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Cal and Betsy - Way backdated
A still skittish Cal meets a telepath. Somehow, it doesn't all go to hell.
Cal looked, for the all the world, like he was simply lying in the grass, quite a way from any paths, and watching the few wisps of cloud in the otherwise blue sky. But his eyes were shock white, and he was in fact observing the currents of wind, the fluctuations in temperature, and the shifts in pressure. He could have done something to them, but he didn't feel any need to. It was fucking awesome as it was, and he was glad Ororo had talked him into trying out her mutation. Even if he'd had to leave Abs inside when he went flying.
Betsy Braddock had, it was true, seen grander grounds than those surrounding Xavier's. But there was something to the peacefulness of them here, the safety of them. Grandiosity and ostentatiousness did not always equate with true quality, she knew. There was a gentle breeze, here and there, and the day was beautiful. And, for the first time in quite some time, she felt at some peace. Based on the boy lying on the grass, she was not the only one. "Good afternoon," she greeted as she approached. He could reply or not as he saw fit, but she did not want to surprise him.
Cal hadn't realized the faint shifts in the air currents nearer the ground actually indicated that someone was approaching until he heard the soft, Brit-accented greeting, and he leaned up on his elbows, and then his hands, watching the newcomer - all warmth - for a beat before his eyes returned to their regular blue. Easier by far to distinguish features that way, without the heat signature getting in the way. "Hi," he answered, not without some wariness, because he never was without it. Not anymore.
He was quiet, Betsy noted idly. Too quiet. Mentally, that was. And yes, of course she reached out carefully when she met someone new. This might be a mutant school, but she and Wisdom had been hunted like animals, and she wasn't exactly in a trusting mood. "Nice to meet you," she said politely. "I'm Betsy."
Cal frowned when he felt a brush against his psi-walls, and all of a sudden, being on the ground wasn't a viable option. He got to his feet without showing any haste, despite feeling the need pretty urgently. "Yeah, don't do that."
She quirked an eyebrow. "Shall I close my eyes, as well? For what it is worth, I did not hear anything. That is why I pushed."
"Well, don't," Cal repeated, just watching her. He was a little too conscious of his own breathing.
Betsy shrugged. "If you insist." She was not going to break into his mind, even if she suspected she could. "You are a telepath, then."
"Right now, anyway," Cal answered, not seeming to relax any. If you insist. Like she was doing him a favor, not invading his mind. "I mimic mutations."
Interesting. She could only wonder at how useful and also how...overwhelming it must be. It had taken her quite some time to grow used to her own mutation, and she had but the one. She could scarcely imagine having several and at a moment's notice. Still, he was clearly on guard and distressed already, so now was not the time to ask him a mountain of questions. "Ah. Right, then. Well, I apologize."
"What for?" Cal asked, surprised by that, for all that he didn't look it.
"Making you uncomfortable. It was not my intention. It was merely....habit," she said. It perhaps underplayed quite how frequently she read those around her, both professionally and for personal reasons, but it was true that it was a habit as well. She did not imagine she could be faulted, given what had occurred.
"Okay," Cal acknowledged. "How come?"
Betsy shrugged unconcernedly. "Because someone was trying to kill me." It was as simple as that, no reason to hide it. The details, those perhaps could go unsaid for now, but the big picture was what it was.
Cal nodded; that would actually explain it. He thought it over for a moment, and then told her, "I'll let you check me for that, if you want."
She shook her head in the negative. "I do appreciate the offer," she said, giving him a small sincere smile "But you needn't put yourself out on my account. I do not truly believe you intend to harm me. As I said, it was just...habit."
Cal nodded again. He would have done it, but he was happier not having to. "So they're not trying anymore?" Whoever it had been, to kill her.
"No, they're not." She agreed. "I'm sorry, I do not believe I caught your name?"
"Sorry," Cal answered, because it was his bad. He'd gotten distracted by her probe, and never gotten back to it. "Cal. I'm Cal."
"Cal," she repeated. "Well, a pleasure to meet you. How long have you been here?" Betsy asked, redirecting the conversation away from her, from Pete Wisdom, from the people trying to kill them, and from S.T.R.I.K.E.
