Logs:Uprooted
| Uprooted | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
2021-12-12 << incredible terrifying mistake. >> |
| Location
<PRV> Rang Phueng Design - Soho | |
Located on the third floor of a narrow brick-faced office building in SoHo, the lobby of Rang Phueng Design is a comfortable place to wait. There are a number of paintings hung on the walls, brightly colored though somewhat fantastical cityscapes. A large aquarium on one wall, clean and carefully tended, hosts brightly colored marine life swimming through a number of plants and coral. The table amid all the large cheerfully blue-and-silverygrey microsuede couches has a sampling of architectural magazines as well as popular ones, magazines and newspapers generally actually up to date. The receptionist desk is a large black wood one, though it is unmanned. Off to the side a small table has a little refreshment stand set up, a Keurig coffeemachine with a large selection of tea-coffee-cocoa choices and a minifridge beneath the table with juice and water and soda. Through the door in back of the lobby is an enormous workshop space, wide and airy. Spacious drafting tables take up much of the center of the room, a number of glass-topped desks edging the sides though only one of them against the back windows actually boasts a computer. Walls painted white and paneled in glass turn most of the wallspace into whiteboard, generally covered with notes and measurements. The back wall's large windows look out onto the streets, and two side doors lead into a smaller enclosed office spaces. Hive doesn't look much like he's at work, right now. The drafting tables are empty, the glass-topped workstations spinning on a completely unnecessary holo-projected screensaver (currently, the sleek form of the Mendel Clinic is building itself from the skeleton outward.) That for once he is not looking grungy -- neat button-down, grey slacks, even a mostly-passably tied tie -- suggests that he had meetings here earlier; currently, he's just slouched against the back wall, head pillowed against an upraised arm, half-lidded eyes looking out the wide windows to the streets beyond. Crrrk-crrrrk. Crrrk-crrrrrrk. The slow grinding of his teeth. He eventually breaks the monotony of this sound with a gruff: "-- you watched it all?" Lily's eyes keep drifting to the screensaver, watching it expand out over and over again. She's in her 'good' professional outfit again -- red cable knit sweater, neck dipping too low to hide a black undershirt, plain gray slacks, and paint-splattered chelsea boots. Her hair is recently washed and braided back -- she twists the end of the plait in one hand. "Yeah." It comes out in an exhale, her thoughts looping through the videos over and over and over again, as if trying to numb out the horror. "Did you?" Hive glances back toward the lone actual computer monitor at the end of the holo-displays, currently black and still. Then back to the window. Crrrrk. His head shakes. "Tried. Bout the third time that motherfucker laid hands on him I --" He swallows, his shoulders curling inward. That motherfucker conjures an image of the asshole in question in Lily's brain and a curling sick feeling in her gut, laced with nausea. The third time, the fourth time, all the others run through her head -- <<Shit shit he can see he doesn't want to breathe>> -- before she sucks in another breath. "Yeah," she says, only a little embarrassed of sounding like a broken record underneath all the replays. "I felt like I had too, but obviously you've --" <<seen it all already>>. Lily bites her lip. "It's different." There's a slight flinch of Hive's shoulders at some of the images in Lily's head, a harder inward clench in time with his fingers balling into a fist against the window. "I saw -- I mean, he had nightmares. Most every goddamn night, after -- but it's different. Memories are different. Your brain kind of mixes, matches, pulls things together into a story that's not --" His head shakes. "I saw a lot of things that were horrible, all twisted up through time and fear and hurt. Watching the cold fucking fact of it --" For just a brief moment there's a psionic sense of pressure up against her mind, there and then (guiltily) receding. Hive's eyes are still turned toward the window -- just a little less focused, a little more distant than they were before. "... do you think anyone will care?" Lily frowns at the pressure -- <> -- and nods, slight. "It's something else, when you see it." Now her thoughts shift -- Polaris in the woodshop, chisels flying; Dusk spitting at her with rage, and then the footage, spliced in on top of data and codes and proposals she'd written. <<don't be sick don't be sick.