Meeting of the Minds

By:  M. J. Cogburn and C. E. Krawiec

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Blinking, he looked up to find Siren re-dressed, her hair slicked back, makeup on and eating a ham sandwich.  "Daddy?  Are you okay?"

"You caught me, daydreaming, again," he said simply as he stood and started toward the door.  As he walked he looked down at his watch and noticed the time.  "You better get going.  You know how Dr. Hugen doesn't like to be kept waiting."

"Yes sir," she responded meekly before she turned and followed him toward the door.  "You have your own rat killing, to do, right?" she teased him back.

"You could say that," he said simply then smiled at her.  "Have a good day, sweetheart.  Just... be careful."

Siren tilted her head slightly at him as she stepped through the door and watched him lock the door behind him.  Not knowing how else to respond, Siren only said, "Yes sir."

Together they went to the bank of elevators.  Xavier made sure that Siren got on her own elevator before he called for another one to come pick him up.  He had only one destination in mind, and Siren didn't need to know that it involved her in anyway.

PART ONE

On the ride down to the infirmary level, Siren's good was evident as she chatted with some of the other riders in the elevator, and the fact that she was finishing up the last bite of the ham sandwich hadn’t gone unnoticed by a little girl with her mother.  Siren just grinned and even managed a bit of a chuckle with her mouthful when the child stated matter-of-factly, "Mama says you're not a-supposed to eat 'cept at the table."

Siren focused on swallowing carefully the last bite of sandwich as the girl's mother exclaimed, "Emily Ann! Hush! That was rude!"  Her daughter, however, wasn't put off or perturbed by her mother's admonishment as she looked up at her parent.

"That's what you always say, Mama. Even to daddy when he eats tater chips on the couch."

By then the other people in the car were struggling not to snigger or guffaw at the child's guileless honesty.  Siren bit both her tongue and the inside of her lower lip to keep from joining the monkey chorus of choked back tittering as she watched the child.  When little Emily's glance swept back up to hers, Siren knelt down on one knee beside the little girl.  Sending a quick apologetic look up to Emily's mother's mortified eyes, she looked again at the little girl watching her intently.  The sight of Emily's lower lip pushed out told her that this headstrong youngster was not about to back down from her speaking out about certain manners being taught her at home.

"You're right, Emily," Siren chose her words carefully. "I shouldn't have brought my sandwich into the elevator to eat. I'll remember next time to finish at the table." Giving the little girl a smile, she stood up and the high amusement settled down.

As the elevator began to slow down, Emily, now emboldened by Siren's agreement with her, looked up at her again.  "Where are you going?" she asked.  "We're going to visit my grammie and grampa."

Hearing Emily's question, Siren looked down at the little girl as she and her mother began to disembark from the elevator car and said, "I'm going to see my doctor for a check-up." She couldn't help the grin that slid across her face when Emily, her hand firmly held by her mother, turned back to call out, "If you don't cry when you gets a shot, they give you a lollipop."

Siren just nodded and waved as the elevator doors slid closed.  "Thank you for telling me that, Emily," she called out. By the time the elevator at last reached the infirmary level, her already good mood was firmly set by her encounter with the little girl.  Going to the main desk, she advised the receptionist of her appointment, signed in and then went through the nearby set of doors into the waiting room.  The fates seemed to have decided that she was to have a perfect day as Siren chatted with a couple of other patients also waiting for appointments.  She even regaled them with a recitation of her encounter with Emily, ending with a giggled, "You know, I fully expect that if my children are anything like me, I'm going to have at least one, if not both of them, turn out just like her."

"Siren Lothoman."

Getting up to follow the nurse back to the examination rooms, Siren had no way of knowing how her own parents - her two fathers - were even at that moment entering into a discussion about her that was the total opposite of the lighthearted incident she'd encountered with Emily and her mother.

~*~*~*~*~*~

By the time that Xavier managed to get down to Central Control, was allowed admittance and gave the respected posture to Lothos, Xavier wasted no time in getting into the meat of the discussion that he wanted to have with Lothos.  "May I speak frankly, sir and to the point?"

Lothos zoomed in on his friend and confidant of the last forty or so years and answered, "You have always had that opportunity, Xavier.  I wouldn't think of you doing any other."

Xavier nodded slightly then turned his head up toward Lothos.  "I would like to discuss why you silenced me from talking with Siren about this ridiculous relationship between her and Allen McAllister.  I understand how Siren would want a friendship while Trevor is away, but for them to build something other than that is out of line."

