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He listened, frowning up until Jiri admitted he had very little control of the situation. That his power didn't really bend to his will. It was a good indicator that everything that had happened to land him in this position wasn't his fault. He felt a little guilty for snapping at him, but only a little. After all, he had gotten stabbed, killed a man, and may very well end up in jail at the end of this. He had a right to be upset.

"Can they hear me? If they can: hi? There's a whole observatory up on the roof with a telescope, if Ace didn't know. And it's definitely not my place to say, but you probably hate me already, so I'll say it anyways--you should let Mary out more. Ace says she gets cramped in there, with how little you use her, that's why she wanders. Also I'd like to know if she's that pretty in real life, or if that was just the dream, so it would be cool to meet her."

He laid down once more, attempting to relax and ignore the mounting headache in his brain. He never had someone address his constructs directly. This fact brought the more mature ones to surface, a near physical presence behind his eyes.

"First of all, yeah they can hear you. Just like I can see and feel everything when they have bodies, they can see and feel everything I do. Second of all, cool, but I don't think I'll be heading up to the roof any time soon. And third, I know very well Mary gets cramped and restless. However, the bodies she wants, feels like she needs, are too big. Do you know how big a mountain lion is? A hundred pounds at least, so that's a lot of material. Plus I need to consume her caloric intake and for a body that size, that's a lot of food. A day of prep and rest, at least. And don't say, just give her a smaller body, because last time I did she ran away from me. She keeps finding new ways to be a disobedient every time I give her a body, the little bugger. And depending on the body I give her, yes she can be very pretty or very ugly."

He groaned and pinched his brow, Mary didn't like a lot of what he said and was currently clawing at his brain box. No permanent damage mind you, but enough to give him a headache. Why did he have to have someone who actively tried to dislike him in his own head? Was he self loathing? Was that it? Was this self punishment that was happening?

"How are Ace and Mary doing? Ace seemed, ah, pretty shaken up. Last we talked."

He lifted his arm to stare at his new room mate and give him a long hard look. "What the hell are you talking about? You shouldn't know-" He stopped short, eyes growing wide with realization. The dream, memory, flooded over him with sudden and terrifying clarity. The memory space of the house in the desert, a young man with a strange cup of tea. Ace and Mary arguing over the intruder's presence. Mary purred in the back of his mind, pushing forward to watch the stranger.

"You..." He breathed, tone between anger and shock. He sat up slowly, careful not to hurt the wound. "You were there. In my head...I thought I was hallucinating, or dead. I did die! For three seconds but the point is, you didn't help! You could have helped!"

That was probably the thing that offended him the most. That he was there and aware of everything that was going on and he had done nothing to help. He just sat there and watched, let Mary take up too much space, move through the cracks in his brain. It was hard to handle in the first place, dying on top of everything didn't help. He had to leave it to the constructs to care about keeping him alive.

But the stranger in his brain only made Mary all the more eager to jump ship. Even now, he could feel her staring at Jiri with something akin to love. However much such a possessive creature like her could actually love.

It had been so long, too long spent cuffed to a bed, collared and drugged. They told him he had been lucky to survive, that the ambulance had been able to get him to the hospital, that the knife wound hadn't cut too deeply and left his stomach intact enough to simply be sown up. That the seizure that happened just after arriving to the hospital hadn't killed him outright. Apparently his heart stopped for two seconds. He had died, god he had actually died. Worst he had killed the man who had done it.

The whole event had made him feel worst that sick. He never thought it would come to this.

Or perhaps the nausea was from the rainbow assortment of pills he had been given. The doctors didn't want to release him so soon after a traumatic incident. But both the school, who had been contacted, and the mutant division of the police thought the hospital wouldn't be safe for him to stay. They said videos of what happened had gone viral, that people were riled by the incident. They said the mansion was better equipped to keep him safe till the trial could be held.

Oh yes, there was going to be a trial. They were going to judge whether it was self-defense or murder. That was possibly the worst of it. Because he didn't know if they were actually going to judge the events as they occurred or if the bias against mutants would prevail. Being collared for the time he had been horrible, suffocating. He couldn't imagine it happening for any longer.

