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[forgodssake]

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xavier
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CHARLES XAVIER

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[darkart]

[ A while later: ]

There's no succinct answer.

[forgodssake]

Oh dear. I shan't make you type it all out then.

[darkart]

Completely hypothetically, have you ever ended up in peril for reading someone's mind?

[forgodssake]

You have identified my constant state of being.
I meant we could go for a beer, for the record.

[darkart]

I have never been in that situation.

We've been threatening to.

[forgodssake]

Probably because you choose such excellent companionship.
Speaking of which what watering hole do you favour?

[darkart]

[ Either that or he knows how to be discreet, CHARLES. ]

I haven't been to any.

[forgodssake]

[ No it's definitely about friendship. ]

Seems the bar on level seven is empty.

[darkart]

Does it.

Very well.

aaand action.

[forgodssake]

[ Alternatively, Xavier could spend half his life in bars anymore. As usual, this one is full of glass and reflective surfaces and chrome, a light-year or two apart from the warm wood and brass of a proper English pub, with its culture and tradition steeped into each grain and nick and scrape. And space beer isn't any better than space spirits.

But it will all just have to do. Despite the fact his focus is down turned on the two long glasses he is currently emptying frothy amber liquid into, he is, in fact, on high alert, affording him the same arrogance that allows him to have his back turned to the door.

Definitely no assassins lurking in the rafters here.

Slacks, a sweater vest, neat shoes, and a button down with the sleeves rolled all make up his wardrobe, very likely what he was wearing before he came down. Its this sort of tailored nondescriptness that has worked for him rather effectively in real life, but matters very little when the backdrop is a horror space ship orbiting unknown stars. ]

[darkart]

[ Severus is glad for how alien it looks, when he finally arrives. Bars conjure memories of high-class affairs he could never get into on his own, taken along in turns gleefully and mournfully. During and post being the distinction. He doesn't want to think of familiarity, of people dead and dying. He doesn't want to think about Lucius, and lying to him over shots in the after-hours of a day very much post. He felt less bad about it after the first time Narcissa pressed the baby into his arms so she could shout at her house staff properly, but it still sits on his shoulder and speaks to him daily.

Black clad as usual, he sits without fanfare. His approach is quiet but not unnaturally stealth; even if he can't read his mind, Xavier is not deaf, so Severus feels no need to announce himself at the door. He doesn't say anything at all actually, just. Sits down. Hi. ]

[forgodssake]

Hello.

[ It's fine, evidently. Charles pushes beer towards Snape, settling down opposite, and there's a vaguely secret smile for the following observation that Snape dresses more like he imagines a wizard to be, which is mostly due to palette rather than cut, and that it strikes him how infrequently they talk face to face that sometimes he might forget.

Probably, that will change somewhat by the time the lab is running. He hefts up his beer, an apologetic glance around, as if assuming Snape might dislike it. ]

I'm used to bars like this having more women dancing in their knickers.

[darkart]

... I am not. [ Shocking news, surely. Severus accepts the beer though doesn't drink it immediately - it's not really his preference, if he does drink at all (which is rare), but eh, who cares. So, a wizard in boring clothes and a telepath walk into a bar and. Have beer. While nobody reads anybody else's mind. ]

Our small community has been decimated by war twice.

[ Now, he does take a drink. ]

[forgodssake]

[ Spoilers: the beer is not awesome, as far as beers go, as for as the English go with regard to beer in the first place, but even if Xavier hesitates and reconsiders his first sip--

--Snape goes and says that, and he is compelled to not put it down immediately. A second quick sip before he does so, hand spidered over the top of it. ]

Against humans?

[darkart]

Against ourselves. [ Severus has no palate for beer. He doesn't care. ] Throughout the nineteen thirties and forties a very powerful dark wizard attempted to lead a revolution to end the statute of secrecy and bring us into the public. He also wanted to rule the earth with the master race.

[ He shrugs, expression twisted with something wry. You can imagine how well that went. ] He was very inspired by outside sources, perhaps. [ Other things that happened in the 40s: HITLER. ] He did not succeed. In my lifetime there is another. This time the very powerful dark wizard is more streamlined. He wishes to kill everyone who doesn't have magic. Everyone who is the product of people who don't have magic. Everyone who sympathizes.

[forgodssake]

[ Charles listens with a waiting alertness, his stare the same sort of tugging inquiry as his power -- not confrontational and needling, but a gravitational pull, a well of receptiveness; inward, not outward. His hands knit together, and when there's a pause in conversation, his gaze drops to evaluate his beer.

Raises, again. ]

Outcome being?

