ArchivedLogs:Credible

Credible
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Hive, Matt Murdock
In Absentia	2014-06-22 '
Location <NYC> {Geekhaus} - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
There's an open airy feel to the floorplan of this unit. The door opens up into a wide expanse of common space that is not so much divided up into rooms as it is simply multipurposed. Ash-grey resin flooring underfoot runs up against the paler grey of the exposed stone in the walls; between the stone support there are wide floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the river on one side of the home and the Commons' central yard on the other. Half of the space has a ceiling at one-floor height, though half of the space is left open with a balcony up on the second floor overlooking the living space below. A slatted stairway heads up to the second floor balcony; on the other side of the room, a fireman's pole running straight down the the basement provides a quicker way /down/. The wide open space here is combination living and dining room; near the windows there are a pair of couches and large armchair around a wide coffeetable; further off a steel-and-glass dining table is surrounded by eight tall black chairs. A full bathroom behind the stairway is done up in dark granite; the glass-doored bathtub/shower is rather expansively large. The kitchen is tucked off in back, beneath the half-height ceiling; in here the appliances and cabinets and shelving recessed into the wall are in brushed steel, wide grey sweeps of tempered glass countertops running around the edge of the room and a large central island holding stoves and oven and deep double sink. Adjacent to the kitchen, beneath the ceiling as well, is a sitting area structured largely around the enormous television against one wall, a wealth of video games for a number of consoles held on the shelves around the television. Crates and beanbags and one low futon folded against the floor are arranged in good viewing distance; opposite the television, a sturdy large pen built out of wood shrines a couch amid a sea of brightly colorful playpen balls. A door in one wall opens up to the apartment next door; a door opposite leads down to the basement. It's late in the afternoon; as long as the days are these days, it's still quite bright, the enormous windows here in Geekhaus flooding the first floor with warmth. The windows are open, a faint breeze wafting through the house; Dusk is at the dining table at the moment, laptop out though the code he was working on has been put aside for some while in favour of conversation. There's a bottle of Bawls by his elbow, a glowing pair of headphones dropped off his ears to hang around his neck, and his phone on the table beside him regularly vibrates every time his gchat chimes -- he's been ignoring the phone though he hasn't bothered to turn it /off/, /manners/ not really his strong point when it comes to technology, he's gotten so used to being tethered to all his gadgets. He's dressed in jean shorts, no shirt, the boxy black electronic monitor strapped still around his ankle; he perches on a stool at the table, his wings trailing down against the floor. His mind is busy, the programming he'd been working on butting up against the worried-stress of his legal situation. His fingers have been playing through his hair for some time now, its thick dark waves tousled into a mess. His other hand drums rapidly against the tabletop in quick staccato taps, fidgety and nervous, and at the moment it's not Matt his attention is settled on but his roommate. Hive has been preeetty quiet. It's a change from how mouthy the acerbic telepath /usually/ is. He's mostly just sat off in a corner with his laptop and a lot of drafting paper and tools, busy with work of his own while eavesdropping shamelessly. His work has gone very slowly, the skinny architect's hands incredibly unsteady as he works on his designs; the few interjections he has made have come slowly as well. There's a /creak/ when Dusk's attention settles on him, his teeth grinding against each other -- he's still working, sketching a slow line on the blueprint he's working on. "The law," he addresses Matt and not Dusk, now, "it doesn't /say/ anything explicit. Right /now/. /About/ telepaths, /does/ it? Like. Uh. I mean. /Can/ a telepath -- testify. To a /memory/?" Despite this being a housecall on the weekend and the rather, er, dressed-down quality of his client, the lawyer himself is still in attire befitting the courtroom: a light-weight, unlined gray wool suit that's appropriate for the summer weather with crisp shirt, pale blue tie, and dress shoes. It has all been tailored to a decent fit, and no doubt the blind man had some help in picking it out when he bought it all. Matt had been mildly surprised to encounter Hive as the roommate, given their previous encounter once upon a time, and though he was amiable about the telepath being around, he has still been a little on edge, considering the amount of secrets he keeps. About both clients and himself. With him, he brought a tape recorder (a method of taking notes for the blind man), and his briefcase stuffed full of various papers that are in Braille, rather than print. His thoughts have been largely occupied by what scant evidence they have to work with, and the unfairness of this particular situation of he-said, he-said. What he can do