Logs:Who Shall I Say Is Calling

Who Shall I Say Is Calling
cn: mention of Nazi violence, description of injuries, allusion to suicidal ideation
Dramatis Personae Jax, Joshua, Scramble
In Absentia	2023-09-25 "Mighta overestimated my sanity meter. You seeing this?" (in the wake of Neilah attack, shortly after Mirror intervention.)
Location <NYC> Freaktown - Riverdale
The plaza outside still looks like a war zone. Charred remnants of tables and food and personal belongings among other things litter the broken pavement, the water main torn from beneath lolling drunkenly, though at least it's no longer gushing, snapped and melted string lights festive no longer. Here in the makeshift clinic that has taken over the first floor of the common house it has quieted down somewhat. It's not a restful quiet -- more of a frightened, exhausted hush. There are volunteers keeping vigilant watch inside and out, volunteers tending to the wounded and the traumatized, volunteers just bustling around to keep themselves occupied. Scramble has been backed into a small study and surrendered herself to medical attention. It's not that she's been deliberately dodging Joshua, but as President of the Mongrels, Mayor of Freaktown, and a Black woman on the cusp of auntiehood she's had her hands full in the wake of the attack. Well. One of her hands, anyway. Her right arm is in an improvised sling that, like the rest of her, is smeared with soot and blood. The sleeves of her once-white blouse are torn to ribbons, and it's the testament to the quality of her leathers that the rest of her outfit is still more or less in tact. "I been known he ain't okay, but how'd he seem?" Her good hand is clutching a bottle of apple juice someone handed her, but she hasn't opened it. "You don't gotta tell me his business, I just." She swallows hard and looks up at the ceiling. "Just worry he gon' chuck himself into the Hudson. Or fall out the sky. Or. Shit, Ionno." "Mmnh." At first this is all Joshua says, and the (haggard) (sooty) (bloodstained) lines of his face betray little else except the focused appraisal he's giving Scramble right now. His eyes are fixed on her arm sling although most certainly he isn't x-raying it, other senses entirely searching out the extent of her damage. He lifts a hand to rub fingers at the hollows of his eyes, and when he drops it reaches for juice of his own -- mostly drunk already somewhere through the grueling process of triaging the shocked community. His mouth twists into a grimace as he gulps down the last of it, and stays there after he's swallowed. He puts the bottle down, holds a hand out for Scramble's. "Man's got trauma." Scramble passes her juice to Joshua and leaves her empty hand propped on the padded arm of the chair she's collapsed into. "You need more than juice, or you just gon' keep running out of juice." That was solidly Auntie Scramble. "I should check on the emergency break fast crew's progress." And there's Mayor Scramble, probably. Then, just a little plaintive, "I coulda helped him with that. Not much, but." She considers Joshua momentarily. "Could help you with that, too." For a moment Joshua just gives the juice a blank stare. Then takes it, sets it aside, takes Scramble's hand instead. It's slower than usual, for him, but the damage starts to heal itself up. The clench of his jaw and narrowing of his eyes are hard and angry, though he's looking kind of unfocused past Scramble and not at her. "Mmnh." It's a little more mmnh than before. "... s'pretty deep fucking trauma." For just a second there are two Joshuas in the little study, but the second vanishes in short order. He's left behind cargo -- Jax is looking startlingly clean and uninjured given what people saw of tonight's events. Plain white button-down, plain white trousers, plain white eyepatch, his near-black hair a sharp contrast to his colorlessness otherwise. His eye has gone a little wider when he sees Joshua, and there's a sharp flood of red to his cheeks. "Oh --" he starts, just a soft relieved breath, but then blushes darker when he looks to Scramble. He backs away a step towards the door, head shaking. "Sorry, I --" "I ain't mean shit already done scarred deep." Scramble's mouth pulls hard to one side. "Could see to that, too. It be a whole process, though, like therapy 'cept it actually works. But shit that just went down? Not that hard to keep it scarring more." She swallows, looks away from Joshua though not really at the bookshelf past him. "Ain't tryna get up in your business, neither, but I can help you. Coulda done for the team all along if --" If what? Possibly she doesn't even know anymore, the thought fully blasted from her mind by Jax's arrival. "What the fuck." She sits up straighter, flinching as the sudden movement stirs a cacophony of pain from her many injuries. Her hand tightens around Joshua's. "Mighta overestimated my sanity meter. You seeing this?" Her chin jerks up toward Jax. "Already-scarred shit's what worries me. Motherfucker nearly killed his own people. You can't quiet those ghosts." Maybe Joshua is too exhausted to be seeing this or maybe Scramble is hallucinating, because at first he does not even look up at the arrival of Second Joshua and Freshly Deceased Team Leader. He does wince, eye scrunching up tight at the clamor of pain running through Scramble's nerves, and the twitch of his hand tells of his instinct to pull back from it. He doesn't -- keeps his hand settled there, slowly lifts his eyes -- not to Jax, exactly, but to the space right beside Jax where the Other Him had just been. He huffs out a sharp breath, his eyes lowering again. "Fucker owes me a twenty." His other hand is lifting again, the heel of his hand digging hard