Clock on the wall

Posted on Mon Oct 2nd, 2023 @ 10:36 by Claire Cavendish & Ji-an Yun

Chapter: All Hallow's Eve
Location: Head Teacher's Office, Avalon Institute
Timeline: 0345, Monday, November 1st, 1992
2512 words - 5 OF Standard Post Measure

At first glance, nothing seemed out of place.

It had been Soren, assuming responsibilities despite his current form, who had first reported the discrepancies. The challenge of calming a castle full of mutant children, terrified amidst a sudden escalation in their own potency, had not made the initial sweep a particularly speedy affair. Accounting for everyone was taking time, particularly in instances where the onset of increased potential had created issues that delayed timely rescue. Despite all of that, it was hardly surprising that the secretary's first instinct had been to check their own workspace, not only out of a selfish desire to confirm order but mostly because all the documentation they would inevitably require was locked in the filing cabinet. Soren had only been gone several minutes before he'd returned quietly to Claire's side and murmured something in her ear that had coaxed the headmistress away at a time that would have, under any other circumstance, seemed utterly inconvenient.

The silence was eerie.

It had admittedly taken a moment to pinpoint exactly what the problem was. Upon initial inspection, it had simply appeared that the main office had been spared any ransacking and had sat tucked away, neat and tidy, whilst the rest of the Institute was plunged into chaos. The longer spent within the space, however, the easier it was to sense the uncanny stillness that bordered on the unnatural and could eventually be reduced to a simple observation regarding the lack of peripheral noise. There was nothing. For all the lower floors were teeming with people, the castle might just as well have been abandoned entirely for all the proof anyone could glean from the office's vantage. Something was wrong with the air flow too, moving about didn't feel right and the exhalation of air from lungs lingered in such a way as to suggest that it didn't dissipate at all, but simply hung suspended as a tiny pocket of condescended carbon-dioxide. Turning the lights on didn't help, mostly because they refused to cooperate.

In the corner, Claire's grandfather clock had stopped.

The darkness was never something that had bothered Claire and in all honesty had Soren not been at her side trying the switch she probably wouldn't even have noticed. The surge had enhanced her ability to see in the dark, though, something she had never considered to be part of her mutation. "Right." Claire was exhausted, running on caffeine and adrenaline. The old clock in her office would always give a soothing tick of time but it was suspended. Time stuck on less than a minute after the Sherwood Rangers had breached the premises.

It took Claire's tired mind a moment to put two and two together before she put on her most soothing head teacher voice. "Ji-an?" It was all crackled up though due to the violence put on her by the intruder. "It's me, Claire." She couldn't think of any more to say to try and get through to the young girl. It was a wonder at all she could recall that it was one of her reflexes in case of stress and fear. She looked over to Soren and gave a bit of a weary smile, "Thanks Jha-... ehm. What should I call you actually?" It wasn't at all pertinent to the current situation but she was clearly not able to keep everything neatly sorted in her head at the moment.

"Soren."

It was all the secretary said before excusing himself, returning to his initial task but perhaps also demonstrating a quiet understanding that his presence was likely complicating matters. As soon as the door closed, the suffocation of silence reasserted itself, his movements masked by the pristine moment of temporal suspension that seemed, at first, to remain untarnished.

The clock pendulum swung once.

There was a small sense of relief when Claire heard the tick of the clock. At least she was being heard. "The bad people have gone. We fought them off. They won't be coming back." That last bit was an empty promise, but at the very least they would be better prepared should they choose to return right now. The entire Institute was on high alert and between the faculty and staff it was probably a bad idea to venture inside the walls if you weren't a friendly. "I know that was scary, but I promise it's over now."

