10299/From Discord to Harmony

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From Discord to Harmony
Date of Scene: 03 December 2019
Location: Classroom - Xavier's School
Synopsis: Shannon and Brad talk about music, their gifts, and what it might be like for each to walk a mile in the other's shoes. While sharing her story, it seems to have over-inspired Brad. Oh, dear.
Cast of Characters: Haunt, Nightingale




Haunt has posed:
The drums are not subtle at all, there's a very rapid fever pitch going on that does not remain contained in the classroom. The music classroom is heavy with drums; the door is shut firmly, but the sound of the drums themselves, if not the other music, carries. It's hardcore punk rock. The invisible drummer is doing his thing, entirely invisible except for one piece: he has a large headset on, black bulky headphones hover in place with a cord going down around invisible leg and the side of the drummer's stool.

" -- For far too long these voices,
muffled by distances,
It's time to come to our senses,
up from the dirt---"

Brad is, in fact, singing along (it's a bit of a screamer song, not melodic), with considerable emotion that takes in the slack of what the teen can produce vocally. He's fierce, but so are the lyrics to the very fast song. There's a lot of focus on getting the elaborate beats, and he's beating the hell out of the kick drum, it's vibrating into the floor in the quick pulsing patterns. A lot of skill is on display, but mostly some kind of built up angry frustration flows through all of it, specifically going into the chorus.

"We give it ALLLLL,
Now there's a reason why I sing:
So GIVE IT ALLLLLLLLL,
and it's these reasons that belong to me---"

Nightingale has posed:
     At this hour of the night, the mansion's resident winged healer finds herself unable to sleep, despite a good workout earlier that evening. So Shannon heads on down to the music classroom, thinking perhaps she would be able to get a little practice in. She's in her red tartan sweatpants, her baggy gray tank top, and her goofy, fluffy sheepdog slippers as she nears the door.

     Something was not quite right inside. She frowns, hearing the drumming and the lyrics of the song. It wasn't anything she recognized, but anger communicated itself more clearly than mere words could, at the choice of song, and the banging of the drums. Peeking inside, she sees what looks like a pair of headphones and... that was it. Just a pair of headphones floating near the drums. It didn't take her long to work out just who it was. She slips into the room and shuts the door quietly, holding back and just listening for a moment or two.

Haunt has posed:
While Shannon probably hasn't witnessed Brad's singing voice (such as it is), there's only so many invisible drummers that sound like him, so it can't be a mystery!

"Breathe; the air we give,
the life we live,
our pulses racing distances....
so wet my tongue,
break into song,
through seas of competition--"

Brad shifts tone, switching beat as the song moves into a slower, melodic part, taking a little break from the frenzy of the previous sections. The drumsticks are moving: the drumset is, in appearances, playing itself. It's possibly a little magical to watch, though it really is just Brad in his most natural state.

"So please believe your eyes:
a sacrifice,
is /not/ what we had in our minds...."

Brad pauses now, suddenly, a flux of his telekinesis told him that there's a person. He stops abruptly, pulling the headset: which makes it appear to just lower and change angles, as it rests around his invisible neck instead. "....Shannon?" Brad guesses. The wings are the tip-off. He draws the drumsticks back towards an invisible thigh.

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon smiles as she witnesses the magic, unwilling for the moment to break the spell. The singing, the drumming, it's a wonder to take it all in as the Muses themselves seem to find voice in the playing of a phantom. But it was no phantom, it was Brad--for who else could be one with the night, and make it seem as if the drums were playing of their own accord? Sadly, though, the spell is broken, and she pushes away from the door. The whispering of her sheepdog slippers along the floor offer a clue to her presence, as does the telekinetic breeze playing amongst her wings. "Yes... it's me, Brad. Why did you stop? You were playing so well."

Haunt has posed:
"Eh," Brad answers, with a little shuffle of sound as he adjusts his footing against the kick pedal. "It's not like I'm performing. Just messing around," Brad answers, with a light tap tap on the rim of the crash cymbals, fiddling around a little bit, though it's just excess energy. Those fast songs are quite a workout, he's breathing deeply, and sweaty.

