ArchivedLogs:Skin-Deep

Skin-Deep
Dramatis Personae Peter, Neve
In Absentia	2014-07-17 '
Location Central Park North
Central Park North is slightly quieter than its southern counterpart, being further uptown and slightly out of the bustle of the City - insofar as one can escape the bustle of the City even here, in the acres of green and blue that make up Central Park. The reservoir is in the northern half, providing miles of jogging and biking trails along the clear water, as well as benches for people to sit and rest. The big lure for Neve in the northern part of Central Park are the bike trails. That the day has darkened into night and there is reflected light dancing on the water here isn't a bad thing either--on a sweet summer evening like this one, one can even forget they're in a city at all, surrounded as they are by soft darkness, the warm glow of lamplight and the scent of growing things and moving water on the breeze. Another big lure is the /lack of witnesses/. Not that the park is deserted but there are fewer people out strolling here, most of the tourists keeping to the southern portion and many of the native New Yorkers engaged in the city's nightlife, nightlife that tends not to involve a more natural setting. The reason for her love of solitude in this case is that she is none too steady on her bicycle. She's downright wobbly, in fact. Dressed in sneakers, yoga pants and a simple pink t-shirt, she wibbles along at a pace that even a four year old could best on two wheels--which is what leads eventually to her downfall. On the /gentlest/ of curves in the path, her lack of speed contributes to a lack of balance and then a tipping which sends both her and her bike veering towards the grass. Once the front wheel crosses the boundary between asphalt and grass, bloop!, over she goes. It is the slowest of falls though, which means no injury and only the loss of pride--and maybe some breath as she connects with the ground. "Oof!" "...you never learned how to ride a bike?" The question comes, from -- of all places -- *above* Neve. It's not a threatening voice, at least; more like the voice of a young man, curious and intrigued -- though maybe just a little needling. Up over her head, a teenager is perched -- on a thick, stout branch -- clad in a loose-fitting black hoodie, the hood pulled up. Under that, he's got on black sweats, and... are those black socks? It's hard to tell, at night; all in all, the effect of his darker clothing makes it hard to even *see* him. He's like a silhouette cut out in the night sky. "I mean, I guess I shouldn't talk. I don't even know if *I* know how to ride a bike," Peter admits, suddenly -- his eyebrows crunching together, as if pondering the possibility. "I bet I totally could, though. Are you okay?" Neve still has a leg beneath the bike. She has succeeded in wiping her hands off but hasn't even gotten to the crucial wiggling out from beneath part of the festivities when that voice interrupts. Brown eyes widen and turn up, along with her face, only for those same eyes to squint when indistinct dark outline of presumed male is seen in the tree above her. So, she looks first startled and then suspicious. "Why are you up there?" is her question, asked in turn. Oh, and another: "And why are you dressed like a ninja?" What? It's dark. He might be dressed like a ninja. He'll have to wait for an answer to /his/ questions, unfortunately. The last one prompts her to do a wellness check on herself, which leads to scooting backwards to slide and then curl her leg out from beneath the bike's frame. Her person patted down--and no injuries found--she performs the same function on the bike. "I think we're all right," she finally decides. "You're not a mugger, are you? I didn't bring anything with me." "Why aren't you up here? And why aren't you dressed like a ninja?" Peter fires back, as if this was the most natural response in the world. But then, at the mention of being a mugger -- there's something akin to a snicker. Maybe. "Oh, man," Peter replies, before simply -- dropping. Like a rock. He leans backward and suddenly he is just dangling, clutching the branch overhead in both his hands -- his knees bent, his feet up against the branch's underside -- dangling like some sort of demented monkey. The hood dangles, just a bit; his face is very, very dark. The nearby lamplight shines off of it, giving a bit of a golden reflection -- hinting that the particular hue is not exactly *standard* among New Yorkers. Or humans, even. "It kind of looks like that, doesn't it? Weird kid in a hoodie sneaking around in Central Park. But, uh, no, I'm not a mugger. I actually stopped a mugging here, the other night." He sounds almost wistful about it. "Did you?" Neve has struggled to her feet while Peter plays monkey in the tree, pulling the bike up with her. When she looks up again, there is a pause as she takes in his new pose. Startled again? Yes, but no frightened. "Oh," she simply say. Oh. So it's like that, is it? In that case, the young woman adopts a smile. It's a small one to start, lips still pressed firmly together, but it /is/ a smile. "I suppose I'm not in a tree because I climb trees about as well as I ride a bike. I'd be an even worse ninja. Is that what you're doing up there now? Hoping to stop another mugging? That's very civic minded of you. But..." She turns her head left to survey the path winding that way, along the twists and turns of the waterwat, turns her head right to study the path leading back the way she came. "It seems quiet tonight," she observes as her face turns up into the light again. "That must be disappointing." "...no, I actually..." Peter has