Xaviers!

Not being quite as flexible as Robin, this required Miriam to occasionally eschew dignity and squeeze through some tight passages. Although she was as careful as could be, she couldn't help but occasionally brush against some spores. Now, in the astral plane or wherever, this would have triggered memories, but here, they were just mushrooms...weren't they?

And if they were just mushrooms, then the voices calling out to her -- the ones calling her disgusting and pathetic, the ones choking back their bile at the very sight of her, friends laughing at her behind her back -- well, those would just be regular hallucinations, right?

"Bloody brilliant. I just had to decide I had to go spelunking for his worst impulses and he's insulated it with hallucinogens. Just great." she complains as she toughs her way through the memories and feelings bubbling up from coming in contact with the spores. "Said it before, I'll say it again, other people are the worst and he's bloody cultivating the garbage they spew. Eww! Fuck!" she shouts as she slips on who knows what and has to brace herself against the wall, hand sinking in a good inch further than she'd anticipated, sending shudders down her spine.

Why had she come down here at all? Why had she decided to poke the bear? Why had she let Sara down, spending so much time as an object that she left and took Robin with her?



Wait, that last one wasn't hers. Fucking Will.


There was a light at the end of the tunnel, however, in the form of some kind of glowing from down towards the back of the passageway she was slogging through.

That last one hurts, if only because it hits close to home on losing someone and feeling left alone. But she's been dragging herself on through the muck for all her life, what's a couple more meters of it made literal...

The dark passageway opened up into a dead-end cavern, illuminated by glowing moss and mushrooms aligning the walls. The sickly green glow covered everything in the room, which I suppose was better than crawling around in the dark.

The floor bubbled and burbled, as new muck apparently seeped out of the ground, joining the flow -- this is where it was generated, perhaps? The source of all the troubles?

And right in the center, rising out of the muck, in a mesh of vines and tangles, was a...well, it was a throne. There was no other way of describing it -- a throne made of vines, moss and mushrooms, but a throne not withstanding. On on armrest lay a wicked looking knife -- but, as they weren't in Will's head, the seat was empty.

"Why would you need a knife down here in the muck..." Miriam wonders, trudging over to pick it up.

The knife was definitely used.

The untrained eye would just think it was covered in some of the same muck that pervaded the entire sewer system. But Miriam's cleverly attuned vampire eyes could tell that, at least here, it wasn't muck -- or not just muck, at the very least. There was quite a bit of what could only be dried blood on the knife, here at the origin of all the general nastiness.

"God damnit Will, did you kill off someone who was supposed to be in charge?" she mutters, then realizes that all the growing fungus and vines and general gloop might be what remains of whatever was killed off down here. Which means... "I hate this new power so much right now..." she curses under her breath before plunging her hands into the muck to try and grope for what source of the bubbling filth might be hidden beneath it to try and pull it up.

Being knee-deep in muck was bad enough. Plunging her arms into it was much, much worse -- Will owed her at the very least a coke.

After a few minutes, though, she did find SOMETHING underneath the muck. It was rather stuck down there, but a bit of a tug popped it loose -- unexpectedly so, sending her sprawling back down onto her own butt in the ichor.

Getting her bearings after a moment, she could begin to investigate what she found --- although maybe she wishes she wouldn't have. It was an arm -- a human arm, though one covered with gunk and muck and fungi.

The arm itself was covered with slashes, punctures, gouges -- knife wounds. Self-inflicted knife wounds, if Miriam was any sort of expert. And it was roughly cut off at the shoulder joint; a ragged cut without precision. And from those cuts and punctures flowed the ooze -- fresh. Just a whiff of it...

___________________
Miriam sat alone in a padded room, deep in the bowels of Muir. The doctor was talking to her again, but what did HE know. HE couldn't possibly understand what it was like to feel this power flowing through her. No one did -- that's why they left her here all alone. To rot. To rot! Someone else's problem, that's who she was. Always someone else's problem...