"Also I don't sing in front of people," Brad adds, with a quick, sharp laugh that exposes a bit of embarrassment. "Drum, sure. But I forget a lot of lyrics 'cause I gotta concentrate on the changeups."

Nightingale has posed:
     "Well, you're still one up on me. I can't play the drums worth a damn. Plus," Shannon adds, her voice dropping a notch. "I get awful stage fright." She settles on a seat nearby to watch him play, smiling a little bit to herself. "I'm sorry for not catching up more," she offers. "How have you been?"

Haunt has posed:
"You sing, though," Brad encourages in return. His location is extremely obvious: the headphones hanging on his neck show a great deal, oddly: they show some of the tilt to his shoulders, display bits of body language just in how they move with his deep breathing.

"I mean, not just anger-shouting like me," he answers, positive. "Stage fright? Yeah, not sure what to tell you there. I'm not sure if it's better that I can't see them staring at where I should be or not," Brad says, but clears his throat. Angry-singing has made his voice a little roughened.

"Eh, not amazing. Holiday sucked, because my parents suck. How about you?"

Nightingale has posed:
There's a light hitch in Shannon's breath at mention of the holiday, and it takes some effort for her to smile. "It was mixed. A blessing to finally meet the rest of my adopted family... but I missed my own horribly." A slight quaver in her voice betokens perhaps tears held back, yet not shed. "Yes... stage fright. There's times I wish I couldn't see, because then I could maybe go up on stage without the world spinning around me and threatening to pitch me to the ground. But... we each have our gifts, I guess. Doesn't mean anybody's broken at all, just unique."

Haunt has posed:
"Yeah. I don't want to talk about mine," Brad says, frustration clear in his voice. Something did not go well in the Sawyer family gathering, if one happened. But Brad's made it clear he's not going to go into that, and he doesn't pry into hers when he hears the tremor in her voice.

"Hey, you want to be blind, I can make that happen for you," Brad says, with a sort of peevish quality to his voice. "I just mean I can share my crap temporarily. I don't mean stabbing your eyes out with drumsticks," Brad says, more a smile in his tone with the second part of the sentence.

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon raises her eyebrows at his assessment of his gifts, her wings ruffling as she reaches over to where she guesses his shoulder must be, resting her hand lightly upon it if allowed. "It's not 'crap', or 'broken', or something that needs to be 'fixed'. It's a gift, one that's uniquely yours." The tremor in her voice doesn't quite fade, suggesting the Thanksgiving gathering hit her a little bit harder than she's let on to most.

This last revelation is indeed just that, new to her to say the least. "...you're really not kididng, are you? How is that possible, sharing your gift?"

Haunt has posed:
Brad is not wearing a shirt it will seem, when she puts her hand on bare shoulder, which will make him sweaty and hot under her hand. He may have a tank top on, but the bare skin is what her fingers will encounter first. He doesn't jump: he suspected she was coming over due to his awareness.

"Sorta like this," Brad says. "Watch the headphones."

The headphones sit there a moment, then they disappear. A bit later, they reappear. "I can force things invisible. I don't think you'd like it, it's pretty dark in my world."

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon smiles as she watches the headphones disappear into the aether, only to materialize moments later. She squeezes his shoulder gently, not put off once by the display. "Is it?" she asks. "I remember you were having 'vision flashes' when you brought that notebook back the other day, and I could see you while you were still able to use TK. So it's not -always- so dark." She pauses, thinking for a moment. "But what -does- it actually feel like, to have those gifts? You can share yours... but I can never really share mine. So, very few are able to understand."

Haunt has posed:
"Sorry. I can't share my senses. Just the invisibility thing: and it's just like if you're in a dark room with zero light---- And I can't do just wings, so, don't ask," Brad says, quickly, with embarrassment. "Maybe sometime, but not now." He adjusts his feet again, which makes the kick drum shudder, but he's just moving his foot from the pedal fully, so it doesn't sound.