against it. How much he'll have to argue. What he'll need to just look for in a jury, and if he'll be able to even get his way with that. The question of telepathy neatly fractures such thoughts, however, and he has to take a moment to sit back and think on that. The worry of introducing it to a mutation-complicated case... "I don't know that it would be helpful," he says, careful with his words. "Maybe if a government-employed telepath. But I think we're still a few years from that being a thing. The question people would float is how can they trust a telepath? How do people know a telepath isn't lying?" "How do people know /any/ witness isn't lying?" There's a little bit of a tired note to Dusk's voice, a stressed-strained edge that is starting to fray. Behind him his wing shift, claws clicking against the floor in restless agitation. "This dude who fucking shot me, he's respectable. I'm a goddamn high school dropout, /and/ I'm a fucking vampire. At least Hive -- he's -- I don't know. He's got a fucking Master's degree from some. Ivy League --" His palm scrubs against his cheek, breath exhaled sharply. "This just feels really hopeless. /Nobody's/ just going to believe what I say and right now that's /all/ we've got." Hive just grunts, soft and noncommittal. "They don't. Don't know anybody isn't lying. Dusk could be lying. That other motherfucker could be lying. Every single person who ever gets up on a witness stand could be lying. S'just how it always goes, isn't it? Chances we take. But. They call -- expert witnesses all the time. Analyse forensic evidence. See what this blood spatter says and this corpse says and this crime scene says. Why not what this memory says? I've got a skill same as lots of other people do." Matt angles his head to a subtle degree, to better pick up on that restless claw clicking and the better clarity of the room it provides, however minute it is. "No, they don't," he is quick to agree, about people knowing if witnesses are lying or not. "Everybody has skeletons in their closets. It's just a matter of finding them," is more of an aside, about the respectibility of the hunter. His thoughts definitely turn to working the man down on the stand until he can bust him for an inconsistency in his story, bust him for that lie. "Do you have a degree in it? Are you accredited and recognized by the government? Look, no offense, but expert witnesses usually come with that kind of thing. That's how juries know they can trust them. They've spent X amount of years studying the subject, have a paper to hang on their wall that says other people in their field agree the person knows what they're talking about. It's not quite the same." He adjusts his dark sunglasses, trying to resettle them a little differently on his nose. "I'm not saying it's a terrible idea. But we'll have to see how the mood of the courtroom goes. If there's a lot of anti-mutant sentiment to battle through, it may not be the most helpful thing in the world. We'd have to build you up as a respectable, credible witness. As soon as the other side finds out you're roommates, they'll try to tear you down just based on that." Dusk slumps lower against the table, shoulders hunching inward and his face buried against his palms, fingers curled into his thick hair. His breathing is quiet and shaky, skewing very noticeably /ragged/, his thoughts trickling down over just how likely it /is/ to get a courtroom full of anti-mutant sentiment. Over the particularly notorious skeletons in /his/ closet. (Somewhere in the back of his mind he is thinking about how loudly Matt's heart is beating.) (Somewhere in the back of his mind he is thinking this is not helpful to his case.) "The government's just -- kind of spent too much of their time torturing us to. I mean. Be, uh. Certifying us in much." Hive tips his head up from where it's been bent over his work. His lips peel back in a slow thin smile, a sharp huff of a laugh pushed out through his nose. "/Yeah/. Actually, yeah. I did my fucking time being put through /every/ goddamn kind of test the government could think of for a telepath to go through. I have been documented six ways from fucking Sunday and they have /all/ the fucking paperwork on file. I am probably the most extensively goddamn tested and catalogued telepath in the history /of/ the fucking government thanks to fucking Prometheus and if all that goddamn torture is /going/ to be good for any-goddamn-thing I'll be glad if it's to help Dusk he's been through hell already. The government knows exactly what I can do, they forced me to do it every day for years with a bunch of electrodes stuck to my skull. That's not a degree but it's something." Hive's explanation gives the lawyer pause. Matt sits for a long while, thinking on this, his thoughts quick and darting, like a small, silvery fish exploring every nook and cranny of a dark pond. How would that work in a courtroom? Would it help? Would it bring more problems? Is that gamble worth it? "Do you have access to any of that documentation yourself?" he asks, in the measured way of someone who hopes yes but expects no. "The government and judicial system shitting all over you and not treating you like a human being is definitely something I will be highlighting repeatedly," he says, to Dusk. "Pardon my French. "Ah -- we did steal some. Whatever we could get our hands on sometimes. Back when Halim was still with us. So