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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"The emotions I can feel," Brooke said softly as she lowered herself onto a chair near Stephanie's bed. Waves of cold anger washed over Brooke, and she absorbed the emotions without letting them affect her. She understood now why Rachel had sent Topher Summers away.

"This was because of the soiree, wasn't it? Something happened there that night?" Because what else could it be? That was when Stephanie had suddenly started acting differently. Towards Marcelo, at least. And perhaps towards her father, a little.

"Yes. Something happened there. But this goes way beyond that, Brooke." Stephanie took a deep breath. She was just about to say something about how Marcelo was right about Crane, but that would bring up things that she didn't really want to tell Brooke.

"Think about how you felt after the speech. Play back a recording of the speech, or see it on YouTube or something. It won't feel the same way." Stephanie spoke carefully, gauging Brooke's response. "Something happened to everyone at the party."

"Brooke." Stephanie took another breath before going on. "Can I trust you not to say a word about this to anyone else?"

Brooke thought back to the speech. She very clearly remembered being on board with everything announced there, but then it was hard not to be. Mutants were a superior species, and they should rightfully rule.

She very much believed that.

But she had felt those things rather intensely. Far more intensely than she normally did.

She looked up from her lap to meet Stephanie's gaze, twisting the carnelian ring that she always wore, feeling rather unsettled.

"What's going on, S?" It went without saying that Brooke wouldn't say a word of this to anyone.

Not that anyone would listen to her, anyway.

"Crane did something at the party to manipulate everyone. And he's been doing it to me for months. And ... I think other people have been inside my mind as well. Essex, probably, judging by the fact that even Rachel's been having trouble getting rid of all of it." She met Brooke's gaze evenly, a steely look on her face.

"I'm done with this, Brooke. I am finished with this Hellfire bullshit. I am finished with being manipulated and used to suit other people's evil agendas. I am finished with my father and I am done with the Hellfire Club."

Brooke was silent for a long moment. Those last words, they were not words that she particularly wanted to hear. After all, Brooke had been groomed from a young age to take a place in the Hellfire Club one day. Preferably as one if the club's many queens.

And she was a rook right now, so she was clearly (hopefully) moving up in the world.

There was a second where Brooke was honestly tempted to use her powers on Stephanie and have her feel differently.

She stifled that impulse immediately and swore never to speak of it.

"I'm not sure how to react to that news," she said, in a moment of startling, unmanipulative honesty for her.

If Brooke ever dared to do that, now, their friendship would turn into immediate and unrelenting emnity. When she said she was through with being manipulated, she wasn't making an idle comment. It was more or less a mission statement.

"Thank you for your honesty." It wasn't really what Stephanie wanted to hear either, but she could appreciate it was hard for Brooke to say the unvarnished truth. She reached out and took Brooke's hand.

"Brooke, your friendship means a lot to me. It really does. But you need to understand that the Hellfire Club has made an enemy of me." Perhaps, in a theoretical world where Sebastian and Crane and Essex were gone, that could be different. But she doubted it. She suspected that the Club molded people as much as people molded it.

"I know this is putting you in a difficult place. But for me to say anything different would be a lie. And you deserve the truth."

Brooke squeezed Stephanie's hand warmly, mustering some semblance of a smile onto her face.

It wasn't a very good smile.

For an empath, Brooke was not someone who was very good with her feelings, and this was one of those moments where her feelings failed her.

"I'm the Red Rook, Stephanie," she said softly. "Of the London Inner Circle, yes, but still. I'm an actual member of the Club." She looked away from Stephanie, down at her carnelian ring. "Does that make us enemies?"

Stephanie was afraid of this. But she wasn't going to back down from this, because she could not go back into that world. To go back willingly now would mean losing everything that was dear to her. To turn her back on what she knew was a better path.

"I know you are." Stephanie wasn't a fool, she didn't expect Brooke would let go of her ambitions for her sake. It was a disappointing thing to consider, though. She didn't blame, Brooke. She wished she could offer blanket reassurance, but she couldn't. It wouldn't be right, or honest.

"I hope not." Her real enemies in a visceral sense were her father and his allies amongst the Lords Cardinal. But ... Sebastian Shaw was Brooke's overlord. "I hope we can find a way to be friends." But she wasn't going to lie and assume it was going to be easy, for either of them.

"There's this...honestly, I'm fighting back the impulse to make this about me," Brooke said, her voice a little more hoarse than it was before. "Because you've been through something horrible, and I want to support you and help you heal." Which were big steps for a sociopath, but Stephanie was Brooke's first friend in a long, long while who she'd never had to empathically manipulate into liking her. The last person who'd had that sort of connection with Brooke had been Roxie Danvers, and that friendship had died once they'd entered high school.

