

Jimmy Hudson has posed:
    Looking up, she'll likely see that ghost of a flicker over James' features. That infinitely small moment when a brain shifts from the conjured image within itself considering its own imagination... only to shunt back to the here and now and be faced with the reality as presented. Just a small haze in the eyes before it clears and Jimmy lifts a hand, then points at Jean as he says cleverly. "Hey."
    And she likely can sense a myriad of thoughts flit one way and another, as a plethora of possibiliies spring to mind. "You." He then adds as he points at her still. "Lived some of this stuff. While I'm just reading it."
    Indeed, she was a witness. And the files on his tablet... after action reports for missions run by he X-Men in the past. Which he had been wading through. Perhaps a bit slowly compared to some of the students here. Perhaps not as smart as some either in some ways. Yet his secret weapon how he got through school despite that small handicap?
    He studied like crazy.
    "I am totally going to pick your brain." He says with a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Most people who first meet him usually can't tell that fact when it happens. It's such a small tell. But Jean likely has an edge by this point.
    "But yeah." He changes topics as his blue eyes lift up to the room itself, around. "Usually I think someone sneaks up here to... indulge a bit in their nicotine habit. Could smell it all the way down the hall."

Jean Grey has posed:
"I lived all of it. Well, everything going back to the founding of the school, at least." Even without the total context, even before she has a good view of the tablet, Jean can fill in some of the blank spaces here, although they come in more clearly as she walks over and takes a leaning sit against one side of the desk. "I suppose there will be things in there back further, detailing Charles' relationship with Erik and their respective biographies. The history that sets the stage for our modern drama." She makes it sound a little Shakespearean. Perhaps it is.

Again, she gives a little laugh when the man declares his bold plan to get the details out of her, and she holds her hands apart to suggest a lack of anything to hide. "I'm an open book."

As for the room? She casts a glance back over her shoulder, studying the collection of mementos and sundries that decorate the place. The old paintings. A lot of it seems fairly, well, unrelated to anything to do with the school, and so she offers her first bit of a history lesson: "While this seems like a secret hideaway, in a sense it's not much more than a storeroom. A lot of these things go back to when Charles was doing the initial renovations. So there's some Xavier family heirlooms, and maybe even some things going back to the Greymalkins. Westchester is full of old places like this, you know, the Gilded Age homes of the Rockerfellers and their peers. Most of them are museums now. So I've always liked the idea that we kept this place going as an actual living home."

Jimmy Hudson has posed:
    A flicker of images slice through his thoughts, how he imagined different things from reading about them in those reports. The mental image he has of Erik being severe, stern, glowering. Much like the man but more a shadowy figure with hands extended outward and drawing power into himself. While Xavier in his thoughts holds that calm and control, ready and at peace even when confronting his old friend and nemesis.
    But then there is the image of Jean interposed in part, as if on the edge of the conflict, witnessing the contentious relationship between Magneto and the Professor. Though her she is much as she presents herself, though there is a heroic tilt to her, as if in some ways she was larger than life from James' point of view.
    A fingertip slides over the tablet and the display fades. "I'll come to you with my questions then at some point. If that's alright." His head tilts as he considers her, then when she speaks to the room and the heirlooms his eyebrows rise as he considers and then he lifts his chin a little.
    "Yeah, there are... parts of this place that makes me think of it as something between a home and a school. Like here..." He gestures with the wave of one hand, "Normally I wouldn't wander into someone's secret hidey hole even if I was living in their home. But dunno. This seemed... welcoming somehow."
    Only then does he look back to her, "Anyways. You need the room?" He asks as he starts to pull the tablet toward himself as if getting ready to depart should she answer so.

Jean Grey has posed:
Jean is usually pretty good about not letting psychic bleedover influence her. It's a consideration that is important not just for keeping from 'letting on' or reminding people of her powers, but as much out of consideration for fairness toward them and the normal rules of society. People think all kinds of things they would never say, after all, and playing mind cop is a drastically slippery slope. But despite all that, even she can't help but smile at the rather heroic recasting she gets in the man's thoughts.

"By all means," she answers. "There's a lot there. And I'm sure some of it must seem pretty outlandish at first glance, or just plain hard to follow, out of context." At the same time, she doesn't press for any particular questions, instead reassuring him that he's not in any danger of being kicked out. "Oh, no, I was just passing by and thought I'd poke my head in and say hello. It's rare to find anyone in here. Well, anyone but Rogue. Not that I'd ever discourage anyone from their studies, but sometimes a little break, a chance to come up for air here and there, it helps keep the mind fresh."

Evidently still thinking about the room, the house, she slips from the desk and walks back a ways, running her hand over a few items on one shelf, and then touching the top of the old globe. "We have to be a little more than just a school, because of who it is we're teaching. Not all our students have anywhere to go, and even those who do... well, there's a kinship they can find here, a community. There's a lot of people who could teach them how to -use- their powers," and her words may call back to that contrast in his mind, "but we try and teach them to -live- with them."

