I Like Long Walks On The Beach

[iamnotpolaris]

The beach is a nice, convenient, out-of-earshot place to calibrate the coordinates for this universe.

Comments

[iamnotpolaris]

"I feel like I ought to apologize that this kind of thing happened the first new universe we brought you to. This has been weird even for me, I assure you."

[not_only]

"It's okay," he says.

[iamnotpolaris]

"...You probably didn't get most of the subtext of what was going on, come to think of it."

[not_only]

"I think I probably missed some things," he agrees.

[iamnotpolaris]

"Okay, so the way our parents met...I should probably back up a little bit. Remember how I said being a mutant could have physical effects on top of things like magnetism and telepathy?"

[not_only]

"Yes...?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"It's not always...externally visible stuff. For example, someone could find out abruptly the hard way that they were...your language doesn't have a word for it. It's possible for someone's body to covertly contain reproductive organs of the opposite sex."

[not_only]

"...That sounds like it would be very surprising to find out unexpectedly," he says after a reflective pause.

[iamnotpolaris]

"Yep. But I'll get into that a little later. So: our grandmother was horribly murdered by someone who proceeded to do horrible nasty things to Dad for several years afterwards. He ultimately escaped, only to immediately turn around and begin hunting down the bastard for revenge."

[not_only]

Sivath nods. This sounds like a perfectly reasonable reaction to him.

[iamnotpolaris]

"So the guy is not slowing down in his evil, he decides to push a pair of world powers on the brink of war over the edge. A government agent manages to spy on him and his cohort, and finds out what he's planning and that he and his cronies are mutants. So she goes to this guy who wrote a scholarly paper on the possibility of mutants, only to find out that he is one. This is Charles Xavier. Dad's name is Erik Lehnsherr," she adds after a moment.

[not_only]

He nods again. There seems to be an obvious direction here, but he can wait to see if he's right about it or not.

[iamnotpolaris]

"So both of these people are on the trail of the same man, and they catch up to him at the same place, a big fancy boat. Dad manages to completely wreck the thing with its own anchor, but the man--Sebastian Shaw--gets away in an underwater boat thing. This is made of iron, mostly, but Dad's not strong enough to lift it out of the water at this point. This doesn't stop him from trying, but all this accomplishes is that he's being dragged through the water after it. If nothing prevents it, he's going to drown."

[not_only]

"But something prevented it," he guesses, not unreasonably.

[iamnotpolaris]

"Charles--Papa--threw himself off the boat he was in to rescue Dad. He sort of...mind-melded with him to convince him that he wasn't alone and there would be other chances and he didn't have to kill himself going after this guy. And the mind-meld thing...Papa fell in love with Dad because of how bright his mind was in that moment. And one thing led to another and here Edie and I are today, but in at least one universe we're aware of it didn't go nearly so well."

[not_only]

"Oh. I see."

[iamnotpolaris]

"So I had to be very careful, when Edie did something similar, because--she has me, no matter what. It wouldn't turn out as badly no matter what happened. But if it turned out badly at all and she blamed herself for it..."

[not_only]

"That does sound like it would be upsetting."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Yeah. She's sensitive. A lot of people wouldn't believe it because she reacts to things that hurt her by getting mad or clamming up, but she is. And it's my job to take care of her."

[not_only]

Nod nod.

[iamnotpolaris]

"I think it'll probably go okay though. As far as I can tell he doesn't really have ideologies to conflict with her over."

[not_only]

Sivath smiles slightly.

"He seems... nice. In a very particular way."

[iamnotpolaris]

"That sure is one way of putting it. It's very impressive considering how terrible the rest of his species apparently was."

[not_only]

Smile; nod. "It is. I'm impressed."

[iamnotpolaris]

"...I hope the unicorn isn't being disturbed, by, things. I don't actually know how the 'finding virgins unpleasant' thing works."