"I'm getting better at not being invisible, yeah. It's too bright in here, so I don't want to do it now. I'm doing it a few hours a day, slowly getting better with the light. Still blind as hell, but we have improved /blobs/." Brad laughs softly, and raises the drumsticks in a little celebration wiggle. Yay!

He pauses, then relents, and focuses. He appears, as his invisibility drops away. His eyes are shut, but he fully appears there. He is wearing a tank top, a snug black one, dark from the sweat of the drumming. His physique lends a little bulky: he's a jock kid. His hair is partially gelled upwards, though some of it is just loose against forehead, from the energetic workout. He's otherwise in some gray athletic plants that ride a bit low, the edge of blue and gray plaid boxers apparent. Barefoot. Brad wasn't really expecting to be seen. "Ta da," he says, with a wrinkle of nose, and squinty-eyed at her.

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon gets up to move away from the drum set, padding her way over to the light switch and turning the lights in the room off, so hopefully as he appears, the light seeping through his eyelids doesn't have time to cause him too much distress. She claps for sheer delight as she sees him materialize. "Bravo! You're doing so well with that!" Whatever frustration and sadness had been lingering in her voice fades away with his success--who could stay upset in the face of that? She settles back down near the drum set, extending one wing to brush lightly against his shoulder so he knows where she is.

Such total darkness is a little difficult for her to imagine, though, and what senses like his must be like. She is quiet for a moment, pursing her lips as she thinks to herself. "Sometimes," she offers. "When I'm nearly through committing a piece of music to memory, I'll turn off all the lights in my dorm and tie some fabric across my eyes, to test myself on how well I know the song. When I do, my sense of hearing takes over. So does touch. It's almost like... well, like 'seeing' without actually seeing. Does that make any sense at all? Is that anything near what your world is like?"

Haunt has posed:
Brad seems to orient well on her, now that the lights are off. Just the light from the doorway now, and various small ambient sources: like the little red light on the side of his headphones, and the amps, and some light from outside night-time lighting that's coming in the window. He rubs his face with his palm, but his eyes seem to have opened up and relaxed. His eyes are brown, generally pretty dark in the already darkened room, but he's clearly aiming at where she is when she comes over, and turns his eyes towards the pale wing when she brings it close enough to brush him.

"Yeah, people think blind people have better hearing or touch or something, but it isn't that," Brad answers. "it's just that we /pay attention/." The boy shrugs a little, hands loose against his lap, after he sets the drumsticks back where they go. "It's not the hearing part. It's the listening part." Brad's quick, easy grin flashes. He has an easygoing, comfortable manner to him. His smiles are charming, but it's more of a puppy's charm, not suave. All of that normally lost due to the invisibility.

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon does not move her wing away, smiling as she listens. The faint glimmer of ambient light seems caught in his eyes for a moment, lending those twin pools of cocoa brown the appearance of pieces of the night sky captured and set into his face. "I guess it's one of those things that's difficult for some to understand," she muses briefly. "Healers have to learn to pay attention, too. Though I don't know if it's quite the same way that you do." Could he see her face, she wondered briefly, or was she still just a blob to him? She's begun to relax a little bit more, though, the tone of her voice soft and even, a light, silky alto. "You have a nice smile, you know. And you're an incredibly talented musician. Why did I have to hear that you feel... broken?" She keeps wing and hand both within reach, for a touch of reassurance if it's accepted.

Haunt has posed:
"Yeah, I'm some sexy fox," Brad jokes back, with a soft little embarrassed laugh that doesn't quite make it to 'cocky' territory despite his intentions. "Too much of me would impact the world, gotta hide this shit in invisibility," he says, but his smile isn't upset. He's playing, not really talking badly about himself.