>> "I don't know," she answers. "Not about him. Not like -- " <<youmeus>> "-- not in the same way. If they care at all." Another small flinch. "Us." It comes out reflexive, hissed sharp between clenched teeth. The breath Hive draws in is slow, clearly deliberate. He blinks -- starts to turn and look at Lily but doesn't, quite, returning to the window, to his not-actual-survey of the street below. His voice is calmer when he musters up words again, back to its previous quiet-gruff. "We don't even care about him the same way. I don't know if putting this out for the whole goddamn world --" His head lifts, thumps back down heavy against his fist. "But everyone doesn't have to. Just enough people." <<what is that is that what does that mean not us -- >> Lily's fingers curl into her palms, nails digging into skin when Hive clarifies. << --not the same way aren't we family haven't I earned it yet God what do I have to do -->> She sucks in a breath, trying to get her thoughts into some sort of less obnoxious order. "There are going to be people who look and feel joy watching him suffer. Is it -- is it going to reach enough people to make it worth that?" She doubts it. "I don't want you do do anything, I just don't understand --" Hive says, and his voice isn't angry, just tired and small -- in Lily's mind there's an echo, her own voice twice-removed in memory << "That's not how I remember it, >> and << He saw it differently. >> There's a small tremble that goes through his shoulders, his fingers clenched up tighter where his head rests against his fist at the window. "We're just coming from very different places here. They threw him to those wolves and you --" Now his voice is starting to get sharp and he cuts himself off, draws a breath. Presses his palm to his eyes, lets the breath back out slow and unsteady. He finally does turn from the window, now; his eyes a little red, a little damp. "I think," he says, careful and quiet, "he'd want to try and reach them. He always tried. Somehow through every-damn-thing he always thought that bit of hope was worth reaching for." Lily's brows furrow, turning the memory -- << Polaris? >> -- over and over like a stone in her hand. << They and me -- just say what you mean, just finish what about them.>> Her parents fizz up, the horrid day Dawson was thrown away and all the days after, the days of regret, the days of resentment and grief and looking and the slow burning ache of giving up. When Hive turns back to her, Lily's eyes are red too, but dry as she chews the inside of her cheek. Breathes out, slow. "I think you know what he'd want better. I just want to be selfish. Keep some more pieces out of view." "How hard could you have looked? The Church keeps obsessive rolls. He wasn't exactly hiding. And then to fucking defend them, like they didn't have any agency -- like they weren't full-ass adults who could've stood up for their child? You were a child then but you aren't now, you haven't been a long-ass time, and he was hurting and he missed you and all he knew was that his family gave up on him. They gave up on him. You gave up on him and then you have the audacity to lay that at the feet of the God who carried him through when he had nothing? How dare you." Hive has curled an arm around his chest, fingers digging hard into his opposite bicep. "I want to let you in. God, he'd be so fucking pissed if his sister finally came back and we were fighting but I just -- can't -- understand. I'd move the fucking universe before I gave up on my family. What does family mean to you?" "Apparently not enough." Lily is breathing hard, fingers digging into her thighs. "I didn't look hard enough. Family doesn't mean enough. I wasn't a good enough sister nor am I a good enough ally or comrade or whatever. I'm never going to be enough because --" << because he took the bravery with him / because there were eleven more children who needed me / because I was 'afraid' of what it meant if he was alive / because they told me they looked (did they lie oh god did the lie to shut me up)/ because what does family mean when you know it's conditional when you know you could be next (I should have been next) / because what has this church ever done but hurt (how did he stay I don't understand) (how did I stay I don't understand) >> Underneath the run of too fast thoughts there's another desire -- just look if you can't understand just 'look'. There is pressure against Hive's mind now, hungry and scared and pushing, wrapping around his brain and squeezing until it finds roots. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" The edge that Hive has been fighting all this while is back in his voice with a vengeance, now, his composure forgotten. He straightens abruptly when he feels that pressure against his mind, his eyes narrowed on Lily sharp and -- furious? Frightened? His breath has quickened, hands clenched into fists. "Are you out of your goddam mind?" There's little resistance there, but what her mind finds is something vast and unfathomable, roots curling into ground already planted thick and wide and deep, tens upon hundreds of other souls reaching up effortlessly to absorb her in among them. From the outside the forest looked deep and peaceful -- from the inside it feels anything but, a clamor of noise and chaos pouring in and not stopping. Her thoughts -- their thoughts -- hard to pick out now from the barista of the coffeeshop down the block -- the taxidriver waiting impatiently at the corner -- the group of toddlers on a rope tumbling into each other as they head to the park -- a couple arguing fiercely three blocks away -- a high school student across the neighborhood anxiously studying for tomorrow's algebra test -- a cyclist in a panic after a near-miss with a red-light runner -- and more, and more, and more, all clanging for space in a mind suddenly voraciously hungry to expand itself. What does she think she's doing? It's unclear as her mind -- his mind -- theirs, maybe -- becomes crowded with the voices of the building, the block, the neighborhood, the next neighborhood, the next the next the next as Lily grows out, out, out, a garden out of control. The trees of Hive's forest are twinned with Lily's flowers, each clamour of thoughts echoing again in unsettling rhythm. In front of them -- him -- her, Lily is hardly breathing, eyes wide and wet. If there was a core of Lily in there, she's buried so deep in the flowerbed that her voice can't surface. Each addition to the garden buries her deeper as she's overwhelmed by Hive's power. The strong roots of Hive's mind grow thicker, faster, stretching out around that untamed garden and fencing it in. In him the weight and power of all those minds isn't chaos but control, turned to a focused point and putting down stable bolstering trellises for Lily's spreading flowers to grow against -- and no further. "Fuck," he breathes out, aloud, shaky and slumping back against the window. There are tendrils within them carefully -- tentative, a little wary -- reaching to start uprooting some of those flowers, paring back the wild. He can't pare back the hunger, but the tight grip of his mind grows closer and smaller as he works, giving it less rein. Lily’s body is quiet as Hive works. Parts of them drop off one by one by one, each pulled flower giving the rest more room to breath. She breathes better when they’re just at the block, seems to wake up and see Hive again with her own eyes when the only patch left is the building they currently occupy. <<Fuck,>> she echoes (they echo) when the garden is only enough to fill a window box. Then the garden is gone, entirely, the last minds uprooted violently as Lily sheds Hive’s power. << incredible terrifying mistake. >> Hive exhales, heavy, and moves to drop down into a chair once Lily is pared back down to just one. His hand moves to his forehead, thumb rubbing at his temple and fingertips pressing hard to one eye. The heat has left his voice, now; he casts a sidelong glance to Lily, brows hiked way up. "Was that fun for you? You really haven't spent much time around other freaks before here, huh." “Christ, no.” << Fun is not the word I’d use. >> There are a number of other thoughts swirling underneath that — awe, fascination, fear, the littlest bit of remaining hunger spinning into all three. She shakes her head, slow. “Wasn’t a big part of the Philly or the Salt Lake mutant scene, no. Wasn’t keen on being known as one.” She’s ashamed of this, though it stays out of her voice if not her thoughts. Hive just snorts at this, soft, head shaking. He's digging his phone out of his pocket, shooting off a text before he looks back at Lily. "Probably should learn something about how not to get yourself dead when you can Be Anyone. Fuck but that was dangerous. You try pulling a stunt like that with some of our friends --" His mouth presses thin. "If you're gonna keep being a part of the community here, best you don't blow it the fuck up."
Lily’s gaze drops to the ground. << Thought I had it that’s never happened before it’s always so easy. >> “God. I don’t want that. I just —“ << wanted to show you >> “— I’m sorry. Won’t try that again.” Even though she kind of wants to. Oh, was that thought too loud? Lily bites the inside of her cheek. "Good," Hive says, levelly, "don't." His fingers scrunch into his hair, his eyes cutting back toward the blank computer monitor. "You think your folks are going to watch this?" Lilly looks at the monitor too, frowning, weighing the image of parents who promised her they were looking for Dawson and the cold reality of never finding him, Hive’s earlier words running in her mind on loop. “If they do, they’ll stop early. They don’t have the stomach for it.” Hive's mouth twists slightly to one side at this. "Real fucking tempting to make them." He rubs at his eye again, then drops his hands to fold into his lap. "Tempting sometimes to make everyone pay attention." It's hard to tell how serious he is about this prospect. He looks up at Lily, brows lifting. "Failing that, I guess -- do you pray? This seems like a good time for it." << Is that a bad idea? It sounds like a good idea. >> Lily presses her lips together. “I don’t.” << But he knows that. >> Her mind casts to the footage, the way her brother holds the Book of Mormon, the way Polaris believes so fervently, the weight of an abandoned CTR ring on Lily’s nightstand. << I shouldn’t He won’t listen what’s the harm in trying? Just to God not the church maybe it’s not the same maybe I’m wrong… >> “Maybe,” she says quietly, “it’s time to pick it up again.” | |
