Logs:The Secret Life Of --
| The Secret Life Of -- | |
|---|---|
cn: reference to off screen deaths in widespread natural disaster context, mild creepy body horror mutant, some kind of terrible freakish mutant disease/sickness/some description of symptoms in very sick patients | |
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
the past seven years "Hopefully he's getting some sleep." |
| Location
where tf is joshua? | |
october 2016. oaxaca, mexico. The actual Salinas residence is not nearly big enough for the current celebration, which has taken over not just an entire restaurant but the entire square that it sits in. There are vivid paper streamers fluttering overhead, almost as bright as the outfits on most of the attendees here. Joshua has had his fill of way too much food. He is now only managing to escape his grandmother encouraging Even More Helpings by dint of letting himself be whisked from one dance partner to the next to the next, around and past each other in exuberant whirl. 26 isn't, maybe, the most exciting of birthdays, but coming out of a few years of Prometheus, it's exciting to have made it at all, and there's a decent number of people here who'd have been glad to come celebrate him regardless. Still more who'd have been glad for any excuse for a party. This is Oaxaca, after all. It's not until Thursday has slipped well into Friday that things wind down. Not until Friday has started making back along to morning that Joshua has sobered up, changed out of his lighter-weight embroidered clothing, tossed back on jeans and boots and a sweatshirt. He's got his medic pack with him when he appears, directly in one of the classrooms at Chimaera, set up already for the medic training that is soon to start. If he looks a little droopy, a little tired -- well, when doesn't he. At the back of the room, Jax is perched on a table, frowning down at his binder and then Ryan's as they go over the heavily marked-up training notes. "Thought you said he were busy today --" He's re-marking his own sections of the outline; as he does so, Ryan's outline blossoms with color as well, bright red stars appearing next to several bullet points (BUDDIES! MEDIC HISTORY!) "... but like shabbat ain't for hours what would he be doin'?" --- april 2017. mocoa, colombia. It has been many days now. The buildings are getting no less collapsed, the streets only marginally less clogged; there are still many downed trees , still cars piled upon cars, the majority of the efforts gone towards excavating what people the teams could find from the cave-ins and rubble. There have been fewer of those, as the days wear on -- at least, alive, although Joshua's team has been strikingly successful at both the excavation and finding improbably late survivors down in the dark. Right now he is (somehow; at this point the men who are working with him have stopped asking questions) shifting aside a thick cement wall that has cracked, fallen to block entry into what was once a house and is now kind of smashed. Probably they should be waiting for further excavation, further backup, but Joshua is just worming his way in. There isn't any sounds -- no signs of life from inside, until there are. Slow and painstaking and more than a little dirt-crusted, but he's trailing a teenage girl carefully cradling an infant to her chest. He looks considerably more spent than when he'd entered. He rummages up his water bottle for a large swig. He's only a little apologetic about taking his leave. He'll be back. They know he'll be back. He's cleaned up by the time he gets to the Danger Room -- a couple minutes late, steps dragging, still shrugging into his jacket. "You’re late.” It’s hard to ever know where Scott Summers is looking through the ruby quartz visor but now, even shooting off a red blast at one of the Giant Robots of the simulation, there is the distinct impression he's looking at Joshua, somewhat askance, out of the corners of his eyes. Maybe another day there would be a lecture, but right now the visible parts of Scott's face just twist into a disappointed frown. "Would be helpful, in the future, if you weren't." --- pesach, 2018. First night is for his family, of course; long and loud and endlessly devolving into a million sidetrack conversations about matzah tostadas and mutants wandering the desert and their dog finding the afikomen (he doesn't, of course, although he does manage to snag it when Joshua's little cousin Aliza retrieves it from a bookshelf and waves it triumphantly in the air.) Second night, though -- well, B"H calendly accounts for time zones because he has a plan. It's still -- well, the first stop goes fine, the friendly Australian family he spends it with insistent on sharing their table with him after he helped their middle child stop unraveling all the fabric she touched last year. When he hops