In Plain Sight

Posted on Tue Sep 24th, 2024 @ 0:12 by Matteo Beneventi & Claire Cavendish & Phoebe Hunter

Chapter: Besieged
Location: Claire's Office, Avalon Institute
Timeline: Saturday evening, January 30th, 1993
2562 words - 5.1 OF Standard Post Measure

Phoebe paced the polished marble floors of the school's entrance hall, her heart pounding as she waited for Matt to arrive on his bike. She had taken the head start to bring in the supplies she had gotten and stacked them to take to where they were. She adjusted her jacket, took a deep breath, and steeled herself. The students’ safety was paramount, and she was determined to convince Claire that the man she intended to introduce was essential. She looked up as she heard the door open and offered Matt a smile as he appeared. "Took you long enough. You did not want to help unload the car I bet." She teased a little trying to lighten her own mood.

"Took a while to lock up," was Matt's defense, which was true only because he'd got to the end of the driveway before realising he'd left the outside workshop area unsecure. Packing had been a fairly simple task, there hadn't been time yet to accumulate a lot more personal effects and most of his wardrobe fit into the backpack he'd used for a long time to transport his entire life from one location to the next.

“Come on then.” She said taking his hand to lead the way to the woman’s office. She reached the headmaster's office and took a deep breath before knocking. Once a voice called out that entering was okay, she pushed the door open. Stepping inside, she was greeted by the familiar sight of Claire and smiled genuinely before tugging Matt inside too. “Can we talk?” She wondered quietly.

The head teacher's room was dark which made it relatively uninviting , or so Claire had been told by others. When she heard a knock it took a moment to register, then she made her way across the room switching on the lights before calling for whomever was on the other side of the door to come on in. "Ph... Miss Hunter, of course." She stopped herself from being too informal in front of a guest who triggered a nagging feeling that they might've met before, but she couldn't quite place him. "And mister..?"

"Rose bush." Matt offered the headmistress a crooked half-smile and made a conscious effort to adjust the intensity of his personal radius to something that would permit Claire to re-establish previous connections. It was difficult to step into unfamiliar places and not immediately seek the comfort of complete obscurity but the current situation was not going to be aided by having to explain yet again how their paths had crossed before, twice now.

A memory stirred at the mention of the rose bush, Claire felt the rest of the recognition fall in line after that. "Mister Beneventi, my apologies. It's been a long couple of days." From what little she understood about his abilities it was easier to cloud a mind that was either weak or already fatigued through other means. While she wasn't sure about the former, it was clear the latter was true. She turned to Phoebe with a bit of a smile, then motioned at the Chesterfield set in the corner. "Please, sit, can I get you something to drink?"

The redhead smiled as the man being referred to as Mister Beneventi, it was not something she had ever known him as so strange to hear. "I will make tea, you both sit," Phoebe instructed seeing how knackered the woman looked compared to how Phoebe had seen her yesterday at the evening meal. She knew how both people took their tea so quickly set about making them all before she sat down with the tea tray. This was a lot more formal than she expected but it would work.

Try as he might, Matt couldn't make sitting on the fancy furniture look natural. Even after he'd fallen a decent way upwards, his living standards had been nothing elaborate, just what a single cop had managed to amass over a lifetime of service and solitude. It was never much use having overly expensive things around Leo anyway, since the kid's tenacity for pulling everything apart was fueled only by the emergent powers that made it far easier to tinker. Matt perched himself on the edge of one of the chairs, as if to minimise how much contact he made with the upholstery, and found himself once again focusing to ensure that he remained fully present. "Leo wasn't kidding when he said the castle was like something out of a book."

"We've done what we can to bring it up to modern standard, but I took some liberties with my own office." It was weird for Claire to sit and wait for tea to be offered in a room she considered more her home than her quarters. She took a seat on the couch seeing as Matt had taken up an awkward position on one of the two chairs. It suited her well, because from here she could see if Phoebe would actually make her tea properly. "I hope you don't think it's too ostentatious."

"I wouldn't like to judge," Matt replied honestly. Given the standards he'd been required to accept over the years, and now that he had a house of his own to decorate in some semblance of a style he wasn't even sure he possessed, he didn't feel remotely qualified to have an opinion.

Phoebe had never grown up anywhere as grand but she liked to believe that on the really fog moment that she was in the book Outlander that she had been reading thanks to a parcel from a friend in London who liked to send her useful things like the sword. "I think it is beautiful and full of history which is one of my specialities. And I could not think of being anywhere else in the universe now." She smiled at the pair as she came back with three mugs and sat next to Matt sitting back completely relaxed around the conversation.

Claire slowly stirred her tea as she divided her attention between the two people. "To what do I owe this particular pleasure?" She felt that the two were kind of hesitant about the nature of their visit and hoped that pushing for it a bit would help them be a bit more forthcoming.

Phoebe glanced at Matteo before looking at the woman she counted as one of her close friends after the last six months. "Matteo..." She said deciding to be honest that they were a lot less formal. She knew the woman knew she had someone in the town much like Claire had or at the very least potential of but the woman wanted it out there right now at the beginning. "He wants to help and I think as he is an unknown factor he can be very helpful." She said putting it on her.

The quiet man held Phoebe's gaze for a moment before accepting that the bulk of the explanation was his responsibility. Turning back to Claire, Matt considered his words carefully and, once ready, spoke in the gentle tones of someone who was woefully inexperienced at pushing his way in anywhere. "As you can imagine, it has never been particularly difficult for me to evade the kind of issues most mutants face. In the past, this push for registration wouldn't have bothered me a great deal because I wouldn't have considered it applicable to me. A lot of things aren't," he smiled ruefully.

