Cable (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
verynaughtymutant) wrote2012-05-22 02:44 pm
verynaughtymutant) wrote2012-05-22 02:44 pm
Home Plot: Post 1
There were few places Cable had ever known as well as he knew Tabula Rasa, few places he'd spent so much time and few places he'd been where his mind was less busy planning out the next steps. But it wasn't his home, it was a prison, something powerful but hostile.
Providence hadn't been his home either, not the way it had been for some of his followers. He'd seen it as a tool, as a weapon, far more then he'd ever seen it as a home. The X-mansion had been much the same and even the station of Greymalkin had never meant as much to him as the AI who inhabited it's walls.
No, the place he still thought of as home, for all he tried to forget it, was the safehouses of Clan Chosen during the Askani revolution. Back when he'd had a wife and a child and hope and mercy and all the other luxuries that young men allow themselves when they think they're still immortal. And that was a time and place he tried his best not to dwell on. Even his dreams, these days, were more often in English and Russian and based on the 21st century. And those that weren't, he never spoke of.
But if he had learned anything about living on Tabula Rasa, and he liked to think that he had learned a lot, it was that the past would never stay buried there where it belonged when it could be used to whip and prod it's victims instead.
So when he awoke to find himself a younger man again, surrounded by the tents and platforms of a rebel camp, he was angry but he was not surprised. He did not know the details of this particular trick, not yet anyway, but the intent was as familiar to him as his own skin. He could feel the whispers of minds around him, and he felt a dull terror at the familiar shape of them. This was a personal hell for him, filled with the ghosts of those he'd failed.
Still, he was not one to sit and take his punishment. Whatever game this was, there was no reason he had to play it. If he was lucky, all he had to do was walk away, out of the camp altogether, and spend what time he had before being returned to Tabula Rasa, out in the wilderness. Alone.
The camp itself was shielded and camouflaged, of course, but it was designed to be difficult to enter not exit and the guards stepped aside as he passed. All so simple then, except he could feel the whisper of another mind approaching and this one wasn't a ghost but another responsibility to chain him down.
Cable closed his eyes for a second, let a single sigh come out, and then stepped forward to greet them, expression blank and masked.
Providence hadn't been his home either, not the way it had been for some of his followers. He'd seen it as a tool, as a weapon, far more then he'd ever seen it as a home. The X-mansion had been much the same and even the station of Greymalkin had never meant as much to him as the AI who inhabited it's walls.
No, the place he still thought of as home, for all he tried to forget it, was the safehouses of Clan Chosen during the Askani revolution. Back when he'd had a wife and a child and hope and mercy and all the other luxuries that young men allow themselves when they think they're still immortal. And that was a time and place he tried his best not to dwell on. Even his dreams, these days, were more often in English and Russian and based on the 21st century. And those that weren't, he never spoke of.
But if he had learned anything about living on Tabula Rasa, and he liked to think that he had learned a lot, it was that the past would never stay buried there where it belonged when it could be used to whip and prod it's victims instead.
So when he awoke to find himself a younger man again, surrounded by the tents and platforms of a rebel camp, he was angry but he was not surprised. He did not know the details of this particular trick, not yet anyway, but the intent was as familiar to him as his own skin. He could feel the whispers of minds around him, and he felt a dull terror at the familiar shape of them. This was a personal hell for him, filled with the ghosts of those he'd failed.
Still, he was not one to sit and take his punishment. Whatever game this was, there was no reason he had to play it. If he was lucky, all he had to do was walk away, out of the camp altogether, and spend what time he had before being returned to Tabula Rasa, out in the wilderness. Alone.
The camp itself was shielded and camouflaged, of course, but it was designed to be difficult to enter not exit and the guards stepped aside as he passed. All so simple then, except he could feel the whisper of another mind approaching and this one wasn't a ghost but another responsibility to chain him down.
Cable closed his eyes for a second, let a single sigh come out, and then stepped forward to greet them, expression blank and masked.
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Huh. She was pretty sure she had her powers back. How about that.
She started padding through the forest, looking around, the bottoms of her slouchy grey pajama pants picking up some leaves and dirt. She wished she had a bra.
It was nice and peaceful, at least. She saw someone heading toward her and blinked, veering in that direction and her eyebrows lifted a little as she got closer. Apparently, there had been a time when Cable was a hottie. Again, who knew.
"Hey," she said.
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Though he was only guessing that she didn't already know that. They'd never really discussed how exactly her visions of the future worked.
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"Because we're in the future kind of maybe."
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One of the things he liked about Layla was he expected she wouldn't demand too much of an explanation beyond that.
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"You know, I went to Latveria in the future kind of, once. From the island." She absently plucked a leaf off a branch as they passed it.
"That was swell."
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"Hmm. Shame you haven't brought your gauntlet with you," he replied, the mention of Latveria jogging his memory. They'd never quite found out what that did, after all and, in this place, she might need it.
It wasn't what he wanted to ask her. He wanted to know about her visions, wanted to know is she'd seen anything about what they were in for but he was working up to it.
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"Why. Will I need it?"
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"Since you're bound to notice. I'm not a precog."
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"That seems an odd lie to tell," was his response as he stopped at the same time she did, not bothering to correct her, wrong, impression that he'd go snooping through her mind.
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"Also, sometimes my powers just don't register so at some point... You were probably going to pick up on it."
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"Well, if you wish to share the true story, now is probably a good time."
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"Just time travel stuff." It was a gross oversimplification, but it would do.
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"At some point, I'm going to want more details than that."