nextgenerationmarvel | Everything Falling Apart (Brooke, Marcelo, Mansion Folk)

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Everything Falling Apart (Brooke, Marcelo, Mansion Folk)

WHEN: One week after the Hellfire Club soiree
WHAT: Stephanie is a complete mess, guys.
WHO: Could be a variety of folks, honestly. This is just laying the fields of awful.
WHERE: The Mansion.

The first day she'd just been angry and confused at Marcelo for insulting her friend, a man who had done so much to help the family. She'd felt a strange feeling of pride in her father, and she'd wanted more than anything to keep him on that path he'd drawn out for himself. She just figured she needed a night of time out, and Marcelo would apologize and she'd probably feel like she was a bit too hard on him. He'd always done nothing but support her, and he was probably wary. And it probably wasn't too bad that he was wary. Her father had hurt her in the past, he really had.

The second day, she'd called Xavier's and, revealing as little as possible, indicated that she needed, if possible, to stay with them for a time. They'd been supportive enough. She felt a little bit better, she swore, though she still couldn't quite reach out and call Marcelo or Reginald. In fact, Crane had called. The picture of solicitude. He came off a little cool and reserved to people that didn't know him, but he'd always been warmly supportive of her. She'd convinced a very skeptical board that she should succeed her father. It was only right and natural. Sebastian was a king, and they could all agree she had the talents. With Sebastian returned of course, that complicated things, but Crane had quietly let it be known that he expected Sebastian would eventually hand the reins to her. Managing the global Hellfire Club was a full-time job, more than, and Shaw Industries would be in good hands.

She'd listened to the message, but she hadn't called him back. Something felt wrong and she swore the voice seemed more cold and distant on that messaging machine than it ever did in life.

Naturally, they didn't believe that at the school. Marcelo had contacted Tessa- no, not Tessa, Sage now, and she'd contacted the others. She was understanding enough when they spoke to her, but she wasn't fully convinced. It didn't quite add up. They hadn't been there. They didn't know Reginald. And yet, he had sounded cold and distant and almost inhuman on the phone.

The third day, she'd felt numb, so numb that she'd actually intentionally nicked herself while shaving her legs. It hurt. So at least there was sensation, if there wasn't feeling. There was blood too, so she was actually alive. Everything else felt so strange and greyed-out, though. She couldn't bring herself to cry, even though she knew she'd probably feel better if she did. She only spoke to people when she was spoken to, or when she absolutely needed to talk.

On the fourth day, she'd asked to participate in one of the training simulations, to keep her skills sharp if nothing else. She suspected Logan agreed to it because that's how he would deal with trauma or pain or frustration. It had felt good at first, distracting, but then a horrifying inchoate rage had crept up and they'd had to shut down the lesson, and then shut her down, before she either destroyed the Danger Room or killed someone. Despite the hard-light technology, there were still some ugly burnmarks and even molten gashes in the walls of the Room itself. When spoken to about it later, she had no recollection of anything other than a rage so all-consuming that it blanked out all sense of reality.

She'd spent the fifth day in a sobbing mess, refusing to leave her room, apologizing profusely and apparently sending out such disturbing emotional messages that they'd actually gone in and ensured nothing sharp or poisonous was in her room. What she hadn't told them was that she wasn't going to kill herself, because firstly, she felt like she was already mostly dead, and secondly, because she didn't deserve the peace that would come with that. She'd betrayed everyone she cared about.

It was on the sixth day that she'd formally given permission to look inside her mind. What they found was a complete scabbed mess, parts twisted in a way that was not compatable with telepathy (much more insidious and cancerous) , but also evidence of finer telepathic manipulations. Ones that could not easily be undone, even by Rachel. One that had clearly been slipped into her mind like a computer virus. Others that had been slipped in, despite an anti-telepathic implant that, if removed and looked at, would show signs to be calibrated to allow telepathic manipulations from a single individual. Sabotaged, perhaps, or specifically designed for that purpose?

It was a week later, before she was able to contact Marcelo again- shamefully, it was by text message, because she didn't trust herself to talk. She needed to say it before some insidious programming broke out of her head and onto the phone.

I'm sorry. I love you, but I'm not myself. You were right about everything. I have to stay here until my mind is sorted out. Please visit soon, with Sancho.

I'm so sorry, Marcelo. Please forgive me.

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"Come in." Stephanie sounded and projected a certain careworn voice, but it seemed like things had settled at least slightly since the disastrous last few days. Indeed, Stephanie felt a crystal clarity about things. She knew she wasn't ready to do what needed to be done, not yet. But she knew what had to be done. Or at least, she thought she did.

Truthfully, she wasn't quite sure how much she should trust herself, even when what she was thinking was contrary to the will of those who had tormented her thusly.

Rachel entered Stephanie's room and quietly closed the door behind her. She gave the young woman a calm smile.

"How are you today?" She stepped in from the doorway as she glanced Stephanie over. Assess first since things changed from day to day.