against one eye. "... maybe. You staying?" Jax swallows, his arms wrapping tight around his chest. "I didn't -- know what to -- they said --" He doesn't finish this, just bows his head at the question, drawing in a slow breath. "Sorry," he says again, and this time it's to Scramble when he looks up, frowns at the sling on her arm. "I just --" The lights quiver briefly but the next breath actually seems to steady him. "Where do y'all need me." Scramble's eyes dart from Jax to Joshua and back, neatly adding "Math Lady" to her roles for the evening. "Jackson Connor Holland," she says with a flat look and a flatter voice that belies the glimmer she's trying to blink out of her eyes. "I thought you was dead, Faggot!" This brings her up short. "Or, were you..." Her gaze slides back to Joshua. "...and got brung back?" But she's studying Jax's clothes now, frowning. "Nah, you just got here. Shit, was that Mirror saved our asses before going critical?" She narrows her eyes as they stray back to Joshua once again. "Are you Mirror?" "He was nearly dead," Joshua answers for Jax, his eyes once more fixed on Scramble's (slowly getting un-)broken arm. "You've been here this whole time. I took you home to heal you. Seemed like the dignified thing to do, between the sand and the explosion --" He's looking down at his own clothes, fresh and clean in contrast to his very much dirty and bloodied skin, "-- your clothes did not survive that shit." With his free hand he reaches -- where? -- and plucks his own NYCAM kit out of midair. Tosses it in Jax's direction. "Plenty out there still need a little bandaging." "No, I ain't -- he ain't --" Jax is looking, a little flustered, between Scramble and Joshua. He sounds almost pleading, here. "I come to help, not to -- you saved all these people. You can't just -- I can't just come in an' --" The end of this sentence comes out in a short puff of air as he catches the medic kit more against his stomach than with his arms, reaching up belatedly to snag it from falling. Scramble has receded into stillness somewhere in between Joshua's pronouncements and Jax's protestations. "Goddamn," she says quietly as she studies Joshua's clothes. "How the hell did that happen? Sure as fuck looked like you, how we gon' explain if it wasn't?" Her brows furrow, slow but deep. "There was this Nazi pyro, showed up and murdered someone before you could bubble him. Erik lost his entire shit, ripped up half the plaza to chuck at the motherfucker, and knocked you upside the head in the process." Then, as kind of an afterthought, "'Bout nearly brained me, too. Anyway, Nazis ran, you exploded, everyone been losing they shit since. Not that I'm unsympathetic." She looks to Joshua again. "What'd I leave out?" Joshua's eyes have squeezed closed somewhere during Scramble's explanation, and just look heavy-lidded and tired when he does open them again. He just nods his head heavily when Scramble looks back to him, shoulders sagging on a heavy sigh. His hand lifts, and though it stops short of actually touching where his shaggy hair is clumped at one side with burned and dried blood there's a slow slide of razor-sharp bone claws that slip from his knuckles and touch light against the matted hair. When they slide back in, it doesn't heal, blood trickling from fresh wounds in his knuckles. "Grabbed his bodyguard's power. You would have been dead, I --" He just swallows, hard, and does not quite manage to repress the shudder that runs through him, or the ragged hitch of breath that comes with it. His voice is just as flat as ever, though, when he continues. "People out there. Saw all that. Saw that Nazi flay you alive. Saw Magneto piss off after giving him an assist. Saw you fucking die. You come to help, get out there. Give people some fucking hope." He's pressing his bloodied knuckles hard against his trousers as if this will stem the pain. When his eyes lift from Scramble's now-healed arm, there are bright tears just spilling over; his abrupt attempt to wipe them away smudges red across his stubbled cheek. "... you see how much people need you, maybe I'll save one more." Jax's hand presses to his mouth, his other clutched tight around Joshua's medic kit. He's looking at Joshua's matted hair -- at the fresh wounds on his knuckles -- at the blood streaked down his face. "You --" he starts to say, but this just trails off into a barely-whispered, "... oh, God." He takes a step closer, hand lifting out towards Joshua but then dropping back to his side. There's a small flicker in the lighting, a brief dimming that for a moment wreaths him in wisps of shadow, but this levels out with a slow breath. "Okay." Kind of shaky, but then firmer, "Okay. Kinda sounds like you near the top of folks need some tending, though." "Shit." Scramble flexes the fingers of her newly healed arm experimentally in sympathy with Joshua's newly injured hand. Slips out of the triangle bandage that has served her for a sling. Turns it inside out for a (slightly) cleaner surface to wipe away Joshua's blood and tears to (slightly) better effect. Picks up the juice he'd set aside, opens it, and presses it back into his non-punctured hand. "Drink. I ain't playin'." She unfolds from her comfortable seat and beckons to Jax with a brusque, "Get your ass over here, medic." Then immediately intercepts him with an embrace so tight it hurts -- her more than him, probably. With it comes a ripple of calm clarity that does not ease his pain, but does loosen its suffocating grip temporarily as it evens out his dysregulated neurochemistry. "Since you missed it the first time: don't fucking die." She releases him, blinking her eyes clear again as she makes for to door. "I'mma tell your kids you alive."