Claire nodded at that, it made sense that someone that could retreat from the public consciousness so easily wouldn't be bothered by pesky things like the law. It made one wonder how many people like him were around, going under the radar. "I wasn't aware this could be extended beyond yourself." She took a careful sip of the tea that Phoebe had prepared for her as she tried to figure out exactly why they had chosen to come to her at this time.

Matt didn't really have a response for that. What he knew of his powers had been a matter of trial and error over the years, though he had learned that the early-onset was considered unusual and, in his case, particularly unlucky. Being born capable of rendering your caregivers less than attentive through no fault of their own certainly hadn't helped him much, and had definitely not improved his parents' situation. Matt didn't know everything, only what his eventual foster father would dig out of the files, but it was enough to twist the anger of abandonment into guilt.

"He is here for his brother and for... me but that isn't the main reason he wants to be part of something more." Phoebe smiled calmly at Matt. She looked to Claire knowing she would know that Phoebe would not do this without a greater good angle. "He might be helpful with our guest from overseas," Phoebe said into her cup as she sipped.

"Call it growing up," Matt added with a rueful smile. "Or finding things outside of yourself worth fighting for." There was no disguising the direction his gaze took, flitting in Phoebe's direction for only a moment and yet still long enough to be telling. "Phoebe's told me a bit of what she's seen coming, and if Leo wanted to leave then we wouldn't be having this discussion, but he's adamant that he wants to stay. Apparently leaving would be illogical." A shared smile gave acknowledgement to the young teenager's obsession with a certain science-fiction icon, though Matt was somewhat apologetic for the ongoing theatrics of insisting on method-acting a Vulcan at every available opportunity.

Claire was able to suppress a look and a tut in the direction of Phoebe, knowing it would draw much more attention than alleviate it if she brought up Ji-an now. She was thankful for Matt seeming rather too ill at ease to have caught too much of that particular topic. "Since you're his legal guardian, if you want I feel like I should be able to come up with a compelling logical argument against staying." Not that it mattered too much, the logical arguments were usually constructed after the mind had been made up. No matter how many fallacies you pointed out, or how eloquently your own argument avoided such things, there was rarely changing a rebellious teen's mind, even if it was disguising behind a flawed and oft misinterpreted sci-fi premise.

"Running doesn't prove a lot, it just restarts you all over again. I don't know if we'd be safer out there on our own, even with my powers." It hadn't been an easy decision, despite having grown out of his own desire to turn tail at the slightest hint of trouble. Even with Phoebe's visions, Matt had to believe being amongst mutants was safer than trying to combat an entire system intent on hunting you down, however, and he wasn't entirely sure he'd secure his teenage brother's cooperation if he pulled him out of the school now in any case. "But I can put them to use here, make better use of them than just trying to save my own hide." He knew that neither woman had any true experience with the extent of his capabilities, wasn't even sure if Phoebe's powers really allowed her to grasp the potency of his, but Matt hoped the pervasive forgetfulness on her part would be enough to convince Claire there was potential to be tapped. He didn't think an outright demonstration would be particularly palatable.

"His abilities are very ... they can be much stronger than he realises," Phoebe said keeping her gaze on her coffee as she tried to ignore the urge to look properly at what potential he had. She did not need to point out that having a mutant on their side that could make people forget things was a great tactic that they could use. "When we got super charged it was interesting for him," She decided to point out.

"I'm sure it was interesting for us all." Claire gave a bit of a comforting smile in the direction of Matteo. She didn't want to overtly pressure them but there was a sense of them dancing around the point. "Regardless of the extend of his powers, I doubt he'll be able to make the country forget that there's a Mutant school here about to defy a new legislation that's being put in place at least in part to thwart them."

"I don't know exactly how useful I can be in terms of my powers. Until Phoebe's future is with us, I think all of us are improvising." Matt sat forward and put his cup on the table. "But I am a mutant in the area and if we trust her visions, which I assume we both do, then I am of more use here than locked inside a house watching the shadows crawl across the walls. If nothing else," Matt added, "I'm an extra pair of hands. All I'm asking for is a place to stay, close enough to make a difference."

Claire nodded at that, "If or when these visions come to pass it would seem that every extra pair of hands will pay dividends." She looked over at Phoebe trying to gauge again if there had been an update or additional clarity on it. The only thing she knew was that the overwhelming power of the vision meant that there was little they could do to avoid at least large parts of the future envisioned. "There's always room in Avalon for those who choose to help build rather than demolish. Would you want me to show you to a guest room," another side eye at Phoebe, "or have you made your own arrangements?"

Phoebe did not look away from Claire's gaze. "We have not discussed that." The woman finally said not sounding awkward but did sound a little loss. She had not considered that at any point of this change and now she felt a little loss in what was going to happen next. "I can show when we have spoken about it." She quickly added glancing at Matt offering a calm smile.

For his part, Matt was more than content to leave the decision in Phoebe's hands. With what she'd told him of the impact these visions had on her, he didn't favour being too far away, but this was her place of work and there were teenagers involved. He wasn't so far removed from reality that he'd forgotten how prone to gossip mongering they were. "I'll be content with whatever suits," he assured both of them, his gaze lingering on Phoebe a moment before returning to meet Claire's. "The same goes for any tasks I can help out with. I've done everything from packing shelves to peeling potatoes." A faint smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "There's more falls between those two things than you might think."

"I wouldn't dare presume." Claire returned the modest smile and sipped her tea. "I'll be sure to let you know if and when your packing potato skills would come in handy. For now, get settled in, have a good night's rest. We shall see what tomorrow brings." At that she glanced over at Phoebe again. What she wouldn't give to be able to actually tell what tomorrow would bring.