over to India he's still on track, a little more boisterous with a small but rowdy group of young Jewish mutants up at Pune University. By the time he's stopped in with his usual Tel Aviv crowd, way more than Four Cups in, he should be well aware what Terrible Sitcom levels of bad plan this. The room is spinning, there's about double the number of people in his vision than there really ought to be. But he's in way too deep to stop now so really, there's nothing for it but to keep going, toppling his way into his chair (or maybe it's Elijah's) and starting with a totally fresh count of Wine – it only counts per house, right, maybe that's how he'll do it. Cool. Is France next? Was it Brazil? ... he'll figure it out after this Dayenu. ~~~ Armed with the first of many riddles, the children are off on the most epic afikoman hunt yet staged at Evolve. Alma refills the glass of water she's just drained and slumps back into her seat. "This has been amazing -- I'm sorry to say it puts my family's to shame, and that's not a low bar." She gulps down more water to fend off her as-yet distant but surely impending hangover, then frowns. "Hey, maybe we should have invited Joshua. Maybe he had plans, but he's so shy, do you think he found anywhere to go?" Kitty is -- not hammered anymore, the late meal absorbing some of the wine and helping to keep her left-ward lean in the chair a respectable amount of Solid. "O-oh, I didn't even -- I assumed he knew, but you're right maybe an explicit invite to come with us would have been better..." She twists a lock of hair around her finger with a frown. "Well, I guess… next year, we'll remember to ask him." --- may, 2019. queensland, australia. There is a small pack of children -- the youngest maybe six, the oldest in her early teens, one sporting wings and a tail, one a peppering of dark scales though most look fairly bog -- trying to hide themselves behind a row of parked cars. It isn't really working all that well, visible still at the undercarriages, the windows, or where they, occasionally, still peek out wide-eyed and fearful and incorrigibly curious. At least they aren't actively shrieking anymore. It is hard to blame anyone for the shrieking, because the thing stalking towards them is clearly full of malice and well equipped to unleash it in Probably Horrible Ways. Tall and muscular, diamond-hard grey skin; his sharp claw-tipped hands each have mouths in them whose sharp teeth are gnashing hungrily as he advances. The respirator he wears is making eerily Darth Vader noises, which probably, really, is not a danger, but is not reassuring the children any either. Neither is the fact that the pair of creepy hand-mouths has just snaked their way out, stretching, questing, towards them. The champing teeth don't encounter the children, though. There's suddenly a Joshua there instead; one of the mouths chomps down on his arm instead, which doesn't seem to hurt in the conventional sense though it does make him go abruptly paler. He vanishes -- the grey-skinned Sith-Lord-Tentacle-Mouth-Hand would-be-mutant-child-eater vanishes. Some considerable while later, Joshua does not teleport into Xavier's but actually comes through the front door, most of the way through when his session with Xavier's newest young hydrokinetic was supposed to start, but? hopefully? Shayna will still be on campus. Hopefully. Charles Xavier probably isn't rolling out here to personally berate Joshua, but does slow down on his way back to his office to level a calm, searching look at him. "She's out by the lake, with Ororo," the headmaster says primly. "I know you're quite busy, and your work is of course important, but do try to remember the children are depending on you." --- october, 2020. new york city. It might be ADHD or it might be The Paramedic Thing. 50/50, maybe. In a crisis, though, the world narrows, sharpens. Why is it so hard to focus the rest of the time? That's a problem for Some Other Time Joshua and his shitty fucking brain. Right now focus is all he's got. He knows this city and its hospitals and its morgues too well, and it shouldn't be this hard. But for one day (and then another, and then another) it's been nothing but runaround. First cagey -- we don't know what's going on, we don't know where to send you, sorry, we can't help. Try filling out this form, try going here, try talking to this person. Then irritated -- already said we couldn't help you, go away, stop hassling us, this is police business. Now that the world outside is starting to ask questions about the inconsistencies here they're moving on to actually angry: are you questioning us, what are you even doing here, did you have something to do with this, hey, if you're interfering with police business we could arrest you too. Only one of them actually tries it; doesn't last long, too many of them know