There's some discomfort, though, a frown, as she asks about the 'broken' thing. "Broken? I mean. I'm blind. So." Brad's brows move together, quizzical expressin showing, though it isn't aimed: he can't see her face well enough to be able to meet her gaze yet, he's sort of looking through her, his gaze is just a bit too low, like nose level, not eye level, and it's more distant. He doesn't reach out, his hands stay on his thigh. "I mean, I'm not good enough to earn an invite to super-special 'teams' on campus," Brad says, with a sarcastic smirk. He's being defensive: downplaying it since it rejected him.

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon frowns deeply as what she heard about is confirmed, letting out a soft sigh. She reaches for his hand, squeezing it lightly as she shares her experiences. "I don't think that talk was meant badly," she begins. "And it's being addressed, trust me. But let me tell you how I came to be part of the team."

No matter how many times she's shared or will share this tale, it never fails to bring that quaver to her voice, the pride of that day so mixed up with grief that it's impossible to keep it entirely from her words. "It was around the beginning of September. There was a mutant rights protest, and some of the team plus a couple of us students were called out to help kind of keep an eye on things. It got really messy when three Sentinels showed up. A kid /died/ that day, Brad. He was shot down by the first Sentinel for standing up for himself. I heard the call to go tend to the wounded, but it was already too late before he even hit the ground." There's a soft, indrawn breath, let out on a shuddering sigh that tells the tale of tears spilling their banks in otherwise relative quiet. "I felt broken. Weak. Like I wasn't good enough, and failed that kid because of it. Nobody else was hurt that day, but I still came back here to the school after and went down to the lake, and cried my eyes out."

She pauses a moment to let that sink in, as she thinks back to that day. It was something she'd done a lot since, whether she admitted it openly or no. "I asked myself why I'd failed Daniel. Why I was so weak. Why did they bother calling me out there if I was so weak that I couldn't even help him. All I could do was close his eyes after he was gone."

Haunt has posed:
Brad gets a somewhat skeptical, distrustful look, unsure exactly where the explanation about how Shannon got on the team is going to lead. He's a little hostile in body language: since it seems to be that she's going to show him the way to join the team. "I don't want on the stupid team---" he says, rebelliously, but does stop being defensive and shuts up long enough to let her talk about it.

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon squeezes Brad's hand gently and nods. "And that's okay. But I also want you to see that you're okay as you are." She takes a deep breath and continues. "Anyways, I went down to the lake and just cried my eyes out. Sometimes, I still do when I think of it. Sam came looking for me, and we talked about a lot of things. Mostly about why there had to be such hatred in the world. I knew then and now that I want to be that shield, and help those who need it, even if I wasn't the strongest, and I sure didn't understand the full extent of my gifts. Hell's bells, I /still/ don't understand everything about them. But then... he told me about the team, and asked me to think long and hard about what I wanted to do. It didn't take much thinking, so I chose to accept the offer to join."

She smiles a little bit, letting all that sink in for a moment. "He asked because he saw potential and heart, not raw power or skill. I think, perhaps, that when you heard about the team, that might have been the intent, even if it didn't come out quite that way. The point is, whether or not you want to be part of it, you are most certainly /not/ broken. There's things I still don't know about my gifts. And I'm willing to bet there's still plenty of things you don't know about yours. But that's why we're all here, to learn. We'll make plenty of mistakes along the way, but at least we won't make them alone."

Haunt has posed:
"I /asked/ if I was being invited. It was made clear we weren't. Me, Gwen, or new kid. Nathan-something," Brad replies. There's a distance in his tone, but it may be coming from a place of being rejected, not that he didn't hear her story. He does listen.

"Besides, I'm broken, yeah, but I'm broken /glass/. I can cut. Throw somebody through a window if I want to without touchin' them. Obviously a team doesn't want a blind kid, I mean, that's sort of ridiculous, but I'm powerful. Just so we're clear." Brad pulls off his headphones, tossing his head a little bit which makes his hair move in a jaunty, proud way. There's a spirit in it, fierce little underdog coming to the surface there, and in the set to his jaw.

