Logs:After the War

After the War
cn: discussion of the Holocaust, antisemitism
Dramatis Personae B, Erik
In Absentia	2023-09-12 "What do you want now, B Holland?"
Location <BOM> Council Room - Bom Lodge
Perhaps surprisingly, this place doesn't look half as sinister as its name suggests; it's a large room with a single long steel table -- at which over two dozen seats are arranged, with one seat at each of the table's ends. There's a high-end projector on the ceiling, designed to produce light in any direction -- or all directions -- at once, allowing any surface in the room to be highlighted for the purpose of presentations. There's also stainless steel pitchers placed intermittently along the table, kept filled with brisk, cool ice-water. Some enterprising nerd has folded several pieces of paper into name plaques and written on them in Sharpie. This leaves a seat reserved for 'GORILLA GRODD', 'SINESTRO', 'POISON IVY', and 'BRAINIAC'. But not 'LEX LUTHOR'. Because that punk? Is just a fucking human. The chair at one end of the table is never taken; that one's reserved for Magneto. There's no meeting currently in session, but the Council Room is definitely occupied -- a bit of thumping, a small squeak, a low hum. One extremely tiny shark, dressed in black-and-blue pleated skirt, silver fishnet tank over her otherwise bare chest, has clambered up onto the table and found that this is in fact quite insufficient to bring her high enough to reach the ceiling projector. B has now traded standing on tip-tip-tiptoes now for activating her hoverboots, lifting off the table to come closer to the ceiling where she is now buried gills-deep in the guts of the projector, frowning as she fiddles with its mass of wires. One heavy oak door has quietly swung partly open while B works, letting the sounds of the common room drift in -- some range of respectful greetings to Magneto, some less respectful but deeply loving ones to his companion, some very loud cursing about blue shells from the couch. The door closes behind Erik just as quietly. He's in a burgundy tracksuit that, probably, is in fact of the 70s in both design and make, sensible grey running shoes, gold ring on his right hand and chain tucked underneath his undershirt. He tilts his head up at B -- at his side, so does Buttercup, peering up at her with wiiiide eyes and wagging tail. "Ms. Holland." Erik squints at the mess of wire, brows furrowing, before he settles on -- "Dare I even ask what you are working on?" From halfway inside the projector there's another squeak, and B emerges with one wire, disconnected, held between her lips; there are two others clutched in one hand. "Ohmygosh," is her initial greeting -- presumably this is not to Erik when it's immediately followed with, "who's the cutest -- ohum nosir. I mean yessir. I mean, there's just been some fluctuations in... I mean, maybe it was that huge storm or maybe --" The thick ridge of B's brow pulls slightly downward as she pulls her gaze away from Dog to Magneto. Then quickly back to Partially Disassembled Projector. "... some of the electronics got a little wonky." Her gills flutter very rapidly once and then lie flat. "I'm trying to get everything back in order before anyone needs to use this room." Her wide black eyes have gotten disconcertingly bigger when she looks back down. "Did you -- need to? Use this room? I can..." Though now she's looking at the unattached wires in her hand with a deeper frown. "Sorry, I'm not as quick about this as, um, I can try to be done soon." Buttercup is probably the cutest on the island but he seems eager for the praise even without competition, wandering away from Erik to the edge of the table closest to where B is hovering. Sits, there, tail thumping against the floor but otherwise still and expectant of eventual pets. Erik, meanwhile, meets B's gaze for that brief moment -- he looks to the projector a beat after she does, sighs. "Not yet, no. Do not rush yourself on my account -- Buttercup simply wanted to greet you, but I am sure he can be persuaded to leave you to your work." Erik's hand drops to the back of a near chair. He's contemplating the wires, too. "... Did you know how to fix this, before?" There's no accusation in his tone, nor doubt in her abilities. "Or has it only fallen to you in his absence?" Maybe it's the slightly wobbly hovering or maybe it's the dog on the floor looking so hopeful for pets, but B gives up on trying to fix the projector where it's at and simply removes the body, bringing the whole contraption carefully down to rest on the table so she can continue her tinkering. She does set the wires aside for a moment first so that she can deliver several scritches to Buttercup's head. "Oh! I, um, I didn't..." it'd be easy for someone wholly unfamiliar to assume B doubts her own abilities, but likely enough this diffidence is surface-level, plenty of her father's awkward-hesitant mannerisms a strong enough reflection to make up for their entire lack of familial relation in looks. "-- I mean, I knew kinda how it worked? And I pick things up okay. This kind of thing, anyway." Hir gills flutter once more, and ze turns hir attention back to the wiring she's been replacing. "People might have to be, um, a little more proactive for a while. In pointing out if anything stops working like it should, there's a lot of things here running on super homebrewed systems, it's not like we can just install Ring and have it run our security cameras or get Alexa to play the music so I'm. Still kinda figuring out my own systems for..." When she trails off there's a very slight sinking to her shoulders, her voice going a little softer. "He just knew how everyone needed things around here better than I do -- yet." Under B's hand, Buttercup is nudging, shaking his head -- okay, scritches good, but what about scritches here instead, oh no we're done? That's okay -- he pads back to Erik for more of same. Erik's nod is slow and considering, the confusion brought by 'Alexa' and 'Ring' only creasing his brow for a fleeting moment. "Yet," he echoes, voice low, fingers curling harder into the back of the chair. "I do not know how long it may have taken him to learn those things. I do not think it was overnight." His gaze drifts to the projector, to the tiny wires spilling from it. "If you want for aid, for assistance, you will have it, as well as quiet space to work. Should we need --" he head tilts towards the projector, "-- I am hopeful we still have overhead projectors in some shed. Surely," and this -- may be uncomfortable, the Master of Magnetism does not often go for a self-deprecating smile and it is not well at home on his face, "I alone have not shorted out every device on the island yet?" All too soon after this comment, that smile is fading again. Erik drops into the chair, settles a hand in Buttercup's fur. B's eyes have fixed on Erik's face, clear inner eyelids blinking shut at his smile. Her own, small and closed-lipped, answers it at a noticeable delay. "Oh, no, sir, I have had plenty of practice hardening devices against --" She presses her lips tight but flutters her webbed fingers in Erik's general direction. Her flat nose wrinkles as she looks back at the projector. "Overhead projectors? It's gonna be real high school throwback hours in here. If I don't get this fixed will you make a bad PowerPoint for our next briefing? I could see you as a --" She's squinting one eye up as she peers at Erik like she's considering this assertion even as she makes it. "-- history teacher." "Of course." Erik's gaze slips off of B, stares unfocused at the wall for a moment. "I did not mean..." And this, too, is strange -- Erik is a man of words, of speeches, but this clause does not resolve into even a simple statement. Erik's hand scrunches up a bit more fur on Buttercup's head, quiet before B speaks again, his gaze looking past hir through the walls to the kitchens. He's slow to come back to himself, too, though his next smile, lightly amused, is far more at home on his face. "I have found, over the years, that I am slightly better suited to practical teaching than lecturing. But I am sure I could make some slides. Physical slides, not those virtual ones with the awful animations." He peers at B a moment -- "Have you ever seen slides. Perhaps you are too young for those." B's head bows as Erik goes silent, a small crease forming in her brow. She's shifting her weight a little awkwardly, one foot rolling idly to the side, and peeks up at Erik's faraway gaze before very slowly turning her attention to a slower rewiring of the projector. "So like," her eyes are still veeeery wide but her quiet voice amused, too, "slides then a field trip. Here's a diagram of bombing, here's --" But now she's tilting her head to the side, regarding Erik with a hint of Millennial Skepticism. "Physical slides?" She's looking between him and the fancy high-tech projector like she is trying to reconcile this notion somehow. Erik chuckles. "That is how we used to do it, yes, with a small amount of fiddling when the slide with the bombing plan was upside down in the machine." He lifts up his hand -- Buttercup is relocating, anyway, to curl patiently at his feet -- and holds his index finger and thumb out. "Yes, slides, this big or so, with particular film printed with text or image within the frame. Fiddly things, but far more effective than drawing our plans out with chalk, until --" his hand tips out to the much more advanced projector, "-- this contraption came along. Which," and now Erik is squinting at the projector, not quite suspicious of it, yet, "from all I have seen of your work, from all your father's praises, I am sure this will be even more unfathomably effective when you find the time to make it so." "My pa has a strong bias." Though the flutter of B's gills that accompany this are a slow-pleased ripple rather than hir earlier agitated flicker. "... but it's true that by the time I'm done with this it might be able to give the presentations for you. Maybe even do the bombing." "His evaluations of his children have not yet been wrong, in my estimation." Erik is considering the projector just a moment more -- where, he is perhaps wondering, will the bombs go? Will they have WordArt on them? "...How is your family faring?" comes out quieter, slower. He drags his gaze from the device back to B. B's hands go still, no longer fiddling with the machine but just slowly tapping one claw light and near-silent against the hard plastic case. "Oh," comes light but just a little choppy around the rapid flutter of her gills, "my family's strong, we've gotten through..." She swallows, silent for a moment. "Shane's been working way too hard like always. Freaktown is..." But this trails off, too, until she hits on. "It's Spence's birthday tomorrow!" she reroutes, brighter. "One of his birthdays. I upgraded his favorite robot it's totally going to be a better bodyguard now." There's a little extra determined cheer to this assertion. "Is it?" Erik lifts one brow. "Please do pass on my well-wishes to him -- and if you have a moment before returning to the mainland, I would like to send a gift with you. It will not," he adds on a moment later, "be as grand as a bodyguard-robot, nor as dangerous as..." The trailing off is contagious -- maybe it's the austerity of this room, quiet save for their voices and Buttercup's breathing. "...It's strange, when these eras end. The days after are at once too full and too empty." At the edge of hearing there is a faint hum of struck steel coming from Erik's sternum. His hands fold together, one thumb idly rubbing the ring there. "If there is anything within my power to make these coming days easier for your family, you need only ask." "Yeah, his Jewish Birthday was few