nextgenerationmarvel | Rage of Innocence

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Rage of Innocence

Brooke was pretty sure she knew why she had been summoned into Rachel’s office. She waited outside, dressed in a floral-print Dolce and Gabbana dress and blue suede Christian Louboutins, both freshly delivered from Barney's. She wanted to appear mature, adult, and demure, projecting the image of a young woman who was savagely attacked by a little blonde monster from the ninety-nine percent who was hating on Brooke for no reason other than the fact that Brooke owned shoes that the mangy little snow rat could never afford.

Or something to that effect.

Would Rachel buy it?

Brooke doubted that. Granted, given the history between Rachel’s family and Brooke’s, it was hardly likely that the red-haired telepath would ever take the brunette empath’s side on anything.

Meanwhile, Bobbi was probably getting taught how to make ice cream with her powers so she could give herself a treat whenever she picked on someone better than her.

She sighed and continued waiting for Rachel, reading out of a book of short stories by Edith Wharton. At least Edith Wharton could always be counted upon to bring some class and sophistication, if no one else could.

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Oh, what Rachel would have given to to be the one to talk to Bobbi instead of Brooke. Though it was probably best Doug handled Bobbi while the redhead continued to handle Miss Wyngarde.

She came down the hallway, stripping her jacket off from taking a psychometric reading from the incident. She had shared what she had read with Doug as she had read it. As she moved down the hallway, she let go of her jacket. It hung in the air like it was on a peg as it followed behind her.

"I apologize for being late," Rachel said as the door to the office opened up. "This way, Miss Wyngarde."

Brooke watched the jacket with mild interest, a little jealous for a moment. What she would give to have the power of telekinesis. Make-up application and blow-drying would be so much easier, and she wouldn't miss Sharona half as much.

Brooke stood up and shut her book. She smoothed down her dress and gave Rachel her brightest, and sunniest smile.

She looked more like a predator about to dress down a beggar child.

"I was probably a few minutes early," Brooke said. "You know me. Always on time."

She followed Rachel into her office, praying the woman wouldn't Phoenix-out on her.

Rachel quirked an eyebrow but decided not to comment on the fake sunshine girl following her in the room. Her jacket floated over to a peg on the wall as the door shut behind Brooke.

"Please, have a seat." The office was a lot cleaner than the last time Brooke had been in it. All the paperwork had been caught up and filed away. Every thing had been straightened. The furniture replaced after one student's minor explosion...

The redhead rounded her desk and grabbed a file that had floated out of the file cabinet.

Brooke lowered herself into one of the chairs across from Rachel's desk. She set her book on the seat next to hers and then reached up to ensure that her chignon was perfectly in place.

"Before you begin, I want to apologize for my part in that horrible event the other day," she said, starting before Rachel had a chance to. "It was unfortunate, what happened, but rest assured, I'm not going to press charges against her for ruining an eight-hundred-dollar pair of shoes." Though if Rachel wanted to force the girl to work it off and pay Brooke back, she certainly wouldn't complain. "After all, she's still learning how to control her powers."

Rachel pressed her lips together for a moment before calmly taking her seat. The file in her hand was labeled "Wyngarde, B." She set it down, unopened in the middle of her desk.

"I would believe that apology if you actually meant it, Brooke." She clasped her fingers together and set her hands down on top of the file. She looked calmly at Brooke. "Bobbi is being disciplined for her part in the incident, but she was not wholly at fault from what I read off the surrounding area."

Brooke was silent for a moment. "I see." Brooke stared at her file for a moment. It was astonishingly thick for someone who hadn't been at the Institute for very long. "Well, as I said, I did have a part to play in the...altercation...between Bobbi and myself," she said carefully. "But certainly, you must understand that I wasn't the first one to turn to using my mutant gifts in the incident."

Since Rachel was a telepath, she was quite still for a moment. She usually did things internally so there wasn't a lot of extraneous gesturing for her. "No, I understand she started with the small prank. And as I said, she's being disciplined for the incident. I'm actually more concerned about what spurred her on and some things I have been noticing during your stay here at Xavier's."

Thus, the reason for the thick file under Rachel's hands.

"She may have been embarrassed. Frumpy Dumpty had quite a great fall from her branch in the tree and all that," Brooke said lightly, waving Bobbi's little issue away. "Raging hormones, and noticing that someone like me witnessed her little tumble...well. You can imagine how she felt." She paused and tilted her head. "What sort of things? You know I haven't empathically tried to make any of the girls here my minions."

Rachel's eyes narrowed momentarily as she added yet another tick mark to her list of things. Or making the ones she had that much bolder.

"It's more a pattern of behavior you've had. I've consulted with the Professor to see if he would have the same conclusions. He did, and we both find it a little troubling for someone with your powers." For all she was usually bothered by the girl, Rachel was trying to lay things out carefully.

"The pattern of behavior closely follows Dissocial personality disorder. As laid out by the World Health Organization, there are six to seven characteristics as part of it. Having at least three means it's likely you have it. By my estimation, you have around four."

