ArchivedLogs:Selfish
| Selfish | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
Thanksgiving ' |
| Location
Al-Jazari Estate - Ithaca, NY | |
The bedroom is large and lavishly appointed, its furniture built of glossy mahogany and upholstered in purple jacquard. A king-size canopy bed dominates one side of the room, its cobalt blue curtains embroidered with silver stars. The corner nearest to it is lined with bookshelves, the floor beside it piled high with cushions. A huge wardrobe stands beside a folding screen that bears a sumi-e painting of ancient Chinese astronomers studying a bright star above. On the other side of the room, two chairs sit on either side of a small table before the fireplace. Both chairs are built specifically to accommodate bodies with wings and tails, and the table's surface is inlaid with semi-precious stones in the pattern of a chess board nestling in a field of stars. A set of French doors hung with heavy drapes lead out onto a balcony. Opposite that, a spiral staircase in one corner leads up to a loft with a computer workstation and several large flat-panel monitors before continuing on to the level above. Beneath the loft, a door to the adjoining study--hung with a chalkboard that reads "Laboratory; do not disturb" in fading cursive letters--stands open, as does that of the bathroom across from it. Both of these are easily the size of most master bedrooms in single family homes. Isra closes the door that let them in from the hallway. She wears a hunter green wrap dress, its hem low and asymmetrical. Her wings are folded beneath a blue-purple duochrome shawl, and she carries a black camera bag in the crook of one elbow. There is a weariness in her movement, her relief almost palpable once she enters the room proper and shuts out the rest of the house. "Welcome to my sanctum." Isra sweeps her free hand out across the room. She stalks over to the bed and sets the camera bag on the nightstand beside an ancient red alarm clock and a beautiful vase of handblown glass. "Supper will be a while yet, and I think my parents are going to need time to process...seeing you." "/Most/ people need time to process seeing me," Dusk replies, wryly. He is trailing a little slowly, a little awkwardly, in after Isra, wings held stiffly behind him like he's kind of afraid of letting them touch anything. He's dressed neatly, dark slacks and a deep red mandarin-collared silk shirt, long-sleeved but with a deep cutout at its back. In contrast to Isra's relief he still just stands kind of tense, fingertips trailing uncertainly against the back of a chair but pulling back soon to curl into the crook of his arm instead. "I never really -- thought much about where you grew up." "I think they were expecting someone considerably less easy on the eyes." Isra flops down diagonally on her bed, wings stretching out languidly behind her. "Yes, I was born with silver spoon lodged firmly in one cherubic little cheek. Anything I wanted, I got." She points at where the spiral staircase exits her room, the space above unlit. "There's an /observatory/ up there. A modest one, but even so..." She shrugs, letting her arm drop back down, across her eyes. "I was aware this was not how most people lived. I went to public school until puberty...and then this was my entire world for the next decade and more." Her wings curl back closer to her body with a shiver. Dusk tips his head back, brows hiking firmly up at the mention of the observatory. His wings pull in /just/ a little bit closer. Careful. His arm drops to his side, though, his smile curling up warm and crooked at one side. "Yeah, well, now," slowly (caaaarefully) a wing slips out to touch lightly against Isra's, "you /have/ the entire world. There's worse ways to end up." Isra's wing relaxes against Dusk's. "I know I am fortunate in a thousand ways, but the world--do I, really?" She peeks out at him from beneath her arm, one green eye gleaming. "The world belongs to people who hate and fear us. If we're to take it back, we'll have to do it by force. It was so much simpler to hide--here, beneath the veil, or at Xavier's." Her wing stretches out and scoops around him, tugging him toward her. "You need not worry about breaking things. I grew up here, and I didn't always know my strength." She props herself up on one bony elbow, ears pressing back against her smooth pate. "I don't really know, either...how you grew up. I know your birth family is deaf, but you never talk about them." "Nah. Fuck those people. What /they/ have is hate and fear." Dusk's lopsided smile blossoms into a full one. "You know. And all the money and power." His wings curl back inward, pressing to his back again. He wanders over closer to the doors to the balcony, fingers resting against one of its panes. "Mmm. No. Don't talk about them, I guess. Didn't grow up like this. Wasn't poor. But it wasn't..." He tips his head forward, resting against the cold glass. "... our kid. Might grow up different." Turning back to look at the bag on her nightstand, Isra sighs and sinks back