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Harry's probably doesn't cater to Hope. It probably would like her not to be here where they could get in trouble for underage drinkers. Doesn't matter. She sits in the prime corner of the place where sight lines are superior. No one needs to know she's got a gun under the table and another three stowed away on her person. The drink on her table is there for show more than anything. How she also got a shot of vodka is testament to the power of redheads. Flaming redhead in shabby clothes? Here's a drink. Never mind she has a soldier's jaded stare in a face far too young to carry it. Imagine meeting Athena in an 18-year-old frame, that's about right. The waiting game should preoccupy her. It doesn't, not really, since nothing goes without her notice.
Particularly lately, Charles Xavier has been prone to sleeping in a bit… but that isn't easy to do when one has a literal telepathic knocking at your door in the very early morning. So, once he identified the source of the "knock" as well as the location, he donned his typical suit and tie and made his way to Harry's. Giving the waitress at the entrance a smile, he waved her off a bit and made his way towards Hope's table, looking at her with a curious expression, "You look like you're waiting for someone."
There's the joy of being someone used to time falling apart. Manage the risks and be patient, things usually work out for Hope. Her patience is a troubling scenario for most people, anyways. Her composure is flinty and pointed, and the space around her potentially mined with any number of hazards. She pokes at the ice in her drink with a thin straw as Charles Xavier, man who is not dead, approaches. His curious expression gets a flat one. "Sure." Her heel bounces side to side under the table. No threat here, except her usual bristly coat worn like a hedgehog to prevent anyone pulling her out against her will. "Happy morning and all that. Or top of the morning."
Charles takes a seat opposite Hope at the table, "Seems a little early for that. I'd recommend his breakfast burger, personally." He regards the redhead who thought he was dead with a curious eye, keeping a careful watch on her reactions. Adding then, "So, what brings you to Westchester." Best to just get it out in the open, after all, considering how things went the last time they met.
A small shrug follows. Hope keeps stirring up the clinking ice cubes without any real care for how they click together. "I'll pass, but thanks." Manners can happen, after all. She simply has to flake off the rust and examine Charles with the look of a basilisk considering a knight. Or possibly the other way around, keep those options open. "Boredom." Fingers curl around the bent plastic and loosen. "Not much fun sitting around waiting for the sky to fall."
The Professor leans back at that a bit, regarding Hope. "I do hope you're not going to start accusing me of tilting at windmills. Though I get enough of that from Erik as it is." He pauses, keeping his attention focused on the redhead across from him, keeping his voice low. "Considering how our last conversation went, I'm going to make a few guesses. Correct me if I'm wrong. You're from the future… well, a possible future. Hank is far more adept at formulating these things than I am anyway. And where you're from, things have gone south and I'm, well, dead." It's not easy to make a statement regarding your own mortality, and it isn't something Charles has thought about much, though with the JFK assassination, it was something he's considered. A legacy of sorts, even though he is still remarkably young.
The professor gets a frank, flat look from the Messiah. An idle Messiah does the apocalypse's work. "Huh?" There. Don Quixote never made it to Cable's education and therefore hers, or it's something without clear value to the blank response received. "The world's gone to hell in a handbasket if you like that. Pretty much." She doesn't particularly have a descriptive bent in the explanations. "Again. Waiting, might as well put the time to use."
Charles sighs a bit, "And so much for hoping for classical education in the future. To be frank, I was hoping for something more idealistic, but I guess your presence suggests the opposite, which means there's something you want to change." He steeples his fingers together on the table, "And I'm guessing with your background you're used to making changes rather… forcefully."
"Would you like me to spin you a lovely lie about how we all go into space to establish utopian colonies on terraformed worlds spanning from here through the Orion Arm, added by supraluminal transportation technologies derived from a benign presence encountered on the outskirts of Cygnus X?" That's a hell of a long sentence for her. The redhead tilts her chin to the side, her hand resting under her jaw. Her elbow is placed on the table, other hand still in her lap. "Still a lie. No point telling you that. You already know, I'm sure." His own gift is wrapped around her to the point of making her a tortoise, a Dyson shell clamped down around her thoughts tightly. Not one for taking chances, really. "Does it make you feel any better that I know one of your students basically sold me to the future to keep the rest of you safe?"
The Professor actually smiles faintly at the recitation of the bolder brighter future, then shakes his head a little, "Actually, it doesn't. I don't like the idea of sacrificing people for the good of the group. That haunts you, and it's something you never forget." His voice darkens a bit, as if he's speaking from experience, then he looks over at Hope, sighing softly to get rid of the dark cloud in his thoughts, "But if you were sold to the future to keep us safe… what's brought you back here?" Even with this tiding of a dark future in front of him, he's still got that core of optimism beating in his thoughts, as if he can find a way out of the trap, because he has too. Not for himself, but for everyone.
Hope shrugs her shoulders a little. Can't change the future to make the past happen, evidently. "Maybe you need me. Maybe someone has a sick sense of humour. Not something you can really ask. Things that happen nine times out of ten shouldn't happen." She acknowledges that with the grim certainty of a survivor, explaining those scarred, cold eyes. "Because when I'm not dead, that means work to be done. I guess. I get it sucks. This conversation. Everything. No one wants the bad news and I'm the bearer." And clearly she expects to be shot for it.
Charles looks at Hope, "Well, forewarned is forearmed, I think, and if you're back here, that means that there's a chance that things can be changed for the better." He smiles slightly, "But you might have more of a chance to fix things, if you're working with people and not necessarily opposite them."
