Logs:Of Tea and Tidings (Or, Working Memories)

Of Tea and Tidings (Or, Working Memories)
Dramatis Personae Fury, Kavalam, Lucien, Matt
In Absentia	2023-07-05 "What in tarnation!" (Just after going to see Jax.)
Location <PRV> Tessier Residence - Greenwich Village
Understated opulence claims this spacious and well-kept townhome, the decor throughout the whole of it of the highest quality and carefully chosen. The front door opens onto the entrance hall, a closet close at hand to receive coats and shoes -- the pale hardwood floors gleam underfoot, unsullied by tracked-in mess from outside. The living room beyond the entrance is all dark woods and pale earth tones, comfortable couches and armchairs and a thick soft rug laid down beneath. Two large and painstakingly aquascaped aquariums flank the entrance to the dining room, with several brightly coloured species of fish within. Most of the rest of the wall space, notably, is taken up with shelves -- shelves crammed with books of every subject and genre. A study branching off of the main hall is cozy, small, done in pale blues and lined with books as well around the large computer desk and smaller futon, though these rarer books are cased behind glass. Another securely locked door leads to the basement, and another to the full bathroom downstairs. The kitchen connects to the living room; in contrast, it is sleek and modern and well-appointed, stocked by someone who takes their cooking seriously. And takes their alcohol equally seriously -- to one side of the kitchen there is a fully-stocked bar. The back door to the kitchen looks out on a small well-kept garden. It's fortunate there's not too much traffic at 3am, even in the heart of Manhattan. It's fortunate Nicholas J. Fury has finely honed offensive driving skills and nerves of steel. It's also probably fortunate his SUV is huge and heavily armored. It's a straight shot down 7th Avenue, hardly 10 minutes at this hour, but he's had five near-collisions before reaching the Tessier house on Waverly Place. Now he's at the door, holding the whiteboard and re-reading Jackson Motherfucking Holland's seemingly nonsensical instructions in all-caps. "Ain't that rude for Millennials?" he grumbles, and with a world-weary sigh, knocks on the door. The door is answered first by a scrabbling of paws, then a snuffling, then one dutiful and sharp: Woof. Despite this trained best-effort at Being A Guard Dog, Flèche is wagging eagerly by the time the door is opened, dancing her way out to press cold nose happily against Fury. Behind the door, Lucien -- not looking particularly sleepy-eyed, not even looking dressed for bed; very-soft heather-grey henley tee, neatly tailored dark blue jeans -- still has one hand on the door, which he's only pulled just slightly ajar. He levels a steady look on Fury, one brow hitching minutely when he does not, apparently, find what he was looking for. "Jackson says you have a package for me." Fury looks distinctly unimpressed with the antics of Dog, but is quickly mollified by the appearance of her master. He lifts one eyebrow high. Opens his mouth. Closes it. "Did he, now? Well, if there's a package involved, your brother's the one --" He breaks off and just flips the whiteboard around for Lucien's perusal: 'LUCIEN TESSIER'S HOUSE. DO NOT TURN AROUND. DO NOT TURN OFF GPS. HAVE MATT CHECK EMPTY SEATS' "This was all he gave me. If this some bonus round birthday scavenger hunt bullshit I'mma swear off having birthdays." Somewhere behind Lucien, another Tessier is slouching toward the front door. Matt is bleary-eyed and tousle-haired, hastily dressed in a pale pink tee with a black (roughly anatomical) heart sliced open to bleed in a swirl of bright rainbow colors, and faded threadbare blue jeans. He peers around his brother at Fury--or perhaps just his whiteboard--with an impassive expression that suggests he isn't quite sure what he's looking at and even less sure he cares. To Lucien's senses, he is abruptly and keenly alert, his power unfurling, questing, finding nothing in or near Fury's (illegally parked) vehicle. "Empty seats," he murmurs as he slips past the other men to unceremoniously rifle through the SUV. "I take it I'm not looking for..." He holds up a transparent vacuum pack containing clothes (in color!), a flip phone, and other items harder to identify through the heavy gauge plastic. "...secret agent starter kits? Or MREs. Oh! Are you missing these?" He climbs out of the back seat and waggles a pair of black aviator style shades. He pulls the front door open, climbs halfway in then hesitates, frowning. A car is rounding the corner onto the one-way