His eyes swing to her face, finding her gaze, and there's a sharp register there, a challenging quality, and a focus. Brad's seeing her eyes: he has to be.

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon shakes her head, and smiles, looking right into his eyes. "No. You're not broken, any more than I am. You have a tremendous gift, Brad, a gift you should be proud of. Besides," she adds, her smile turning to something of a cockeyed grin. "You haven't actually talked to the team lead about it. That would be Cannonball. So what if you're still working on syncing up your sight and your gifts? That's just learning, and that's fine. Sure, you could throw me through a window or out the door right now and there wouldn't be much I could do to stop you. But I've also seen you throw snowballs and just have fun with it."

Her smile turns a little bit rueful. "You think there aren't times when I think, 'What the hell was Sam thinking asking me to join, when using my gift only means he has to worry about me getting hurt?'. Then think again. But I'm not broken. My gift is as powerful in its own way as yours, just different. You can move stuff with only a thought. I can save lives."

Her own tone has taken on a surprising amount of confidence and cnviction, which is certainly rare enough to hear from the winged healer, for anyone who knew her. "You can be so much more than you think right now. But talk to Cannonball about it, seriously. At least hear him out. Would you be willing to do that?"

Haunt has posed:
Brad rolls his eyes away, and flickers twice, as his emotions start to kick into a different gear, stress, maybe. He gets off the stool, and abruptly entirely vanishes. Maybe intentional, but probably not. His control with visibility isn't great. He puts his headphones away into a blue backpack to the side, following the cord down to the mp3 player he was using. A plastic water bottle joins it in the bag, along with a towel that he uses to wipe down the stool. It's a funny thing: he's being considerate, but in a sort of angry way. Like a young teen told to go clean up - things get flung around but the cleaning does happen.

"Maybe after I toss around some Friends of Humanity I will. Then we'll see who's eating their opinions on how broken or unfit for the group I am," Brad suggests, tone sly, the rebellion still clear. "Don't even need a tactical costume like Andrea showed us."

There's a wounded quality to all of it, an injured pride, so very deep. His self loathing for being blind, his hold on his self-confidence so very very fragile. "I'm gonna go. We'll just ... 'see,' I guess." The word 'see' had a bit too much pressure on it, before the backpack disappears, and Brad invisibly heads out, in a bundle of explosive emotions.

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon sighs softly, rubbing her temples. "Brad..." But does he hear? Is he gone? She gets up to follow, to reach out and try and offer a hug before he can get too far. But is she anywhere near successful? It doesn't quite seem so, and she slams her fist hard against the wall. "Scheisse!! Damn it... we don't go /looking/ for trouble!" But, uncertain if he heard her calling out or not, she has no choice but to head back upstairs, tears of frustration trickling down her cheeks. What had she done??

Haunt has posed:
Brad got into the hallway and set his back against one wall, to, well, hide there a little. And to angrily sulk, in proper teenage boy sulkiness. Which does mean he did hear her talk. And heard her crying.

Not only is he broken, he made the sweet angel girl cry. What is even wrong with him?

"I'm not /actually/ going," Brad says, from his invisible spot, as he trailed her to the stairs. "I don't hurt people." There's a sigh that follows. "Night, Shannon."

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon she reaches out to touch his shoulder briefly, gauging where he is by the sound of his voice. "No," she adds. "You don't hurt people." She tries to smile for him, but the hitch in her voice remains. "Listen. Let me try to talk to Sam again or something, or even Jay. They've got a way of sorting things out. Just... please don't go looking for trouble, okay? I do worry."

Haunt has posed:
"I'm a master at /avoiding/ it, Shannon. Trouble never sees me coming, til I trip over it," Brad say. He's still upset, perhaps, but pushing it down: and being invisible does a massive amount to hide what he may or may not be feeling. Still, he wasn't just going to let her run off crying. No, he's too empathetic for that.

There's sounds of him moving up the stairs now, out of range, into the men's hallway: finally gone this time.