[ He feels like it might be condescending to ask on which side Severus stood. He can assume, but only if he's being simplistic, and that's bitten him before. So he waits, and stops trying to mentally squint through the silencing fog that clouds his friend's mind. ]

[darkart]

[ It would be both easier and phenomenally more dangerous if Charles could just read his mind but-- perhaps even if he were a Legilimens, all he'd see would be fabrications of innocuous thoughts, constructed in his mind like an illusionist might in the physical world.

So. ]

Yet to be determined.

[ He looks away for a bit. Takes another drink. Looks back. ]

There are four houses at the school where I teach. Seven years. There are currently between eight and fifteen students in each year, in each house. Around three hundred students on a campus that's stood for hundreds of years, built to board a thousand or more children and staff. I was made head of house when I was twenty-one because I was, and currently remain, the only alumni of that house employed.

[ Decimated. ]

That boy - Harry - is the product of what he says is the end. The true end. Whatever dark magic or upsetting items come through the jumps for him, I want it gone, and I don't want anyone else aboard trying to make it their bloody business.

[forgodssake]

Charles Xavier, [ he supplies, at the end of that, a fleeting smile that is gone by the time he takes a longer pull of beer. ]

I'm sorry. I hadn't any idea. What conversations I'd had with Harry hadn't gotten that far.

[darkart]

[ Severus inclines his head. Yes, you, Charles Xavier. But he doesn't think the other man will get his feelings hurt and he isn't the type of person to not say it so-- it's fine. ]

Self-evidently, I can't imagine why they would. [ It's not pleasantly conversational, this talk of war. ] Sirius Black was a schoolmate of mine. He remembers my interest in dark magic, and he remembers that dark magic is primarily aligned with the wizards who've tried to commit genocide.

But he has not seen war.

[forgodssake]

[ Easy to fluster, difficult to offend, Charles only listens. ]

Politics. Right. I thought it more personal.

[darkart]

It is. Sometimes. Without politics he would still hate me and I would probably still hate him. But he can't say he hates me because I was poor, and ugly, and got better marks than him, and was a convenient outlet for his violent tendencies before I learned how to defend myself. He has to say 'I hate Severus because he's probably actually evil'.

[ This is a lot. At once. And it is very personal. Severus says it all completely evenly, almost detached. ]

You know I'm going to ask about Erik now.

[ Because fuck. He drains his beer. ]

[forgodssake]

[ Charles has enough heart -- quite a lot of heart, to be fair -- to look vaguely abashed for pressing. The lines at his eyes deepen but he doesn't break eye contact, drinking it all in without offering comment.

A thin smile for that last part. Because Ah, of course.

Charles drinks too, without finishing it. ] Quite a bit of a different situation. We're friends, for one thing.

[darkart]

[ Severus does not want to say any of this, but it isn't a deep dark secret. Everyone at home knows. He's not going into his role in the war - and he won't. Sirius Black has no bloody idea no matter how much of a fit he throws, and Severus has the ultimate trump card anyway: the Boy Who Lived is here and apparently trusts him. So bugger off, ship.

It is important he maintains connections. He knows Charles has the potential to be a very useful one, and so he's going to do this. He likes him just fine, it's just that Severus doesn't really understand how normal friendships or even normal acquaintances work. He is startlingly perceptive and capable of great empathy but he does it from an outside perspective, making him useful in some situations but totally lost in others.

Which is why he just tilts his head at that opener. 'Friends' is a strange concept, but even he doesn't think that's how it's supposed to work. ]

[forgodssake]

[ ...yep, more beer. ]

There's a context too. I'll probably repeat myself from things I've told you before, so bear with me.

Myself, and my sister, Raven, were the only mutants I knew about for a long time. This remains the case for many of us, and it was the case, as well, for Erik, who had no one. We ran into each other during a fraught moment -- I was assisting the CIA with tracking down a man named Shaw who presented a threat and was aligned with other mutants. Erik was on a similar path, except he meant to murder this man, but would have gotten himself killed had I not intervened, and shown him my own nature.

[ He's being similarly generous in his information, but there will be retained a hard line, where he will not spill Erik's personal background to Severus, his motivations. Just enough, to make things clear. ]

We worked together for a time, finding other mutants, and tracking Shaw. I helped him with his own ability, and I suppose we had an understanding, as well as a debate. I sought to integrate ourselves, openly, into human society. He has a great mistrust for them. A dangerous one. But I thought we wanted the same thing, in the end.

[darkart]

[ Charles hasn't actually told him very much. He's mentioned things, and Severus has observed him discussing things with other people, but he hasn't shared personally - and Severus hasn't asked. Not out of a respect for his privacy, but because it hasn't occurred to him to do so. Not really. His disregard for other people despite being someone who's given up his life for the greater good is kind of shit.

Maybe he's learning. ]

But you don't.

[ This sounds familiar, even if being friends is not. ]