street but, not being another gigantic SUV, can probably squeeze past. It isn't slowing down, though Matt can't see this where he's awkwardly balanced on the threshold of the passenger door. His head tilts like he's listening for something as his power presses down around him, gradually, carefully keeping his brother outside the bubble of suppression. As Matt's power presses down there is, quite suddenly, a teenager tucked beneath Matt where he looms over the passenger seat. Kavalam's glasses (bent, lens cracked badly) are askew on his nose, his jeans ripped, his button-down speckled with blood; his face is bruised, a gash across his forehead that his hair is starting to mat to where the blood has dried. There are scraped-raw cuts abraded down a forearm, too, but if there is further damage that his clothes are concealing it isn't damage enough to stop his breathing (slow and even) or keep him from an apparently sound sleep. Lucien's eyes flick down to the whiteboard with a small ah that is not quite understanding, but not -- not, either. "If it is my brother you want, I assume some fresh mutant nonsense is --" He pulls the door just a little wider, steps just a little back, to let Matt trudge out to the car. "-- brewing. Do you like scavenger hunts, Director Fury? In your line of work I suppose that could swing harshly either way." "I don't want him --" Fury protests, but quickly reconsiders and concedes, "If there is some fresh mutant nonsense brewing, I s'pose I'd rather he find it than whatever the hell the alternative is." He huffs indignantly at Matt's evaluation of his...secret agent starter kits. "Boy, I been a spy longer than -- hey! Matter of fact, I been missin' those. You go right on ahead and put 'em on the..." His eye tracks to the other car, not slowing or moving over to thread the space between his SUV and the legally parked cars on the opposite side of the street. When, an instant later, it still shows no sign of changing course, he draws a handgun from beneath his duster and in one swift motion levels it at the driver -- just as they slam on their brakes and skid to a screeching stop only steps from the SUV's rear bumper. "Tabar--" Matt's blaspheming is cut short by one or some combination of three things happening more or less simultaneously: the abrupt appearance of his (battered) (bloodied) student, the squeal of tires as the car behind them brakes hard, and the thud of his own head against the passenger door frame when he reflexively tries to straighten. The very next word out of his mouth is "Kavalam!" His power shifts, sinking insubstantial yet inexorable into Kavalam's to keep it quiescent while the area suppression lifts around them. He kneels on the top step (yes, there's more than one) of the SUV's door and shakes the boy gingerly by his shoulder. "Darling, what happened to you?" Whether it's the squeal of brakes or the shaking Kavalam is stirring -- tensing up first, fists clenching, eyes snapping open. He relaxes when he sees Matt, then unrelaxes at the sight of Fury beyond. He scrambles up and half-tumbles down the SUV steps onto the sidewalk. He's dusting unnecessarily at his clothes with a very catlike nobody-saw-that nonchalance. "Mr. Jackson told this cop very sternly to bring me here," he's informing the Tessiers, apparently quite pleased to be relaying this information. "He does not use that boss-voice in class. Does he order you around like that?" Is this an answer No It Is Not, but it's what they get for now as he sidles -- veeeery gingerly, keeping a wary eye on Fury -- toward the Tessiers' front door. Lucien's eyes have gone slightly wider as Fury draws his weapon, and somewhere in the tortuous machinery of his mind a vague flutter of desire is stirring that doesn't quite settle until the second car has moved on. It's swiftly displaced when he sees Kavalam -- concerned, frightened -- though he seems content to leave the external fretting to his brother. "Me? Goodness, no, he saves the domming for Matthieu." He clicks his teeth against tongue to recall Flèche as she starts to head for the street and the exciting new guest. The sight of Kavalam has allayed a good deal of the confusion in his expression -- even if in his mind it's waking up several more spinning thoughts, curious, assessing, somewhere beneath those a sinking fear. "I am in fact quite impressed that you got him here at all. Jackson's instructions must have been --" His lips compress. He eyes the whiteboard. Eyes Kavalam's bruised face. His fingers clench just a bit tighter on his door handle and he steps back, wider, to allow the others back inside. "-- quite thoughtful." Fury