Look at Shadows

Posted on Tue Mar 21st, 2023 @ 11:27 by Claire Cavendish & Cynhelm Warden

Chapter: Prologue: Dawn of Avalon
Location: Head Teacher's Office, Avalon Institute
Timeline: Saturday, October 3rd, 1992
3783 words - 7.6 OF Standard Post Measure

The best educations in the world, focused on public speaking, debating, and addressing the press. It had kept Claire's back straight, chest forward, and words confident when facing the crowds in New Cresthill and outside the gates. Now that she was stepping into the safety and privacy of her own office and pulled the thick oaken door behind her she felt the tension release and her shoulder dropped. She let out a heavy sigh and her gaze fell to the floor, the room in darkness.

For her the shadows were comfort, and she didn't reach to switch on the lights. Halfway through the room towards her seat she froze. Her eyes immediately darting to the large chair behind her desk. Out of reflex she immediately disappeared and took a quick step to the side so that whoever was there wouldn't know exactly where she was.

Very distinctively, the rustle of paper indicated the slow turning of pages, the gentle movements of a hand to smooth out the creases just visible as an outline in the poor light. It possibly wasn't a very polite way to keep oneself occupied inside someone else's private space but only someone who understood the occupant's particular skillset would have had the foresight to view the dark as an asset rather than a threat. Not without irony, the first hint at revelation came in the form of a slow pool of blue light that gathered inwards into an outstretched palm and eventually bore remarkable resemblance to a magnifying glass. Whether it operated effectively as such was hard to say, but its emanating glow brought the headline into gloomy focus. The universe held its breath.

"You've been busy."

After a moment Claire realised who the person in her seat was. She moved closer and then shimmered back into visibility. "You're in my seat." She glanced over to the newspaper he had in his hands with the dim light illuminating a headline 'vigilante leader claims self defense'. It was slightly more nuanced than some of the headlines she'd seen over the past week.

Ever since the Sentinel had come to try and take one of the students it had been quite the rollercoaster for the institute. The nearby town had been overrun by the press, each of them with their own agenda, most of them aimed at the sensation of an unsanctioned super hero team fighting off a clandestine military robot. Luckily none of them had commented on their experimental jet. The man that was now behind her desk was one of the last people she'd expected to be there. "So, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?" There were a few other choice words she'd been able to bite back thanks to a lifetime of keeping up appearances.

"It's a nice seat."

The layers of implication that rested behind the simple statement, which was easy enough to take literally but probably couldn't be limited to such given who it was speaking, spoke for themselves at first. Warden had never been a hurried man, at least outside of his work, and whilst the curt tone being flung at him was perhaps a little disproportionate to any known merit, he likewise wasn't the type to take it personally. The object in his hand, turned slowly in contemplation for several rotations, was eventually laid flat and the chair pushed backwards to allow him to rise. Stepping behind it, strong, sturdy hands gripped it and spun it slowly as an offering. It wasn't an answer but those never came swiftly where Warden was concerned.

Claire didn't take her eyes off the man in front of her, and didn't take a step towards the offered chair. While it at least showed a willingness to sit down and talk things over, she couldn't shake the feeling that this was not as much of a social call as the last time they'd gotten together. Warden was rarely someone that came for just the company, and seeing the circumstances under which he was currently holding up in her darkened office Claire knew it was just a matter of time for him to come to the true intention of his visit. She also knew that it was no use pressing him on it. He'd come out with it in his own time. "Under other circumstances I'd offer to boil the kettle." She slowly circled around to a closed cabinet to the side. "It feels more like a Whisky kind of week, though." She softened her approach slightly, this man had come through for her and those she held dear multiple times in the past after all.

"Start of a school term usually is."

Anyone who thought they knew anything about Cynhelm Warden knew that he didn't touch alcohol. He barely consented to touch coffee when it was the only option, and even then he took it black without further embellishment, as if to deny it any place of appreciation beyond the resulting jolt to the system that was probably warranted. As with most things people assumed themselves experts on regarding the man, this understanding was reasonably apt in all circumstances but applied absolutely not to the handful of exceptions intricately woven into the tapestry of his life. Ruou Gao at a particular place in Vietnam, soju under certain conditions in Korea, Jamaica was the only acceptable place for rum. And if he wanted a whiskey, it was with Claire Cavendish, usually when the glue that held the puzzle pieces of her life together started to show signs of wear and tear.