_______________

Miriam's head swims from the stench and memories that aren't hers but close enough to rattle her. Stumbling to her feet she desperately clings to consciousness. Who knows what would happen if she passed out underground, in a space of her own making. Even the best case scenario of 'just' lieing in this stuff is enough of a burst of panic for her to gather her wits enough to stagger out of the room, still clutching the knife as well as the severed arm. Back out. Out. Out. Out! At least it's faster now that she doesn't really have to try and stay clean anymore?

If anything, the further she ran, the deeper into the muck she sank. It was almost like holding the arm was just causing more and more gunk to pool around her -- or maybe that was just her panic talking. Her rush bumped her into more mushrooms, giving her flashes of the shit Will had gone through -- pain, loss, torture. She was dazed, nearly over her head -- there was no way she could get out, it was too much, she could feel herself slipping away...

...when a powerful arm suddenly wrapped around her waist, looping around and around, pulling her up and getting her free from the muck. Will grimaced as he lifted her, his other arm still outside the sewer, holding on to something back in the 'factory' area, as he reeled the two of them back.

"Breath, Miriam. In and out. In and out. I've got you..."

"No thanks, I've got enough of that smell for a lifetime or two..." she sputters, spitting out bits of goop and frantically wiping at her face and hair, the arm and knife dropped on the floor.

Pulling the two of them back onto the now-abandoned factory floor, Will carefully set Miriam down.

He then placed both hands on her, and closed his eyes, as he slowly began absorbing the muck that had clung to Miriam.

"My cross to bear, after all..."

"Shouldn't have to be... So much pain and hurt still bubbling from this." she says, nudging the severed arm away from her a little with the heel of her shoe.

"And I'll bet dollars to doughnuts it's not the only one down there. They grow back, don't you know. Like a starfish," Will frowned.

"Will, you can't keep doing this to yourself. Whatever this is exactly." she says, finding the knife to get a better look at it now that she's not trapped in a rotting cavern. "This can't possibly be a good emotional mechanism."

"Like you've never tortured yourself for your mistakes, Miriam?" Will snapped, a little harsher than expected -- maybe a side effect of sapping up some of the ichor?

He took a deep breath. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. My shit, my problem.

From what I'm told, Robbie and company helped set it up so that stuff gets processed subconsciously elsewhere, and as long as I'm not producing more than I can process, I'm alright.

...I don't think that's why I'm so lethargic, but I wouldn't put it past being part of a problem."



The knife, frankly, didn't bring up any thoughts to Miriam specifically -- it seemed like a fairly generic chef's knife, albeit one that was nearly dull with over-use at this point. Maybe simply removing it would have some kind of positive benefit? Or not?

"I have. I do. That's how I know it's no good. And if you overwhelm your ability to cope with it..."

"Then you get grouchy Will," he smiled, sadly. "I know, I know, I know.

The problem is, I see who I am as a person...and I don't like it. That's what it all boils down to, doesn't it? I don't like me."

"Then change. It's what you do and what you enjoy, isn't it?"

"You heard the brewmaster. Not much call for that 'round these parts," he said, with a wry grin.

"I'll keep, Miriam. I'll struggle my through this; I always have before. I'm actually quite slow to change, ironically, but change I will."

"You've changed quite substantially throughout the year that I've known you for. I do wonder sometimes if you'd be happier if I'd never let Sam open that box in your head."

"Oh, almost certainly.

But 'happy' isn't the only metric by which a life is worth living, is it? If you don't know what you have to lose, how can you enjoy what you have?

I suppose a vampire would prefer a life without stakes," he joked.

"Oookay that's it, you're going back in the box."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure puns are hard-coded in the clay, you're not getting out of this one by finding my original packaging," Will grinned.

"Well, as pleasant a distraction as it was delving into the literal gutters of your mind, it did not actually bring us any closer to figuring out what's wrong with you. Well, what's physically wrong with you anyway."

"Maybe it did," Will said, looking down at the knife. "I'm hurting myself down there, right? And if I'm hurting myself, maybe that's causing me to tire out."

"Maybe it is a matter of changing myself."