lowers the gun quickly when the driver of the errant vehicle carefully passes the SUV. "What the fuck was that about?" he wonders aloud just about in time to be blindsided by yet another WTF. "Where the fuck that kid come from?!" His eye skips back and forth between Matt and Kavalam as he, presumably, tries to sort out how the former conjured the latter out of his empty...seat. He also looks down at the whiteboard, only realizing then the gun's still in his other hand. He re-holster it matter-of-factly and moves aside to give Kavalam a wide berth as he passes. A shiver of horror and revulsion rises from somewhere deep in his gut. "He was in my car?" he demands first of Lucien, then of Matt, "The whole time?" Then finally, to Kavalam's back "He didn't order me nothin', I chose to help, and he ought've just been straight with me!" His face twitches very briefly into a cringe. "Goddamnit." "The whole time," Matt echoes kind of absently. Was that an answer? "Oh yes, I love it when he orders me around. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it." He hooks Fury's lost sunglasses onto the collar of his shirt, also kind of absently, his own mind churning away. "Not to worry, he has no desire to be gay with you, either. Thank you for delivering Kavalam here, even if you did it unawares." The smile he offers Fury is faint, but looks genuine for all that. He catches Lucien's eyes, just for a fleeting instant, with a decisive sense that they've come to the same conclusion, even if his sinking fear is muffled, distant. "Oh gods, you've been gone the whole time." He ushers Kavalam inside, then heads directly for the kitchen to put on the tea his brother had laid out in readiness before even waking him. Kavalam trails after the Tessiers into the house, stepping out of his grubby slip-on shoes to leave them by the door. "Do not be mad at Mr. Jackson, sir," he sounds considerably less flippant than he had before, considerably more tired, "he was as straight as he could be. You would have forgotten if he had just told you. I am very forgettable." His face is a little more pinched at the whole time, his head bowing as he scrunches fingers into Flèche's fur. "... are you having tea?" Is this to Fury or to the dog? It's hard to say. He hasn't actually seen into the kitchen yet but he is quite confident tea is being made, apparently, even before he follows after Matt to slump into the breakfast nook bench. "You should," his voice sounds oddly distant as he tells Matt this, "sometimes check your voice mails." Lucien meets Matt's eyes for only a second, though the cold fear in him is growing. "Are you having tea." It's definitely to Fury, at least. His voice is flatter, almost-but-not-quite entirely unlike his usual soft neutrality in its stark tonelessness, now. Regardless of Fury's answer he's going to be locking the door up tight once everyone is inside. He stops by the kitchen just long enough to make sure the tea is actually being made, and then disappears into the bathroom. He's in the middle of sending a text when he returns, a first aid kit in his other hand. More extensive than the one under SHIELD's kitchen sink, since Jackson was interrupted before even starting over there. Fury is slow to enter the house, his curiosity only just barely winning out over the tangle of perplexity, fear, and suspicion that furrow his brows deep. He's slow to take off his shoes, too, and even when he follows the others he doesn't fully enter the kitchen, just leans against its door frame with arms crossed. "I'll have some tea," he replies, though he doesn't sound altogether sure about that. He isn't feeling altogether sure about anything at the moment, except that he hates feeling this far out of his depth. "You erase memories?" he asks, eyeing Kavalam intently, as though willing himself to remember their earlier encounters. Matt's hand stops mid-motion reaching for an extra mug, then follows through smoothly, as though someone had accidentally hit "pause" on him and immediately corrected the error. "I heartily agree," he says, his voice soft and soothing, "but tea first, no? Perhaps something to eat, also?" He curls his fingers loosely through the handle of the celadon teapot, though it's not time yet to decant it. "I can listen to them now, if you'd rather be spared some rehashing, but either way..." His vivid green eyes snap to Fury, putting an edge into the sweetness of his tone. "...this isn't an interrogation. Not," he adds with a strange, fey smile, "that an interrogation would help you much right now, in any event." The wisps of his power threaded into Lucien's brace him against the icy