him here, but those hours in a cell are hours he could have been using. Hours between him and when this whole exercise won't work anymore. There's only so far chugging Even More Espresso will get him. By the time he actually collapses on his feet on his way to try to cajole a sometimes-friend at the next hospital -- well. With what that particular power takes out of him, this many days removed -- He takes several breaths to keep himself from throwing up into the nearest trashcan, and drags himself home. It feels like a cruel joke, at times like these, that the small banalities of life somehow have to continue, but the next morning he has to get up (somehow), shower (somehow), eat breakfast (... coffee, it's close enough), do his laundry. Somehow. He's got the basket in his hands. Halfway down the stairs it feels like he's simply forgotten how to possibly close the distance between here and the basement machines. Dusk is taking the stairs two at a time. Evolve paper bag and takeaway coffee tray in his hands, no doubt he's heading for Hive's, but stops short when he sees Joshua. One wing starts to reach for the other man but, remembering himself, stops short, though the crumpling of his expression suggests this was a hard check. "Fuck, man, where have you been, it's --" He swallows, fingers crumpling into the bag he holds. Softer, heavier: "It's Flicker." --- september, 2021. chonburi province, thailand. It's been like nothing they've ever seen -- probably nothing either of them have ever seen, probably nothing anyone has ever seen, a disease out of some sci-fi horror. No doubt if Leo had not caught it the news would have been catastrophizing about a terrorist attack, about Chinese labs, possibly about Leo himself, but he did catch it, B"H. Regrettably or thankfully their very first stop was, had to be, finding the terrified young mutant who started this, helping them understand and control their amazing and horrible new power to control fungi. But since then it has been cleanup, has been trying desperately to be some kind of firebreak against its spread in this small seaside town. Leo's been amazing, of course, when isn't he, even after all this time, even after watching it, analyzing it, occasionally, very carefully, very supervised, practicing it alongside, Joshua can hardly believe the quiet brilliance with which he unravels the most tangled of problems no matter how grisly their circumstances. And it is grisly, this one. Leo can tend the thinly spiderwebbing toothy fungus but Joshua tends its effects in the sick and dying it has left behind. Even for him it is difficult at first -- no matter how long you've been at this, triaging a room of children (of course it's children, the young mutant's friends and classmates went first) with their organs half chewed away kind of gets to you, trying to keep a clear-eyed view of where to ration your not actually limitless energy (Guay de mi but some days, Eli's loss feels even more acute) while parents -- also sick, Lord help them, you can't even send them out -- plead beside you with struggling breaths. It's a long week, especially frantically trying to juggle this between his shifts of the job that Actually Pays Him at home, but at least they've gotten things to a point where it isn't a constant frantic worry about if they are about to lose (another) patient when his alarm goes off again -- fuck, fuck, fuck. A different kind of frantic, now, hastily ditch the PPE, hastily scrub down as best he can, hastily change -- -- it's a whole different kind of chaos he blinks in to, regrettably extremely familiar. A bunker-like heavily-guarded facility, the familiar bright flashes of Sentinel lasers, the familiar bright flashes of someone else's lasers entirely, his team's at once tumultuous and clockwork cooperation. Out by his Danger Room Facsimile'd getaway van, a badly injured Danger Room Facsimile'd labrat. The glowing 2-D health bar that appears above said labrat's head is almost empty, what little remaining HP blinking red as it slowly drains away. For all that the illusion is obviously Jax's power at work, it's Matt—his power hastily coiling into Joshua's, too, now that he's here--beside him who calls out, sing-song and only slightly frazzled, "Heals plz!" --- may, 2022. cusco region, perú. Sure, he can teleport, but sometimes, where's the fun in that? The weather's been gorgeous; he and his friends aren't half-bad campfire cooks, and the scenery --! Right now, fingers crammed into an extremely jagged crag, hanging maaaybe he shouldn't think about how many feet off the ground, hands slicker with sweat than he'd like, toe starting to slip from its smear against the rock is he regretting not teleporting -- He sets his next cam, tests it firmly before clipping in, glances down to his friends below before continuing. Hell' no, he isn't. It's a