"How you think about yourself. There's... probably some middle-ground, but moderation's not exactly my area of expertise."

"Nor mine," Will nodded. "Which I think is kinda the point."

"Look at this place. It's a massive factory -- but it wasn't always here. Sam -- not your Sam, my Sam -- built a small little construction outfit, and it bloomed into this. Populated by a cast of thousands. It can't be something small, it's something huge. Or the box -- I can't just have, like, gone to sleep for however long, I had to lock it all away and get someone to dramatically bust it open. No middle ground! Or you -- I couldn't just be concerned about you being a vampire; I had to come busting in to your hotel room, stakes a flailing. It's 100 or nothing with me.

And maybe thats what's draining me. If you let a battery go all the way out and keep filling it back up, it loses its capacity. Maybe I'm doing something similar -- maybe I'm just too...too much.

I mean, look at the beer nozzle -- it's broken because it's on full blast all the time. The pipe's not big enough to handle everything that's going through it. No middle ground.

The problem's not some strange rock here on campus, or an allergy or something. It's me. I'm being a drama queen 110% of the time, and it's slowly killing me."

The factory around them slowly recedes and crumbles away around them as Miriam eases up on her power until they're just sitting among waist-high walls and a couple of pipes and valves.

"And no rerouting or redesigning or adjusting is going to change who you are. I... maybe could, but whoever you'd end up being, it wouldn't be you."

"Being 'me' used to be easy, Miriam. I knew who I was," he said leaning up against the vampire.

"I was Sara's husband. But here, Sara is some military woman with a life and a family of her own.
I was the Morrigan's Champion. Sam's a friend here, and isn't trying to exclude me, but Tereza and Viv are her champions here, and there's no doubting that.
I was the X-Men's leader. There's barely an X-Men here, and I'm not sure I'd have the energy to fight on a regular basis if they were here.
I was Robin's father. I still am, but she's a grown woman now -- she doesn't need someone to change her diapers or tend to her scraped knees or play pretty princess dressup."

He paused.

"I've spent my whole life defining myself by other people. And when they turn against....no, that's melodramatic.

When what I see my role as being doesn't match up with what they want, I get angry and hold a grudge. And that builds up until I'm sitting in a sewer filled with goop cutting myself, because maybe that pain is what I feel I deserve?

Sara'd have a fix for this, you know. She'd either have some sort of sciencamagun that charged me to full, or she'd have some kind words to help me feel better, or she'd yell at me until I realized I was being an idiot. Maybe all three," he said, with a sheepish grin. "Or I'd head over to Sam's place, and make them dinner or fix their shower or take part in some kind of pagan ritual. Maybe all three."

"You have no place here. A spare cog in a machine that's not your own. Or you're having a mid-life crisis at age 2 billion."

"Maybe that's it. Maybe I should go buy an expensive sports car and go dating a floozy half my age. Know any wizened old crones?" Will joked.

"Hey if you want to go on a self-destructive tear you just have to say the word and I'm there."

"Eh, that's the problem. I go on a wild tear, I still gotta wake up the next morning, shower, and deal with everyone knowing I was on a wild tear the night before. A world without judgment would be a hell of a thing, though I think it might burn down fast."

"That's the whole point of doing something you might regret in the morning."

"I think, in general, you're more OK with burning bridges than I am. As you can see," he said, gesturing at the knife. "I care what people think about me. A lot. A hell of a lot."

"I'm miserable. All of the time. So much that it takes effort to not constantly see the worst in everyone and see the good as a personal affront. You can put up with some misery in the morning for a judgement free night."

"You can, maybe," Will sighed. "I, on the other hand, take the slightest hesitation as a sign that, oh no, secretly, they all hate my guts.

For me, it's the idea that everyone is just...putting up with me. As a favor to...I don't know, someone. And that, given half the chance, they'd cut me out of their lives and never see me again. No room for error."

"You tried to kill me and I just waded through your mental sewage for you. Not only am I not just putting up with you, I think you owe me at least one night of painting the town red. Or green."