ArchivedLogs:Real

Real
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Nox
In Absentia	2013-05-22 (Part of Thunderdome.)
Location <NYC> Common Ground Clinic - Clinton
A dingy waiting room with a line of rickety chairs, a small glass table with a set of permanently out-of-date magazines, a set of plastic holding racks with a number of informational pamphlets about STIs and partner abuse. This place is not, to be sure, the most cheerful on earth, but for many of its clientele it is the best they have. The Common Ground Clinic's staff provides free and low-cost medical care on a sliding scale to many of Manhattan's poorest residents, without checking for insurance, immigration status or many other things that bar entry for many of them to traditional medical care. There is counselling available, too, and once a week social workers to help people find resources for getting on their feet. The wait times are long, but the volunteer staff here is dedicated (if always overworked.) It is impossible to close the clinic for the day--or close to impossible--but wait times are probably going to be ridiculously high for anyone unfortunate enough to visit. The back of the house is bustling like a three star restaurant in the weeds. Shell-shocked mutants, injured mutants, the walking wounded and the critical cases, all tucked away into multiple rooms for triage and care and just plain shelter. All in all, it’s gone relatively smoothly for what could have been the most chaotic of events. Thank the team that went in for them for that. The transport van has pulled up again to offload more captives. Nox is among these unfortunates. It’s late afternoon moving into evening. Jax was kind enough to create a shadow pocket for her to curl into until she could hide in the curtained alcove set up for her in the van by the rescue crew but...Jax has also been reunited with his children--and she is not one to look for that service to continue while father and twins are brought together, nor in a state of mind to carry the blankets with her. So she enters the clinic in human form, passing from the bright light of day into the bright light of fluorescents. As is often the case with those bulbs, the light is not kind to her. Hairless, topless, shoeless, charcoal skin bleached to a sickly pale grey and latticed with white, she looks like a Holocaust victim. The look on her face is a match as well, hollow-eyed, a hazy film covering what once was inky black, and with a tendency to stare at nothing as she’s shuffled along in the current--back door to hallway and then towards one of the holding rooms. The holding rooms are hectic. That probably goes without saying, for a bunch of traumatized refugees, but a bunch of traumatized /mutant/ refugees make the place /more/ hectic. One room is being swept of jagged shards of what /looks/ like glass that has shattered all over the floor. One room’s floor is being singed through by a puddle of some sort of clearish-yellow ooze leaking from a woman huddled in the middle of its floor. Another room has recently been on fire. It’s not on fire anymore. Largely due to the efforts of a rail-thin young man tucked into a wheelchair in the middle of the chaos. Matt has a baggy green t-shirt paired with -- pajama pants, really. They’re blue, and covered in frogs. There’s a blanket draped over his lap and a green knit cap pulled down low on his head and, in all this chaos he looks oddly calm. Or, maybe, that’s just exhausted. Lucien is in the same room. With Matt pacifying powers he is pacifying /people/; some are panicked, some are angry, some have moved beyond angry into murderous. And some, aided by quiet words and more by quiet /touch/ that comes with a heavy dose of calming-soothing-pacification, have slipped off of murderous and are progressing back to calm. Malleable. Able to be doctored. “{-- Should get the woman in the next room before she burns a hole right /through/ the floor,}” Lucien is murmuring to Matt as he guides their current young patient back to the examination table. “{I think she may have already,}” Matt answers with a crinkle of his nose, “{but they -- hopefully have good insurance here?