Jimmy Hudson has posed:
    At the mention of Rogue she can see his smile slip a little wry. Again it's a hard read for most. With him it's a subtle narrowing of his eyes and a curve up of that lip slightly though his natural inclination is to hide that expression slightly with how he turns his gaze away.
    "Yeah," He says at first, "I wasn't going to name names really. But..." He looks back to her, the smile more easily readable then. "Yeah."
    Then he gestures with a nod of his chin toward that globe even as her fingers glide over its surface, "Think that's where she hides her illegal contraband by the bye." Inside the globe, which has him crossing that distance with a few steps as he lightly drifts his own touch along the curve of South America, fingertips seeking the hidden clasp...
    And with a click the Northern hemisphere lifts up slightly and folds in on itself, turning the globe into a bowl which might well have been a place for hidden bottles and a few shotglasses. Though now there's a pack of cigarettes in the cubby hole.
    For some reason that makes his smile grow even as he shakes his head. Taking in after the fact what she tells him of the difference needed for Xavier's. "I can kind of. Tell." The difference between the schools he's been in, and this one.
    "During the general day to day. Less anxiety. You and yours." The word choice there telling, that he still feels he is somewhat of the 'other' not quite at home yet. "You go a long way to making that bridge there. Schools I've been in before, you could feel the anxiety of the kids. Or..." So used to not giving insight into his powers, his abilities, she can likely feel him make that subtle self-shove mentally as he corrects himself. "Can smell the difference in how anxious they are."
    He lightly twists the globe a little, causing the glass still within to clink softly, then meets her gaze. "S'one of the reasons I wanted to work here." He takes a deep breath, the scent of the room strong with that tang of tobacco, the old dust, the hint of old leather. But also her scent there amongst the antiquities. A curious thing that has him looking to the side, then murmuring. "When did you make that decision for yourself?"

Jean Grey has posed:
Jean's reaction to the revelation is well and truly shocked. Evidently, while she may have been well aware of the people who use the room, and had at least a decent guess of what they might be using it for, there were yet some secrets being kept from her! Namely, the very concept of turning a relic like that into a hiding place. It's pretty brilliant, as she wouldn't have much reason to go looking, but what is probably even more impressive is that the culprit had managed to keep her thoughts on the matter quiet. "I suppose we don't teach psychic defense for nothing," she finally declares, shaking her head. "And I imagine it was plain as day that they were in there? There's probably a lesson in that somewhere, about the right tool - or power - for the job."

She stands there a moment, apparently pondering something, and then reaches to snag one of the bottles and a pair of glasses. Apparently this culprit doesn't get yelled at for getting caught, she just gets her stuff confiscated for official use!

"Do they actually smell different?" she inquires, with a touch of wonderment that his senses would provide that kind of insight, the sort of thing she'd normally rely on her own for. "Not that we don't still have our share of teen angst and drama, not by a long shot. But we try, try as hard as we can, to make them feel like they belong here. It would be so easy to think of this place as a punishment, after all, like being sent off to military school? So we have to make the effort to prove that the place is theirs as much as ours. That they're here to help build the same thing, once they learn how."

The final question gives her a momentary pause, though, and Jean turns to walk back to the desk with her 'reappropriated' spoils. "Decision? You mean which side of the whole thing I cam down on, how I was going to live with what I was? I'd love to say some heroic moment, but I don't know that I ever really had a lot of chance to think about it. My powers activated when I was quite young, and I was just lucky. My father knew Charles- both academics, you know? So I became his student experiment." She laughs, shakes her head. "That makes it sound bad. But I grew up here. Helped build it, in a way. I don't know that I've ever had much chance to doubt it, to think any other way."

Here, she pauses. "Doubt myself maybe, my ability to live up to everything. But not what Charles was doing, or how." She's set down the two glasses, and pours a little in each.

