ArchivedLogs:Shadows Over Coffee

Shadows Over Coffee
Dramatis Personae Murphy, Nox
In Absentia	2013-02-19 Murphy meets Nox at Evolve.
Location <NYC> Evolve Coffeeshop - Lower East Side
Tucked down an alley, this out of the way coffeeshop is easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for. Unassuming from the outside, its inside makes up for it -- spacious, with abundant seating and plenty of plush couches and cosy armchairs along the room's edges. The coffee is good, the prices are cheap, and there is a definitive alternative vibe to the room, from the music they play to the art that hangs on the walls. The real draw to this place, though, stems from its client base -- one of the very few businesses in the city that is welcoming to mutants, Evolve has become widely popular as a hangout with that crowd, and it is quite common to see them among clientele and employees both. At night, the thump of music can be heard from above, coming from the adjoining nightclub of the same name that sits over the coffeehouse. The hour groweth late! Not New York late, but late enough that Evolve is packed to the gills with people who've gotten off work and stopped in before going home. The line stretches from the counter almost to the door, which leaves the latest arrival--Nox, dressed in a sewer-stained sweatsuit with a sweater hood pulled up over her head--with quite the wait ahead of her. Here on the surface, the woman is smaller than she seemed below, constrained by the proportions of clothing and by the press of the crowd around her, but there's no chance of mistaking her. Even with her eyes hidden behind large sunglasses, her charcoal skin and the snaky curl of the hair that escapes her hood around her face would give it away. With head bowed, she seems to be focusing on the small slip of paper held in her hands. Oft-folded, it's deeply creased and likewise stained with water here and there, making it fragile, flimsy. She does her best in smoothing it and refolding it but there's little hope for the scrap. Fortunately, it shouldn't be in her possession for too much longer. The baristas, expecting this rush, are practically teleporting around behind the counter. Coffee is slung, danishes are parceled out and the whoosh of whipped cream cannisters being employed rises above the crowd noise. Among the crowd of comers and goers, there's one sorry son of a bitch who isn't going *anywhere*. Murphy Law has been glued to his chair for the better half of an hour. Waiting, maybe. For a lucky break. Or maybe he's just memorizing faces--engraving the image of each person he sees in his head. For future reference. When Nox arrives with that slip, well... she looks different, sure. Everybody looks different when you're ankle-deep in sludge, stomping around the shadows of New York's sewage system. But Murphy's got a thing for faces--for skin--for *everything*. She could wrap herself from head to toe and he'd probably recognize her just by the smell. "Buy you a drink," Murphy says, suddenly behind Nox in the line. Hands shoved deep in his pockets. He's not looking at her--he's staring out the window, across the street, as if something very interesting was going on over there. He doesn't look happy. But then again, he *never* looks happy. Ah, yes, the smell. Dark places, dank places, large open places where sunlight has never been. She smells of that and the cold and of shadows in bedroom where a nightmare's just been experienced. It's certainly more evident here, under the perfume of caffeine and cinnamon and vanilla. Murphy is treated to this when he steps close, and more so when she turns to take him in. Her face tips up, the lenses of her sunglasses reflecting him. "Ah...Mr. Law." Her fingers curl over and around the scrap of paper, obliterating its neat folds. It disappears into the pockets of her poorly fitted sweatpants. She smiles. "Is the wait worth the drinks here? I rarely partake. Are you well?" Nox pauses to study him. "You look as if you've been sleeping poorly." "If you like fancy shit in your coffee, sure. And I don't sleep much. Bad dreams." Murphy fishes out his cigarette. One of the baristas sees him doing this, and gives him a glare. Murphy grunts; the cigarette slides back into his pocket. There's the sense that this is not the first time he's tried to smoke here. "Figured if you were gonna drop off the note, you'd do it at night. Place ain't open 24/7, so I'd just stick around to close." He doesn't need to explain this, but he does anyway. Then he adds: "I wanna talk. Just for a minute. You mind sittin'?" "That was observant of you." Though her smile doesn't change, nor the whispering, he would likely recognize the amusement that colors this comment. Nox looks from him to the line, the baristas beyond, and then back to the door. "If you prefer, we could stand