Finding Solid Ground

Posted on Fri Oct 11th, 2024 @ 5:00pm by Charles Xavier & Meilin Jiang & Maeve MacKenna
Edited on on Fri Oct 11th, 2024 @ 5:14pm

3,958 words; about a 20 minute read

Mission: Episode 5: Days of Fortune Past
Location: X-Mansion
Timeline: November 5th, 1990

As Meilin stepped out of the taxi cab with her legal briefcase in tow, she saw Charles Xavier waiting for her outside the portico of the mansion. His expression was calm, as always, but there was a certain weight in his eyes that she recognized—something more than just the stack of legal documents she had come to collect. She adjusted the strap on her shoulder, her usual composed demeanor in place, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that today’s visit wasn’t just about the MRA class action lawsuit.

Xavier inclined his head in greeting as she approached. "Thank you for coming, Meilin. I appreciate you handling the documentation in person." His voice was warm, but there was a subtle undercurrent of something more personal in his tone, as if he was about to broach a delicate subject.

Meilin nodded. "Of course, Professor. This case is a priority for all of us." She glanced at the imposing mansion, this being her second visit and this time without the benefit of Jean Grey's escort. The old money represented all around her was far and away from the life she had known before her very fledgling law career. "But I get the sense this isn't the only reason you asked me to come in person."

Xavier smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. "You're perceptive, as always." He gestured for her to follow him inside. "There is someone I'd like you to meet. A new student named Maeve. She’s been through... more than anyone should at her age."

Meilin’s pace slowed slightly, her grip tightening on the handle of her briefcase. "More than just a student, then." She didn’t need to ask for clarification; the weight of her own past settled heavily in her chest. She knew all too well what that meant. Her taciturn expression kept a tight lid on it all.

Xavier paused before the doors of the mansion, his gaze steady but kind. "Yes, one of my X-Men. And, like you, she’s a survivor. She’s still finding her way, and I thought… perhaps your shared experiences could help her feel less alone."

Meilin took a deep breath, steadying herself as old memories flickered in the back of her mind. She had long since learned how to compartmentalize the pain, how to channel it into her work and her fight for justice. But standing here, on the cusp of confronting that part of herself through someone else’s pain, felt different.

"I’ll speak with her," Meilin said quietly. "But I can’t promise anything."

"That’s all I ask," Xavier replied gently, opening the door. "Sometimes just being there is enough."

---

The events of the Hellfire Club were still fresh in Maeve's mind. All in all she'd only been here a couple of months but in those months she'd felt the exposure to how these people live was intense. Days later she still felt her bones ached and she felt that being outside helped, it was closer to nature, closer to what calmed her.

Sitting on a large rock of her own creation Maeve had closed her eyes just to listen. The sounds of the woodland area were nice, the smell of the trees, the grass and earth were soothing. As she simply began to relax she felt a sudden resistance from the ground. Opening her eyes with a slight frown she reached out with a hand, her palm facing down, and flexed her fingers as if trying to control the feeling, or sensation. Arching her fingers she felt resistance that pushed her to the side with a jolt forcing her to retract her arm quickly and stare at the ground with some confusion.

At Professor Xavier's direction, Meilin found the young Irish girl meditating in nature. It was something that Meilin did herself, though she often had to settle for urban gardens and city parks. Natural woods were far better for the tranquility they afforded.

Rather than give a greeting, Meilin quietly approached and sat down opposite from Maeve on the ground. Her pants suit would probably need drycleaned but such was life. Meilin assumed a lotus position which brought the hem of her pants halfway up her calves. Hands dropped into familiar mudras as she closed her eyes and began to hum.

Maeve glanced over as a woman walked up and assumed a position that made her legs look they'd been folded up into a pretzel. "That looks uncomfortable," she commented to herself quietly, but still tried to do the same in an attempt at copying. The suit looked fancy, more so than she'd seen on any teacher.

"You were at the Beat Street Club," Meilin said softly with her eyes still closed. "Weren't you? On the day of the attack. You saved several lives." With a slow flourish, Meilin closed the mudras on either hand and brought her palms together in front of her chest. "Thank you." Eyes open, Meilin explained, "Those kids are the closest thing I have to family in this world."

Maeve's memory of Beat Street was almost still as fresh as the Hellfire Club, and just as much as the Arlington Bridge. In the past few months she had been involved in a lot of very dangerous situations. "You're welcome," she responded watching the woman closely. "I don't like bullies and that's what most Humans are... or they make things that do bullying for them."