"A few weeks," Cal answered, wondering privately when that had happened. A few weeks, already. A few weeks of relative freedom. They had even gone out to town. He had been tempted to get on a bus and go, had even sat on a bench at the bus station for a while.
But where would he have gone? And there was Clint.
Betsy nodded. "And is it everything it seems?" She asked, voice light.
"Jury's still out," he answered, and his gaze cut to the side as he considered. "But it really does seem like it."
She gave him the hint of a flirtatious smirk. "A cautious man. I can appreciate that." Betsy tucked some hair behind her ear, and looked out over the grounds. "To hear Professor Xavier speak of it, it sounds almost too good to be true."
"Did you do the mindmeld thing with him?" Cal asked.
Betsy shook her head no. "Did you?" She asked, legitimately curious.
Cal nodded a little. "Yeah. As far as I can tell, it's legit. But... he's stronger, better than me."
She'd thought the same of her own odds against the older telepath. He was naturally gifted, so far as she could tell. More than she was, by Betsy's reckoning. Which was precisely why she'd not chosen to let him into her mind. She knew what kinds of things a driven telepath could do to a brain. She'd done many of them herself. "So your mimicking, then, it's not quite equal?"
Cal had been counting on her not making that leap; easy to have chalked it off to the old man's experience, instead. She was smart, actually thinking to ask that. "Not quite," he confirmed.
"Hmmm...is it only the mutation, or the attendant training as well?" She queried speculatively.
"How to use it, too," Cal confirmed with a nod. He was thankful they hadn't burned that out of him while trying to optimize him.
Betsy smiled at him. "That's lucky. I imagine taking on some mutations would be rather overwhelming otherwise," she observed.
He knew he should smile back, and so he did, a small smile. "Yeah. I'm mostly glad I can pick and choose."
Cal had a nice smile, and hers widened. "Can you keep them?" She asked with good natured curiosity.
"Xavier's not around," he pointed out.
"Ah, good point. Touché, Cal," Betsy said, chuckling softly. She pushed her hair out of her face, and looked over towards the lake. The weather was nice, the breeze was lovely, and now that Cal had relaxed at least an iota he was not so bad.
"When did you get here?" Cal asked, deliberately attempting to have something that might pass as a normal conversation with a new student. He even went as far as to slide his hands into the pockets of his jeans - good thing he had Billy's knives, and did not need his hands to direct them anywhere, if needed.
"A day or so ago," she said. Betsy waved her hands gracefully, though playfully, to indicate the lack of precision. "Time change and all, I fear I can't be more specific. But we've not been here long."
"We?" Cal echoed.
"Pete Wisdom and I," she explained. "He's about....somewhere."
"A compatriot?" Cal asked, prompting without pushing. He'd let it go if she didn't want to say anything about the guy.
"Fellow traveler of sorts," she said, sounding unconcerned. The trick, she had learned was sounding comfortable and confident and speaking just enough truth to sound honest, even as you hid what needed to be.
Yeah, that sounded like she didn't want to talk about him, and Cal moved on. "So you got here just in time for classes to end."
Betsy chuckled at that, a touch low and gravelly. It had always struck her as strange that, despite the body she'd taken having not been hers, her voice had not much changed. "I suppose so. Fortuitous, that."
"No summer school for you?" Cal asked.
"I think not, unless Professor Xavier decides to insist," Betsy said, nodding. "You?"
"I'm thinking about it," Cal admitted, frowning down at a patch of grass to the side. He shrugged, looked back at the girl. Betsy. "It'd be something to do."
Betsy nodded slowly. "Do you like school, then?" She asked. Though her academics had never suffered, it had never been something she sought out without reason. Her brother, however, could run academic circles around nearly anyone, so she was familiar with the type of person that did enjoy such things.
Cal used to. He used to like classes, like the contest of it, like working to be the best. But now it had all been twisted in on itself, and he shrugged. "I have a bunch of classes to make up for." He was banking on the fact that summer school classes would have fewer students, too.