From the moment he'd issued the first warning to Xavier through his implants, Lothos had paid special heed to his friend's interaction with his daughter. The manner in which his Supreme Torture Master had become thoughtful, even considering during the short time in his small home office had been carefully noted.  It was, upon his review of the immaculate and minute records he had kept on the years of Xavier rearing his eldest daughter, that Lothos discovered that it was the first time in all those years that he had ever gainsaid Xavier.  Now, as his friend of many decades stood before him in Central Control, he had little doubt of the subject of Xavier's presence.

"There is nothing to discuss," Lothos stated. "I see nothing wrong in Siren having a friendship with her co-worker, so long as it doesn't affect her work or her health."

"I beg to differ with you, Lothos, but there is something to discuss," Xavier stated plainly.  "I don't see anything wrong with a friendship.  I'm afraid that Siren may get to close with Mr. McAllister, jeopardizing her relationship with the father of her children, namely Trevor Conroy."

Lothos' response stung. "Is it your intention to dictate to your... to *my* daughter whom she can and cannot have any sort of relationship, Xavier?" Lothos asked his quiet tone one that was familiar to all who had encountered it even once.  "Do you not trust that you have raised and instructed her sufficiently to make good decisions?"

Even though Xavier acknowledged the quiet tone and questions asked of him, he cut through with another quiet question of his own instead of answering those set to him. "Why are you letting your daughter go down a path where hurt, pain and anguish await?  Would you want her to be happy and fulfilled with a love that she already has before her?"

Xavier wasn't quite ready for the explosion that set off before him.

Since the moment that his complex had progressed from intricate and complicated blueprints to a concrete and steel perfection, there were ever only a select few whom Lothos trusted with near implicitly.  In fact, those few could be numbered on the fingers of one hand and among those select ones Xavier was numbered.  Those few were the only ones who could dare to speak freely to Lothos.  However, as Xavier answered his questions with one of his own, Lothos' temper flared at the accusation in his old friend's tone.

"Tread lightly, Xavier," Lothos warned his tone and manner icy. "Do not assume that our friendship entitles to you to unilateral rights where Siren is concerned.  I trusted you to raise her and I have not interfered with what you have taught her, but I am her natural, biological father. Siren is MY daughter! I want her happiness, yes.  However, I will NOT see her walk into any relationship with any person blindly.  The first blushes of love may satisfy the needs of the flesh, but I want to be certain that whomever my daughter chooses to join her life with that he is worthy of her.  To that end, sir, it is *I* who will determine what she encounters on her journey along that path.  A little pain and anguish now is preferable to her being swallowed up by bitterness in being played a fool by a handsome face."

Xavier knew deep in his being as Lothos spoke of his daughter's path in life that what he was about to say would probably lead him down a path that he wasn't ready to turn, but when it dealt with Siren, it seemed he couldn't even let her father rule over her.  "And who's to say that Trevor Conroy would ever play Siren for a fool?  He's stood up to everything that you have thrown his way.  Everything!  Why are you jeopardizing that, Lothos?!" Xavier raised his voice over the hum of the anger that he could feel permeating the room around him.

"Because human beings at their most base levels think only of themselves and their needs," Lothos roared.  "Every man, every woman to have ever drawn breath, when stripped down to their most basic instincts want only what gratifies them and their lusts."

Lothos went silent, letting the plainly startled Xavier take that in for a few seconds before continuing.   "Mr. Conroy, though he initially displayed appearances of affection for Siren, is, when all is said and done, nothing more than a man with needs to be satisfied."  He saw Xavier open his mouth and hissed silkily, "Don't." Through his fury, he was pleased that his friend still maintained common sense.  He went on.

"You ask why Trevor Conroy would ever play my daughter for a fool, Xavier. It appears you think him incapable of such actions." When Xavier remained silent in the face of his diatribe, Lothos made his point.  "I submit to you, sir, that not only is Mr. Conroy capable of using his charms to take advantage of my daughter's feelings for him, he is, in fact, at this very moment, doing that very thing."  He went silent. Now he wanted the man whom he had charged with rearing his daughter to speak. Lothos wanted to hear the question on his lips.

Xavier's eyes slowly went to the floor as his anger began to rise.  His breathing increased exponentially.  "He's engaged in pleasuring another?" Xavier asked through clenched teeth.

