Re: log: marvel, mutant manor - jack/rachel
Jack looked up the path and watched the brief flickers of someone else's life. Knowing none of this was real eased some of his worries. It should have been an easy thing to decide, but nothing seemed too strange to be, anymore. The shared nature of this place, seeing a hint of what she felt, that was more of a balm. It did make the prying of it seem less threatening. Even in his current state, he still couldn't help but wonder at what lay at the top of the stairs.
"There is usually a price," he murmured. A flash, then, of a dark shape, falling from high above them to land on a horrified individual on the ground, gaping up, a knife clutched in one hand. There was no sound, and it flickered out of existence like film with frames missing.
He looked down at the scarlet light spilling across the steps. "Neither," he said. Beyond the stairwell, words rustled together like reeds, out of sight, a hundred remembered stanzas, wound around like mantras for the worst of times. coffee spoons and last duchesses. "I memorize." It was just for him, after all, an embarrassing interest that generally just seemed like an overtly eccentric affectation when trotted out in conversation, so he kept it to himself when he wasn't sharing brain space with someone else. "No one worries about it when you read novels or books about World War II, but people make assumptions about a man interested in poetry," he said. The flash of humor disappeared as quickly as it had come. He liked this quieter place, where he could let anger simmer in the background, out of sight, pretend around it for a little while. There was a calm here like something bad was running through the woods, created by the foreign presence there. He would take it, just the same.