Perilous Petition (Closed)

Participants: @namor and Jean Grey
Open/Closed: Closed
Location(s): War Room, Royal Palace, Atlantis
Time of Day: Middling
Weather: N/A
Summary: A certain psionic pleads with the Avenging Son to rethink his crusade against the surface world.


The war room of Atlantis was much smaller than the vast expanses of the chamber that housed his throne. The lesser size did nothing to diminish the elegance and nobility inherent in its sculpted, many-pillared planes. Namor was alone, something that was rare these past weeks. He almost always had a retinue of guards drifting around him like planets orbiting their star; or else advisors, couriers, attendants to keep him appraised of the constantly shifting tides in his vendetta against the surface.

Even more uncharacteristic of late, Namor was not bent to a task. The grand, mother-of-pearl table dominating the heart of the war room was strewn with papers, charts, graphs, maps and more, but the King of Atlantis had his back to all of them. Instead he floated in front of a massive window that spanned an entire wall of the room.

Many such viewing portals in Atlantean architecture were left hollow and empty, allowing the currents to flow, and easy passage for citizenry or fauna of the deep. Security adjusted the norm in many of the palace's designs, and a panel of translucent material wavered in front of him, subtle warbling the view of the underwater garden displayed in the courtyard that it peered onto.

The water in the room shifted the barest bit. Namor would've tensed, but every muscle in his back and shoulders had been taut for nearly a fortnight now, burdened with the weight of his crusade. "I continue to allow your group to operate out of Atlantis as a sign of respect," Namor said without turning around. "I acquiesced your request for an audience as yet another display of it: the respect I hold for you.

"Now. I hope that what words you are to say will extend the same courtesy to me. Or are you poised to insult a king in his own palace?" Namor finally twisted where he floated, hooking a fierce, arch look over his shoulder at his company. Miss Grey stood in a pocket of air carved by her own will, forming a pale, pinkish sheen of telekinetic energy that made looking at her like looking through stained glass. She was out of uniform, and her green eyes were pleading and sorrowful. Namor's stomach flooded with indignant fire, but he held it at bay... For now.

The sound of the depths pressing against her barrier was a dull, primal hum that limned her bones. Two Atlantean guards bracketed her, one just ahead, the other just behind. Though she'd begun the procession after being received at the palace gate on foot, the speed that the two chaperones waded forced her to abandon that. Now Jean hovered along between them, held aloft by her own mind rather than the ocean's currents.

The corridors and hallways Jean was escorted through were each as grand and monolithic as the last. There was no preamble to their arrival, except when they stopped at a pair of doors that were flung open to admit her. Now Jean's booted heels touched the iridescent, multicolored floor. She took measured steps into what looked like a planning room of some kind and the doors drifted close at her back. Namor floated in front of a vast window on the other wall of the chamber, and his voice cut clearly through the water and her barrier as if neither were there.

Jean seized hold of her psionic shields and painted coat after coat of added strength to them. Namor, just like he was saying, had been polite enough to accept her request to talk. But tensions in Atlantis were through the roof and they clashed more openly and viciously with the surface as the days wore on. Jean couldn't sit idly by any longer, both as an X-Man heading nearby X-Lantis and as an ally and comrade of the Atlantean in that room with her.

For all his good faith, Jean could feel the anger like an asp rearing, ready to strike, boiling off of Namor. Atlantis was a volcano ready to erupt and so was her king. She couldn't risk the faintest psionic interference in Namor. She knew he was far more sensitive and aware of telepathy being brandished than most gave him credit for, thanks to his marine telepathy. The foundation of trust that they stood on had got Jean an audience, but if Namor felt her the smallest threat, he'd strike. Jean, quite honestly, didn't know if she'd be able to do anything but counter and flee, if the worst came.