She didn't push at that - he seemed the reticent sort, and anything that required additional make-up classes was likely to be a rather fraught topic - and instead simply nodded. "What do you think of the school?" Betsy asked instead. He was clearly skeptical, whether entirely through nurture or nature she could not say, and that was a perspective she appreciated. It meant he was observant, he would pick up on the small things.
Cal's shoulders tensed a bit, for a second, but he kept his hands inside his pockets, and then relaxed again. "It seems a lot like a private school with mutant powers thrown in. But then there's that bunch of students training to go out and fight, and a holo-room to train them." He'd been staying the fuck away from it.
Betsy hummed softly in acknowledgement. "Ah, yes, his little teen vigilantes that came to get us."
"You don't sound thankful," Cal remarked, but there was no judgment in his voice. He was just stating a fact.
"To the contrary, I am quite grateful for their assistance. And it was lovely to see Warren again, he is an old friend," Betsy said lightly. Even if, as always, the initial reveal of 'oh yes, hello, and I've recently taken over a new and very different body, lovely to see you' caused some level of discomfort.
"Worthington?" Cal asked. If there was another Warren at school, he didn't know who it was.
She nodded. "Worthington."
"Are you also - wealthy?" Cal asked, wondering if he should upgrade her accent from 'charming' to 'posh'. It did sound fancy, but maybe someone like Warren Worthington had old friends who weren't part of the same world as him. It wasn't as if Cal had ever even talked to the guy, but he'd caught up on mutant news, and that meant watching a lot of interviews of the 'Worthington heir', as they kept calling him.
"I was," she said, nodding slightly. She imagined being publicly dead also meant she could not inherit, even if her parents and twin knew the truth.
"Sorry," Cal offered. Whatever the reason for that past tense was, he figured sympathy was probably the right way to go.
Given that her name, and its relationship to wealth, had been the cause of her kidnapping, and having had cause more than once now to ponder her own mortality and consider making peace with death, Betsy considered herself rather fortunate to be alive. They money was a minor loss, considering. She gave Cal a small, reassuring smile, "Thank you. It is alright, though. I find myself to be rather fortunate, all things considered."
Cal nodded acknowledgment, if not understanding. Was he fortunate? He'd gotten out, when so many hadn't. But he didn't feel it. It felt like too warm an emotion for him to wrap his mind around, for now. "Good for you," he settled on, for lack of something better to say.
Betsy shrugged slightly. "I suppose it is a matter of comparison, in my case. Still, beggars cannot be choosers, or some other such cliched phrases."
"You seem more like a chooser than a beggar to me," Cal pointed out, and he wasn't talking about wealth so much as mindset.
At that, she could not help the slight smirk. "It is all about attitude."
It drew out Cal's half-smile, like an echo of who he used to be. "Nice attitude, then."
"Ah, there it is. I did suspect you had a lovely smile," Betsy said, her smirk broadening into a true smile of her own.
Praise from a beautiful woman; it took Cal a couple of seconds to realize why he had such a weird reaction to it, both wanting more and wanting none of it. His smile slowly faded, but he wanted to get past it. He was so sick of feeling stuck in that year, like the Right still had its clutches in him even now he was free, like Sandra did when she might well be dead. "It only comes out for special occasions," he told her, the flirtatious tone in his voice another ghost from his past, and he ignored the way his stomach twisted uneasily.
"Well then, I am honored," she assured him, tone more warm and a touch teasing. But only a touch. He reminded her of a skittish horse, push him too hard, and he might bolt. And even if she'd no real designs on him, something about him was interesting. Bolting wouldn't do.
He held her gaze for a beat, and then glanced away. "Anyway, welcome to Xavier's."
"Thank you," she said graciously.
"I suppose I should leave you to it." She didn't want to intrude on him unduly, after all. "But it was a pleasure to meet you, Cal."
"You too," he replied, easily. He finally felt like he was falling back into the patterns of normal conversation - right as she left. Way to go, Cal. "I'll see you around."
She gave him another slight smile, and with that took her leave. She had to hand it to Charles Xavier; his student body was nothing if not interesting.