He took up the seat on the other side of the desk. If one knew how to navigate between the lines, it had been offered to him, after all.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

A rare offering from the man, another facet assumed unlikely that revealed itself only to a handful of sources. Even his tone, which clung so frustratingly to its enigmatic evasiveness at times, seemed to express a willingness to cut a more direct pathway. Cloaks and daggers, shields and shadows. He dropped them occasionally. For her.

Claire brought the tumbler over to the man and when he took it off her she slipped an arm around him. "Not even sure where to begin." She circled around to her own seat and sat down in the chair he had occupied earlier. "When I saw that message from this guy I'd never met before calling us allies, I saw everything I worked for in the past decade go up in smoke." She took a sip and shook her head, "after the robot I naively thought the government would want it all to go away." She took in a deep breath.

There had been several opportunities for her Institute to be shoved into the limelight, but it seemed that either the donors or her own family still had enough pull to hide it from the wider public. That all stopped when Avalon was mentioned in the same breath as an organisation taking credit for a terrorist attack on a political target. "I don't like the spotlight and tabloids at the best of times, so imagine my feelings when I realised that not only I had to talk to the press, I had to reveal the true nature of Avalon to the world, I had to distance us from Sherwood, and field questions about my family name all in the same half hour."

"Shadows don't last forever." It was an agreement more than any sort of rebuttal, a sliver of sympathy that didn't require unpacking because she was one of the few who understood how deeply intimate his knowledge of chaotic upheaval was. The tumbler sat rested against his knee, for the only proper way to drink whiskey was via osmosis, or perhaps the vapours that evaporation produced as time got tired of waiting for the first sip. He could nurse a single measure for well over an hour. "You handled it well though." The compliment was sincere because the man didn't speak in empty platitudes. It also revealed that he had watched her press conference and taken mental notes.

Claire was never very good with compliments, and that went double when they came from a man like Warden. "We could really use someone like you around here." She immediately bit her lip. It had been a request she had done over the years, not just for Avalon, but also some of the other initiatives she had supported. It was the one thing she knew he wouldn't agree with. She took another sip of the drink, too much of a snob to have the ice cubes in the glass slowly dilute her nectar. "Now I'm getting threats from both sides of the aisle."

"You certainly attracted some rather unique attention."

Warden shifted in his chair, settling back as was typical when he consented to remain a while. Had he remained standing, it would have been clear that his visit was intended to be fleeting, but his timing now was entirely characteristic of the man. Something this significant, with implications so far-reaching, called for his input, that much he chose not to struggle against. The trouble with the rest of her ongoing proposition was that he wasn't really very well-suited to the mundane 'in between' and, in fact, his presence may very well have shortened the timespan between major incident and 'business as usual'. Warden knew his place, it had been drilled into him enough over the years.

"I am attempting to narrow down motive and intent." After the moment's silence, he gave in to the inevitable question without forcing her to ask it. A kindness, given all that she'd already endured. "They're not telling us much, which means there's more than a few dirty fingers in the pie. Our giant visitor almost certainly needed a passport to cross international airspace, however." He quirked both eyebrows. "Choice of target doesn't tell us much though. Arbitrary selection, perhaps. Some sort of training protocol."

"Training protocol?" Claire mulled that particular but of information over in her head a couple of times. It implied a great many things. And the fact that a foreign organisation could do this on UK soil also didn't really bode well. "The target was a vulnerable kid, single mom, history of narcotics. Only tenuously holding on to custody. Had we not offered him a spot at Avalon his disappearance would've drawn all the attention to her." She shook her head a bit. Who would have that kind of information on mutants. "You're thinking they have the government's backing?"

The slow swirl of ice was in direct opposition to Claire's preferences but Cynhelm had never claimed to be very cultured. Diluted whiskey didn't really seem like the worst transgression given the list of contenders it was in direct competition with. "We have contingencies for hostile incursions into sovereign airspace," was what he said, such was his habit for confirming or denying indirectly. "None of them were deployed."

