It was such a comfort to be able to wander down a hallway, into the kitchen and make whatever food you happened to be thinking about at the time.  Masque had spent so many years where food was almost a luxury that having it in such abundance still felt like a gift.  A warm place to sleep every night and all the food one could eat meant he should have been happy and for a very brief and fleeting moment he had been.  However, moments like that don't last forever.

It was late when Masque found himself in the kitchen preparing himself a sandwich.  Not so late that it would be considered unseemly to be awake at that hour but late enough that there was no one else presently in the kitchen.  As he prepared his meal he couldn't help but think about recent events.  Entering the Mansion was, of course, the best one and in many ways the one that most effected his life.  with that one simple thing, everything in life had changed and all things seemed possible in a way they hadn't in years.  It was the only recent good event.

First there was Aura and he still didn't know what to make of that night.  It gave him nightmares to remember the people she had killed and to know that, inexplicably, he hadn't turned her in for the deed.  Did that make him little better than murderer himself?  He didn't know but what was worse is that a small part of him still didn't' know if she had been entirely in the wrong.  Then there was the brawl in which he was pretty sure if there hadn't been more competent mutants around him he would have been seriously injured or worse.  There went his illusions of being able to take care of himself.

With a sigh, Masque sat down with his completed sandwich.  So many questions and no answers to be had.

Awkward situations were awkward. Aiden still wasn't anywhere near used to have a roommate as extroverted as Jude, so even if he weren't still trying to sort out so much other stuff in his head he would have been wandering the mansion at odd hours.

He could believe that Persi's family was deranged enough to try to kill him. There was plenty of compelling evidence leading up to that realization. He could even accept that the girl who had ended up helping him had connections with less than pleasant people. No, the weird part was that his parents weren't really all that bothered by him being a mutant.

Weird, wasn't it?

Aiden was mostly trying to just not think about it all the time. He technically succeeded, as there were occasional moments where he thought about something else instead. Like right now. He was thinking that he was quite hungry, despite the unusual hour, except the last time he'd gone in there he'd noticed some scratches. Some too fresh for comfort scratches. That meant a certain someone who so liked trying to kill Persi, and had somehow ended up as a cat, if the rumours and gouges were to be believed, was still hanging around.

That did not relax him at all. He did need food, though, so he poked his head in.

... Strange person looked familiar but definitely wasn't Isabel, unless she somehow now had a humanoid-but-not-bone-queen-Isabel form. Should be safe enough. He nodded politely on his way to the fridge. Food... food. Hah! It was still there. There was a container in the back corner that contained cooked chicken. He pulled out a leg and tucked the container back where it belonged.

... Strange person was definitely familiar. "...Er, hi," he said.

As Masque slowly ate his sandwich he couldn't help his mind wandering.  Daydreaming was something he was prone to although that usually wasn't much of a problem.  What was a problem was when daydreaming turned into brooding which happened more often than he'd really care to admit or deal with.  Alas, brooding seemed more the direction of the day but at lease the food was good.  

"...Er, hi,"

Masque jumped at the voice, almost falling off of his stool in the process.  He hadn't even noticed anyone walk up on him so lost was he inside his own thoughts.  Paying attention.  It was a thing.  Apparently.  One whose absence had very nearly caused him a moment of acute embarrassment.

At first Masque thought that the newcomer was a stranger but after a squint and a closer look he realized that he recognized him after all.  It was quite understandable that he not since the first time he had seen the guy he had been snow white, literally, and now he was not.  If not for his artist's eyes, he may not have even recognized him as the same person.

'Hi.  Nice to see you again, Aiden.'  Masque lifted his arm and the words appeared in his usual neat black writing.  Distractions from brooding were good.

Someone clearly wasn't aware that there was a mass murderer in the building, to be that unobservant. It wasn't like Aiden was shrouded in snow or something.

Oh. That was where he recognized the guy from. Okay. Masque was here? Huh. All right then. He bit into his chicken leg and tore off a small bite before noticing the letters on the guy. Right, visual communication. "You too," he said after swallowing. "I didn't know you lived here."

No one else would be here in the middle of the night, right? No one who didn't live there? It wasn't like some place where people would come and stay for a few days and be stressed and wander around at night because they couldn't sleep. The stressed people wandering at night already lived there. As long as certain people didn't wander at night, though...