"Humans are us," Meilin said quietly, "and we are them. Bullying is an excess that defies labels like human or mutant. When we allow excess to govern us, we lose our harmony, and in our imbalance, we fall—and too often, we fall onto others. The Sentinels are manifestations of that imbalance, a reaction to fear and control. Most people turn a blind eye to this imbalance, but you chose not to. You risked your life to correct it. For that, I honor you." She tilted her head slightly, her gaze soft but inquisitive. "May I ask how you came to this country? I hear your journey mirrors mine in many ways."

Maeve found Meilin's words kind and generous. She appreciated her intelligence and the fact she came across as a strong woman. Maeve had a lot of those types of role models in her own life, Irish women were often a force to contend with. When asked about how she got to the United States there was a little rumble underfoot. Trees swayed as if trying to stick hold their ground and a nearby rock formation saw a small split form. "I wouldn't have called it a journey." Maeve replied taking deep breaths.

Her face had flushed and subconsciously she had started twirling the end of her hair, a nervous habit. "I don't know how to put it into words..." as the cuffs of her sweater dropped there were slight signs of scarring from being tied up under the deck of the ship. "I thought I'd met someone who would help me start a new life and it turned out he'd said that to many other girls around my age..." It felt difficult to try and find the words. How do you even tell someone about something like this, especially someone you've just met and don't even know?

Meilin’s gaze softened further as she noticed the slight tremble in Maeve’s voice, the nervous twirl of her hair, the scars peeking out from beneath her sleeves. She knew that unspoken weight. It lingered in the shadows of her own past, a familiar burden carried by those who had been betrayed as they had.

With a deep breath, Meilin leaned closer, her voice calm and measured, yet laced with the quiet strength that had helped her survive. "I understand," she said gently, not probing, just acknowledging. "When people like us have gone through things that strip away every sense of security and identity, it’s hard to call it a ‘journey.’ It feels more like… survival. Like you’re constantly fighting to keep pieces of yourself intact while ghosts of the past try to tear them away."

Her eyes flicked to the ground, where the earth had trembled, and then back to Maeve. "You don’t have to find the right words for it. Sometimes, there aren’t any." Meilin’s fingers brushed against the edge of her sleeve, a subtle reminder of the scars she hid beneath, both physical and emotional.

"For a long time, I didn’t have words either." Meilin paused, letting the silence settle between them, her next words holding the weight of her own past. "I thought I’d met people who would help me too. Instead, they locked me away like I was some object to be sold. But that’s not where my story ended."

She leaned even closer and stopped just short of a hug. Her presence was steadying as she offered Maeve a quiet solidarity. "Your story didn’t end there either. We survived, and that means we have more power than we sometimes realize. You don’t owe anyone an explanation, but when you're ready—whether now or later—know that I’ll listen."

"I killed them," Maeve said, her eyes beginning to glisten. "I lost control, and I killed them," she stated, a single tear rolling down her cheek. "That's not strength; that's weakness. My mother taught me to be strong, to care for others, to use my intellect. She instilled in me a sense of right and wrong, yet they're dead. My power ended them without a trial or involving the police..." she trailed off, spiraling. "I could have encased them in stone. I could have rooted their feet to the ground..."

As she looked down at her hands, a wave of sadness overcame her. The memory of the spikes that impaled the men, their screams as stone pierced skin, flashed through her mind. It was not justice but revenge for the way they had treated her and the other girls on the boat during the 'trip' over. Maeve tugged the edges of her sweater over the markings on her wrists.

"Since arriving here, I've felt safer, yet I've battled Sentinels determined to exterminate our kind. I've clashed with other mutants on a bridge during a march for peace. I've been regarded with admiration and awe, and also with fear and revulsion. I'm uncertain if I've exchanged one prison for another, albeit a more comfortable one," she mused, glancing at Meilin, unsure of what she sought from her but knowing she hadn't confessed this to anyone, not even the Professor, though she was convinced he understood her feelings, given his abilities.

Meilin listened in silence and absorbed the weight of Maeve’s words. She allowed a moment for the intensity of the confession to settle between them before speaking, her tone gentle but firm. “Killing them doesn’t define you, Maeve,” she began, her voice carrying a quiet certainty. “When we’re pushed to the edge, when our very survival is threatened, sometimes we do things that we never intended. But that doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human.” She chuckled for a moment and shrugged. "Well, mutant. You know what I mean."

