Library Conversations (rp for cyke_out)

[a_sloane]

The library was quickly becoming a favorite place, which disconcerted Arvin Sloane to some degree. He hated being predictable. Still. It reminded him of Zurich, not of Los Angeles, which he found preferable, and yet had an atmosphere of its own. The mysterious Charles Xavier, who had come and gone before Sloane moved into the mansion, must have created it, and it was entertaining and challenging to identify hidden doors, books that didn't belong, which one one but an avid reader would notice, and sometimes just to enjoy the quiet.

Sloane had forgotten how teenagers could be. He had missed both Sydney's and Nadia's teenage years, and there had been no reason to involve himself with others. Sometimes he thought teaching them was being locked up with ten to fifteen versions of Marshall Flinkman and Julian Sark; they were either over eager, or sullen and unsubtly sarkastic. Irina, he remembered, had taught when playing Laura Bristow, and she had raised Sark. Clearly, she was even stronger than Sloane had always thought her to be.

So here he was, retreating in the library, looking forward to working on his idea for infiltrating and invading first the Sentinel outside and then SHIELD which was supposed to be a surprise gift for his, well, hosts, when realizing this time, he wasn't alone. There was already someone in the library. Scott Summers. Looking somewhat harrassed himself.

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[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

Sloane has a sudden memory of Nadia's blood on his hands, which doesn't make sense; he had stood several feet away from her and Sydney when shooting her. There was no blood when she crumbled. Well, it's not hard to guess that the mind plays tricks and uses appropriate metaphors, he thinks, pushing the image away and ignoring the fact it carries a different sense memory than that night in Svogoda with it as well.

"Not at the end," he says. "She wasn't herself then; she had been drugged by -"

Her aunt. Her foster mother. Who wouldn't have been able to do so if not for Sloane having pursued that particular line of research years earlier.

"- someone who tried to use her as a weapon against everything Nadia held dear."

And before that, she must have believed that he had betrayed her. Ironic that the only way she wouldn't have believed it at the end would have been if she recognized what he did when shooting her; stopping her from killing her sister.

"But a few weeks before, I was in a - well, you could say I had a choice to make."

Explaining about wandering inside one's own memories was probably a bit too convoluted to explain, but then, given everyone's talents here, Scott Summers might actually have had a similar experience himself

"And frankly, I thought I should remain where I was."

I was a good man once, but now I am a monster. There is no place for monsters in this world, Nadia.

"But my daughter thought otherwise. She told me she believed in me."

Nadia's voice, telling him that Emily and Jaqueline were gone, had been for a long time, the choice between a past that never was and thus never could betrayed inside his own mind and reality, embodied by his daughter who had seen the worst he could be in a way he had always been able to prevent Emily from.

I believe in you, Dad.

"So I think - I hope - that she knew."

There's that image again, as false as the memory of Emily carrying a living Jaqueline in her arms, of Nadia's blood on his hands. With an effort, he puts it into the black hole in his mind that swallows what he won't, can't look at, and focuses on Scott again.

"It is not always easy, working with family members," he says, trying not to make it sound like a platitude. "And yet sometimes the results can be... extraordinary, rather because of the differences than inspite of them. Nadia's half sister Sydney and her father spent most of Sydney's adolescence unable to to talk with each other for longer than five minutes, and yet once they started working together, the results were magnificent. Maybe your children and yourself will surprise each other in a similar way, one day."

When those children are grown up, as Sloane has their age rather wrong. Of course he also neglects to mention that magnificent Jack and Sydney cooperation hinged on a) him recruiting Sydney against Jack's wishes and b) both of them working against him. The more recent state of affairs, with Sydney believing Jack killed Irina and freezing him out again for a while before starting to trust him again, gets also edited out of the recount. Besides. Both, in Sloane's mind, prove his point anyway; he knows what is best for his Bristows even if they don't, and what is best for them is working together, with him, even if it is against him.

The practical application here for the Summers clan: there should be a reunion sooner or later. Surely, a mutual foe can be produced?

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

She wasn't herself. . .

Scott hears the words and shakes his head. How many times has this been true of himself, of people he cares about. "God," he says, "I'm sorry."

He stops speaking for a moment and looks at Sloane, trying to get a good measure of him. He doesn't want to forget that he and Emma have assessed what they could of this man's past, and determined that a lot of it was almost certainly unsavory. Scott needed someone to talk to, and Sloane was providing that, but was it just a way of earning his trust? In any case, the stories, like his own, are almost certainly edited for content and context.

"One of these days," he says, "you and I are going to sit down and tell each other some real stories. Whole stories. But --" He reaches down for his book, remembers the other he came for, and heads to the shelf. "I have a feeling," he says, "that today is not that day. I have what I need. I've been here too long anyway. Enjoy the library, it's what you came for."

And he heads toward the door.