touch of his fear. His own mind is a vast, preternatural calm neatly containing an inferno of thrashing, tearing rage. "He doesn't erase memories, if that makes you feel any better." Despite his words, this comes out with a certain suggestion he's quite sure that knowledge will not make Fury feel better. "What rot. I erase memories," Kavalam says somewhat defensively. "But only my own." He is eying the first aid kit suspiciously, but after a pause holds out his arm toward Lucien. "-- memories of me," he amends. "My own memory is very-good, actually. I stop you remembering me. Do you know how many times have we met?" He is asking Fury this with a sharp gleam in his eye. "I would make a deadly super-spy. You will," and, experimentally, Matt can feel something cranking up in Kavalam's power, though he does not disappear from view, "not remember any of this. A shame, no? Tomorrow you will be dying to know tonight's story." "I suspect in most cases, you prevent memories from forming at all. Easier. Neater." On another night, perhaps, Lucien would be quite enjoying this exchange, perfectly calibrated as it is to drive Fury insane. But tonight he's just folding a towel under Kavalam's arm, rinsing out the ragged abrasions with saline before he can dress the wound. Faintly, under his touch, lingering aches and pains are starting to calm. "We are all dying to know tonight's story." His mouth presses, tight. "-- no interrogation," sounds like he's reminding himself as much as Kavalam: "{But, please --} is Gaétan." He pauses, swallows. "Was Gaétan with you." Fury's expression tightens further -- if only fractionally -- with each explanation. Inwardly he is not quite panicking but certainly extremely disquieted and highly indignant. "But can't you --" He indicates Matt with a sharp, accusatory jerk of his chin. "-- make him stop?" Though now he is sparing one hand to stroke at his beard, reluctant intrigue creeping into his horror. "Deadly, maybe. But you wouldn't make a particularly useful spy if your allies can't remember you, neither. No one to take your reports or back up you when your ass in the wind." He quiets, though, at Lucien's question. Quiet, too, his admiration as he looks from one brother to the other -- both tending to the boy in their own ways -- and something more wistful. Matt turns his hand upward in time with Lucien's explanation, indicating his agreement as though it were self-evident somehow. "Oh, I can," he tells Fury equably, "and so can he, to a point." Even as he says this, he is easing up his suppression, the light touch of his power now deftly supporting Kavalam's, making it easier for the boy in his exhaustion to flex it how he will. "I think he's quite aware how useful his power can be, and how detrimental. I also expect it is how..." He trails off, glances at the clock, and picks up the teapot in earnest to fill four matching celadon mugs. "How do you take your tea, Director Fury?" It's a fine, light nilgiri, still plenty dark enough to take milk well. He heaps extra sugar into Kavalam's mug and delivers it to his (at least visibly) less injured side, his other hand still warm from the tea when he lays it very gently on the boy's shoulder. Only Lucien can feel the absence of warmth behind this gesture and the overwhelming impulse to say something more, violently quashed. "Mmm." It's a quiet agreement, with Lucien's assessment, thoughtful, brow-furrowed. Kavalam's power is still leaning -- harder, now that Matt has for released it -- weight bearing down on Fury with a careful intention. "To them it is the same, though, no?" With Fury he is huffing, maybe-still-defensive, maybe slightly proud. "I can let people remember me, but it takes some good deal of work. Until I know enough to trust them why would I do it? I could be very useful. Nobody notices. Nobody remembers. It's how I..." Here, Kavalam stops, letting his breath out slowly. His eyes are fixed on Lucien -- on the man's hands, on the careful work of dressing and bandaging his wound. "Yes. He was there. Is there. Excellent strategist he is, too. It's how I --" But his voice falters once more, now, when Matt sets the tea down beside him. His eyes tip up to the ceiling -- squeeze shut tight. None of this helps, fierce though he's trying, and Lucien can feel his composure shatter just a heartbeat before the flood of tears actually begin to fall. His hand lifts to rub for a second, angry and ashamed, against his face, knocking his glasses aside before he gives up on this endeavor. Just leans up against Matt's side and sobs. "In some ways. In others it might affect you a lot. Memory is not impossible to