days back so we just get to celebrate for a whole stretch at once. I'll bring him your gift." B settles a hip against the side of the table, head turning towards Erik's chest at that faint hum. For a second she's quiet, inner eyelids slowly blinking closed and back open. "It's been hardest for my Pa, I think, I don't know if he..." Yet again a trailing off, her breath slow as she slumps down into an adjacent chair. Slowly she rocks the chair from one side to the other, and then finally looks back at Erik. "What did you do? After --" The flick of her eyes towards Erik's arm is hard to gauge but the outward flick of her claws in the direction of his inner arm is considerably easier to notice. "When everyone's telling you a war is over but you haven't even finished burying the bodies and there's an entire world of people who definitely still want the rest of you dead." Erik's hands freeze in place. It's not until he exhales, long and slow, that maybe he noticed that he was not breathing. "-- oy," and suddenly he sounds his age, the boom of Magneto gone and leaving something ancient and cracked behind, "but I am no example. If you want wisdom, if you want a model to follow, you should ask..." Again he trails off, again the silence washes over them until Erik finds his voice again, low and oddly halting. "I am not altogether sure when I even realized the war was over. It was all I knew -- I have almost no memories from before Hitler, I came of age in Auschwitz." He leans forward, arms propped by the elbows upon his knees, and does not tug the sleeve of his tracksuit up the elbow. That chain around his neck slips out, a silver flash glinting for a moment before Erik wraps his left hand around it. "They declared the World War over, and we Jews were still behind barbed wired, in the same camps built to murder us, dying of starvation and disease the same as when the Nazis were in charge, being murdered inside those gates by the same Nazis." Erik lifts one hand -- above his palm, his gold wedding band hangs suspended, spinning slowly in the air. "I do not think I cared much about anything, that year in the American camp, save for protecting the one person I had left. When she found her surviving family, I let some strangers bundle me on a leaky boat to Palestine. I farmed. I built. I playacted at happiness. I pretended I had no nightmares. In time, I believed in the lies I told myself." "I thought perhaps, when I returned to Europe, it would be kinder. Maybe they would learn from their hatred. I was wrong." The ring stops spinning. "I was born into war -- I do not think I ever had the option to stop fighting. It took those ancient hatreds ripping my family from me again to realize it." It drops into his waiting hand, disappears into his curled fist. Now Erik looks back up at B -- his eyes are dry, but there is something fragile in his expression. "But this is not what you are asking, nu? You do not want for your family to be weapons. You need to rend your clothing but there are so many with bare backs; you need to mourn but there are so many still to bury; and they are all looking to you for guidance and wisdoms. When that was my position..." His other hand opens -- a steel ring has worked its way onto his left ring finger. His tone dips apologetic, as if he already knows this will bring no comfort: "I became who my people needed." "Should ask --" B is starting to ask, but quiets, eyes wide and intent as Erik speaks. Quiet, too, for a time after he's done. There's been a very slow -- very small sink to her shoulders but now they square again. "I think it is what I'm asking, sir," she replies, soft but steady. "What we want --" She hesitates around a hard swallow. "-- won't be reality till our people are safe and free anyway. Until then we can keep our weapons sharp." "Until freedom could be a very long time yet." The gold ring rolls across the back of Erik's hand, up until it finds its home on his other finger. He studies hir for a moment longer. "What do you want now, B Holland?" asks Magneto. "Do you want to lay down your arms? Is this part of the war truly finished?" B is looking steadily now at the table, at the fried wires ze's removed and set aside. She doesn't blink for an uncannily long time. "I want Shane to have time to record his album. I want Spence to go to college and geek out at me about science I don't even understand and not follow after any of us. I want my pa to settle down with some quiet artist who hasn't been in a fight since grade school." Her gills flare out, pressing down flat again only slowly. She's a little wry with her follow up: "I'd kill every last person in office if I thought it'd get us any closer to that." Erik's eyes meet her unblinking ones, a slow-growing intensity in his gaze. "If it is blood that you want," Erik replies at length, "that I can advise on. I do not recommend waiting fifteen years to hunt down your torturers, as I did -- they will only grow stronger, smarter, and more well protected." He rises from his seat -- Buttercup scrambles up at the movement and rushes to the door in anticipation. "Here, too, you need only ask for aid. This alone will not carve out peace for your family, but --" his jaw tightens, "-- in hunting, I began to find some safety for mine." B doesn't say anything in reply to this -- ze just dips hir head in a nod and watches as the others head for the door. She's quiet, too, as she turns back to the slow and contemplative work of fixing. Some time before she has left the island, though, a slender folder finds its way through the slit of the cheerfully gaudily decorated suggestions box outside Erik's cabin. It is a short list, printed -- names and addresses, places of work, some photographs. In B's scratchy handwriting below: These are just the shitfucks who've slithered into NYC so far. The complete list from Lassiter is much longer. How do we start?