Hearing his master affirm that answer, Xavier’s rage flew as he grabbed the chair that was before him and hurled it across the room.  Having taken only a little bit of his aggravation out, Xavier looked up at the eye that was sporadically portraying a red beam out to the side of the room and said simply, "What do you want me to do, Lothos?  Ask it and it will be done to the nth degree."

Xavier had reacted precisely as Lothos had anticipated, the fury in the man's face every degree of the heat and level that the revelation deserved.  He allowed his friend his furious reaction in grabbing and hurling a chair across the width of the room.  However, his reply to the dangerous pledge Xavier had uttered wasn't in the least what his friend neither wanted nor expected to hear.

"I want you to do nothing," Lothos informed him, enunciating each word clearly. When Xavier began to protest, Lothos cut him off unequivocally. "No, Xavier you are not to do anything. You are not to utter or intimate or suggest in any manner whatsoever anything of what has been said here." He paused then added enigmatically, "Or what you have seen."  As he expected, an expression of confusion came over Xavier's face and Lothos saw no reason to leave him in the dark.  "Approach the master console, Xavier," he instructed his friend. "Stand before the monitor in the center."  When his friend was positioned as instructed, Lothos sent the visuals he was receiving in that instant from Trevor Conroy's ocular implants.  As Lothos had known would happen, Xavier's face reddened with renewed fury as he observed the manner in which the one man his friend had believed to be honorable was betraying his pledge of love to the young woman they both cherished as a daughter.

As the intimate scene continued to display on the monitor, Lothos spoke quietly aloud.

"Though I know you would exact every degree of retribution upon Mr. Conroy that he is deserving of for his shallow promises to Siren, Xavier, I have another plan in mind.  Even now, it is being set into play.  And, as much as I would enjoy watching you exact payment out of Trevor Conroy's hide, there is another way, a better way of achieving it."

"How?"

Before Lothos could utter how his plan would play out, words from the screen caused Xavier to focus back on the man who was breaking his daughter's heart. 

"I love you, Trevor.  God, I can't help it but I do," the young woman whispered heatedly as she pulled him down to her.

"And I you, my own," Trevor answered back softly as he began to kiss her neck. 

As anger coursed through Xavier's blood, he focused on the woman that Trevor was over whilst in amongst the bushes at Ft. Hildren .   It was in that moment that he swallowed any trust that he'd put in the young man and turned his attention back to Lothos, intent to hear what Lothos had to say. 

Due to the hypersensitivity of the electronics built literally into the walls of Central Control, Lothos easily gauged Xavier's rising blood pressure.  Gauging the man's fury was easy - he just observed the older man's increasingly reddening face.  As he recorded the passionate whispers of the lovers, he increased the zoom on one of the cameras until the only part of Xavier's person being displayed on another monitor were those icy blue eyes.

"I have set into motion things that, while causing Siren some hurt and anguish, will also allow her to exact her own retribution upon Mr. Conroy.  And, I believe you would agree with me, Xavier, when I say that truly, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."  As he watched his friend slowly nod his agreement, Lothos darkly added, "I believe you would also agree, that any man who crosses anyone with Zoë Malvison's blood in their veins will remember to their grave the stupidity of their actions."

Five very long, very silent minutes passed in Central Control, as man and machine regained their composure in the face of all that had transpired between them and the unexpected revelation of another man's weakness. At last, observing Xavier turning away from the monitor, Lothos turned the monitor off then watched his very trusted friend return to the large red circle in the center of the room.  As his friend bowed his head in acknowledgement to him, Lothos repeated something he had said a few moments earlier.

"You will not say or suggest, in any manner, anything of what you have been made privy to here, today, Xavier."

"It shall be as you command, Lothos," Xavier responded, his voice quiet and even, his visage once more calm and unreadable to all but his master. He didn't make a move to leave until Lothos said, "You may leave now."

"Yes, Lothos," Xavier replied respectfully then bowed his head again before turning and walking to the door.  As he approached it, he watched the door slide upwards, a square light to the left of the door changing from red to green as he exited the room.  The sound of footsteps drew his attention, and he looked up to see a familiar young woman approaching, her expression determined.

"Xavier," Johanna Royden said respectfully, pausing as a man whose work she had seen examples of in her years of training moved past her.

"Good day to you, Ms. Royden," Xavier responded, a vague shadow of a polite smile curving his lips as he continued on his way.  Within seconds of passing Lothos' Chief Observer, Xavier had dismissed her from his thoughts.  After all, as he had acknowledged to his daughter as they had left their quarters a short time earlier, he had some 'rat killing' chores to do.