Logs:Agency

Agency
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Matt
In Absentia Hive, DJ, Elie	2024-10-06 "I thought I was better than that." (Part of Lean In plot.)
Location <NYC> Guest House - The Refuge - Staten Island
This is a cozy bedroom comfortably appointed in warm earth tones, alike though not identical to so many other hexagonal rooms in this hivelike building. There's a sturdy wooden dresser, a writing desk, two chairs, and a twin bed -- only the last has seen much use from the current guest. Two panels of the bay window are open to the crisp autumn air, and the roman shades are half-lowered to soften the warm sunlight. Matt looks like he'd just lain down for a nap, dressed kind of cultishly in all white under the also all-white sheets. He's pretty pale, himself, though physically more or less fine except for a few slowly healing bruises and just a touch of brain damage. This last is mending with shocking rapidity and now he stirs hazily awake, senses unfurling. As awareness returns a burst of too much memory cascades through his brain and even though he doesn't have a seizure this time his breath still hitches with freefall panic. Then relief. Then anger. Then grief. Then -- nothing. His breathing has evened out by the time his eyes flutter blearily open. Something in his language processing starts, crashes, restarts, and after the subjective eternity of a few seconds finally makes it out as a whispered, "...tabarnak." Matt is not alone, in this cozy bedroom. A chair from the desk has been drawn up beside the bed; in it, Lucien looks like he's made himself a tidy little workstation. He's been sitting beside Matt, comfortable enough in a pink-and-purple striped button-up shirt, a gray linen jacket with a colorful glass cabochon pinned to its lapel, crisp blue jeans, and white leather sneakers. There's a smaller folding desk pulled up in front of his chair, his laptop open (carefully angled, despite Matt's previous unconsciousness, so that the screen is well out of sight), phone beside it and a tablet in his lap as well. He hasn't been touching Matt, not at all, but still, Matt can feel easily enough where -- whether by Hive's assistance or Lucien's own manual hijacking while his brother was unconscious -- Matt's own power has threaded through his brother's, extending Lucien's range to allow him to work quiet and efficient on that project while he also plugs away at whatever is occupying him on the several screens. Lucien doesn't do much to touch that rollercoaster of emotion, though his own mind is rearranging careful and neat to make sure there is not much spillover. He does not glance up when Matt speaks, just finishes typing whatever he is typing and then flicks the screen of the tablet off. "{You should drink.}" His head is inclining towards a glass of water beside the bed. Matt swallows. He does not look at Lucien. He does eventually roll his head in the direction indicated, though he squints at the water for several long seconds before struggling up onto one elbow so he can reach it. The first sip is tentative, but it cues his nervous system to how parched he is and he gulps down half the glass at a go before -- wisely, whether deliberate or not -- relinquishing it and dropping his head back down to the pillow. His eyes fix on the ceiling and he tries to manifest several emotions before giving up and letting each fade half-formed. He swallows again, less painfully, but his voice is still faint. "Well. This is a bit ironic." After a brief consideration, he revises this to, "a lot ironic. {Did they tell you what happened?}" "Is it?" It's hard to tell whether or not Lucien expects an answer to this; the question comes very aggressively mild. He arches one brow high, in answer to Matt's inquiry, and there is a definite superciliousness in the brief dart of his eyes. He plucks up a thermos from beside his chair and takes a small swallow. His eyes return to his screen. Just as mild: "{What happened?}" "Perhaps it is not. I do not much trust my mind, right now." He closes his eyes again and the stutter-start chaos of his cognition slowly smooths out. "{Hive showed me. Things I ought to have seen without being forced to. I do see now, but I can't account...}" His lips press together tight, and another rapid shift of neural activity shortens his breath. "Chu désolé," is even quieter than the rest. Lucien has returned to typing, and though this time he does not look up, there's a small abstruse clenching somewhere in the workings of Lucien's mind when Matt's breath catches. He does not bear down, does not shift his gentle bolstering support of Matt's recovery, but somewhere in the brief seize it becomes very clear the ways he has quite carefully intertwined their powers, some part of Matt's control held in a firm noose that is abundantly ready to tighten. "{I imagine that in their current state, Hive could show you an awful lot. You will have to be more specific.}" Only now actually processing Lucien's hold on his power -- though he must have known it already in some obscure way -- Matt has a brief moment of absolute terror that fades into numb helplessness almost as quickly as it came. He does not struggle. In fact he's gone very still outwardly, as well. "{Our lives. Not all of it, just the horrible bits.}" There's a bubbling of mirthless amusement. "Through a million eyes that see what I -- what I did see. But did not understand." He throws an arm over his eyes against the sunlight. "There's something very wrong with me. I already knew that. But I had thought..." A sharp rage lances through the fog of his confusion. "I thought I was better than that." "{Just.