Cal looked, for the all the world, like he was simply lying in the grass, quite a way from any paths, and watching the few wisps of cloud in the otherwise blue sky. But his eyes were shock white, and he was in fact observing the currents of wind, the fluctuations in temperature, and the shifts in pressure. He could have done something to them, but he didn't feel any need to. It was fucking awesome as it was, and he was glad Ororo had talked him into trying out her mutation. Even if he'd had to leave Abs inside when he went flying.
Betsy Braddock had, it was true, seen grander grounds than those surrounding Xavier's. But there was something to the peacefulness of them here, the safety of them. Grandiosity and ostentatiousness did not always equate with true quality, she knew. There was a gentle breeze, here and there, and the day was beautiful. And, for the first time in quite some time, she felt at some peace. Based on the boy lying on the grass, she was not the only one. "Good afternoon," she greeted as she approached. He could reply or not as he saw fit, but she did not want to surprise him.
Cal hadn't realized the faint shifts in the air currents nearer the ground actually indicated that someone was approaching until he heard the soft, Brit-accented greeting, and he leaned up on his elbows, and then his hands, watching the newcomer - all warmth - for a beat before his eyes returned to their regular blue. Easier by far to distinguish features that way, without the heat signature getting in the way. "Hi," he answered, not without some wariness, because he never was without it. Not anymore.
He was quiet, Betsy noted idly. Too quiet. Mentally, that was. And yes, of course she reached out carefully when she met someone new. This might be a mutant school, but she and Wisdom had been hunted like animals, and she wasn't exactly in a trusting mood. "Nice to meet you," she said politely. "I'm Betsy."
Cal frowned when he felt a brush against his psi-walls, and all of a sudden, being on the ground wasn't a viable option. He got to his feet without showing any haste, despite feeling the need pretty urgently. "Yeah, don't do that."
She quirked an eyebrow. "Shall I close my eyes, as well? For what it is worth, I did not hear anything. That is why I pushed."
"Well, don't," Cal repeated, just watching her. He was a little too conscious of his own breathing.
Betsy shrugged. "If you insist." She was not going to break into his mind, even if she suspected she could. "You are a telepath, then."
"Right now, anyway," Cal answered, not seeming to relax any. If you insist. Like she was doing him a favor, not invading his mind. "I mimic mutations."
Interesting. She could only wonder at how useful and also how...overwhelming it must be. It had taken her quite some time to grow used to her own mutation, and she had but the one. She could scarcely imagine having several and at a moment's notice. Still, he was clearly on guard and distressed already, so now was not the time to ask him a mountain of questions. "Ah. Right, then. Well, I apologize."
"What for?" Cal asked, surprised by that, for all that he didn't look it.
"Making you uncomfortable. It was not my intention. It was merely....habit," she said. It perhaps underplayed quite how frequently she read those around her, both professionally and for personal reasons, but it was true that it was a habit as well. She did not imagine she could be faulted, given what had occurred.
"Okay," Cal acknowledged. "How come?"
Betsy shrugged unconcernedly. "Because someone was trying to kill me." It was as simple as that, no reason to hide it. The details, those perhaps could go unsaid for now, but the big picture was what it was.
Cal nodded; that would actually explain it. He thought it over for a moment, and then told her, "I'll let you check me for that, if you want."
She shook her head in the negative. "I do appreciate the offer," she said, giving him a small sincere smile "But you needn't put yourself out on my account. I do not truly believe you intend to harm me. As I said, it was just...habit."
Cal nodded again. He would have done it, but he was happier not having to. "So they're not trying anymore?" Whoever it had been, to kill her.
"No, they're not." She agreed. "I'm sorry, I do not believe I caught your name?"
"Sorry," Cal answered, because it was his bad. He'd gotten distracted by her probe, and never gotten back to it. "Cal. I'm Cal."
"Cal," she repeated. "Well, a pleasure to meet you. How long have you been here?" Betsy asked, redirecting the conversation away from her, from Pete Wisdom, from the people trying to kill them, and from S.T.R.I.K.E.