Brooke stared blankly at Rachel for a long, silent moment.

She blinked and then looked down at the file again before looking back at Rachel. "Dissocial? Look, I know I haven't exactly been Miss Social Butterfly around here, but that's mostly because I can't begin to guess how to connect with these people." She paused. "Besides, you didn't seem too thrilled about my plan to take all the girls for make overs to Barneys that time I suggested it. But, away from this place, I really am quite the social young woman, so I can't possibly imagine where you or the Professor would get that preposterous idea from."

Rachel was unphased by the staring. She picked her words to be slightly less clinical.

"It's a sociopathic personality disorder, Brooke. There is a great concern when someone with empathic powers displays no non-powered empathy. You run the risk of becoming like the former Hellion Manuel de la Rocha."

Like my father.

The fact of the matter was that Brooke didn't know a lot about her father. Her mother had kept his entire existence away from her, and anything that she had learned, she'd learned from Manuel himself.

"Just because my family has a somewhat shady history-" Jason Wyngarde's dealings with Jean Grey and Lorna Dane for one, her mother's altercations with the X-Men for another, and her father's history with the New Mutants for a third... "-doesn't mean I'm a sociopath. And really? Three out of seven? That's not even half." Granted, four out of seven was more than half, but Brooke wasn't about to point that out to Rachel, who no doubt was already well aware of that fact.

And then Brooke paled. Brooke had never actually told anyone who her father was, after having found out a few short months ago, and here she was, thinking about him in front of one of the world's most powerful telepaths.

Rachel blinked. She had caught the force behind those thoughts. And the thoughts themselves. She would have to check with Sage who kept up on the Hellfire Club information.

"Brooke, this is not 'you need all of these characteristics to have this.' You don't get out of it on a numbers game. You have at least three of the characteristics: you're suffering from it. This also has nothing to do with your family's history. This is about you and how you've been acting."

She was looking down in her lap now, following the lines of the ruched fabric as it tore through the floral pattern on her dress, disrupting it. She allowed herself a small, ironic smile before it faded. "May I please inquire as to what these symptoms are, Rachel?" She looked up at the other woman. "Just so I can understand a little bit more about this."

Rachel nodded slowly. She unlaced her fingers and sat back in her chair.

"The traits that have been observed are callous unconcern for the feelings of others, very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, an incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, and markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the you into conflict."

"An incapacity to experience guilt?" Brooke asked. "I can assure you, Rachel, I have felt guilt before. That's how I was able to use the feeling against Bobbi after she froze my -" Brooke closed her eyes. That was an admission of guilt, wasn't it?

That was an admission of guilt, but Rachel wasn't going to dwell on it. She already knew the truth of the encounter.

"I didn't say you were an extreme case, Brooke, but you are on a path that does cause some concern. Which is why I am trying to talk with you and explain what is going on."

Brooke relaxed a little. The admission of guilt was not jumped on. That was refreshing.

Unless it was going to be a bomb that was dropped on her later.

Her nostrils flared, but Brooke tried to hold back and relax. Because she was not aggressive.

She. Was. Not. Aggressive.

"So, what now? You lock down my powers and put me in solitary until I learn to behave like a better mutant being? Because, let's be honest, the putting blocks on powers thing has never worked well for anyone."

Pause.

Okay, maybe she was a little aggressive.

If Brooke was looking for a rise out of the older woman or any anger back. She kept her voice level and seemed unruffled by any aggression being shown.

"Despite some of the demonizing about what goes on at this school from the Hellfire Club, that is not a standard form of help used here." And there wouldn't need to be mental blocks as Forge can make some fashionable and wearable power dampeners. "Now, we offer help. I made you aware of the problem, and I don't think it would be fair to not try to help you work through the issues."

"Is it genetic, this thing? Mental? Chemical imbalances?" Because these were important questions that she needed answers to.

"And what did Manuel de la Rocha do that was so wrong, anyway?"

Because, in a way, that was an even more important question.

"It thought to be genetically based but typically there are environmental factors, such as family relations, that can trigger it," Rachel answered carefully. She had read up on it recently and was trying not to sound too textbook.

And the second question made Rachel glad it was her and not Doug handling this one. There was plenty of vehemence in her husband's dislike of Brooke's father. "As a member of the Hellions, he came to this school to undermine Magneto's confidence when he was schoolmaster. He got caught by two staff members while he was doing that. So, he turned their innocent mutual attraction into insatiable lust. And the insatiable is not meant in the figurative sense. Later on, he went to Nova Roma and empathically manipulated the girl he loved and the entire population to adore him and put him into power and prominence."

Brooke listened silently as Rachel filled Brooke in on her father's past, not really putting in a word edge-wise. She didn't know Manuel too well yet.

Finally, she said, "I don't believe my mother has ever been to Nova Roma."

Verbal confirmation that Manuel de la Rocha was Brooke's father?