"I'm starting to realize just what's happened to me." Stephanie replied. "I'm not feeling good at all. I feel like a puppet, like a pawn. And I never, ever, want to be used like this again, by anyone."

Stephanie was currently holding a fragile equilibrium between deep self-loathing and rage.

"I know I can't do what needs to be done right now. I'm not strong enough. And that's a very hard thing for me to admit. I like to help other people. I don't like accepting help, but I need it. Desperately." She managed to hold Rachel's gaze while saying all of this.

"Asking for help is usually the hardest thing a person has to do," Rachel assured calmly. She moved over to right in front of Stephanie and then sat on thin air to be at the same eye level with her.

"What happened to you is not your fault. I will give you all the assistance you need. As will all of the staff at Xavier's. You're also stronger than you know at the moment." She offered her hands, palms up to her.

Stephanie nodded. It was ... not as bad as realizing your mind wasn't entirely your own, but it was hard. It was also harder to recognize that you'd made a horrible mistake. That you thought you could balance something, enjoy the benefits of corruption while staying relatively clean of it yourself. That it wouldn't just chew you up and spit you out.

That, maybe, deep down, she had value to her father as something other than a tool. She'd nearly forgotten that hope, just to have it brought back and snuffed out again, even more cruelly.

She reached out and took Rachel's hands. "I need my mind cleared. I need to find a way of making sure this cannot happen to me ever again. I'll have to cut any links, ties or benefits I ever received from my father or the Hellfire Club." Not that she'd directly done much with the Club, but she'd indirectly benefitted from those associations several times. But it was becoming manifestly clear that those connections were not at a price she was willing to pay.

"I know Sebastian Shaw has never been, in any measure, a good man." She deliberately eschewed the honorific of 'father'. "But he's become worse, I think, since he's returned. Perhaps that's another illusion too and he's always been like this."

She frowned and struggled not to lower her head in shame, but she kept it up. "They need to be taken down."

"I can help undo the mental and emotional damage. What I can't get, I know of someone who can help." Despite her power and skills, Rachel knew there was one woman with skills more honed than hers and with intimate knowledge of the Hellfire Club. She just had to work up her own nerves beyond her personal reservations to approach her.

She noted Stephanie's hands felt warm. It was unusual for Rachel since she regulated her own temperature to the warmer side. Freezing in mutant camps made her unconsciously use her greater power and control now want to stay warm.

"I have a... very colored view on the man. So, I couldn't give you an untainted answer. But there's one thing for certain. You do know what a good man is." It was a gentle prod. Something to get Stephanie to not dwell on the darkness of the moment. Ray needed her anchored to something that could pull her beyond vengeance. Something or someone who could give Stephanie a future.

Stephanie nodded. She knew exactly what Rachel was getting at.

"I do." She said quietly. "I love him, and it hurts to be away from him now, but I can't go out there yet." Of course, she wanted to see him and she felt like she would be able to see him now, but home wasn't safe. Too close to social connections. Too easy to accidentally pick up the phone and have Crane rope her back in. Or to pay her a visit.

This was about as safe as a place could be from them.

"He'll understand." Rachel would talk to him, too. He was human and probably very not used to this kind of thing. As sadly common as it could be in the mutant world.

"And he'll have to be your anchor in this. As I work. I need you to hold onto him, how you love him, and what he means to you. Because what has been laid in your mind, it couldn't touch that. It protected the core of you, so that you're here. That you can get help." Ray pulled her feel off the floor and floated there, sitting lotus-style. The physical connection between their hands strengthening the psychic bond that would be needed.

"We can probably get in a short session here. Chip away at it some more. Nothing too taxing before you have a visitor later."

Stephanie nodded.

"Yes." She could do that. She could hold onto that, use him as an anchor. He was, after all. Without him, she probably would've been completely sucked into the void. It was that which had allowed her to go here in the first place, to find help.

"Yes. Let's do this." Stephanie nodded and tried her best to think of Marcelo, instead of all the hideous, dark thoughts about what had happened to her and what she'd been through.

Rachel smiled softly. "Close your eyes. Deep breaths. Think of Marcelo."

Those were the last words Rachel said aloud. Anything else would come mentally. She carefully entered as she was let in. No force, just gentle flowing in. Rachel's eyes were open but unseeing as she floated there.

Her consciousness strengthened the path she used to get in. To help heal it to wholly under Stephanie's control. To fight off tendrils of things wanting to creep back.

I'm here, Stephanie. Together, we'll undo this. Lean on me as much as you need. Hold onto him as firmly as you can.

Stephanie didn't resist her, just kept holding on to thoughts of Marcelo. Her mind was a treacherous place, though much progress had been made. There were the thick cancerous vines of unfamiliar manipulations, along with the more subtle traps laid by a master telepath. She felt Marcelo's hand in hers, guiding them along the path.