So here he was, picked up from the hospital, electronic ankle bracelet to keep him confined to the mansion grounds, and guided back into the Xavier Mansion. Safe at last, it seemed. His body felt like fire, even with the pain meds, but at least he could walk around. He was eager to lay down again though.

Back in his old room he found the second bed that had been empty when he left now was occupied. Curiosity won over pain and he found himself plopping down on the strangers bed, looking at the open laptop and the video it had pause. The image made his blood run cold. So these were the videos everyone was worried about.

Alex looked up at Randy, face the picture of innocence. "Riiiight, friends, good-good buddies of mine, good guys..." He cleared his throat, "Could you uh, ya know...get my friends to leave? Or, even better, get me out of here? I don't want to cause any trouble." He kept his voice low, not wishing for them to hear him, even though there was plenty of noise for his voice to get lost in.

Still there was no way he'd risk it. Those guys had very nearly kicked his ass for stopping them from being jerks. Sure he could have done it in a more subtle way but they deserved. It was only now he was regretting his choices.

"My place...it's the mountains where we spent our youth and the fields of my creation."he said wistfully, full of nostalgia and an ache for freedom. Oh how many lands must they have wondered, the sights they've seen. "Alex, he enjoys these places too, they are as much his home as they are mine."

He glanced over at Mary and frowned. "Yes, she does have a love of hunting. Says if she can not gnaw her teeth on something's bones, then her teeth are liable to grow through her skull. A lie I imagine she made to garner pity from out creator...Hardly a lady, but she is fond you think of her like that."

The mention of their comings and goings made him smile. "Oh we can leave but we have nobodies to go to. We could possibly expire with out a tether to hold us down. So the choice is left to Alex. He can only let so many of us roam free at a time. Mary requires bigger bodies, lest she claw up Alex's mind in a fit of anger. As you can imagine she doesn't get to leave often. Thus she think our creator a warden and this a prison."

When he returned the room had changed, no longer a living room but a spars and locked bedroom. The windows were still barred with the outside now night but the door hung open. Alex was now laying on the bed, tucked in and dozing. Not asleep but calmer than he was before. Ace was there with him, sitting on the bed, hand pressed to the boy's forehead.

Mary lay napping in a corner, her human mask shed in favor of the real one. A mountain lion much larger that the normal type, fur decorated in swirls of cream and desert sand. Every breath she took seemed to shift the swirls with her body.

"She refused to leave until you returned. So I'll ask again, who are you?"

Ace was glaring at him, anger radiating off him. He was protective of the boy, connection far deeper than blood. The boy was creator, home, joy, such joy and pride, whose being was tangled in his own. They were one and the same, Adam born of earth and God's breath. They shared in their creators heart, Mary and him. All of them did, thus bore his traits.

He did not blame Mary for her traits, they were as much a part of her as they were of Alex. But he did blame the stranger for bringing the wrong ones out. The stranger who dared say he was the creator. The untethered one, with no body to call home. This drifter would not be allowed to settle here. Not while he had talons enough to fight.

Alex sat up slowly, running a hand through his short hair. No long, his hair was longer in this time, he was younger too. Fifteen it felt like. Oh, he was fully immersed in this memory this time around. God, he didn't want to think about this place. Not after everything that just happened. In the background cicadas buzzed, soft and just on the edge of thought.

To answer the stranger's question, "Not much I don't think. It's both and neither. Its just how I remember this place." He stood up and looked out the barred window, the light and the breeze feeling exactly how he remembered it. The desert looked much the same too, aside from the mound of freshly turned dirt.

"Not that they're aren't back doors everywhere in this place. The locks are pointless." A voice purred in Jiri's ear, arms with clawed hands draping themselves around him. Mary looked human enough this time, cloaked in fur and with a mouth full of pointed teeth.

Ace appeared next, hawkish as his presence implied and more animal than human. Two wings rested over his shoulders while dozens more lined his spine. "Mary, I told you to leave them be! He can't take this strain, not now!"

"I'm not dead yet?" Alex turned from the window, looking resigned to his fate.

"No you're very much alive. For how long depends on her. You need to go back to your place, Mary."Ace commanded.

"You go back, wait for the ship to sink. I want off." she growled, claws digging into Jiri.