"A few weeks," Cal answered, wondering privately when that had happened. A few weeks, already. A few weeks of relative freedom. They had even gone out to town. He had been tempted to get on a bus and go, had even sat on a bench at the bus station for a while.
But where would he have gone? And there was Clint.
Betsy nodded. "And is it everything it seems?" She asked, voice light.
"Jury's still out," he answered, and his gaze cut to the side as he considered. "But it really does seem like it."
She gave him the hint of a flirtatious smirk. "A cautious man. I can appreciate that." Betsy tucked some hair behind her ear, and looked out over the grounds. "To hear Professor Xavier speak of it, it sounds almost too good to be true."
"Did you do the mindmeld thing with him?" Cal asked.
Betsy shook her head no. "Did you?" She asked, legitimately curious.
Cal nodded a little. "Yeah. As far as I can tell, it's legit. But... he's stronger, better than me."
She'd thought the same of her own odds against the older telepath. He was naturally gifted, so far as she could tell. More than she was, by Betsy's reckoning. Which was precisely why she'd not chosen to let him into her mind. She knew what kinds of things a driven telepath could do to a brain. She'd done many of them herself. "So your mimicking, then, it's not quite equal?"
Cal had been counting on her not making that leap; easy to have chalked it off to the old man's experience, instead. She was smart, actually thinking to ask that. "Not quite," he confirmed.
"Hmmm...is it only the mutation, or the attendant training as well?" She queried speculatively.
"How to use it, too," Cal confirmed with a nod. He was thankful they hadn't burned that out of him while trying to optimize him.
Betsy smiled at him. "That's lucky. I imagine taking on some mutations would be rather overwhelming otherwise," she observed.
He knew he should smile back, and so he did, a small smile. "Yeah. I'm mostly glad I can pick and choose."
Cal had a nice smile, and hers widened. "Can you keep them?" She asked with good natured curiosity.
"Xavier's not around," he pointed out.
"Ah, good point. Touché, Cal," Betsy said, chuckling softly. She pushed her hair out of her face, and looked over towards the lake. The weather was nice, the breeze was lovely, and now that Cal had relaxed at least an iota he was not so bad.
"When did you get here?" Cal asked, deliberately attempting to have something that might pass as a normal conversation with a new student. He even went as far as to slide his hands into the pockets of his jeans - good thing he had Billy's knives, and did not need his hands to direct them anywhere, if needed.
"A day or so ago," she said. Betsy waved her hands gracefully, though playfully, to indicate the lack of precision. "Time change and all, I fear I can't be more specific. But we've not been here long."
"We?" Cal echoed.
"Pete Wisdom and I," she explained. "He's about....somewhere."
"A compatriot?" Cal asked, prompting without pushing. He'd let it go if she didn't want to say anything about the guy.
"Fellow traveler of sorts," she said, sounding unconcerned. The trick, she had learned was sounding comfortable and confident and speaking just enough truth to sound honest, even as you hid what needed to be.
Yeah, that sounded like she didn't want to talk about him, and Cal moved on. "So you got here just in time for classes to end."
Betsy chuckled at that, a touch low and gravelly. It had always struck her as strange that, despite the body she'd taken having not been hers, her voice had not much changed. "I suppose so. Fortuitous, that."
"No summer school for you?" Cal asked.
"I think not, unless Professor Xavier decides to insist," Betsy said, nodding. "You?"
"I'm thinking about it," Cal admitted, frowning down at a patch of grass to the side. He shrugged, looked back at the girl. Betsy. "It'd be something to do."
Betsy nodded slowly. "Do you like school, then?" She asked. Though her academics had never suffered, it had never been something she sought out without reason. Her brother, however, could run academic circles around nearly anyone, so she was familiar with the type of person that did enjoy such things.
Cal used to. He used to like classes, like the contest of it, like working to be the best. But now it had all been twisted in on itself, and he shrugged. "I have a bunch of classes to make up for." He was banking on the fact that summer school classes would have fewer students, too.