started to rock as he hangs from that tree branch; the rocking suddenly stills at that last statement of hers, his voice becoming a little softer. "Kind of like -- the quiet. I come here to think. At night, nobody sees me here unless I want them to." It doesn't even sound like a point of pride, for Peter; rather, he's just stating a fact -- like an observation about the night's weather. "I mean, I'll help people if they're in trouble but I think I'd much rather them not be in trouble in the first place, these days, if you -- know what I mean." Then, a little more directly, Peter adds: "I've seen you before. Your face, I mean. Are you on TV or something?" Neve tilts her head. Were he on the ground it would be a nod of acknowledgement--she does indeed know. But the angle, as it is, makes it seem a curious tilt instead of an empathetic one. "Quiet is nice. And there are precious few places that count as such. Especially here." Implying the greater city. It /is/ quiet right here, right now. Or it was, until she starts trying to walk the bike around to move towards the nearby bench. There's a grinding sound from the bike's chain and then a *pop*, surely protest for her misuse of it just a few minutes previous. Or maybe for manhandling it? That leaves her rather distracted when it comes to answering his next question. She gets the bike to the bench and leans it against the bike, before taking a grass-stained knee to pluck at the sprung chain. This puts her back to Peter. Hopefully he is /not/ a mugger, as he claims. "I have been. Here and there," she says slowly, with liberal use of pauses. "My name is Neve. I work for Themis House, if I look familiar you've probably seen the ads or one of my interviews." "--Themis House," Peter repeats, and now the rocking has entirely stilled, the boy making no motion at all. "That's the place that -- you're making mutants not mutant," he says, and it's very hard to tell what he thinks of that idea. If anything, he seems confused by it, as if it was a possibility that was very novel to him. "You were -- were you? Are you?" There's a slight scrambling, now -- Peter's moving up that tree branch, flipping back atop of it, moving to gracefully hop, hop, hop to a branch that brings him closer to Neve -- overhead, though still quite a distance away. As if worried that she might be infected; that whatever human she got on herself might be spreading. "--a mutant, I mean? Does it actually work? I'm asking, because -- y'know, this isn't the first time someone's said they're here to help, and it turns out -- they actually just want to eat us, or dissect us, or put us in cages and make us kill each other." The bike's chain confounds Neve. She has no tools, just ineffective poking. But it gives her something to do with her hands while Peter's chatting and fiddling with a chain is far preferable to sighing. Or flinching. With her head bowed, there's no spying the way she /does/ close her eyes, possibly offering up a silent prayer. But once that's sent winging towards Heaven, she shifts a little to look up--this time at the more extreme angle. Neve smiles again. "I still am a mutant, yes. Like you, I'm guessing. But what I did has been suppressed. It doesn't happen anymore and I'm happier that way. It works better for some than others but we do our best for everyone who comes to us. And there are no cages or...or anything like that. We're an /out-patient/ facility," she tells him. "Nothing like...like those videos that came out. From people who'd been...used. That was horrible." "It was," Peter admits, "pretty horrible." And then there's a soft *thud* right next to Neve; just like that, Peter has descended from the tree branch and dropped -- besides her. Crouched on the back of the bench's spine, his toes -- those are bare feet, she can see, now, dark and chitin-clad and black -- curling down to squeeze, somehow managing to keep him easily perched in position. He keeps enough space between himself and her to at least be polite, though his sudden proximity is likely a bit startling. And then Peter reaches forward, veeeeeery slowly, extending a hand out toward the chain -- as if to offer to help her fix it. "If you're happier, well -- that's good, I guess. It kind of sucks that people can't just get over it, though. I mean, not *you*, just -- I mean, I can't imagine you'd really *care* about looking normal if people just didn't care -- I mean maybe you would, I don't know, people are weird and I can't figure them out, but..." Peter stops nattering away for a moment, frowning. "...can you change people's skin?" All right, when he drops, she /does/ flinch. There's no keeping from it, one minute looking up and the next bam, there he is. Neve, impressive and fierce specimen that she is, jerks backwards and ends up in a spill not unlike the bike tumble. This time, at least, she landed on rump and not hip. And he manages to startle a laugh right out of her, forestalling any worries about having offended. "You /are/ a ninja," she accuses. After a pause, time spent studying him, she adds, "A shiny one. Have at it, I'm useless with this sort of thing." And so the bike is ceded to the teenager, while she draws her knees up and curls arms around them to watch. "I /am/ happier. It wasn't...it wasn't just how I looked. There was more to it than that, and it had less to do with other people, more to do with me." Then his last question earns another pause. "That depends, really. On the sort of skin. The way their mutation presents and the treatment the doctors advise. Sometimes, yes." "Oh, jeez, sorry about that," Peter admits, and suddenly his chitin-clad cheeks darken from a deep blue-ish