outside, where you can smoke. The cold doesn't bother me and I don't need a drink, though thank you for the offer." "Fine," Murphy says, and though it's abrupt, and there's a hint of frustration in it, the frustration doesn't seem to be targeting her. He moves, then--straight for the door--assumedly with her in tow. No sooner is he outside then does he produce that familiar lighter of his--now, refilled. It makes a delicate *clink-CLINK* as he lights his cigarette tip. "I'm sorry." By the way he says those words, it's clear he's not used to them. They leave a sour taste in his mouth. "About going all south last night. I usually keep a pretty good lid on my anger. Sometimes, a little bit of it slips out." Nox does indeed trail in his wake. Outside, she reaches up to slip off the sunglasses. They follow that scrap of paper into her pocket and leave her to study him with eyes exposed. Her expression is more easily read--bemusement, in this case, and a mild dose of curiosity. The apology leads her to dip her head but she doesn't speak right away, the silence drawing out long enough for the first winding trail of smoke from his cigarette to disappear into the overhead gloom. Then, thoughtfully, "Thank you for apologizing, Mr. Law. I believe I understand why you would have been...frustrated at the overall situation, and I know your anger wasn't directed at me." Her lips twitch as if she'd been stung. "Or rather, I had hoped it wasn't." He's not looking at her, funnily enough. In fact, he seems to be taking a great deal of care to *not* look at her. It's behavior she might be familiar with among most people--although by the way he couldn't stop staring at her during their first meeting, it might strike her as curiously contradictory. He sucks on that cigarette and just *stares* across the street, as if he's searching for the words he wants in the faces of other people. Finally, after letting the silence speak for him for a good stretch of time, he gets tired of what it has to say: "I don't forget things. *Anything*. Everything I've ever experienced--it's stuck. Here," he says, tapping the side of his head. "I can play through it like a movie. 'Cept it's got everything--taste, smell, touch, even thoughts." This summons a longer silence. Finally, Nox breathes a gentle, "Ahh," as if that clarified something for her. But rather than question as to why he refuses to look at her, or why her comment led to this line of sharing...she says nothing else. /She/ is content to look at /him/ with those black on blackest eyes, practically unblinking. Yet she remains silent. He fills the silence with more words: "Found out while I was in the corps--Marines," he clarifies. "Instead of kickin' me out, they promoted me. You didn't hear this shit from me--but that whole 'We Don't Use Mutants' line the US military's sellin'? Load of horseshit. They use 'em. They just don't *talk* about using them." Again, the cigarette tip glows--burning brighter as he pulls in a long, hungry draw: "Anyway. When most people find that out about me--that I remember things--they always say shit like, 'oh I bet that's handy'. Thing they miss? People /need/ to forget things. It's one way we learn to let shit go. But I can't do that. I can't let anything go." Nox nods when the point is made about the military, as if he's confirmed something she's suspected or known. "How could they not?" is her comment, softer than soft, and entirely rhetorical. After another brief pause--this one filled with the restless squirming of her hair, grown more energetic now that they're outside--she goes on to say, "Not long ago, I told someone that it seemed to me every mutation was both a blessing and a curse. I've yet to find one that wasn't." "There ain't no such thing as a blessing that ain't got fine print on it," Murphy says. But then, slightly softer--as if he was fearful of being overhead: "What you're doin' down there. For that kid. For the others, however many there are. It's *good*. It ain't... *right*, but it's good, and there's so little of that out there. And I'd break my goddamn word and pick up a gun before I let somebody destroy that." Then, as if he's exposed something he didn't mean to--his voice gets stronger--still not looking to her. "They're settin' up a mutie clinic. You hear? Might be useful." "I would rather you didn't." The gun, she means. Nox exudes understanding as strongly as she exudes a sense of darkness but there her own voice grows firm. "Though I appreciate the sentiment, more than you could know," she's quick to add, with a renewal of her smile. Carefully, with a slowness meant to compensate for his lack of looking, she reaches out to lightly touch grey fingers to the crook of the PI's elbow. "What good a broken oath that ends in bloodshed? You should keep your course, Murphy. There are a lot of not-rights in