Logs:Stolen

Stolen
Dramatis Personae Erik, Polaris
In Absentia	2022-05-16 we are more alike than you yet know.
Location <NYC> Freaktown - Riverdale - The Bronx
The weather today has vacillated between almost early-summer levels of warm sunshine and violent thunderstorms, and though it has settled on the former for a while now the towering cumulus clouds hint at more of the latter to come. Riverdale has come out from hiding for the time being, children playing in the streets, clusters of residents and visitors chatting on stoops and porches, and even a few kiosks opening back up on the plaza. Polaris is on cleanup duty for downed tree branches around the neighborhood, assisted by a length of steel cable which she is using to drag them to a heap of detritus at the edge of the wooded empty lot. She's in her work clothes, a black fitted tee decorated with a silver compass rose, tight black jeans, and heavy black boots shot through with steel hardware. Her usual assortment of other metallic accessories today include a belt with three rows of pyramid studs, an intricate woven wire choker, nine wire twist rings, and a pair of steel link cuffs around her slender wrists. Presently she's wrangling a thick bough torn off by a microburst, coiling the cable around the center of its mass and tightening it to snap the entire mess in half for ease of transport. Erik, too, has been helping out, albeit on the other side of Riverdale under the mostly attentive eye of today’s Kingsguard. He’s shed the denim jacket that characterizes his disguise best, dressed in a purple tee and sturdy work jeans and steel-toed boots instead of his usual “punk” attire, though the jeans are held up by a heavily metal studded belt. The studded and chain-covered facemask and sunglasses remain, as does the red in his hair (fading now to a soft pink), joined today by a steel link band around his right wrist.. He’s hauling a wheelbarrow of unrecoverable fencing to the detritus pile now the he catches sight and sense of Polaris. Steadies the wheelbarrow on the ground for a moment, watches the cable snap through the bough. The corners of his eyes crinkle, like underneath the mask he must be smiling. Polaris re-routes the cable and gathers the ruined vegetation into a slightly more compact bundle, but she's only gotten it halfway back to the pile when she stops dead in her tracks, dropping her load with a loud rustling crash. The sudden focused attention of her power feels strange, like an inaudible hum around and through Erik's absurdly strong bioelectric field. Her eyes fix on him, her mouth working, but she cannot seem to either move or speak. When she doe finally manage speech it's just an angry snarl of "You!" For a moment she looks undecided on whether to flee or confront him, and it seems to startle her when her feet lift from the ground and make the decision for her as though involuntarily drawn toward the other magnetokinetic. "What the actual. Entire. Fuck?!" The crashing boughs rattle Erik out of his reverie — behind his sunglasses his eyes widen with alarm. “{Ah, shit.}” This is muttered mostly to himself as Polaris draws closer. A quick glance around the lot — blessedly empty — and then he’s pulling off the sunglasses, the mask, looking up at Polaris with his true face, pain and sorrow written across it. “I am sorry for the deception. Truly. Please —“ and his field is flexing out to wrap around Polaris’ steel cuffs, around the steel in her boots, not stopping her approach but slowing it with a light pull backwards, “— let me explain.” "No," Polaris snaps, straining without much success--without any real sense of direction, for that matter--against the grasp of Erik's powers, "you fucking listen. You're so full of shit, talking about making a better future for our people when you abandoned your own kid to be raised by flatscans." She's sobbing almost hysterically, the air around them strangely charged, every piece of metal in the vicinity shivering. "I can't even be like, 'my real dad is the one who raised me' cuz guess what, Arnold didn't want me either." All of a sudden her rage seems to drain away and she sets herself down only a few steps away from Erik. Quietly, plaintively through her tears, "Why wasn't I good enough?" Erik’s lips press into a thin line, feet lifting from the ground as he floats up to be level with Polaris. “Watch your tongue —" he’s starting to command over her screaming, until the word abandoned gets spat out and he stops, mouth still open. Erik just — blinks, at first, though the hum of shivering metal around them ground them grows again as his field imbues each piece with an additional charge. Sets himself down onto the ground, jaw working for far too long before he settles on — “What poison is this, abandoning you? I learned you existed a month ago.” The humming grows louder. “What did your mother tell you?” Polaris's weeping starts to ease off, her arms wrapped tight around herself. "She said you were too busy with your revolution, that it wasn't safe to raise a kid when you had dangerous battles to fight..." She frowns deeply. "Why should I believe you?" But then her brows clear and she scrubs her hands over her face. "No no no that fucking bitch! She lied and she didn't even tell you why did I ever believe her?!" Just like that she's weeping openly again. "And I still kept thinking maybe--maybe you'd come for me if I was--" Her head shakes hard. "I tried to find you, I tried but no one ever answered." “I am going to kill her.” Erik’s not