Logs:Not Monopoly

Not Monopoly
Dramatis Personae Echo, Naomi
In Absentia Harm, Kavalam, Astrid, Lael	2023-05-08 "I know that guilt."
Location <PRO> Echo and Harm’s Cell - Lassiter Research Facility - Ohio
The staff calls them "rooms", but this is like any of the other cells here. It is small, though not claustrophobic, and the door with its single reinforced glass window locks from the outside. The two cheap cots are permanently attached to the floor, as is the stainless steel sink/toilet combo in the center of the far wall. The inset overhead lights are institutional fluorescent tubes, their light sickly, sometimes flickery, and liable to emit a certain high-pitched hum. The air conditioning is always set too high and the heat set too low. Echo's lying on her back on the cot, a thin pamphlet eight inches from her face. Upon closer inspection this is revealed to be...the Monopoly rulebook? The furrow in her brow and her right hand vaguely moving phantom houses in the air suggest that actually playing the game might be a better way to remember how it goes, but this is the route she's chosen. She startles when she hears footsteps, jerking her head upward and squinting toward Naomi in the door, then clears her throat. "Harm's out," she offers, though that's self-evident. A beat passes before she suddenly struggles up to a sitting position after inadvertently pinning her too-big sage scrub shirt under her elbow in the process; the pamphlet flutters out of her grasp to the ground. "Hey, are you mad at...I mean..." She swallows and gestures at the other girl with some effort. "It's my fault you're -- here, I think." Naomi, leaning against the open doorframe and fidgeting with the end of one of her locs, frowns. "You know where they at?" There's a strong undercurrent of worry in her tone, at odds with her too casual posture. "If they ain't being poked at I can go find them --" She's turning, a bit slowly, to go, before Echo's question finishes. Turns back around, one hand twisting at the hem of her scrubs, leaning once again heavily on the mantle. "Girl." A bit incredulous. "What the hell you talmbout? That serum messing with your brain?" Echo shakes her head. "Don't think it was for that, haven't seen any of those orderlies today, h--they didn't look...worried." A breath to reset a normal tone of voice after that bit of roiling concern for the healer. "Probably just the rec room, but I dunno which." She wilts a little bit at Naomi's tone of voice, drops her head and scrubs at her eyes a bit before she clasps her hands under her chin. "I don't mean here like you wouldn't've come, just I, I keep thinking back over that moment and you had it under control until I -- like, you wouldn't have been caught if I hadn't messed up like that," the words get faster as she goes on, spilling over more than her usual overqualifications. Naomi sucks her cheeks against her teeth for a long moment. Without eyebrows and without her glasses, Echo probably can't make out the other girl's expression at this distance, just two blobs of jet black and warmer brown. Slowly: "I reckon it's my damn fault you in here, I done dragged you to that zoo nonsense. Make you think all adventures gonna be like that. Mind if I sit?" Naomi's not really waiting for permission, just crossing to Echo's cot and dropping heavily onto the foot of it. "You really wanna play the 'what if' game? It's shittier than Monopoly -- sometimes in Monopoly you can actually win." Echo laughs, two short humorless exhales, and starts to twist her palms together while nodding. Her eyes focus -- more, but not completely -- as Naomi closes the gap. "Nah, I knew," she pauses to look for something true, "well, it was gonna be different, the way everyone was before we came. Just thought, minor help is better than none, right?" She shakes her head. "Didn't think about the harm flip side." A sideways glance to Naomi, an apologetic backpedal. "Sorry, you were trying to make a point, I know. Just still can't help feeling I should be able to do better -- better enough to not get my friends hurt." Naomi leans forward, hands clasped, arms propped up on her legs. "You been at freak school for like ten minutes. You did your damn best, ain't no shame in that. We're both alive, ain't we?" There's a heaviness to the question, some space after to acknowledge who, they both know by now, didn't make it. Quieter, almost directed at the floor: "Anyone ever tell you 'bout our 2020 field trip?" Another rueful laugh. "Kavalam suggested I shouldn't've come. I mean I think he did mean we all shouldn't have, but maybe that's what would've been doing my best." The silence falls thick and stifling; Echo's face crumples a little in the mutual weight. "But. Thanks. Was this the uh...alternate-dimension-worse-mutant-torture-prison he mentioned...?" "Mm. Ionno what he done heard from everyone else when we got back, but it was -- jus' awful." There's a faint grinding sound -- scales moving, struggling to form creases across Naomi's forehead. "We didn't go on purpose or nothing, there was some hole in spacetime that jus' snatched us right up. Before all that shit in Shippenville --" here Naomi shivers, sets her jaw before continuing, "-- we were hiding from these robots -- like the Sentinels here, but worse 'cuz they could tell if you was a mutant, right, and that world was full in on roundin' up all o' us. I was thirteen and a new freak and real full o' myself, an' I went to steal supplies -- blew our hiding spot. Tried to fix that, and forced everyone to walk straight into a trap. This one girl exploded, cops almost got us, and that was day one. Was a miracle I ain't got anyone killed." Naomi's gaze cuts sidelong to Echo, now. "Then we was stuck there for two more weeks, and I sat there every damn day knowing I nearly got my brother and all his friends murdered. Whatever guilt you feeling right now -- I been there. I know that guilt." Echo's eyebrows draw together in confusion and then creep apart with the beginnings of a realization before the gravity of the telling takes over, flattening them and the look in her eyes. She leans forward, arms hugging herself as she stares somewhere around Naomi's shoulder. There's a slight rocking of her form back and forth, faint and slow. "Exploded..." It's not a question. Echo's shoulders hunch inwards, and there's a long silence. "Wow." Another pause. "I can't imagine...I'm sorry, I really have no idea how much everyone's maybe carrying around." She flicks her gaze up to meet Naomi's. "How do you...manage it?" “She got better,” is Naomi’s relatively breezy reply. Her shoulders pull inward, too, though it’s unclear if she’s mirroring the other teen. “Manage it?” A hunched, tight shrug. “Badly? There was counselling when we got back but I quit cuz I needed to study for math. Mostly I just -- didn't use my power, at all, for a while. I had to prove folks could trust me to not steal their brains. If they trusted me again -- maybe it would be okay." She tilts her head to look at Echo. "I didn't trust you much last week. Ain't personal, I just don't trust most bog folks further than I can throw 'em. Now? I know you gonna try to help even if you can't, an' that's -- that's something." "I'm, uh, glad?" Echo tries to run a hand through her hair, gives up when it hits a tangle. She opens her mouth, closes it again. "Seems like they do," she offers. "I mean, not everyone, I heard some weird stuff at school, but. These guys. And, I dunno if that really makes it okay, but...I heard you try to stop that guard for me." Echo takes a deep breath and then matches Naomi's gaze as surely as she can, this time. "Thanks for...sharing, Naomi. I'll...keep doing my best, to help, even if I can't." A thin smile as she gestures to the thick concrete all around them. "Maybe someday I'll trust myself." "Psh." Naomi smiles back, small but reaching, against all odds, her light green eyes. "Girl, you can do what you want. You wanna quit helping once we outta here, nobody gonna blame you." She pushes off the bed. "Tell Harm I was looking for them when you see 'em. Oh, and --" she's walking, slowly, to the door of the cell now, this last bit breezy over her shoulder, "-- don't rush tryna trust yourself or nothing." Naomi glances back, and there's the distinct sense that, even without her powers, her eyes are trying to change, anyway. There's something weird about her register when she speaks next, pitched somewhere low that probably would have sounded scarier if it came with a hissing undertone-- "I don't trust me, yet."