"But I understand. Or at least, I'm telling myself that I do. You have to do what's best for you, and your relationship with your father is obviously toxic." She reached up and wiped away a tear. It seemed like the ones she loved the most were always pulled away by her from fate for one reason or another. This could very well be another casualty of that.

"But I'll never make a move against you. You know that, right?" Because, unlike Stephanie, Brooke was completely okay with giving a blanket reassurance.

Stephanie knew that it was difficult for Brooke. She never really could quite give Brooke the label sociopath but she knew that the girl did not see things the same way as she did. It was more than understandable given her background. What was astonishing, in many ways, was that she wasn't exactly the same.

"Thank you." Stephanie replied, honestly, without any guile. When Brooke wiped away the tear, she suddenly pulled Brooke into a tight hug.

"Or I, you." She knew that Brooke needed to have people trust her nearly as much as Stephanie needed the friendship. She decided to make that leap.

"Besides," Brooke said, "You were always...the Club didn't quite suit you." While Stephanie was smart and strong and rich and beautiful and powerful and all of the other things that the Club liked the members of their Inner Circle to have, she also had a sense of integrity and dignity and social warmth that some of the members seemed to lack.

As much as Brooke didn't want to admit it, Stephanie was better than that. Brooke herself had only been groomed for the Club, first by her mother, then by her father.

She pulled away, then, her eyes searching Stephanie's face. "Marcelo. You guys had a fight that night. Is he...is he aware of what's going on with you?" Okay, she didn't much care for the man because he wasn't a proper New York society person, but she had clearly felt Stephanie's love for him.

It was dazzlingly, painfully pure. Or at least it seemed that way to Brooke.

"I'm sure he's hurting, too."

Stephanie took a deep breath and nodded. "No. It never did. And I should have known better than to think that it could ever have." Though she was suspecting that had been groomed into her too. It was hard to know, what was her own folly and what had been manipulated into her.

She couldn't explain how exactly she'd managed to be that way, she certainly hadn't been raised to be anything other than resentful, ambitious and power-hungry. And yet, she did want other things. She enjoyed her privilege and wouldn't have dreamed of giving up dreams of wealtha nd power entirely, yes, but she also wanted to have a positive impact in the world, not just for her own glorification, but because it was the right thing to do.

"He does, yes." Stephanie replied. "I'm certain he is, just as much as I am. And it hurts, almost physically, not having him here, not being home with him."

It was all that, and more. Her love for her him, the love they shared, was the best thing she'd ever had. The one thing that was completely, totally non-negotiable.

"But I need to get myself right before I can go back. Because a lot is going to need to happen when I do." She offered up a tiny, sad little smile. "Also, we have a kitten together and he's probably missing me too. I ... don't think I ever really told you about Sancho?"

"No, you haven't," Brooke smiled a little more genuinely this time. Rachel, she was sure, was going to help Stephanie out with the issues. Realistically speaking, she was one of the only ones on the X-Men who could, with maybe the exception of Jean Grey.

Who wasn't around at the moment.

Brooke bit back a scowl. Originally, she'd only come to Xavier's to get help in learning to control and use her powers. She'd been an enemy of the X-Men's though.

Well, maybe enemy was too strong a world. At this point, Brooke had probably fought with the X-Men more than she had against them.

And now she was realizing that she was genuinely starting to like some of them.

Ugh!

Pushing those thoughts away, though, she squeezed her best friend's hand. "But tell me about him. And about Marcelo." Because talking about those things would help heal Stephanie, and Brooke was willing to do anything for that to happen.

It was at that point that Stephanie Shaw did something that few people would ever believe of her. She took out her phone and started showing Brooke pictures and videos of Sancho, of which it soon became apparent she had no lack.

Sancho, as it happened, was an utterly adorable, but rather large Maine coon kitten. Who had already become an accomplished spider-killer (a good thing, because Stephanie had a deep instinctive loathing of spiders) and had a love bordering on obsession with yogurt.

Stephanie sniffed a little bit and wiped away a tear of her own showing Brooke all this. "He probably has no idea what's happened to his Mommy. But Marcelo will take good care of him."

Brooke moved from the chair to the bed so that they could sit closer. She looked at the pictures, taking all of it in, trying to share in her friend's happiness. It became easier when Brooke opened herself up enough and actually felt Stephanie's happiness.

She understood it a lot more.

A sense of wistfulness washed over Brooke as she listened to Stephanie, wrapping her arms around her friend as she sniffled.

This was, she realized, quite possibly one of the last times that the would be in this sort of close, jovial mood. Who knew how Stephanie's decision - how the machinations of the Hellfire Club - would end up tearing them apart?

But she pushed those thoughts away. Now? Now it was all about Brooke and her best friend.

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Everything Falling Apart (Brooke, Marcelo, Mansion Folk)

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