talking to Polaris here as much as past her, the humming growing louder as every piece of metal within his field shakes, shakes like the curled fists at his side. “After everything, after everything — “ The rage leaks out now, random pieces of metal in Erik’s orbit lifting up just a foot or so off the ground. He’s breathing hard and fast before he speaks again, fast. “I would have been there in an instant had I known, had she not — how could she?” His voice cracks as he closes the distance between him and Polaris, setting his hands on her shoulders. “I swear, if I had known nothing would have kept me from you.” "No," Polaris says, quiet now but firm. "No. She--I'll never forgive her, never, but--she's my mom." She swallows, trying to blink back fresh tears. "I guess. Not anymore really she--they--fuck!" Her shoulders are tense beneath Erik's hands, and she starts to jerk away from the touch but then leans into it, her head drooping to rest on his broad shoulder. "They said that I did it to myself--all the bad things that happened--that I ended up just like you and I was so mad at you but--" Her shoulders hitch with muffled sobs. "--deep down I was still proud to be like you. Even then." Erik nods once, jerkily, his own eyes growing wet in the corners. Cautiously, like he’s afraid she might shatter, Erik wraps one arm around his daughter’s shoulders, pulling her close against his chest, his cheek pressed to her hair. “Oh, sheifaleh, we are more alike than you yet know. The horrors you’ve lived — if I had been there you should never have seen them — you deserved none of it, you understand? Purge their poison from your mind. I am so proud of you.” Polaris sniffles, tensing again in Erik's embrace but not pulling away. "They got you, too. That same year, summer of 2015, we were trying to stop the Keystone Pipeline and--" She swallows, pressing her face tighter against his shoulder. "I'm glad you got out. But how can you be proud of me? I saw you on the news but you don't even know me she stole that from you." She's quaking with anger again. "From us both." Abruptly she's laughing, soft and breathless. "Gosh, I would be like, a thousand times more badass if I didn't have to figure this shit out by trial and error." She's undoing the claspless cuffs on her wrists, working their hidden inner mechanisms and starting to knit them back into one band without so much as lifting her head to look. "Do--do you want this back?" If Polaris were to pull away, maybe Erik would school his face into something firmer. But she's not, so he's not, either -- when she says 2015 his entire face falls like someone had pulled the world out from under him, and yes, now some traitorous tears are catching on his stubble. His other arm comes up around her back, pulls her closer, tighter. "How could I not be? My daughter is a fighter, a survivor, building our people a new future -- and alive." His eyes squeeze shut for just a moment, flick back open with a frown. "Ah, that sentimental fool." He's gently catching the links in his own field. "Do you -- like it? I have -- " the bracelet on his own wrist presses, warm, against Polaris' shoulder, "-- many like it, it is no loss to me. It's yours if you want it." Polaris's shoulders hitch again, though she manages not to start crying this time. "Being alive. Seems like it should be a pretty low bar. " She finally unwinds her arms from around herself to wrap them tight around her father. "Yeah he was like...I mean, I felt so stu--foolish accepting it, just. After the Danes disowned me I...wanted to feel like I still had a parent. Somewhere." She reluctantly pulls away, her blush almost lost where her pale skin has gone red from all her weeping, and after a very brief hesitation she looks at the half-disassembled bracelet(s) hanging in the air and nods. "I like it. It feels different from other steel. Way cooler than the stuff I make." She bites her lower lip, her gaze settling on the numbers inked into Erik's forearm. "I guess being alive is kinduva big fucking deal." The tears spill hot onto Polaris’ hair, the hug seeming to overwhelm whatever was left of Erik’s emotional defences. “Disowned you? Vindictive, petty humans. They do not deserve you.” When she pulls away, he turns to look at the bracelets, wipes the damp from under his eyes. “Then it is yours — as is the secret of how to make it. I will — find us, make us a forge to work in. I can show you so much, if you would let me.” He’s reassembling the links now, carefully dividing them again into the two cuffs they were before. “It is.” Tracking her gaze, Erik extends his arm, slowly. ‘214782’ reads the tattoo, though Erik is looking at his daughter’s reaction. “Not here, not now, but soon. Any question you put to me, I will answer. This story is in your blood — it should be in your mind as well.” "I mean. Yeah that was fucked, but like...I did scream at them. Kind of a lot?" Polaris gives an exaggerated, lopsided cringe. "Just. So you know what you're getting into here. I'm impulsive and stubborn and literally crazy and--" She sighs. "Probably not anyone's idea of a good daughter. I swear I do listen it just. Takes me a while sometimes." Her field pulls the bracelets back and clicks them into place around her wrists. "Not now," she agrees, wrapping both of her hands around his. For all that she looks dainty beside him her grip is strong, her hazel eyes wide and sincere and almost distressingly intense. "But I want to know. I want you to tell me everything--everything I missed."