The look that Namor leveled at her tore aside several wisely-worded preambles that Jean had been ordering, wondering which would be best to use. None of them, apparently, was the answer. Jean's lips, parted a second before, closed and her face twisted in faint anguish. There were so many routes she could've taken - pointing out Atlantis was just on its rise after yet another in the long line of countless destructions it'd weathered; all the folly of open conflict with the world above; on and on and on. Even with her telepathic powers shuttered, she knew they would only push him toward hostility toward her.

"I'm not here to talk about Atlantis," she decided to say. Jean clasped her hands in front of her and tilted her head. She may have done, if Namor's mood had been different; if she'd thought it would help. But it wasn't and it wouldn't. So Jean cut to the very meat of her visit. "I'm here about you. I've sensed something different in you, even from a distance, these last few weeks. It feels... alien. Unnatural."

@namor

His advisors and counselors had been staunchly against this very meeting when Miss Grey's request found him. They pointed out all the things that Namor already knew: about her powers and abilities. They worried he would become a puppet on her strings, made to call a ceasefire between the depths and the heights at her command. Namor did not deny that Jean Grey was capable of such things. He simply knew her better. Her morals shackled her powers, and her conscience was proportionate in strength to her mind.

Still. Namor remained poised on a blade's edge, glaring at the redheaded human. Waiting for the slightest, most imperceptible sign that her unseen powers were on the move. This was his realm, his kingdom and his seat of power. He was confident here, if anywhere, Namor could act more quickly than the psionic who faced him.

The king's eyes, already razor-thin, narrowed further when Miss Grey finally spoke. His lips, pursed in a sour star before, snagged out in a sneering line that suited him not at all. "You needn't be so perplexed. I know this foreign thing you speak of. It is an old friend, and it's name is anger. You have never sensed such rage in me, Miss Grey, because in all my long years I do not think I've ever felt so much of it."

Namor now fully turned his body to face Jean. He drifted forward, his halo of drifting, ink-black hair following belatedly after him. "And I do not intend to staunch it. In fact, I welcome it with open arms. Too long have my people been defiled, destroyed, poisoned and murdered by the surface world. No more." He shuddered with the strength of his rage, curling nearly into a ball with it. With the greatest effort, he straightened back out, his expression going steely and cool, glaring at the telepath opposite him.

"So if you hoped to intercede. To dissuade me from my path to avenge Atlantis, then yours is a fool's errand, and I bid you leave before my charity to your little group is altogether spent."

Jean Grey

Jean had felt the anger of Namor even from her distant headquarters of X-Lantis for days now. Standing in the same room was a whole new experience. When her concerns only stoked that fire, she winced against the fury that was bearing down on her psi-shields like battering rams. Namor drifted closer, every muscle in his body twisting and straining in his barely-checked rage and Jean worried that she might have to make a hasty retreat after all.

The King stayed composed, if only just. His words were packed with cold venom and a kind of determination that, more than his anger or strength, unsettled Jean. Namor's reply tapered to a warning, grave end and Jean opened her mouth to speak. Then she paused and closed her lips again.

There were so many things that she wanted to say. She wanted to point out that didn't it concern Namor that his anger could potentially not be altogether his own? Among countless other pleas. But Jean thought better of it. Anything that her heart strained in her chest to highlight, she worried Namor would misinterpret. So much as implying that his anger wasn't completely organic would be an affront - belittling or cheapening what Namor felt just, noble and righteous fury.

Jean stood there on the spot, sifting through her substantial experience in peacemaking and counseling to try to find a solution. Namor's glare only turned more and more sharp, and time was evaporating around her. Still nothing came to mind. At last, Jean bowed her head mournfully, then turned and walked to the doors she'd entered through. They opened when she came near and Jean spared one last glance over her shoulder.

Namor was floating in front of the window, like before, but his shoulders weren't tense anymore. They seemed, to Jean, slumped in weariness. She took her leave, already knitting together other ways - other avenues and methods - she could intercede, now that the straightforward approach had failed her.

[Thread: End]