}" Lucien's hands go still, fingers resting light atop his keys. "What does better than that even mean? If you do a thing, you are the kind of person who does that thing. You were there, n'est-ce pas? I was there. It seems a settled matter." A faint tightening hardens his jaw. He closes his laptop gently, looking over the small folding desk now directly at his brother, and it's only Matt's terror and helplessness that finally put the faintest of tired edge in his voice. "I don't think it's irony. I am better than that." Matt drags his hand down over his face. "Thought. Past tense." Maybe on some other day or in some other life this would be curt. but he just sounds exhausted and flat. "But I was there. Clearly I am the kind of person who would do that." He turns and looks back at Lucien. It stirs a sudden tumult inside him of aching frustrated bewilderment that his overloaded brain cannot process and just mildly dissociates him from it instead. "I know you are. {I've always known that.}" He sounds and feels kind of far away. "{I don't understand how I could ever have believed otherwise, much less...}" He turns his face back up to the ceiling and closes his eyes again. "Thank you, all the same." Lucien's laughter is just a near-silent puff of breath, light and quick. A flutter -- incredulous and amused all at once -- ripples light through his mind. "{Always, really. Then the murder was just, what? An attempt to please her? Goodness, that's almost more insulting than thinking you did imagine I would ever have --}" He pulls in a sharp breath and the ripples in his mind smooth over glassy and tranquil again. "{At this point, Matthieu, what does it matter? Until someone succeeds in offing me again I imagine our paths will continue to cross every so often and on these occasions it would save us both quite a bit of time and energy if we could simply dispense with the pretense that you care.}" "{No! I don't -- }" Matt's first fumbling answer cuts off into a grief so intense it hurts even at a remove. "{I don't understand it. I was angry, but I've been angry before, I know how to -- }" Speaking of anger, this time his words cut off into sheer blinding rage that pushes through his bodily weakness and levers him up onto one elbow. "Esti de câlisse de tabarnak!" The string of profanities come out in a pained hiss as he struggles upright. Or tries to, with limited success -- the anger isn't that strong. "{I was wrong, it was wrong, and I do not ask you or anyone else to forgive it but I do care.}" There's a momentary quiver -- almost shrinking, almost afraid, something gesturing in the direction of a reflexive apology rising in Lucien's mind to answer Matt's anger. He doesn't, actually, clamp down on it; the feeling just fades away as quickly as it started to rise, ebbing back away into the gentle calm of before. Lucien takes another sip of his tea, and though there is grief left behind in the aftertaste he isn't swallowing it back but sitting with it. He shakes his head small, and his voice is quite dry. "{Goodness, but you really ought to rethink how you show it. What are your motivations, darling, who is this character you're playing? You need some clarity; I think what you're projecting will simply confuse an audience.}" Matt's expression shutters, at that quiver. Something not fully legible to Lucien's biokinesis -- though from long experience he may recognize it as some sort of cognitive sleight-of-hand -- shifts beneath the bristling sharpness of his mind, quieting his wrath just enough to let through whispers of confusion and horror and grief. He pushes himself up to sit more properly and picks up the half-drained glass, the water in it trembling faintly. "{Everything seemed so very clear before. But I didn't really see you. I didn't really see her.}" He swirls the remaining water around the glass the way he might a glass of whisky. "I do now, but that clarity is new to me." His lips compress. "And I fear my motivations no longer fit the character. Or the show." Lucien watches the water swirling in Matt's glass, his expression somewhat distant. He blinks, looks away and pockets his phone. "I recently came by some newfound clarity, myself. Perhaps you can use yours to find yourself some new motivations." This, too, a little distant. He is packing up his things neatly, folding the table away as well. "If you aren't feeling the role any more, transform it. One thing people often forget about actors is how much agency we have in creating the parts." He tucks the chair neatly back by the desk. "I'm sure DJ will be in soon enough to check on you." Matt gives a small puff of a laugh, a half-twitch of a smile. There is a surge of real mirth behind it, but coming as it does at a delay it is hard to tell what part of Lucien's advice inspired it. "I'm glad you've found your way." He is, if only a little, and if only deliberately so. "Perhaps I will find mine." He says this lightly, without much mind to the dull despair beneath, and when he frowns it's also light and pensive. "{Or drop the pretense of caring, I suppose. I'll try harder to keep out of your way, in any event.}" He finally downs the rest of the water and sets the empty glass aside, watching his brother for a moment with blank, unnerving focus that dissipates abruptly as he rustles up a bright smile from somewhere. "Fare you well, my darling."