down to the mattress again. "For all their flaws, my family ultimately supported me and respected my choices. They even had the means to isolate me from those who would persecute me for a time, but they couldn't make the world more accepting." Her tail thumps against the bed restlessly. "We don't seem to be making much headway there, either. Our kid...the egg...if we can find a humane method to--" She curls up into herself, a cocoon of smooth gray wings. "--euthanize? I don't even know the right word. It's more responsible than trying our own hands at parenting." This last, staring at the wicked sharp talons that tip her long fingers. Dusk's head does not lift from the windowpane. The claws atop his wings twitch. "No. /We/'d be fucked --" He trails off, lapsing into quiet. His eyes focus outward, though with a slow narrowing, a slow tightening of jaw. "What if -- it wasn't /us/. I talked with Jax and Micah. About the egg." Isra doesn't respond at once. In fact, it's hard to tell at first if she has even heard. This wing of the house is quiet, far removed from the merrymaking--staid and civilized as it is. Outside the wind stirs the occasional drift of brown leaves up against the door. "Jax and Micah /are/ good parents." She stirs, slowly levering herself up by one wing into a sitting position, digitigrade legs curls under her in a pool of her slinky green dress. "I'm not sure any kind of parenting can offset this world's cruelty, but to have a loving, stable family? It counts for a lot." She reaches for the camera bag, but stops short. "What did they say?" "Kind of the best ones I've known." A slow shift of dark eyes follows the drift and swirl of leaves outside. Twitch of claws, the occasional trace of fingertips against window. Dusk isn't moving a whole lot otherwise. "That they'd raise it. If we wanted. I mean, it was a. Little longer talk but. That was the gist." His brows pull together. "I broke Jax's hand." "No lasting damage, I hope." There's very little doubt in Isra's voice; it's hardly even a question at all. "If we wanted." She echoes. "Do we, though? I imagine it would be an awful burden. To raise /any/ child is a massive commitment of time, energy, finances, and emotional fortitude. Can we in good conscience ask that of someone else?" Then, more quietly, her lower voice a rumbling bass purr. "And is it more ethical, in the end?" "Joshua helped." Which doesn't really clear the troubled look from Dusk's face very quickly. Though the topic at hand isn't likely helping this, either. His eyes slide closed, wings drooping low against his back with a soft rustle of fur against silk. "Any child. Let alone --" His words trail off, hand lifting. 'Whatever /we'd/ hatch,' he signs with a sharp huff of breath. 'Better than murdering our child?' A long pause. 'Don't know. Don't know. Don't know.' His head lifts, thumps down against the glass again. "My conscience won't really feel right no matter what." Isra's eyes stay on Dusk's hands long after they've stopped moving. She rises, the shawl slipping from her shoulders and remaining on the bed, and goes to Dusk. 'If they /want/ the child,' she signs haltingly, compared to him, but the tremor in her hands is probably not related to her skill level, 'I will support them. Right, wrong, it doesn't matter.' Her hands come to rest, one on his chest and the other on his lower back, claws dimpling his skin through the clothing. "But telling them that..would be forcing /them/ to choose." One wing pushes back the half-open drapes and the other curls around him. "No one should have to become a parent under duress--not us and not them." Dusk's breath fogs the glass as he breaths out, a sharp huff of raw laughter. 'It /matters/. Just.' He leans back against her, heedless of the press of talons in against him. "This is fucked the fuck /up/. Its life is going to be hell." 'Micah wants it. They want it.' Dusk -- just looks kind of ill. "This world is fucking duress. We should kill it." His head thumps forward again, this time against Isra's wing rather than the glass. "They'll be good parents. It'll just hurt them that much worse when its life goes to shit." But this isn't said in the tone of an argument so much as an already foregone conclusion. The knuckles of Isra's fingers work slow circles up his back, while her head sinks down to rest on his shoulder. "Could you kill it?" Her voice is barely audible now, a soft rumble against his skin. "I'm not at all sure I can. I just want to destroy every person and institution that would hurt it--or its family." Her hand lingers between his wings, kneading and rubbing. "...our family." 'Yes.' This answer comes simple and unhesitant. Firm. 'I'll throw you in a cage to get vivisected for a few years. Slaughter half your friends. Gun down your brother in front of you. Cut out your eyes, carve off your wings. Then see if you could or not.' Unlike most of his signing his expression is oddly flat through this, giving his words an odd listless monotone. "Killing it would be /kind/." 'But maybe I'm selfish. It's /ours/.'