black to a tinted violet as she tumbles! "I forget, sometimes. That not everyone can see where I am." For a moment, he seems ready to reach out for her, but when she draws her knees up and curls her arms around them, the extending hand slips back to the bicycle chain -- and there's the steady click-click-click of metal as he begins dexterously fumbling with it, working to pop it back into the spokes, one by one. "...yeah, I know a couple of people who would really like it if their powers..." Pop, pop, *click*. "...didn't, y'know. Screw their lives up so much. Physiological mutations are probably tricky, though. Like, skin conditions, or eyes, or -- gills," Peter says, and for a moment, his work on the bike pauses, mouth firming up into a stern little frown. "But those are all things that..." Peter returns to the work. Maybe a little more *violently* than before; he is certainly getting the job done, but there's a certain intensity to the work, now, as he slips those chains back into the spokes. Eyebrows knitted. "...I mean, it sucks to have gills and live on land. It sucks to not have properly functioning *sweat-glands*," Peter says, as if this was a particular sore point. "But it shouldn't suck just to be -- blue." SNAP! Chain is back in. "We can't suppress anatomy, no. At least not without surgery and sometimes even that isn't possible. That's something we go over with the clients on an individual basis since it's different for everyone. I was fortunate, I responded very well to the treatment." Neve keeps her eyes focused on the boy's hands as he works. Her arms tense around her knees, giving them a strained sort of hug. "It would be hard, not having sweat glands. If you're the active sort." And she thinks he /is/--a sentiment betrayed by the return of a mild smile. "But skin," she goes on, picking up the thread of her end of the conversation, "that can be tricky. Mine changed when I began treatment. My father thinks maybe it's because I wasn't born that way, it developed later." A pause. "It shouldn't. But for some, it does. If they feel they don't match inside and outside." "Nobody matches inside and out," Peter says, but there might just be a hint of defensiveness there, brimming beneath the surface. He shifts, staring down at the bike almost reluctantly, before flipping it back over -- something he does with ease, almost tossing the bike like it was just a rock -- boing! It lands on its wheels as he catches it with his other hand, giving an easy little bounce. "Maybe it would make more sense if -- everyone didn't want to kill mutants just for looking weird. It's hard to figure out if you're okay with how you look when everyone wants to beat you up because of how you look." Peter is very *sternly* staring at the bike, now; as if it is somehow culpable in this deplorable state of affairs. "...but you seem okay," Peter tells her, then, finally looking up to meet her eyes again. "Just... be careful." He gently nudges the bike toward her, letting it roll. "Don't end up in a cage." Neve hugs her knees to herself even more tightly when Pete goes circus strongman on the bike. She blinks too. It is certainly something to see. "Oh." Just that, again! It works well as filler, while she gets her thoughts ordered. "It's...yes. That's...thank you. For fixing it." And so she uncurls to get to her feet, hands brushing off her seat and then lifting to order the short, drifting strands of hair over her brow. After that's done she steps forward to reach and steady the back before it topples. Again. She has a smile ready for when he /does/ look at her, though it gains an odd, pained tilt at what he has to tell her in that moment. "We aren't Prometheus," she says quietly. "I know it's hard for people who look different. Dangerous. Painful. I know it better than anyone. But this is something different. I wouldn't have...I wouldn't do what I'm doing, for Themis House, if it weren't really there to try to help people who want this. And /only/ those people. But I understand if it doesn't make sense." She pauses for a beat. "What's your name?" "They call me... the Spider," Peter says, and for a moment, his voice is dark, raspy and hoarse, as he performs his best Batman impression. But then, right after that, he quirks his mouth up into a half-grin, surrendering the bike up to her. "Peter." That half-grin lingers for a moment longer before fading away, eroded by an errant thought. "I believe you," he tells her. "But, just... be careful." Her smile deepens at that, tugged by amusement. "The spider? Not the beetle?" Her teasing is as light and sweet as his attempt at Batman voice is dark and raspy. There might well be a trace of almost fondness in her tone but it's so faint and she moves quickly on, giving the bike a tug to settle it at her side. No more riding for Neve this evening. The risks are too great and she is about to promise being careful, after all. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Peter. I will be careful. And you should be careful too. I know you can handle yourself but..." Another of those darn hesitations. She is picking her way carefully now. "If you ever want to talk. Or a quiet, safe space to be. Themis House is on the Upper East Side. I'm usually there, during the day." "I'll... keep it in mind," Peter says, though there's a hint of reluctance in his tone. And then, a slight smile -- and then... hop. He's gone. Like that! Almost as if it were a magic trick. One second you see him -- the next second, he's sprung 2 or 3 yards into the air, clinging hold of the branch of a tree, slinging himself up and across one branch to hop to the next -- and then the next, and the next.