Xaviers!

Will sat in the med center, dressed in a hospital gown, looking at his watch.

This was partially a return checkup after being released from Muir; a check to make sure his internal MGH levels hadn't spiked once again. But this was also an opportunity to get some answers about the lethargy and befuddlement he had been experiencing, as well.

Privately, he doubted the doctors could differentiate between their head and a hole in the ground, at least when it came to his unique physiology, but you have to start somewhere. So, he waited for the lab boffins to get back with his bloodwork, and then he'd try to remember as much as he could from days gone by to analyze the results himself.

((open))

"You really are ancient. Who wears a watch anymore?" comes a dry comment from the door where Miriam is leaning against the frame, holding a blood-bag with an honest to god silly straw sticking out of it.

"Oh, watches will come back into fashion, just you wait. All the cool kids in the 2030s have watches, penny loafers and feathers in their caps."

"Purely ironically, I assume. What are you doing here anyway? I wouldn't have thought you'd need something so mundane as a medical check-up."

"Part of my condition for getting out of Muir was to make sure that there were no long-term side-effects to my drug-induced haze. Personally, I don't think the doctors are going to be able to tell a god-damned thing, but don't tell them I told you that.

I've also not been feeling 100% for quite some time now -- lethargic and drained. So maybe I can get some answers that way, even if this has to be one of the least efficient ways to do so. I guess I'm just trying to kill two birds with one stone."

"You've not been cheating on me with some other Vampire, have you?" she jokes as she steps into the room and lets the door fall close behind her.

"Har-de-har-har. Enjoying your synthetic bloodbag there, my tall, pale and gruesome friend?" Will joked back.

"Nah, it's been happening more or less since I've been here. This Xaviers, that is, not this dimension. And mostly since my brain-box was opened up. I'm wondering if there's some kind of, I don't know, strange mineral or something here that's draining me, or if I'm just having psychological troubles since the world slammed into me, or what have you. I don't know! I'm kind of an idiot when it comes to these things."

"You've been... put through quite a bit, psychologically speaking. Do you want to take a look for yourself?"

"Well, that's why I'm here. I'm sure they'll have serotonin levels and blood oxygen content and a bunch of other stats which don't technically mean anything for me, but might help figure out what's going on by analogy," Will said, missing the point.

"I meant your head, not things you change on a whim anyway. You said I should figure out how my power changed, you might have something going on in that cartoon you call a mind."

"I don't think you get to make quips about the flavor of my head when you're constantly on balconies overlooking wind-stepped moorlands, but your point is taken, at the very least."

"On the contrary. You saw my mournful castle, I get to quip about your toffee factory. That's the deal." she says with the hint of a smirk.

"I wonder if everyone's head is so interesting, or if it's just us special crazy people who have inner worlds.

Now, you don't have to do anything, but if you want to see how your power has changed, I'll give you permission to check it out. Best to test it on me, anyway; I typically bounce back."

"It's everyone, though if I had to hazard a guess, you and those of us who deal with it more regularly keep reinforcing the metaphors. They're just concepts and abstract thoughts seen as something you have a frame of reference too. The more you think of them as actual places the more you flesh them out like a recurring dream. Of course now I somehow make them real so what do I know." she shakes her head.

"Well, 'real' is in the eye of the beholder, don't you think?

You -- er, that is, the other you -- were able to create bubbles where people thought the rules of reality were different; kind of a mass hypnosis sort of thing. This might work in much the same way. After all, we really WERE on a balcony when you gothic'd it all up. Maybe we just THOUGHT we were picking a rose and whatnot."

"Deluding myself and everyone around? That does unfortunately sound like me."

"Making them see things from your point of view might be a more charitable way of putting it, yes?"

"That's a very slippery slope for someone who can change minds with a thought, but I appreciate the optimistic perspective."

"Well, tell you what. I catch you changing anyone's minds, I'll hit you with my old man cane. Deal?"

"Deal. Now... we should probably do this somewhere else. I don't think the doctors would appreciate me replacing parts of their hospital with a bakery."

"What, you don't want to find out how my brain interprets a wide variety of medical whatzits and gizmos? You don't want to disrupt all the other patients 'round these parts? Fine, I guess that makes sense," Will said, dramatically sighing and rolling his eyes.

"Let's go then. Who knows how long it'll take them to run your labs to their satisfaction." she says, briefly tilting her head towards the door.

"Right-o," Will said, peeling off his hospital gown, and then flexing as he shifted into his regular casual outfit.

"Lead on, MacDuff."

"I have to admire your dedication to letting your arse hang in the breeze simply because you're in a hospital." she says as they head out.

"Everything has it's proper form and function, even people," Will nodded. "All the world's a stage, and one man in his time plays many parts."

"It's me. I'm the one man," he over-explained.

"Yeah, thanks, I got it." she says, heading out the front door and glancing around for a moment, finally settling on the path leading off towards the more wooded parts of the grounds.

"Ready for a new set-dressing then?"

"Indeed.

Is there something I need to do to make this easier?"

"I haven't the foggiest. Focus on where you want to start looking maybe?"

"So many trees to choose from," Will joked, looking off deeper into the woods.

"In your head, you muppet." she says, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. With only the two of them in the immediate vicinity it's easy to let her mind's eye drift and find the landscape of Will's mind. Of course, there is a forest in his head, but she'll be damned if she's going to this much effort to replace a bunch of trees with different kind of trees to wander through. The smell of the woods does at least help in focusing, even if she moves away from the mental forest. Around her not much is changing for a moment, then the ground begins to soften and sag a little, spots of sewage slowly bursting to the surface in patches.

Miriam's fists clench and her head falls back, empty eyes staring up the the sky peeking through the branches above as the puddles of dirty water recede around the bricks and tiles rising out of them, quaint buildings pushing from the ground around them, leaving a smattering of twigs, leafs and dirt on the cobblestone road emerging beneath their feet...

Will moved to catch support Miriam as she wobbled.

"Hey, hey, easy does it. Don't strain something," he said trying to support her. "Can you hear me?"

Will looked around -- there was something eerie about the essentially deserted little town. A side-effect of it being drawn out by a vampire? Or just from being in the woods?

"Yes, I'm here... You're here too. Here and everywhere." she quietly muses to herself.

"Just be careful -- this is..."

Will looked around.

"This is extraordinary. This is what the inside of my head feels like, is it?"

"It's... yes. A part of it... the store-front to everything else, it's where a lot of things come together from the Factory, the Woods, the Sewers..."

"I can hardly keep track of it. It seems to change every time someone visits. There used to be a garden, and a library, and all sorts of things.

Probably a side effect of how malleable I am, I would imagine."

Will walked around a little, peering into windows and checking around corners.

"They feel real enough."

"There's a lot more than this. Try thinking about your lethargy... maybe we can follow the train of thought."

"Maybe the lethargy is why no one's here?" Will thought out loud, trying a door, and finding it locked.

"I don't suppose you have a key, or know the manager," he joked.

"Everyone who would be here already is. Or is... busy having you be conscious I... don't really understand how it works."

"Well, that's what experimentation is for, I suppose," Will said throwing his shoulder into the door and popping it open.

"Sweet, a bar," Will said, walking inside. As he crossed the threshold, just for a second, his skin seemed to ripple and undulate, before firming up in his normal appearance. He didn't seem to notice.

"What was that?" Miriam asks as she follows him, eyes still not really focused on anything, much less Will, which begs the question of how she even really noticed