Dusk's breath shivers out, soft and almost whimpering as Isra's fingers work at his muscles. "-- God, you should've seen the look Micah gave me when I first said this kid shouldn't be born." 'All fucking /hurt/. Like I'd said I would kill --' His wings quiver, too, where they droop at his back, the thick strong muscles of his shoulders tensing against her hand. 'You already know how to be strong.' His fingertips squeak against the glass as his hand curls into a fist. "This world isn't built for /kind/." Isra only reluctantly pries her face away from Dusk's shoulder so that she can see his hands, and even so, her response is long in coming. "I can imagine, but he would get over it." Her fingers work the muscles at the base of his wings--carefully, though her claws are long enough now that an occasional scratch is inevitable. Then, with her other hand, 'I would, too. There is no right decision.' She has gone very still except for the hand massaging his wing and the tail swaying rhythmically beneath the hem of her dress. "The world isn't built for a lot of things." "He says he's not judging. That he just wants to support us and make sure there /are/ options and." A low growl thrums under Dusk's words, soft and harsh in odd contrast to the lopsided crook of his smile. "Maybe he even fucking believes that shit. But how shocked he looked --" 'he'd be fucking judging a long time.' The growl /roughens/, harder, lower, as Isra's talons scrape against his skin. The next /thud/ of his head downward against the glass -- against her /wing/ -- is heavier, harder, rattling against the French doors. 'Then I guess we're just going to make a wrong one.' "I'm sure he believes it, but the heart has a will all its own." Isra's hand tightens, though she eases off before the points of her talons draw blood. "There's judgment enough to go around. Two-thirds of my family will be horrified no matter what we do with it." She does not flinch when Dusk's head smacks her wing against the glass. "But if you don't want the blame, then I--" Her eyes flick back toward the nightstand. "--I could...try." She shifts her weight, but does not need to fully step away from Dusk to snag the camera bag's strap with one outstretched wing. Her jaw is set firmly and her face blank as she unzips the cover. Nestled inside, smooth and gray, the egg looks for all the world like a large stone. "And the other third?" Dusk turns, wings pressing flatter against his back as he leans back against the doors, shivering where his skin presses to the cold glass but relaxing where his wing touches to /hers/. 'Don't want any of this.' His eyes skim from her face down to the egg. Back up to her face. The growl deepens. He leans in, reaches out, lifts the egg from the bag to cradle it in one large palm, fingers curled up along its side. "Hive probably knows. I haven't had the heart to ask him. He used to sing to Tola. Talk to her about his work. All kinds of shit. Before she was born. Said it was weird feeling her going from just this blob of nothing to starting to recognize him to starting to actually feel shit to starting to actually /think/ shit. He probably -- knows. If it could it even. Feel anything. Yet. But I haven't -- asked." The egg is heavy, its shell slightly warm to the touch. Isra lays one hand on it, fingers wrapping over Dusk's. Her eyes do not blink, but stare at the egg as though she means to divine herself whether the inhabitant is anything recognizably sentient. "I hadn't wanted to drag him into this. He deserves a little peace. But all the clinic can tell is that it has a heartbeat." She presses the pads of her fingers--the tips of five talons clicking softly--against the shell as if feeling for a pulse. Her wings tremble faintly against him. "He /has/ spent a lot of time near it. We can ask." Dusk's jaw clenches. Very faintly, his fingertips press in against the shell of the egg. The growl rumbling through him lowers, but doesn't fade away. "I don't want to know." His head shakes, sharply. "They can have it. They can have it." Isra's ears flatten down, and she gives the barest nod by way of acknowledgment. One wing squeezes in, pulling their bodies together on the side not occupied by the egg. "They can have it," she echoes, subsiding to his height. Her head droops down to rest on his chest. Dusk pulls his arm inward, egg cradled in between them. His wing wraps around on their other side, coccooning them in as his forehead drops to rest against the top of her head. The low thrum of his growl vibrates through the thick shell of the egg nestled in between their bodies. | |
