(no subject)
Ellen sits in the middle of the living room on the floor before a lit candle. The candle rests on one of the dishes from the kitchen, and the wax is slowly bleeding down its sides while the flame flickers. Her feet are bare -- this has been happening a lot -- and pressed against the soft grey of her slacks as she sits with her legs folded in. Her hair falls long and blonde and loose around her shoulders, clean and shining and healthy-looking.
Wherever Erik has been, he looks as if he has had a long day. His suit is grey, as are the shadows beneath his eyes, and the knot of his tie is already loose at his neck, jarring with the rigid formality of the rest of his attire. His hat is tugged off his head as he steps in through the door, and tossed lazily aside onto the island that divides kitchen from living area. He's halfway across the apartment before he notices Ellen and her candle and turns to squint at both.
Ellen does not look up from the flame immediately, processing the sounds of his entrance but busily involved in staring at it. "I felt a little confined so I came out here," she says aloud by way of greeting. Her clothes are neat, and formal, as ever: the dark slacks matched to a navy dress shirt bearing a hint of silky gloss.
"Alright," says Erik. She does...not seem to be sticking her fingers into it, so. He watches for a moment longer, some odd mix of mildly exasperated and wary, and turns to settle his briefcase more carefully down next to his hat so that he may enter the kitchen with both hands free.
Ellen does stick her fingers in it! But only to extinguish the flame by licking her fingertips and then pinching the wick. Then she rises smoothly, unfolding from her cross-legged position on the floor and retrieving candle and dish to, at the least, set them aside for now. Tucking a few stray hairs behind her ears, she pauses a moment to glance at his hat, as though she finds it puzzling on some level or other, before turning to drift after him toward the kitchen, folding her arms over her stomach.
"I see you have decided to have hair again." Tone mild and voice rough, Erik moves to the usual cabinet to extract the usual bottle, and the usual glass. He does not look back to track her progress after him into the kitchen, but focuses upon clinking glass to glass without bothering to mess with ice first.
"Whoever I am or am not these days, I might as well resemble myself." Ellen's answer is perhaps not the most reassuring thing that she could say about no longer being bald. She does not follow him all the way into the half-kitchen, standing instead with her feet planted firmly on the threshhold. Her tone carries a dry hint of humor as she adds, "It was that, or smash the mirror."
"Makes sense," says clean-shaven Erik as he pours, cutting himself off short at about a finger and a half. He studies this for a few seconds, and then tips the bottle down again to fill the glass. "It looks nice. Would you like a glass?"
"No, thank you." Ellen is very courteous in her refusal, tipping a hand outward in a negating gesture even though he is not actually looking in her direction. "My thoughts are clear. It ... I should like to keep them that way." She lifts her chin slightly, drawing a slow breath through her nose. "I was watching the news."
Without benefit of a beard to soften the lines around his jowels, it is not difficult to extrapolite from the defined flex and clench that sets in there at mention of the news that he has been following it as well. Still. He says, "Oh?" Then he takes a drink.
"I think that we may have been given a task, Doctor Lensherr." Ellen enunciates all the syllables of the name with extreme delicacy, watching as he swallows with an odd light in her pale eyes.
Magneto does not say anything immediately, but it is clear in what portion of his profile is visible and in the set of his back and shoulders that he is angry. He takes another sip, more slowly this time, and finally turns around to face her, settling back into the corner of the counter as he does so. "At this point, I suppose it would not hurt to set them all on fire."
"They build instruments of truth so that they can persecute us. Our people. They must be destroyed." Ellen tips her head slightly to one side, her expression bright -- not with pleasure or happiness, but bright with alertness and clarity and the sharpness of her gaze, like the sheen of a blade. "In blood and fire. But their instrument, sir."
Disinclined to argue on any of those counts, Erik rankles his nose a bit against the burn of whiskey in his chest. He watches her as she speaks, wary perhaps of that alertness and aliveness, and measuring. A brow is lifted, and then the other, encouraging her to continue while he follows his slow sip with a readier swallow and sets the nearly empty glass aside.
Ellen takes a step forward in her earnestness, but only one. She holds herself very still otherwise, as though she fears to loose the energy her stiff posture keeps contained. "Can we not make it ours? They make a little -- thing -- to taste our blood and find our genes -- in heartbeats, minutes? They /must/ do something within my realm." Ellen lifts one of her hands into the air and closes her fingers into a grasping fist, tight enough to whiten her knuckles. "I don't know what, I am so far behind and I haven't found anything in any journal anywhere to suggest what they claim to have done. But from the Lie Smith's book, sir: teach it to lie. Find mutants everywhere. Anyone we choose. The shadow, the illusion of the power they hate, in their own blood."
Clank. The glass is set down, and Erik tries not to look like he has a terrible taste in his mouth, and fails. "By manipulating the machine, or by manipulating the masses?" He is guarded in his skepticism, but pushes away from the counter to match her step with one of his own nonetheless.
Ellen shakes her head with swift vehemence. "I cannot manipulate the machine, or any machine," she says. "But if I had one -- I could see what it does to a body, to brand the blood as mutant blood. Imagine if it is something that I can duplicate. In the body of anyone we chose."
"Then we will acquire one." Simple as that, apparently. Erik looks her over again, turns his head to peer at the uncapped whiskey, and sidesteps over to the island to clip open his briefcase. "I will contact the Circle."
Ellen shows her teeth in the sharp flash of a hard smile, gone near as soon as it appears; she dips her head. "Thank you," she says. "These men and women would market our utter subjugation. They must reap what they have sown. They practically ask us to kill them and destroy their factories."
"It is refreshing to hear someone say so." Even an insane someone. Erik forces a half-smile at her over the open top of his briefcase, extracts his laptop, and closes it. "I have never been one to have extensive amounts of patience in the realm of watching and waiting."
Ellen frowns, and draws her head up as she takes a half step back. Brow crinkling, she asks, "Why wait?"
A flicker of a sneer plays unpleasantly on Erik's closed features, and he sets to opening and booting up the laptop. "We aren't. Not anymore."
"Oh." Ellen's expression clears. Well, that's all right, then! "I see," she says, briskly. "Well. If there is anything you need of me, I am at your disposal, sir."
"I will let you know," says Erik, who is already distracted by the terse email message that he is in the process of writing as soon as his password is keyed in.
Ellen inclines her head to him again, and then turns and strides back out of the kitchen. The renewed vitality in her step sends her to pace the short hall and her small room, burning the excess of her energy a little more out of his hair.
It does not take long for the email to be written, or for Erik to hit 'send'. The computer is shut, and shortly after that, so is the front door. If she returns to the living area, it will be to find that he is gone again.
Ellen has ideas!