Yes.

Oh, Brooke. Rachel felt a tiny bit sorry for her. Because whatever she constructed about her missing father was not going to be close to reality. The redhead took in a breath.

"No, he went to there with the former New Mutant Magma. He met your mother after he came out of hiding due to what he did in Nova Roma." Which from the timeline in Rachel's head sounded about right.

But Manuel had told her...

Brooke's brow furrowed.

Manuel had told her that Regan and his love and burned brightly, fiercely, but family issues had kept them from being together for too long, and so he'd reluctantly left her, breaking her heart.

Apparently that was why Regan had gone to the trouble of creating an illusion about a fake father.

"That doesn't make any sense." Brooke looked up at Rachel. "He's not...he's not like that."

"Is that what you assume or know from meeting him?" Rachel was carefully curious. She had a possible emotional timebomb sitting across from her. She could be safe, but students passing in the hall most likely wouldn't be.

Though, it had to be asked. If Brooke had talked to her father, there could even be more manipulation Manuel had done.

At this point in the conversation - which, this was not where Brooke was at all expecting this conversation to go - she knew there was no point in lying to Rachel.

The woman was one of the strongest telepaths on campus.

"I've met him. He introduced himself to me recently." She had actually summered with him in Spain and become the Red Rook to his Red King.

"I... see." Well, the twists just kept coming. Rachel rubbed her fingers across her mouth briefly. Pulling the right words together was not coming easily. She dropped her hand away.

"If I take a guess, Mr. de la Rocha told you your mother was the love of his life and that he had some vague reason that he was away for all these years. Either Hellfire Club business or something with his family in Spain. And he said he broke your mother's heart so badly that she couldn't bear to tell you about him. Am I somewhere in the ballpark there?"

"Apparently, my aunt Martinique didn't approve of the relationship, and so he broke things off with my mother, so she wouldn't ruin her relationship with her family." Not that Brooke could verify this, since Martinique was allegedly dead. "But they left things on a sour note, I suppose." Brooke nodded. "So yes, you're in the ballpark."

With all that the Wyngardes had done to her family, Rachel found it vaguely unsettling that she would side with them. However, the man who went by Empath was much worse at the mind games.

"I don't know that because I'm up on Wyngarde family events, Brooke. I honestly try to ignore what your family is currently doing if they're not apart of something that is threatening to Xavier's. I figured out what he said because it fits his profile. The traits I mentioned to you earlier? Your father hits all of them solidly. He's a master manipulator without his powers."

"..." Brooke tilted her head and studied Rachel for a long, solid moment. Despite the history between their families, Xavier's people were generally a goody-goody crowd. Rachel wouldn't lie to her.

But at the same time...

She frowned, softly.

"But, socio -" she couldn't bring herself to say the full word, now. It made her mouth feel wrong. "But, the condition...it's not permanent, right? It can be..." cured was never really the right word for mental issues, "dealt with?" Still not the right phrasing, probably. "What if he's changed?"

That? That was a daughter who wanted more than anything to believe that her parents had loved each other, and who wanted to hold on to the real flesh-and-blood father that her mother had denied her.

"Dissocial personality disorder," Rachel supplied helpfully. "Technical terms carry less stigma if it helps."

She was trying to tread carefully. She could see the desire to have a real, perfect father. "There's been positive results for therapeutic interventions, but that requires someone else bringing it to his attention to work on it. I can't honestly say if there's anyone with the strength to step in to do that for your father."

Because if Manuel did not like what you were saying, there would be hard emotional repercussions.

"I think I preferred it when I thought this conversation was going to be about taking away my privileges to go into the city for two weeks," Brooke said dryly.

"I won't apologize for being concerned about your well-being," Rachel noted. "And the incident with Bobbi just brought it to the fore."

"I wasn't searching for one," Brooke said. "Though I'll be sure to thank Bobbi for this startling little revelation." She crossed and uncrossed her legs, shifting in her seat. In a startling moment of clarity, she added, "Given all of the genetic information that's gone to create me, you realize that you pretty much have a Herculean task ahead of you, right? My Fair Lady, this isn't." Pause. "Even if I am the fairest lady of them all."

A bit of a wry grin peaked out from underneath Rachel's calm facade. "If we agree you're not Eliza Doolittle, then we have to agree I'm no Henry Higgins."

She stood up and offered her hand to Brooke. "If you'll agree to my help, I'll do my best to shoulder the herculean task in front of both of us. Things between our families are never easy, but I'm willing."

"Then I'll be thankful that Mr. Ramsey isn't Pickering." Brooke stood up and shook Rachel's hand. There was a good chance that, once their hands touched, Rachel would feel a swirling maelstrom of emotions beneath Brooke's seemingly calm, lightly-joking exterior.

"If this helps me become a polished, classy, beloved society matron one day," not to mention, the best queen the Hellfire Club had ever had, "then I'll work with you as best I can."

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Rage of Innocence

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