Hope taps her fingers against the soft underside of her hard jaw. She still manages to make dry, unrelenting focus look marvelous in a way. "That was my dad's thinking. Except, you know, you're usually not around. Not when we looked. I met his dad, though. Hence some alarm. He's pretty chill for being super young, really. Scott is more…" Her hand wobbles. "It doesn't go very well for him. Don't tell him that. At least, that's what my dad said."
Charles lets off a bit of a sigh, "That's what I'm afraid of." He looks at Hope and smiles a bit, though, "But what do you want? Did you want to join the school, or is this something that you haven't decided?" He shakes his head a bit, "And don't tell me what your father would want, or what you think I want. What do you, specifically, want?" He regards Hope with that, as she has talked a lot about her own duty, or what everyone else needs… but not much about what she needs.
The question isn't one that she can answer. It's plain in the dull, reflective stare and the vaguest shake of her head. "Ask a nanomite bomb what it wants to do. Or a scalpel. Or a…" She points at the coffeemaker, something so alien it's a wonder she knows it is a machine. "Not to be bored. Sitting around in a place where no one wants me to work? This is worse than the damn Dutch. Their horses got more choices than I did, then." Which possibly implies another horrific truth.
She's also seen the past.
The Professor snorts a bit at that, "If I let you in, you don't have to worry about being bored. I'm pretty sure of that." He looks at Hope, "There is one thing though, and it's something I do with all students, or teachers. A mental screening." He looks at Hope, "I'm not going to look into what is in the future, because I really don't want to know those specifics. But I have to make sure, for the safety of the school, and the students, that you aren't a danger." He smiles a bit, "I can sense your shields, and I know I can't break them, but this is a matter of trust." With that, he extends his hand, and actually… lowers his own mental shields, a silent invitation to allow Hope in as it seems to be an offer of quid pro quo.
"I'm used to dealing on my own. But…" She looks around the place, quiet, full of people who dine on burgers. Spoiled people. Secure and safe people. Her nose scrunches up a little. "Gotta be some purpose aside from whatever. Scrounging and terrorising pigeons. Seeing the World's Fair for the twentieth time." Her eyes roll at that, giving credence to how antiquated some of the stuff probably feels like. "So you know… like… all the people in Mutant Town make a lot of noise. And your kids make a ton of noise. It's like the airwaves are screaming with them and I'm not the only one who has to know that." Is she? Evidently not, in her books. He offers his hand and drops those shields, a ghost in the room. A blink follows from her.
And it's like they were never separate at all, her body wreathed in a dust storm cropped by flames around her shoulders and dissipating into melting strands of the blue time stream by her feet. She's dressed a bit differently in that mental projection. For one, more pouches, a ragged cloak running off her shoulders. Those green eyes don't have pupils. Don't ask about the hyperpresent existence of her, solid where things tend not to be. She's concentrated even more than Charles himself probably is, and the vast maelstrom settles down pretty concretely into a girl with windblown hair. All he is, all he ever could be, all he ever might attain is idealised in that mirror that doesn't bother to give a name that often. Because she doesn't have one, not really.
Despite the optimism of Charles… he's a lot more like Hope's dad in ways neither of them would really appreciate. The fires of war forged both of them in different ways, with Charles reinforcing his optimism, the hope of the Dream, rather than rejecting it for grim reality. His mental projection looks rather similar to his physical self, though he wears the telltale jumpsuit of an X-Man instead of the comfortable suit. His discipline, his experiences, all seem to come through there as he 'looks' at Hope, and smiles a touch, a melancholy expression as he says, "All I can offer you is your name." Which seems a bit of a riddle, at first, until it sinks in. Because it's the one thing Charles offers everyone, regardless of who they are, or where they are in life when they come to his school.
Hope.
"I don't have a name." The answer is simple enough. She doesn't broadcast loudly, either. "Other than this my father gave me to honour someone else. To remind himself why." She shakes her head slightly, the ghostly crackle of fire so at odds with the watery behaviour of the seconds weaving and twisting around her. The slide Nathan Summers, troubled man at large, would understand at a glance. He might be concerned about the dawn fire bit around her shoulders and face though. "Who I am doesn't really matter to me. It's done. Gone. Whatever. Here I am nothing and no one. Would you wipe the slate clean if you had a chance and make yourself something new? What would you form of the clay of yourself?"
Charles shakes his head, "You're not nothing. But then again, no one is nothing." In the mental projection, he extends a hand as well, always the Good Shepherd as he says, "But if you want, I can help you find a way, a place in this world." He doesn't seem to mind the flames, as he says, "It's all about who you can become. The raw material is always there, and there's a purpose, if you wish to seize it."
"Better than being your messiah," she answers, almost heard rather than felt. Vibrations hum around her. No laughter, so much as a realignment to melt away the leather outfit she wears into something more suitable, ragged cloak turned into a t-shirt. "The raw material of you is fine. Mine is flawed more than anything." She shrugs. "I don't mean your students any harm. Though people who decide to make my life harsh will be answered in kind."
The Professor smiles, "I don't anticipate that happening at the school… though, I suppose it depends on if you'd view classical literature as harsh." The fact that she missed a Don Quixote reference hurt almost as much as the grim future she was from… or perhaps that's a reason why it was grim. "But I think this will be good, for both of us." And with that, the mental link fades, but not completely, as the Professor returns to the here and now of Harry's.