Jimmy Hudson has posed:
    A small twist adorns the smile, "I dunno." He says at first, then holds up his hands. The first he says, "Super smell." And then he lowers the other hand as if it weighed so much more. "Telepathy. Think yours sorta wins out." But that's said with a casual warmth that is rare for him, amused a little though.
    But when she asks him for clarification, about how things smell, she can perhaps catch a glimpse into that mind, into how he perceives things, especially as his thoughts delve further into that. A little window into how that sense of smell almost seems to add a subtle dimension to things, like a hue of color perceived in an entirely different way. And it's mirrored in his thoughts as he's ever had a hard time explaining something like this.
    "They do, yeah." He offers as he moves with her while she's carrying the bottle, the glasses. "Hard to... explain. But." His lips twist inwards as he murmurs, "Back in Weehawken. There was a strong separation. Home. School. Here, there's a blur so the... stress they feel is more... to their core when it happens. A different flavor of stress? I'm no good at describing it."
    He steps to stand beside her, one hand resting on the desktop as she pours and he falls silent as she tells him about how things unfolded for her. At times his gaze would drift to her, thoughts regauging her, casting her in different lights. Perhaps a hint more of vulnerability is there, some understanding. A tinge of compassion given.
    The glasses are given their taste of the liquor and he reaches a hand forward to curl around the base of the small glass. He lifts it up, and for a brief moment there's a flicker of intensity there, the roil of instinct, and almost instantly she might feel his psyche cracking the mental whip as he catches the thoughts and impression. Controls it. It's what has allowed him to keep that poker face of his so calm and handled even in dire circumstances. That poker face that broke when they were in the Danger Room.
    "See the difference between you and me." He starts to say, his accent a hint more pronounced as he starts there, then he meets her eyes with his own. "You have Expectations on you." The capital E there felt in his thoughts and clear in his tone. "Me. I think people will be happy so long as I don't let the power of being the school gym teacher go to my head."

Jean Grey has posed:
"It's not a competition," Jean answers wryly. "But I suppose it makes sense. Maybe you smell the stress hormone levels, or related chemical changes." The part of her that is the daughter of one professor and the protege of another, the eternal student, is quick to turn to scientific inquiry. Even if biology isn't strictly her area of expertise, given what they are, it's not something she could afford to neglect, either. "Come to think of it, I imagine that can give you a lot of interesting insights, actually." What was that conversation she and Rogue were having in the danger room, about whether or not the computer could ever simulate instinct? Maybe they need to work on the olfactory simulation. "Either way, it seems like a good sign. You're actually a bit of an exception in that we don't get a lot of experienced teachers here, in the traditional sense of it. So that's a helpful perspective to have."

Lifting her own glass just a moment after he does, what becomes apparent as some of his own instincts and thoughts rush to the fore... is nothing. At least, in comparion to earlier, where that crack of a smile may have revealed a little of what Jean was seeing of the other man's thoughts. Here, she's perfectly calm, or rather, just continues as she was with no outward sign or change in demeanor. Pouring, drinking, smiling, chatting. Whatever turmoil the man has inside, for good or ill, it's something she has experience with.

Taking a moment with even that small sip (she's hardly a hard drinker herself), she has time to think about the way the man describes her situation. "I do," she agrees, after weighing on it a while. "But I don't like to fall back on that, to make myself a martyr for the fact. I like my job here quite a bit, even if it means high standards, responsibilities, expecations from others. Those things- they're goals, benchmarks I'm motivated to hold myself to. Maybe I'm a little jealous of our laid back gym teachers and... whatever Rogue is, but I wouldn't really do well like that, in the long run."

Jimmy Hudson has posed:
    Turning his hip so he can rest a little against the desk. It puts him more on an even eye level with her, perhaps even a little below. Though he takes a sip from his glass. There is that warmth of the liquor, the taste is reflected in his thoughts slightly. But no hint of a buzz or that first wash of feeling that comes with the first few moments leading toward inebriation.
    "Jealous?" He repeats after she says that word. Then he leans to the bottle she had liberated from its hiding place and lifts it up. A small trickle of liquor adds some more to his glass. And then she might sense a subtle hint to his psyche. A moment that becomes a hesitation. Some aspect of himself telling him he shouldn't lift that bottle. Shouldn't offer her more. Down that path lies possibilities. Complications. That part of himself that usually draws rein on the normally so stern looking man, admonishes him taking that second pour.
    And likely frowns when he looks up and meets her gaze, and offers her some more with just the quirk of an eyebrow. A small bridge crossed. And a hint of an admission.
    "What is there to be jealous of me about?" He asks after that length of time that was barely more than a heartbeat's span. "Unless you have a particular envy for a guy who gets to watch kids play dodgeball all day every day." Alright perhaps that's an oversimplification. But his smile. His smile could sell it.

Jean Grey has posed:
"Oh, just what you were saying," Jean answers quickly, as if it should be pretty obvious what she meant. Maybe partly that's the sort of mental process that comes from being used to knowing what the other person is thinking. "That it can be nice to live without those expectations, the freedom to live without knowing anyone is relying on you, to make your choices without the guilt that they're choices for someone else too. It would be nice. But it's not- it's not reality for me." There's a momentary pause, as if considering how she's put it and then finding it insufficient. "For a lot people, those things are choices. How hard you are on yourself, the value of accomplishment versus giving yourself the freedom to fail. But they're not really for me. It's not a matter of giving fifty percent versus a hundred. If I'm not perfect- well, I'm dangerous."