while before they all reach the top, exhausted, kind of giddy with the exhilaration of it, the breathtaking Andes view spread wide around-and-below them, the ruins behind them that how few people have probably seen? while they share their well-earned meal. He chugs his water deep, rolls pleasantly aching shoulders as he starts to consider their long route back down. But first things first, hitting up his sister to borrow her phone. Just because his is in pieces halfway down this mountain does not mean he is gonna miss the opportunity to submit a new Ingress portal; his friends might be clowning him as they set up for meal time but he's got priorities here. ~~~ This meeting has been all over the place, which perhaps should be a point in favor of the Scott Summers Method, but no one's really in the mood to debate that. "I think we should table the election," Blink suggests, though there's no table in front of where she's perched on a rail, long since tired of her very comfortable chair. "It's not just Jax, anyway. Joshua's not here." A little quieter, though not exactly under her breath, "Hopefully he's getting some sleep." --- july, 2023. lassiter prometheus facility, ohio. There's a klaxon-blare of alarm in the facility, lights flashing, chaos up above. Down here it's quiet, though; down here it's usually quiet -- the room's occupants (neatly laid out on slabs and toe-tagged and, often enough occasionally, getting further dissected as if their life had not been indignity enough) tend not to make much noise. Certainly, Joshua is utterly insensate to the quiet-creeping entrance of one green-eyed young Asian woman with distinctive purple markings down her face, wearing Company X body armor much too big for her. Oblivious as she roots through the drawers, oblivious to the purple light that takes him from this place, shearing the metal drawer he's been in straight through. He doesn't see the transformation that comes after, the frizzy-haired redhead who is toiling for -- how long, possibly he'll never know -- by his side. Barely alive though he is, barely conscious, it's the next transformation that tugs at his senses. A familiar blazing in his dim and flickering awareness, alight with the bright glow of a nearby ability. From the gauntlet of the past months -- tattooing them on and having them sliced back out, over and over; with this forcible mutilation still raw and ragged in his bones, it's impossible not to just soak up the feel of it to try and at least stem some of this bleeding. Almost-gone though he is, the colorful pattern is so familiar that slipping it on feels like greeting a friend, like coming home to his family. Though his breathing is still shallow, inadequate; though his still-growing heart is struggling to beat, the rend gashed through him feels a little less raw, as he struggles to open his eyes -- sees one very familiar teenage teleporter, still, bafflingly, in Company X armor reaching for him; dismisses this as some bizarre nightmare as he slips back into unconsciousness. ~~~ The morning is still dim, with only hints of the sunrise beginning to glow along the horizon. Scott, posted in a lightweight camping chair at the edge of the growing Xavier's corner of the Lassiter encampment, is just beginning to stir, lifting his head, rolling his stiff shoulders -- for once his entire face is visible, his glasses folded and tucked into his breast pocket. When he stops it is with the abruptness of a blink, though he only actually blinks after one long second. Then he blinks again. For a moment it seems like he's going to stand up, but the moment passes. "Joshua," he says -- his voice is quiet and just-woke-up gruff, but carries easily in the stillness. His brows are pulling together over his eyes. "Man, when you vacation, you really vacation. Didn't you see my emails?" In an epitome of strolling-into-work-late-with-Starbucks Joshua is, in fact, carrying coffee as he trudges into the Xavier's part of camp; in very small measure of redemption it's a pair of those big group sized carafes. He's looking -- well, far too pale, apparently he didn't vacation anywhere with much sun, raccoon-shadows under his eyes, a good bit thinner than he was last semester, but otherwise much the same in his droopy face, kippah pinned neat to shaggy hair, jeans, a purple tee shirt that bears the Hebrew text 'אמת', though the aleph has been smudged near to illegibility. He freezes in his place when he sees Scott's eyes, and maybe it's seeing them that keeps his gaze hitched there for several moments longer than is comfortable for a conversational pause. He blinks, eventually, seeming only at a delay to remember there was a question in there, and tears his eyes away to find a conspicuous place to set down the coffee. He shakes his head once, his voice flat as it most often is: "Sorry. Got busy." | |