destroy, but it is difficult. If you obstructed memory retrieval a skilled telepath could still recover the information. If you prevent it from being encoded at all --" There's a deep curiosity lighting in Lucien's mind, briefly pushing down some of the cold fear that has been rising. "Director Fury, do you recall why you drew your sidearm, earlier?" It's a complicated tangle of feelings twisting through his own mind -- winding hard and tight and unraveling again just as swift when was there shifts to is there, his hand stilling where he's been taping gauze against Kavalam's arm. Mind already threaded tight through the teenagers for analgesic purpose, the sudden cracking dam of emotion floods through him before he manages to wrest some barriers back into place -- breathing unsteady, eyes abruptly bright with tears. He shifts his hand aside to the table swiftly -- a moment later, an aggressive calm reasserted in his own mind, finishes with the bandaging. His gaze lifts to Matt. He stands, silent, to finish preparing the other three mugs. Fury is seething, but looks over Kavalam's wounds again and keeps his mouth clamped firmly shut until Matt asks him a non-rhetorical question. "Sweet," he replies, terse enough that it doesn't sound like a question itself, but not enough to cover his uncertainty. "Ionno from all this neurology shit, but are you tryna not-exactly-erase my memory right now?" This, at least, is more curious than worried, but only for a moment. At Lucien's question he frowns deeply. "Sidearm? The hell you talmbout, I ain't drawn my gun since --" He stops, suddenly lost. "This has got to be memory shenanigans. Why did I even come here? How did the kid get here -- now wait just a minute..." Fury straightens up and studies Kavalam intently. "You was with their brother? Where --" He subsides quickly when the boy starts crying, but he's watching the Tessiers' reactions very keenly. Matt's breath catches, though it's easy enough to miss beside Kavalam's breakdown, and he let it ease from him slow and controlled. Something shivers and twists deep beneath the surface of his mind without much evident effect on its suffocating calm. When he meets his brother's gaze there are no tears in his own eyes, but they're still less empty in some ineffable way than they've been the last two months. "Oh, darling..." He sinks down beside Kavalam and curls an arm around his shoulders, pulling the teen tighter against his side as with his other hand he nudges the tissue box into easier reach. "You made it. You're safe now. Everything else, we can figure out together." He darts Fury a look that isn't outright hostile, though there's something like a warning in it before his expression softens again. "Goodness, you almost shot someone for my sake. Pray don't trouble yourself too much, there's a lot going on here, but you won't remember any of it. I trust Luci will apprise you of whatever you need to know when you need to know it, with considerably less hoopla." Kavalam turns his face in against Matt's side, shoulders shaking and his breathing ragged for a while more. Eventually he pulls himself away, tugging a tissue to blot at his eyes, blow his dripping nose. "You drove me here. Be glad you do not remember. Other drivers also cannot see cars I am riding in." He swallows -- takes another few breaths. They're getting steadier, if only slowly. He curls a hand around the mug of tea, pulling it close and dipping his head to it to sip like he doesn't currently quite trust his hands. "Yes. Him and Spencer and Nanami and everybody. Your mother, too. Mr. Jackson he said they would try to help and I know he has done many terrorisms but --" His shoulders have gone tighter. "Can he get everyone out of Lassiter?" Lucien has been heavily sweetening Fury's tea even before the answer comes. Less sugar in the other two. "It happens automatically. I assure you, the effect it has on his life has considerably more heft than a confusing evening for us." It's somewhere about here, as he's turning to put the tea in Fury's hands, that Kavalam finishes speaking. Is it your mother? Is it Lassiter? Something in these words hits him like a freight train -- and Fury, as well, where Lucien's powers abruptly pull Fury along into his mental maelstrom. Fury's own assemblage of old-soldier wounds and pains are disconcertingly replaced with Lucien's considerably-younger nightmarishly-demanding-theatre overexertion; beyond that a sharp spike of headache and the fraying-edged kind-of-delirious exhaustion of not-sleeping for a length of time that might kill someone with a normal brain -- and over and beyond those, briefly