And here, her own thoughts may pre-emptively predict his, before she hears them. Of course he's dangerous too. Many people here are. And she finds herself answering, even before any of that has a chance to be voiced:

"You are too, I know." She finishes the last of what's in her glass, and glances at it, and then back at him, her eyes meeting his and offering just a hint of awareness before she sets it down, with purpose. Maybe it's to make a point about what she's talking about.

"But trust me, it isn't the same thing," and she says that without any sense of bravado, but the coldest of hard fact. "I take it you haven't gotten to 2015 yet. To the invasion, well, the one of many... the one that wasn't."

Jimmy Hudson has posed:
    "I might not have." James says with that controlled tone, but he hadn't. "I do know..." He says as if to pre-empt the telling of that tale, or perhaps to try and offer some insight. Insight she might not even need, and for an instant he reflects on that. But carries on.
    "That you feel strongly that it has to be that way." His eyes meet hers, and perhaps he derived some sense of that from how she phrased what she said, with the intensity in her words, and that conviction that is in the subtle scent between them, that at times lets him know when someone is selling him a line. With her. It's sincerity.
    "And I'm not one to fault you that." He tilts back his glass and downs that liquor and for a brief moment... a single sliver of an instant there is a flash or a hint of liquor that is felt, just a small glimpse of an altered state and then that healing factor filters out the alcohol from his blood stream. There. And gone.
    "I tell a pretty story sometimes." He starts without looking at her. "About how I realized what I was after I healed from a car accident." Turning his head he looks to her sidelong, still a few inches beneath her sightline with his hip on the desk. "Not entirely true. I mean yeah, it happened that way. Car wreck, the flames. Realizing I was still alive."
    He tilts the bottle on its side, the liquor gurgling faintly as he refills his glass. No offer is given to her this time, she made her will known in that regard. "What made me realize what I was. Was what I wanted to do to the other driver of the car after he ran me off the road. What I almost did."
    Perhaps a glimpse of flames, burnt tires on a road, the way anger contorts a rational mind's perception of things. Small touches of that night. "So." He says, "Envy me for somethin' else maybe. Like. My amazing fashion sense." Trying to disarm things perhaps. "But not so much being able to relax."
    Then his tone slips a little as if realizing he doesn't have all the facts, so might just be talking out of his ass. So he adds. "If that makes any sense at all. But." He smiles a little, "It's nice to meet someone that can mebbe understand."

Jean Grey has posed:
"You should probably read the file," Jean notes, not coldly, necessarily, but with a certain hint of firm finality to it, a rejection of the idea that he could quite grasp what she's talking about without the details. That it is simply different, somehow. "It's the sort of thing where an objective report, the cold reality, is an important context. Even believing me, seeing is something else. Even just reading the typed up numbers." 'Numbers' is a bit of a clue there, although almost certainly no less confusing of one without the very same context she speaks of.

But Jean doesn't hold that particular sort of demeanor long, relaxing again when the discussion moves past her. Because, for the time being, she isn't going to tell -that- story. She'll let him read it, when he gets around to it, and perhaps dare to ask her for the insight they were talking about earlier. Instead, she listens to his, with the sort of gentle expression that one would normally expect of her, listening and understanding. He may, of course, underestimate just how familiar the topic is to her, but that doesn't make her dismissive of it. "I imagine it's very difficult, controlling those instincts. I couldn't be sure, but I had a hunch there might be something like that. It's why I pushed you so hard in the Danger Room. You should-"

And here she pauses, considering how exactly to explain this.

"I don't know how much of Logan's file you've looked at," she prefaces, taking a turn away from him personally. "Although it probably doesn't matter- he might set a world record for the number of mysteries wrapped up in a single person. So it's spotty. Have you gotten to speak to him?" But even that, their familiarity, isn't really what she's driving at. "There's no doubt, with Hank's tests, and watching you in the Danger Room, that the two of you are... that you share something. You could be related, or it could be another case of cloning, concealed somehow- we've seen that before, given how much government interest there's always been in his genome." And now, maybe, there's a sense of making the tale more winding, roundabout than it needs to be.

"... Anyway, the point is, when I say I understand any of this, it's because I know Logan, because I've known him for a long time. Well, maybe a long time to me, not so long to him," she muses, again getting lost. "I don't mean to dismiss any of that. If you have even a little bit of that, then I -know- how difficult it is for you, how the laissez faire attitude can mask other things." And now it's not conjecture, or empathy she's talking about. "I've felt it. The two of us, we've- well, I know him very well."

Here Jean straightens up a bit more abruptly, face a little flush, and probably not entirely from the booze. "You're right though, it's nothing to envy. I'm sorry. The fashion sense, though, definitely." She summons a smile quickly, because a joke is a nice easy out, as she turns from the table and toward the secret shelf-door. "I'll leave you to your reading."