Re: log: marvel, mutant manor - jack/rachel
Putting a voice to the phantom memories made them fade in immediacy, and Jack's attention shifted to the roving presence in his mind. The quick opening and shutting of his time in the facility was strangely satisfying. This was not a rogue, alien thing that was digging around in his head, but a person, someone who could like or dislike what they found there, who could be frightened out.
Then the trees parted and fell away, like the first cracking of a new book's spine, and the steps materialized. Jack didn't back away, but he did settle on the girl on the steps with suspicion and worry that rolled off him in waves. A long red thread of curiosity, though, clung to him, drew him a short step forward.
There was a face to put to the digging and picking, now, a woman. Flesh and blood - unless she wasn't. "Jack Corvus," he said, glancing past her, up the steps, to the mist and the lanterns beyond. Could it possibly be real? Or was it nothing more than an illusion, like the strange doubling he had seen a moment before? He thought he had a sharp handle on reality, that he knew his hallucinations for what they were, as real as they might seem, as soft and genuine as they might appear. This was different.
He didn't step up the stairs just yet, but he didn't back away. Looking for peace. Accurate enough. "I thought everyone was looking for that," he said. Talking, suddenly, didn't seem as difficult as it had a few moments before. Maybe it was her calming presence, or maybe it was her connection with his mind, the temporary boxing away of what had happened in the past weeks. "What's at the top of the stairs?"