She paused, letting the words breathe, before continuing with a solemnity to her next revelation. “I, too, have taken lives with my power. I didn’t know what I was capable of until it was too late. I watched my captors wither away before me, and for a long time, I couldn’t escape the weight of what I had done.” Meilin’s eyes drifted briefly, recalling the haunted memories of her past, but she returned her focus to Maeve. “But the Tao teaches us that destruction and creation are two sides of the same coin. When we are unbalanced, when the world pushes us out of harmony, we react with force. But the very same power that destroyed them can also help you rebuild.”

Meilin leaned in slightly, her voice soft but steady. “It’s not about erasing what happened, or pretending it didn’t affect you. It’s about finding your balance again, about taking that pain and turning it into something new. You talk of justice, of your mother’s lessons—caring for others, using your intellect. Those things are still a part of you, no matter what you’ve done or what was done to you. You’re not trapped in the prison of anybody's actions, and you don’t have to carry that weight alone.”

Offering a faint, reassuring smile, Meilin let her fingers gently brush against Maeve’s arm in a gesture of solidarity. “The world may feel like a new kind of cage sometimes, but the key to freedom lies within you. Taoism reminds us that true strength is in yielding—bending like bamboo in the storm, without breaking. You’ve bent, Maeve, but you haven’t broken. And as long as you keep searching for your balance, you never will.”

Having said that, Meilin leaned back slightly, giving Maeve space to absorb her words. “When you’re ready to step out of this ‘prison’ you feel trapped in, know that you have the power to shape your path. But you don’t have to do it alone. I've only just met Professor Xavier, but I have the sense his mission is genuine. I think you can trust him with... well, all of it." She smiled meekly. "I’ll be here for you, too, whenever you need me. We can walk this path together.”

"Thank you," was all Maeve could manage to say. The woman before her, a stranger, had offered her help. Meilin's words seemed sincere, and so had everyone else's in the mansion; Maeve found no reason to distrust them yet. "Professor Xavier has been kind. It's rare to find someone who would offer a room and food to a scruffy kid who just showed up at their door, much less include them in a superhero team..." She paused, pondering the notion. "I've never seen myself as a superhero. My abilities can be destructive; at the Hellfire Club, I caused walls to collapse, ceilings to fall on people. When I'm upset or frightened, the earth trembles. And then there was the incident on the bridge. Some said my eyes turned completely white, and I spoke in a language that wasn't English... I mean, I was speaking Gaelic, which is my my own language... but this was older stuff." Maeve's frustration grew as she stumbled through her explanation.

"I can understand why you'd feel that way," Meilin said softly, her voice steady but empathetic. "It’s difficult when your power feels like more of a curse than a gift and starts leading you in directions you don't understand. I’ve been there too. I’ve done things… terrible things with my abilities. Unintentionally, of course, but the damage is real nonetheless." She hesitated for a moment, choosing her words carefully. "When I was first taken by the traffickers, I didn’t even know what I was capable of until my fear triggered it. I drained the life from them—left them as shriveled husks. My power has never manifested so strongly since then."

Meilin's gaze grew distant as she recalled her own struggles. "I didn’t know Professor Xavier when that happened. Instead I met Telford Porter—‘The Vanisher.’ His past wasn’t exactly clean. He wasn’t a saint, but he saw something in me, something in my pain, and he chose to help. He founded the Beat Street Club for kids like me, like you—those the world would rather ignore. He gave me direction when I was lost."

Her eyes refocused on Maeve, soft yet firm. "Xavier may not have the same past as Telford, but they both know what it's like to see potential in someone, even when they don’t see it in themselves. The Professor gave you shelter, not because he sees you as destructive, but because he sees what you could be. Just like I found my place, so can you."

Meilin let a brief silence settle before adding, "Listen to the clues and signs the universe puts in front of you, Maeve. Life flows like a river—sometimes we try to fight the current, thinking we know better, but all we end up doing is tiring ourselves out." She offered a small smile, though for Meilin it was a borderline grin. "Perhaps it’s time to heed the direction the current is trying to take you. Destruction doesn’t have to be your legacy. It could just be the beginning of your story."

She stepped a little closer, offering a hand, a gesture of solidarity. "The universe has its way of guiding us. We just have to trust the flow. What is the flow telling you?"

"The women of my family have always had this gift." Maeve looked beyond Meilin and at the forest in front of her. "From what I understand it's strange for a mutation to be the same through a whole line. I thought it was more random." She shrugged. "The people of my village, mostly the women, possessed gifts from the Tuath Dé, the Old Gods, but I feel like mine is more. Does that makes sense?" she asked half rhetorically as she began to float a series of small pebbles towards her.