flooding out other thoughts, a snarl of rage and helpless terror that twist deep in his gut. Lucien's hand tightens. He has entirely forgotten to let go of Fury's tea, and there's a dull and distant panic that is trying to rise and clamped down under a very forceful calm. He swallows -- looks up at Fury -- looks away to his brother. His voice has gone oddly calm, also. "-- I expect he will try." "I beg your pardon?" Fury is, in fact, troubling himself. "Now, I can tell this young man is having a rough time, but that don't mean you get to condescend to me about what I need to know and when I need to know it." He uncrosses his arms and straightens, not looming but certainly more imposing than before, his anger and distress and confusion almost palpable. "And after I -- apparently -- done played chauffeur and bodyguard for y'all tonight, too. You owe me an explanation." Kavalam's explanation may not have been what he was asking for, but it certainly grabs his attention for the brief instant before Lucien's power grabs it instead. He gasps, clenches his jaw tight, then looks down at where Lucien's hand touches his. In a rush of realization he pulls away aghast. "What the fuck," he demands, low, his voice shaking, "was that." Matt covers his mouth, though there's no noise there for him to stifle, not even really even much an expression there for him to hide. "He will try," he agrees, insistently gentle though only just holding himself together, "and at better odds by far, with a super-spy to advise him." Better than what, he does not say. As much as Fury's (not unreasonable) demands to know What's Going On have become a kind of background noise to this conversation, the latest one seems to strike a nerve. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and pushes wearily to his feet. Inside, something doesn't just snap; the stifling pressure in his mind gives way with a crack like thunder when lightning strikes much too close for comfort, followed fast by the whirlwind of anger and pain it had been holding down. He squeezes Kavalam's shoulder as if in assurance he will not stray far, and indeed only goes to retrieve his tea from the counter. His power where it's threaded through Lucien's propels it effortlessly across the small distance that Fury had put between them. He seizes hold of the old man's neurochemistry with shocking care for all the rage that drove it there, and Fury's exhaustion is suddenly overpowering, the temptation of sleep impossible to resist. "Pray don't trouble yourself too much," he repeats, firmly. His hands are trembling where he grips the mug tight. "This will all be easier to deal with after some rest." "Oh, is this man going to help him with the terrorism?" Kavalam seems deeply intrigued by this prospect, and only moreso at Fury's sudden and shocked reaction to -- being offered tea. He studies Fury's face thoughtfully. Then Lucien's, a little more critical. Then Fury's, again. He picks up his own tea as he stands, glancing towards the stairs. "You don't need to make the guest room for me," at once wry and glum, "-- Gaé is not using his bed." Lucien flinches as Fury pulls away, eyes closing, shoulders briefly tensing in time with a brief stab of something not unlike grief. His panic spikes sharper when Matt pulls at his ability, stark and sharp for just a second before -- only sleep follows, and, absurdly, he chokes back a laugh. Where Matt has just stolen his power he steals right back, flexing across the distance. The fine adjustments that tweak at Kavalam's mind are, to Matt's senses, oddly similar to the boy's own power at work in others -- just a brief disruption of the processes that would encode the last few moments of memory. That same flex starts to reach for Matt himself -- and stops short. Freezes, pulls back, though there's something pleading in Lucien's eyes when he looks briefly at Matt and then away. His internal chaos is settling into just fear, just hurt, blank-calm though his expression is. He is curling his arm, strong and supportive, beneath Fury's shoulders as this wave of somnolence sets in. His breath tightens at Kavalam's mention of his other brother. He only nods once, dull, before turning away, half-carrying Fury off to bed. "I meant you," Matt informs Kavalam delicately, then indicates Fury with a sharp jerk of his head, "The jury's still out on that one." When he meets his brother's eyes this time, he uncharacteristically glances away first, before the storm of his own pain has a chance to spill over. His power neatly completes the mnemonic disruption Lucien aborted before withdrawing altogether as he follows Kavalam upstairs.