}” Lucien exhales sharply at this. And then freezes, at the sight of pale grey-and-white skin out in the hallway. He leaves the other man right where he is. Leaves Matt, too. He slips out into the hall, into a room across the way, and turns its lights off. There’s -- a grumble from the people already /in/ the room but it’s a little too exhausted to be more than a brief protest. This is the reverse of moth to flame. Nox might be seeing poorly--she doesn’t appear to notice Lucien when he steps into the hallway, doesn’t seem to recognize the man at all as her eyes pass directly over him--but when the lights go out in that room, her head turns sharply in that direction. Stepping over a man sitting in the hall, his legs stretched across the way, she shambles towards that darkened doorway. After the third step, she’s stopped absent-mindedly tugging at the sweatpants drooping around her hips. They fall. Her ankles pass through the puddled fabric. She continues to fade the closer she gets to that dark room. By the time she’s reached the doorway, it’s easier to see the white streaks decorating her body than it is the woman herself--like following movement by keeping the corner of one’s vision fixed on negative space. And there is so much white. Even as the gloom swallows her up, it remains visible. Before, when Nox has invaded darkness, it gets darker still. It takes on a living quality, a sense of presence. Now the room barely flickers. But whisper-soft against Lucien’s skin, there is a sense of fingertips skimming his cheekbone. The feelings that come with that are so very distant. Pain. Numbness. Pain. Confusion. Disbelief. A low, distracted rage. But mostly, strongest of all, there is a sense of disconnect, of one dealing with a lack of reality. Lucien is standing near the entrance of that darkened room, hand still on the light switches. He pushes the door mostly-shut behind him. His eyes slip closed, at that soft feel. There’s anger of his own that leaks across, but its muted, carefully tamped down. His hand lifts. Touches to the space at his cheek there those ghostly fingertips touch his skin. The faint trickle of soothing cool that washes across to her is quiet, but familiar. “What,” is his only question, “do you need right now?” With the touch, the room's darkness thickens. Shadow becomes heavy, oppressive, and the complaints of the other occupants is drowned by a buzzing whine that can be felt in one's teeth. Its pitch rises, tighter and tighter--until soothing-cool trickles in. That feeling, so foreign against the host of negatives pulsing inside of Nox, convince her: "...real. You are real. This is real. Not my mind. You..." The keen ends abruptly and that weight lessens for everyone but Lucien. /He/ is wrapped in it, in her, an invisible blanket that resolves into arms tight around his neck, a head pressed hard into his shoulder. Her keening then is for him alone. "Oh, Lucien." Nox has no other answer for him. “This,” Lucien agrees, and in him this comes with a sharper twinge of anger flickering through that cool feeling, “is real.” But the anger sputters out, its flickering flame extinguished in the weight of darkness that envelops him. For a moment his teeth clench against that buzzing, but this, too, relaxes. His head tips down, cheek pressing to her head. His arms wrap around her tightly, one arm curled up against her back to rest his hand at her neck. The wash of cool grows as his hold tightens. “Are your people all --” There is a quiet beat of hesitation as he rifles through possibilities; /well/ and /alright/ and even just /alive/ seem somewhat inadequate. But then, so does everything: in the end, he settles on: “free?” Nox shudders as entrenched emotion is iced with Lucien's efforts. It's a war between them until exhaustion gives his ability the edge. Gradually, she quiets. Gradually, she resolves into something a little more human. Not once does she ease up on just holding fast to him. It helps, to think of the others. Gratitude joins the mix. "Yes? I think. They were...you were...it was timely. Masque...dying. Needs medicine. James, his head...he is...he is being tended. By his friend. Marrow, Anole...the twins and their friend...so many, Lucien. They had so many. How...how are you here?" “There are people here,” Lucien says quietly. “Who can heal. They are tending to the worst of the injured. Doctors, for the rest. They will -- you will all be cared for.” Lucien’s hold doesn’t ease, either. Against her head his jaw tightens, at the question. “Jackson and his people --” he begins, but then stops. Quiets, a long moment. “I saw,” he says quietly. “A fight.” "Good, good." But whatever comfort she might have taken from those assurances is erased a moment later. Nox's trembling is replaced with utter stillness. There is a detached sense of dismay, coalescing beneath the surface of artificial calm. "You saw. A fight or...?" /Her/ fight. She can't voice it, leaving the unspoken to