the last couple raids we don't have shit, really, but the older ones -- so /my/ lab and Hive's and -- yeah, we've got shit from there. Rilla -- one of our old labmates, she's out in Washington state, she's kind of our recordskeeper, she's got. Well, whatever shit we -- uh." Dusk's thoughts are starting to calm, just slightly, his breathing slowly getting a little more steady. "I mean, it's all just shit we stole from the government when we busted out -- but it's not like that's a secret, it was all over the news that we, y'know, broke all that shit out back when Prometheus went public so. I guess any trouble we were gonna be in for that we already are in, I dunno." Which doesn't stop a ripple of unease in his mind over the whole ordeal. "Ffff." Hive snorts, slumping back against his seat and scrubbing his hand in a path against the side of his head. "Man, trouble flares up over this is going to be more on /their/ end than others. Goverment locks us all up and tortures us for years, they'll have the /biggest/ fucking balls on them for trying to throw us /back/ in jail for having the audacity to /leave/. I'll call up Rilla. Tell her send over whatever the fuck she's got on you and me." Stolen documents does not exactly set Matt's mind at ease, but then he is used to working with very little, and very little is what he is going to have for this case, as well. It will no doubt be a delicate dance in the courtroom of convincing the jury that Dusk is being railroaded because he is a mutant with the fact that there's no evidence to show that he was the aggressor. "Please do have them sent over," he says. "We'll have to see how much they help. Taking the government to task for everything won't necessarily help with the case, unfortunately. It will definitely make things, ahhh... interesting, though." His fingers lightly drum a moment on his knee. "You don't have any medical records for your injuries from the shooting, do you?" "Um --" Dusk swallows, a flush of red darkening his cheeks. "I hate doctors." So that would be a no. "I mean some of my friends just patched me up. It was on video but that's about it." His palms scrub against his cheeks again with a rasp of skin against scruffy short beard. "Look do you want. Some. Coffee or. Dinner or. It's getting late and." And Dusk's mind is racing once more over a rush of /fretting/, turning over all the ways this case could go -- for him, for Hive -- and if they /do/ allow it and if they /don't/ what precedent that might set. Over in his seat, Hive just shudders. "Christ," he whispers, almost to himself. His eyes turn back to his work. And, in a softer mutter, in French: "{Jesus fucking Christ.}" The rest of /his/ thoughts, though, are his own. He's picking his compass back up to turn his attention back to his half-finished blueprint, teeth clenched and jaw setting hard. Matt does well to hide any disappointment at the news; if anything, there is a sort of quiet acceptance about him and the way his head dips briefly. Considering his usual clientele, this sentiment is not out of the ordinary, both from mutants and from the less fortunate who can't afford it. "If you can, please also send a copy of the video to my office. My law partner will have to take a look at it." See if it is worth court time, or worth having a medical expert look at. Gunshot wounds close up can be different from those far away, after all. It really depends. With the mention of coffee or dinner, Matt comes back out of his thoughts, and a hand goes to the special watch that he wears, feeling out the time on little balls that glide around the face instead of hands behind glass. "Ah, no, thank you for the offer, but I should probably get going, actually. I have a lot to work on tonight, and court in the morning," he says, even as he rises from his seat and, after a hand quests out his briefcase, starts slipping papers away. Dusk lifts a hand reflexively to sign 'sorry', habitually defaulting back into sign both as /his/ native language when stressed and out of a ingrained reflex not to /say/ sorry after the zombie plague -- only afterwards does he mentally check himself and say aloud, "-- Lo siento. I just. After Prometheus. Doctors --" He pulls in a slow breath, pushing up from his seat. "I'll get that video sent over. And thank you. For coming by today. I still haven't been -- /great/ with being out in crowds so it -- means a lot." He stretches a wing out, one wingtip touching lightly to Matt's elbow once he's gotten his things in order to guide the other man towards the front door. Matt misses out on the signing, not enough noise going on for him to really make out more than murkiness in that regard, but he of course doesn't miss the verbal apology. "No, don't apologize, it's all right. I'm not exactly a fan of doctors, myself," he admits, his half of a smile a little self-deprecatory while he boxes up memories of his childhood to deal with another time. The tape recorder is the last thing to be packed up, switched off and tucked into the briefcase. And then he finds his red and white cane and extends it with a flick. "Don't mention. It can be a lot easier for me to get around." Says the blind man. What has this city come to. He finds the wing touch fascinating, but doesn't comment. Instead, he bids his goodbyes and allows himself to be guided out, so that he can find his way home. With some being pointed in the right direction.