I can see where to go. There's ... there's where all my ambitions were played upon. To keep me involved even when I should have known better.

Rachel, a small glowing phoenix in Stephanie's mind, stayed alongside her as they moved where directed. She cleared out what small things that came at them.

Follow the path. It's your mind, so your instincts are best here. When it gets hard, stop. That's where we'll work on clearing.

It didn't take long before they got to something that made Stephanie stop. It was a swirling miasma of loathsome green, grey and brown colours that coalesced into the image of Reginald Crane. At first, as the calm, efficient professional. Then as Stephanie's trusted counselor and friend.

And then, finally, in his true visage, dull grey eyes hiding an astonishing amount of manipulative cruelty. The blank expression became a cold sneer and he reached out towards Stephanie and the perception of Marcelo.

Always with the evil color scheme. Rachel was ever so thankful that this man couldn't mask what he did behind enough things to hide it from Rachel. It was less perilous than the traps set by someone who knew what he was doing.

Rachel spread a wing out. Her own force was behind the energy she plucked from Stephanie. She was the back up to the... glowing kitten that came out from Stephanie and her mental anchor.

The fiery raptor blinked but didn't question the small protector. She put energy behind it to stop this manipulation from grabbing hold of Stephanie.

Stephanie was not going to let this manipulation grab ahold of her. She moved out of the way as quickly as she could and then ... then came the small glowing representation of Sancho, who immediately started batting at the tentacles with his paws.

I have a cat. Was Stephanie's mental thought as psi-Sancho proved himself to be surprisingly adept at dealing with horrific mental illusions.

A very adept cat. As Stephanie moved out of the way, Rachel brightened. She provided enough illumination to try to make sure Stephanie did not escape into something worse.

She kept an eye on the cat dealing with the dead eyed man. The healing worked better when Stephanie or her small, furry avatar in this case did more of the banishing of what Reginald Crane had done. The other manipulations needed more of Rachel's own work.

He is the best damn cat. Stephanie echoed, looking determined, and clearing some of the tangle herself, as Sancho did some of his own. That was when Rachel would've noticed something, almost invisible in the muck surrounding her. It looked like a land mine. A flailing tentacle set off another one, creating an explosion which seemed to shake the entire mindscape.

... that looks pretty dangerous.

Two in the area mean there were more around most likely. She tapped further into her own power to get some psychic hand tools into her raptor claws.

It is. Not Crane's work. Keep doing what you're doing. If you have to move out of the way, go back the way we came here. Don't come near me at the moment.

Careful about the psychic reverberations the phoenix turned into an armor-clad woman with a hand trowel and a scalpel. She crouched down next to the mental booby trap. The energy for this would come from Rachel herself rather than Stephanie.

I understand. Stephanie resumed hacking about the undergrowth. The mine was a delicate mechanism- it would be less about the application of brute power, of which Rachel had plenty, than that of skill.

It was at that moment that Rachel would notice a small red dot settling on her.

Rachel really wanted to think 'well, shit' in there. However, that would not be very confidence inspiring for someone who had been emotionally shattered.

The trowel turned into a shield since brute force was not the call for the day and defenses were. She put the shield up in front of her as she checked behind her on Stephanie. Seeing the person whose mind she was in doing fine, she turned back to whatever was going to hit her and probably hit her hard.

"You're in the wrong neighbourhood, chickadee." A faintly familiar drawl said from the shadows as a beam of energy erupted from a strange weapon. One that, while not actually breaking Rachel's shield, would strain it heavily.

More shadowy visages started coalescing out of seemingly nowhere. The Marauders. All of them, by the looks of it.

"Doc should've put up a sign. This bitch's brain is his now." A mentally-projected Arclight sneered, sending a seismic wave rolling towards Rachel, Stephanie, Marcelo and the projected Sancho.

Rachel lost the scalpel and shoved that power into shields. She expanded them to protect Stephanie's consciousness as well.

Well, this confirms Sinister. Freaking family stalker. Pull back, Stephanie. We've done enough for today.

She would rather not turn Miss Shaw into a vegetable taking out the mental booby traps. As much as she was loathe to admit it, Rachel needed help. Someone with more scalpel precision.

She did as Rachel ordered and before long, they were back in her head. She frowned slightly in thought.

"This is going to take awhile, isn't it?" She'd certainly suspected it might before, but it seemed clear that it would now.

But progress had been made, and would continue to be made.

Rachel was floating a bit higher than she had been before entering Stephanie's mind. She ramped down her powers and carefully put her feet on the floor.

"Yes, I'm afraid this will take awhile. We'll keep chipping at it, but I'm going to need some help with what Sinister's done." That it was Sinister and who she felt would be the greatest help did not make her feel any better. She frowned momentarily before going into a slight smile. "Though you are doing wonderfully against what Crane has done. We'll pick this up again tomorrow."

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Everything Falling Apart (Brooke, Marcelo, Mansion Folk)

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