As the pebbles approached the prodded them with the end of her right index finger and they floated away before dropping to the ground when she lost interest in them. "I was taught to look for balance in nature, that I was more connected to the Earth and all that around me than those than inhabit this planet. Bit sad though as I like a gab (chat)." She shrugged. "Us Irish are an overly friendly sort." She chuckled softly.

Meilin shrugged. She didn't see that as a trait unique to any given culture, but she granted it to Maeve regardless.

"I'm sorry you went through what you did." Maeve offered an understanding smile. "And am glad you found Beat Street... and thank you, for talking to me. I know you didn't have to. The Professor can be quite persuasive." She paused realising the last question asked of her, about this 'flow'. "I trust the Tuath Dé won't forsake me but... I've started to feel different lately. Like a fizzy drink that's been shook and is just waiting for someone to open it. I feel more connected to the Earth than normal and more distant at the same time, and after touching Ben on the bridge I've had this feeling there's more to connect to that the planet we live on." She looked up at the sky, or what she could see in gaps between the bare branches of the trees.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Meilin said gently, her gaze steady. “In this life, we help each other because that’s how the world flows. Like water carving a path, we move with the current or we drown trying to fight it. Beat Street... Telford Porter... it all came into my life when I needed it, just as I’m sure you’ll find what you need when the time comes.”

She leaned in slightly, her tone more personal now, almost as if sharing a quiet secret. “That feeling you’re describing, like a fizzy drink ready to explode... I’ve been there. It’s that energy you feel when you’re on the edge of something big. It’s not just about power—it’s about change. The universe is shifting around you, guiding you somewhere new. That connection you feel with the Earth, with something more... it's not a coincidence. The world is showing you that there’s more to understand, more to align with.”

With a knowing smirk, Meilin concluded, “The universe doesn’t forsake us, Maeve. It just asks us to pay attention.”

"Water is Hayden's department." Maeve smiled softly to herself. Her friend had went through such a harsh recovery after the Hellfire Club and that strange fire that burned her so. "But I think I get what you're sayin'. I guess that Gods wouldn't give me this gift to let it eat me up. Seems like a waste... but I hope I don't explode before I'm ready." She'd began to twirl her hair again without realising. "I guess I'll just have to pay attention."

Meilin scooted over to sit next to Maeve and gave her a slight bump against the shoulder. "That's what I've been saying." For the first time, she smiled wide enough to show her teeth.

Although he had not approached the conversation, Professor Xavier had followed it through its entirety. He wouldn't have asked this of Meilin had he not trusted her. At the same time, the well-being of his students was his responsibility. Having too light of a hand had led to some tragedies and regrets of late. Pleased as he was, his mind lifted from theirs and left the ladies to finish their talk in private.

On her way back to the driveway, Meilin saw Professor Xavier waiting for her. "Maeve is a brave soul," she offered, not waiting for the man to inquire.

"Indeed, she is," agreed Xavier with a nod. "Thank you for take the time to speak with her."

Meilin turned her head askance as she studied him. "Were you listening?" She tapped her head. "In your way?"

"Miss Jiang, I am always listening," the Professor said. "It is my gift to the world. If I did not, I would fear for those caught up in the shadow cast by my hasty judgments instead."

"I suppose you have a point," Meilin granted. What was a telepath supposed to do? Not be one? "Thank you... for inviting me to speak with Maeve. It may have done me some good as well."

While that brought a smile to Xavier's face, there was no surprise expressed in it. "Splendid." He escorted her to the waiting taxi cab. "I have another student that I would like you to meet as well. Ethan has expressed an interest in a law career. Would you be willing perhaps to sponsor him as an intern?"

"You're nothing like Telford," Meilin said ponderously, hesitating before she opened the rear passenger door of the taxi cab, "and yet you're exactly the same."

The Professor's face darkened for a moment before his smile returned, though it held pain behind it. "My dear, you have no idea how grateful I am to know that." The horror he had personally inflicted on Telford Porter in order to end his reign of terror as the Vanisher was something that had caused a brief loss of confidence the First Class had held in him. For Telford to have finally found the high road in life before the end... it was bittersweet. "I am sorry for your loss."

"Telford lived his path, and now he's returned to the flow of things, as we all will. I appreciate your sentiment, but mourning doesn’t change what is." Meilin shook her head and sent strands of her fine black hair asway. "My focus is on the here and now—on what we do next."

"Well stated," the Professor said with a smile. "You would make a fine teacher."

Meilin politely demurred as she climbed into the taxi cab. "Thank you, but no. I have found my place... where I will make room for Ethan if he desires."

"Then I bid you farewell in your return to it." Xavier smiled again. "Until next time."

 

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