hang above them. In answer to this Lucien only gives silence. His head turns, lips rather than cheek pressing to the top of her head. His fingers trail against her back. “I had a feeling,” he says after a long stretch of nothing, “that something was very wrong.” His fingers spread, palm pressing flat between her shoulderblades. “... I have never been stood up before.” If she has eyes at the moment, surely they close when that kiss is felt. The stroke of his fingers causes Nox's arms to tense; there's no way to pull him closer but she will try. Her anger simmers. "They took us. At the garden. The day before, I think...it was...they had...I was useless. I let them. I /let/ them...take my people. I did not stop it, Lucien. I...I am sorry. So very sorry." “Your gardens,” Lucien comments in absent tangent, “have been steadily tended. Harvested. I believe perhaps Jackson --” His shoulder lifts, the barest hint of shrug. “It did not seem to me like you /let/ them do anything. They -- were not given. They /took/.” His anger is, perhaps, rising as hers simmers; there’s the faintest trace of it sullying that calm-cool-soothing, edging it tinny. Sharp. Like a metallic tang of blood at the back of the throat. “But. It will be taken back from them.” It is good news, filed away to be appreciated later when not balancing on a knife's edge of composure. Nox turns her head, cheek grazing his, renewed hair brushing his face. As his efforts are colored with something other than calm, the dark room /hisses/. Nox shivers. "Where did they take them? Where are they?" Lucien’s answer is stilted, and though there are vestiges of his usual quiet-calm they are tattered ones, rapidly fraying at the edges. Rapidly /sharpening/ at others. “I do not know,” he answers, “yet.” She's silent for a time. At least, the projection in Lucien's arm remains silent. The hissing in the room subsides to a low but steady thrumming. Tendrils of shadow creep through the crack in the door, sliding into the hallway, keeping to the dark edges as they spread. And spread. "Yet," she finally whispers. "When...when this is. Done. Perhaps. Lucien. Can I...can we...I do not want to leave. You. Again." “Yet,” Lucien echoes, and though there’s still the same hard /edge/ to his voice, his words are quieter. This time his lips press to her head and stay there, just resting as those shadow-tentacles creep out and spread. Slowly, the tinge of anger leaking into the calm recedes, fading and then vanishing altogether. Vanishing, at least, in the feelings echoed to Nox, although there’s still a distinct /tension/ in the clench of his muscles, the tightness in his jaw. His voice, though, echoes calm rather than anger. “So do not. Leave me. There is plenty of room in my --” There’s a quiet beat, and here his lips shift, the smile felt rather than seen as they rest lightly against her. “-- life.” When the search turns up only captives and those tending to their hurts, Nox withdraws entirely into the room again. Into his arms, pulling herself even from the darkness he created for her benefit. Though she's silent, she's also entirely whole and content, for the time it takes him to compose himself, to hold and be held. Then, while others mutter in the background, she melts away. Shifts. Rather than Lucien holding her against him, shadows creep around behind him, slinking through the space between the outer layers of his clothes and his skin. A dark, hidden belt, a smudge against his back...she shelters against him. This way, he can feel as well as hear the hum of each soft word. The exhaustion, the gratitude. Sick anger and hurt tempered with his calm and her caring. "Thank you." Lucien draws in a breath, quick and sharp, as Nox shifts away. Against her new melded form his muscles tense, then relax again slowly. The soft flush of cool continues. He doesn’t answer the thank you, not in words; instead a brief trickle-glimpse of /his/ current state. The overwhelming relief, too tired yet to have managed /joy/ but it would be in better times. The anger, beneath it, that he does not /hide/ here, colder and sharper than the flood of thankfulness at getting Nox out. A steady determination underneath that all, though the /non/-psionic nature of his kind of sharing means the cause and goals of this are unclear. Just a brief glimpse and then the walls go back up, replaced again with soothing calm. He tugs at his shirt, pulling it down to ensure it /stays/ a neat dark shelter against the light. And then he turns, heading back out into the hall to find Matt and continue their work.