It was difficult to pinpoint the moment of temporal alignment, outside the most obvious indication as the lights flared suddenly. Like a photograph developing, colour seeped back until the invisible shroud was palpably absent and the to-and-fro of the pendulum's metronome heralded the reassertion of temporal constructs. Beyond the walls, the sound of distant recovery efforts was now a welcome reassurance and a pervasive chill that had gone almost unnoticed given the reasonableness of its existence started to fade. Glaringly obvious at this point was that, far from an ongoing illusion, the headmistress' office appeared to be genuinely unscathed by recent events, outside the shrivelled desolation of one solitary desk plant that had clearly seen better days.

Beneath the desk, tucked away into the alcove behind Claire's usual chair, the tiniest hint of movement gave away the sole occupant's location.

Very slowly Claire started to move towards her desk. She put a hand out to the desk plant, a momentary frown, it had been fine this morning. She shrugged that off, a concern for later. First she needed to check and make sure Ji-an was alright. "That was a bit scary, wasn't it?" She squatted down next to her chair and carefully pushed it aside.

Tucked neatly into the space, Ji-an sat with her knees bent upwards and her arms wrapped around something clutched to her chest. As much as it was a defensive stance, and the wide-eyed stare that looked back at the headmistress held a glimmer of deep consideration, as if determining the woman's legitimacy, there was something oddly calm about the young mutant. At the very least, she lacked most of the visible hallmarks of juvenile panic, seeming to breath easily enough without signs of tears or tantrum. Carefully drawing herself along the floor by digging her heels in and pulling, Ji-an emerged quietly and immediately held out the object in her hands to Claire.

It was her file. Every piece of information Warden had passed over about the girl's history to date.

Ji-an kept her eyes averted. "To stay safe."

Claire nodded. "You did well." She took the file and looked over it without opening it. She had studied it long enough to know what was inside without having to take a look in front of the child it was relating to. She then looked around the room, which was oddly untouched. "And the rest as well." She gave an appreciative smile. It was difficult to land on the proper tone to talk with Ji-an. She looked like a six year old, but her mind was that of someone almost twice her age, with the language barrier adding more difficulties.

The head mistress wondered how much she could ask of the girl. "Did anyone come in here?"

For a moment, the girl's dark eyes fixated on the head mistress, her expression fathoms deep. A small hand slipped into Claire's and Ji-an tentatively took the lead, hesitating after a few steps as if unused to such a position of control. When no recrimination was forthcoming, she took them to the door and, opening it quietly, simply stood in the threshold and watched as Soren moved around the space. With her free hand, she gestured towards the doors that opened to the corridor beyond.

"One came."

"Left empty handed?" Claire wondered if in his amped up state Robert would've been able to draw on some of her powers. As far as she'd been able to tell, and what Phoebe had told her, he needed physical proximity. A girl hiding in the fourth dimension probably precluded that opportunity. This whole conversation was highly uncomfortable. The young girl looked so young and unspoiled but the entire ordeal had her barely rattled. At least outwardly. She couldn't imagine the kind of training and conditioning that underpinned that calm exterior. And yet her main focus was to make sure Robert hadn't made off with her powers.

At first, the young girl looked down at her own hand, withdrawn quietly from Claire's as an act of deference and retreat. Though Ji-an's comprehension of English seemed to outweigh her spoken ability, the turn of phrase had clearly lost her a little. She held up her hand, palm-first, and fixed Claire with a worried look of perplexed uncertainty.

"Did the one person that came through take anything?" For Claire it wasn't always clear that some of the awkwardness came from the language barrier. Ji-an seemed to be a very solitary person. Her hope was that some time at the institute would help socialise her a bit more. Being surrounded by Brits should also help improve her English. Then again, she'd heard some of what passed for English these days and had wondered if they should have more diction classes. Some of them were taking on the Americanisms of their English teacher as well, which was an unforeseen consequence that should've been obvious when she hired Jonathan.

Only the briefest hesitation preceded a very gentle shake of the girl's head. "It was not here." At this inelegance, Ji-an frowned faintly, acutely aware that her lack of conversational English did not match her comprehension of it, colloquialisms aside. She gestured with her hand to the office, and then turned again to indicate Claire's behind them. "This...place, was not here. He could not." Liquid brown eyes, quite a warm shade for one so solemn, lifted upwards to meet Claire's. "I took it. Put it away, all the people." Her head turned towards where Soren was sorting through the student files.