"Bloody hell." Claire immediately took another sip to try and cover up her loss of composure. Had it been anyone else across from her she would've bit her tongue. Stiff upper lip. She didn't know a lot about the country's military defense protocols, but the fact that none of them were deployed said enough. "Perhaps our response has dissuaded any follow up, I can't imagine that it was cheap to build that thing, and we really didn't leave them much to salvage." She abhorred violence, and that philosophy had cost her quite a few friends and allies in their community, but in this case the machine had been relentless until it was well and truly dismantled.

It took an expert, one with years of practise, to read the inherent humour tucked away behind the man's placid gaze but Cynhelm nodded in faint agreement, and then dipped his head to the side to concede an unspoken point. "You and your people did appear to have its measure. I'm sure the encounter provided invaluable feedback on its weaker points." Ducking his head, he poised to finally take a sip and added, "One can hope they added 'ill-equipped for primary function' to the list." Any device meant to subdue and harvest mutants should have taken into account that hunting them in groups was foolish.

"The Americans said it was prototype robot policeman." Claire shook her head trying to remember exactly what the US President had mentioned in her speech. "They denied involvement in the same breath, of course." There was no love lost between her and the US government, or any government for that matter. "They're saying it's connected to that Mutant Control Agency they have over there. But the MCA never got a license to operate in the U.K., so riddle me this, Warden," she took a swig of the whisky to create a dramatic pause; "What's it doing all the way over here trying to grab one of my students?"

A very long, weary, drawn-out sigh was the man's first response. Normally, he didn't permit speculation. Robert tried it far too often, members of his own unit were constantly dabbling in it. Warden was a man who preferred precision, and whilst it wasn't always possible to act on definitive information, he had certainly witnessed more harm than good as a result of people's attempts at guessing their way to a course of action. Claire, with her chink-in-the-armour capacity, somehow always managed to wear him down far easier than anyone else. There was a reason it was only one whiskey per visit, after all.

"The press-release rarely matches the facts, Claire. You know that. They've admitted they have these things, they're just not telling us what it's doing over here."

Reaching up, Cynhelm kneaded his fingertips into the tension across his forehead and made a decision. This was a place where he could speak and it probably wouldn't come back to bite him. Probably.

"I don't have definite information yet, a lot of this is buried deeper than my sources can get to in a hurry. I will say that this seems to have coincided with an increase in pressure from some of your friends down yonder." He gestured roughly in the direction of the township. His dark eyes met hers. "I also don't think this was the only attack. I think it was the only attack that escaped press suppression. Again, probably underestimated the fortitude of a disgruntled Scotsman."

"My father must be furious." It would've been a strange leap of logic for anyone but Warden to follow. She wasn't really open about her heritage, at least not beyond her closest friends. And despite their differences and everything else going on between them, Warden was still one of those privileged few. Although privilege wasn't quite the right word in Claire's mind. "If there's more, then this isn't over. Do you think they'll come back for Oliver?"

"That would depend on why it targeted him in the first place." an unhelpful clarification, which in itself bore testament to the man's own frustration. Warden didn't wear a lot of emotion openly and he certainly rarely spoke in redundancies. "On the balance of things, the fact that you were able to decisively neutralise it may leave them unwilling to spend another several million on an attempt. You've made it clear that the boy is heavily protected."

The man sat then, index finger poised over his lips as he stared into shadows and seemed to retreat, as always, beyond the moment to ruminate in silence.

"I need you to extend that to another..."

He stopped right before the word 'asset' escaped his lips, a habit that nevertheless wouldn't have been welcomed. The hesitation alone was enough to identify the missing word but perhaps his decision to switch it out would spare him something. There was always a first time for everything.

"...child."

Claire was ready to comment on his choice of words when he stopped himself and inserted an acceptable alternative. She deflated a bit as a result, though it was a reminder of what exactly they were to government spooks. Game pieces on the board. "As I said in my press conference, Avalon stands as a sanctuary to the disenfranchised." She finished her glass and put it back on the table leaning forward slightly in the process. "So what makes this particular... child," she left the pause so that he knew that she knew, "different enough to warrant the attention of the illustrious Cynhelm Warden?"

"She's not coming through official channels." That would be a first. "And she's not arrived in the country yet." Further intrigue. Slowly, Warden pushed himself to his feet and ambled, the way he was wont to when the allure of deep thought proved too much to resist. An elbow found a bookshelf and he leaned, contemplating the contents of his glass before he ignored it yet again and met her gaze.