the world that can't be solved, but we carry on even so," she says with gentleness. Afterward, her hand withdraws to find a place in her pocket and she adopts a more conversational murmur. "I hadn't. I know of one that accepts those like us as patients but hadn't heard of one dedicated. It could be useful. It could be dangerous." At the touch to his elbow, Murphy sighs, a thick cloud of smoke rolling from his nostrils. Closing his eyes. He seems thankful for the contact. "You're right. I shouldn't. And, I don't think that'd ever be the choice, anyway. If you can't get it done without a gun, you probably ain't gonna manage it *with* one. But--" He *almost* looks at her, now. "--it ain't--I don't want you thinkin' I'm *noble* or something. It ain't got nothing to do with... that. It's just... When I do something terrible, it sticks. I don't ever forget it." When her hand retracts, he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth. Lets it drop. His heel descends, grinding it into concrete--another dead soldier. "Dangerous, yeah. Particularly for the poor fucker who's opening it. Looked him up. Don't even think he's a mutant." Not that it would matter, but, well. Sometimes, mutants can shrug off bullets. "Told Jim--the tree man from last night--I'd help him look into easin' it through. If it works out--*if* the place don't get firebombed--could be a safe spot for you to take the kids. Get 'em checked out, keep 'em healthy." Nox goes very, very still. Even the hair that curls around her face freezes, while the air around them grows denser. The light from Evolve's windows, from the sign overhead, they grow dimmer. Distant. In all of that gloom, her eyes have lost their glinting stars--they stare at him, round and dark as gun barrels. "A clinic for mutants being opened by someone who isn't one?" Murphy catches the change--though he's not sure what to make of it. Suddenly, he *is* looking at her--despite himself. His eyebrows grind together... and he nods. "Yeah," he says. "Ain't positive, but yeah. Iolaus Saavedro. Nothing about him being a mutant. Just a bleeding-heart." Jim's words, plucked from a prior conversation. Then, his eyebrows pinch downward, between his eyes: "You're figurin' it ain't out of the kindness of his heart." "They're more subtle than that. Wouldn't they be more subtle than that? One would think...but so much attention. There's been so much attention, so little hope. It would be the perfect lantern. The door into the cages." This time it's Nox who is looking away. There isn't a great deal to look /at/ in the alley any more, the shadows are growing thicker, almost cloying. The sound of traffic from the street, so constant in the city, is just a faint hum now. "Not at first, no," she murmurs--it's clear by now she's thinking aloud, without consideration for Murphy's presence. "No, they would let the word spread. The hope. Pick and choose, once the cattle are in the pen. Iolaus Saavedro." Murphy's eyes narrow to slits. He's thinking--the grind of those eyebrows is constant and steady, computing numbers, pouring through facts, sifting and searching the mountains upon mountains of data that sits inside of that skull. When he speaks, he picks his words carefully: "Jim trusts him. And Jim don't trust easy. He'd have done some digging. When mosquitoes take a shit, he hears the plop." Then: "That don't mean you're wrong. Jim mighta missed something. Or not; doctor could be a patsy. Or hell, maybe it's just what it says on the tin, but once it opens, somebody'll *turn* it into what you're thinking. But..." The narrowing of his eyes does not relent: "You got reasons to be suspicious of fellas in white coats?" Murphy's digging. He can't help it. The man's *drawn* to secrets--like flies to shit. It's as if she doesn't hear him. His thoughts on Jim, his theories on the proposed clinic. Nox is there, but only because her clothes are there--heather grey tethers to keep her body in place, while her mind roams elsewhere. Her own thoughts are no less busy. When she returns from that place, it's as if a switch has been flicked. The light leaps back into place, windows glowing, neon sign flickering, and the blare of a taxi two streets over almost deafening as it rushes in to fill what had been empty. The woman blinks at him. "I have to go." With no better parting words than those, she turns and walks down the alley. He opens his mouth--closes it--and finally, opens it again. As she retreats, Murphy's voice floats on back behind her: "You need somethin'... I'm in the phonebook. Or my card--" Does she still have it? He doesn't know. He watches her go, just soaking in the evening atmosphere. Standing alone, grim and scowling. Then, with a final, reluctant sigh, he shrugs his shoulders and turns, leaving. Still scowling. *Thinking* over what she said. Unable to let it go.