"That's." Claire couldn't quite put into words how amazing that was. The people there relied on her to keep them safe, their identities hidden. Who knew what could've happened if Robert had gotten his hands on those files. "That's amazing. You did an amazing job." She walked closer to the young girl and offered a hand to take the file off her. It would have to go back into the safe. "Best get you to bed. You must be exhausted."

Unexpectedly, it was not the file that wound up in Claire's hand first but Ji-an's own tiny grasp. The transference of trust was palpable, if not a little worrisome to the uninitiated. As easy as it was to suppose the young mutant was too quick to rely on this new caretaker, it was fair to say that most did not have the relationship with time that Ji-an did and therefore had no concept of just how much she was able to glean about a person in what appeared to be an instant. Handing over the file followed, but not before the little girl had leaned into the head mistress' side as if relieved to finally defer to another person's judgement.

Claire gave a modest smile and put an arm around her for a moment. Then the file was put in her hand, it was a true shame that people like Ji-an had to live in perpetual fear that someone with bad intentions would get to them. It was from all directions. Her abilities made her a prime target for people with ill-intent. Much like Phoebe had been. There was something about those that viewed and manipulated time differently that appealed to those seeking power. it made sense, it was one of the things that humans had only had a tenuous grasp on. The relentless march of time was always against all of them.

The head teacher started to guide Ji-an out of the room and towards the hallway. Her room was not in the regular dorms as she was not technically old enough to attend the school. Her room was close to Claire's so she could keep an eye on her. "You want me to stay with you for a moment? Until you fall asleep?" She asked as they made their way over.

"We will be safe tonight."

It was spoken with gentle certainty that lacked any authority but still managed to come across as entirely confident. More to the point, though Ji-an seemed mollified by her own interpretation of what came next, she did nothing to distance herself as the door to her room was opened. Shrinking back into Claire's side, the girl's reluctance to proceed alone was acceptance enough. Though it was written in her file, Ji-an herself didn't often speak of the dreams that plagued her, half realised versions of events that might have been. On some level, in some capacity, she was aware of all the eventualities in which safety was less assured. Such sensitivity was not a comfort usually.

Much less so than Phoebe Ji-an was known to glimpse the future, but when a pre-cog told you you'd be safe tonight it gave a certain level of comfort that nothing else could quite convey. Claire walked her into her room and pulled a chair from the desk closer to the bed, "I'll just stay for a bit for my own peace of mind." She sat back on the chair and watched Ji-an settle underneath her covers.

Despite everything, regardless of the events of the evening and their toll on her well-being, there was something very ingrained about the way Ji-an prepared for bed. After changing into her pyjamas behind the wooden screen set up for privacy, she folded her clothing systematically, even those eventually placed into the laundry basket, and took the time to clean her teeth and brush her hair loose. Fresh clothing for the following morning was laid out, her shoes were placed toe-first to the wall beside the door and when she finally slipped beneath the covers, there had been hesitation about whether or not she should turn off the bedside lamp. Opting to leave it on, an unnecessary deference for a visitor who favoured the shadows in any case, the little girl wrapped her arms around a bedraggled rabbit, one of the few personal effects to have been sent with her, and without expectation of comfort or even acknowledgement, closed her eyes.

It took a moment before reconsideration saw them flicker open again.

"Annyeonghi jumuseyo. I am...sorry, for your plant."

"Geokjeongma" The head teacher awkwardly tried to tell the young mutant not to worry in her own language, she probably butchered it a bit along the way. She leaned forward and made sure the bed sheets were nicely tucked in before switching off the desk light. Even in the dark she could make out a lot of details in the room. Much more so than normal. Whatever it was that had supercharged all of their abilities, it hadn't completely dissipated, even after several hours had gone by. "Sleep tight, Ji-an. Jal jayo"