She didn't push at that - he seemed the reticent sort, and anything that required additional make-up classes was likely to be a rather fraught topic - and instead simply nodded. "What do you think of the school?" Betsy asked instead. He was clearly skeptical, whether entirely through nurture or nature she could not say, and that was a perspective she appreciated. It meant he was observant, he would pick up on the small things.
Cal's shoulders tensed a bit, for a second, but he kept his hands inside his pockets, and then relaxed again. "It seems a lot like a private school with mutant powers thrown in. But then there's that bunch of students training to go out and fight, and a holo-room to train them." He'd been staying the fuck away from it.
Betsy hummed softly in acknowledgement. "Ah, yes, his little teen vigilantes that came to get us."
"You don't sound thankful," Cal remarked, but there was no judgment in his voice. He was just stating a fact.
"To the contrary, I am quite grateful for their assistance. And it was lovely to see Warren again, he is an old friend," Betsy said lightly. Even if, as always, the initial reveal of 'oh yes, hello, and I've recently taken over a new and very different body, lovely to see you' caused some level of discomfort.
"Worthington?" Cal asked. If there was another Warren at school, he didn't know who it was.
She nodded. "Worthington."
"Are you also - wealthy?" Cal asked, wondering if he should upgrade her accent from 'charming' to 'posh'. It did sound fancy, but maybe someone like Warren Worthington had old friends who weren't part of the same world as him. It wasn't as if Cal had ever even talked to the guy, but he'd caught up on mutant news, and that meant watching a lot of interviews of the 'Worthington heir', as they kept calling him.
"I was," she said, nodding slightly. She imagined being publicly dead also meant she could not inherit, even if her parents and twin knew the truth.
"Sorry," Cal offered. Whatever the reason for that past tense was, he figured sympathy was probably the right way to go.
Given that her name, and its relationship to wealth, had been the cause of her kidnapping, and having had cause more than once now to ponder her own mortality and consider making peace with death, Betsy considered herself rather fortunate to be alive. They money was a minor loss, considering. She gave Cal a small, reassuring smile, "Thank you. It is alright, though. I find myself to be rather fortunate, all things considered."
Cal nodded acknowledgment, if not understanding. Was he fortunate? He'd gotten out, when so many hadn't. But he didn't feel it. It felt like too warm an emotion for him to wrap his mind around, for now. "Good for you," he settled on, for lack of something better to say.
Betsy shrugged slightly. "I suppose it is a matter of comparison, in my case. Still, beggars cannot be choosers, or some other such cliched phrases."
"You seem more like a chooser than a beggar to me," Cal pointed out, and he wasn't talking about wealth so much as mindset.
At that, she could not help the slight smirk. "It is all about attitude."
It drew out Cal's half-smile, like an echo of who he used to be. "Nice attitude, then."
"Ah, there it is. I did suspect you had a lovely smile," Betsy said, her smirk broadening into a true smile of her own.
Praise from a beautiful woman; it took Cal a couple of seconds to realize why he had such a weird reaction to it, both wanting more and wanting none of it. His smile slowly faded, but he wanted to get past it. He was so sick of feeling stuck in that year, like the Right still had its clutches in him even now he was free, like Sandra did when she might well be dead. "It only comes out for special occasions," he told her, the flirtatious tone in his voice another ghost from his past, and he ignored the way his stomach twisted uneasily.
"Well then, I am honored," she assured him, tone more warm and a touch teasing. But only a touch. He reminded her of a skittish horse, push him too hard, and he might bolt. And even if she'd no real designs on him, something about him was interesting. Bolting wouldn't do.
He held her gaze for a beat, and then glanced away. "Anyway, welcome to Xavier's."
"Thank you," she said graciously.
"I suppose I should leave you to it." She didn't want to intrude on him unduly, after all. "But it was a pleasure to meet you, Cal."
"You too," he replied, easily. He finally felt like he was falling back into the patterns of normal conversation - right as she left. Way to go, Cal. "I'll see you around."
She gave him another slight smile, and with that took her leave. She had to hand it to Charles Xavier; his student body was nothing if not interesting.
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Betsy, you are very sweet.
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And he says no thanks to the hug, surprising absolutely no one. ;)
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