"An old associate in South Korea needs a place for his daughter. Turns out the road to democracy's full of sinkholes, and this whole thing with mutant-hunting robots has forced his hand. She's a Cat 1." This time, he didn't shy away from using the designations assigned by his superiors, the oppressive dehumanisation that he was both subjected to and required to perpetuate. Mutants that landed themselves in Category 1 were deemed to have powers that had the potential to devastate the natural order.

Claire frowned at that categorisation. There were many ways that people had tried to categorise mutants over the years, her father was very adept at it. At least he'd like to think so. But he always looked at it from a 'threat to humans' perspective and described them in terms of 'how many armed police officers should you throw at them'. He had always seen her as the lowest risk, somehow even finding ways to diminish her accomplishments in something as sickening as categorising your own daughter like prized meat. "Any idea as to the nature of her abilities?" What she had wanted to ask was if she had to be worried, but it was not in her nature to be worried about the abilities of her fellow mutants.

"Temporal manipulation."

Warden sighed. They were rare and, despite what his superiors thought, almost impossible to quantify. The time-benders were about as enigmatic as the mind-shapers. Or the pre-cogs. "Far as I know, the application of her powers has been limited so far. Her father... He's a researcher, done a lot work on South Korea's attempts to lock down X-gene. An ally," he assured, though much like himself it was hard to claim a clean record when you couldn't move without government officials breathing down your neck. "According to his records, her scope is pretty significant." He tossed a hand loosely in defeat. "Suspended animation, quantum acceleration, temporal rewind. Tip of the iceberg if you believe her father's projections but she doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot with it yet. Her relationship with time isn't constant."

Most of it didn't make sense to Warden but then he wasn't being tasked with understanding people's talents, just making use of them.

"She's 13 but looks half that."

From his back pocket, he drew out a single photo. The file existed, and if she insisted, Claire would be welcome to view it. He'd simply brought the one thing that he figured would tick all her boxes. Leaning forward, he tossed it onto the desk in front of her.

Claire seemed to tense up a bit around the whole thing. They were friends, and while it was true they didn't meet each other often, and then it usually was because one of them needed something, there had been a little hope in her that Warden had come to check in simply because they were going to a rough time at Avalon. The care and interest had definitely been there but now that she was hearing the details about this girl it had become clear to her that this had been his primary concern.

She pulled the picture closer to have a look at the girl. "So, mentally and developmentally thirteen." Her gaze lingered and had to agree with Warden that she didn't look a day over seven. "I take it there's more extensive, but possibly redacted, reports for me to take a glance at?" She let out a slow and steady breath through her nose and looked back up to Warden. "Not that it matters. There's always a bed available in Avalon." She hoped that it was something that he also remembered for himself. She wanted to assure him that she was there for him, in his time of need.

The only response at first was a nod. That in itself seemed to betray a weariness that hinted at lack of decent sleep, hardly a first where the older mutant was concerned. The timing would never reveal whether he'd have shown up regardless of personal agenda, and it wasn't likely to be something he'd admit easily if directly questioned. That was generally the problem with people stubbornly insisting on seeing the best in him; Warden himself was never really sure which reflection they were looking at or which way he had to turn to get a similar view. He was certainly yet to discover it for himself.

"I'll take her elsewhere if it gets too much," was what he offered instead, a gruff acknowledgement that bordered on respect for her custodial sense of obligation to her charges. "And I'll get you more information on the Yankee's robot police." The very faintest of smiles tugged at his lips. "Find you a few more weak spots."

"That would be much appreciated." Claire pocketed the picture of the young girl and had the feeling that with Warden leaving her in the custody of Avalon meant that she'd be much more personally involved with the safety and development of the girl. "So. Should I find an empty room for you or are you more comfortable on my couch?"

"Actually, figured I could watch the perimeter for you tonight."

And there it was. The olive branch.

He finally drained the rest of his drink. Pushing away from the bookshelf, Cynhelm leaned across the desk to take her empty glass and held the pair between thumb and forefinger, pressed together in the assurance of his grip.

"You should get some sleep."

Claire nodded in silence. There was no denying that one. Besides there was no feeling more secure than knowing Warden was on the palissade, watching over the institute. Watching over her.