ArchivedLogs:We

We
Dramatis Personae Flicker, Hive, Jim
In Absentia	2014-12-15 Part of Future Past. Set immediately after waking up.
Location <NYC> The Unicomplex - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
Flicker and Hive split the basement in this apartment; coming down the stairs emerges into an open expanse of shared space, with a pair of desks on opposite walls and large cabinets holding an enormous library of board and card games. The bookshelves here are packed predominantly with sci-fi and fantasy as well as a mass of roleplaying sourcebooks. The walls are eclectically decorated. A replica of Arya Stark's Needle, a few bright-colored but anachronistically somewhat morbid paintings of Jax's, a Mega Man X poster, a stained-glass suncatcher hung in the window and a collage of feathers framed on one wall. Up near the ceiling there's a large square hanging frame strung with netting -- a nearly ceiling-wide sort of hammock though it's hard to immediately discern how to access it. A side door leads to the bathroom, small but neat in pale stone tile. Towards the back there are walls dividing off the actual sleeping areas, tiny-cosy rooms mostly only large enough for the bed-dresser-closet combinations they contain. It's generally easy to figure out which one of the bedrooms is Hive's from the large amount of /clutter/ contrasting Flicker's perpetually tidy space. Flicker's full bed can be folded up into a recess in the wall, while Hive's larger queen hangs from the ceiling by sturdy black chains. Still dark, down here. Sun won’t be up a while yet. There’s probably been plenty of lights switched on around the Commons, though, here and there and there and there, startled into unpleasant wakefulness by a searing mental flash -- but down here, still dark. In the pitch-black of Hive’s bedroom, it’s quiet. Just a lumpy bundle of lumpy blankets, Flicker’s one good arm curled snug around Hive. Maybe the telepath is asleep -- maybe. Flicker isn’t. Cheek tucked against Hive’s dark hair. Green eyes a little wet and fixed blankly ahead. The front of his plain white undershirt is sodden-damp where Hive’s face has pressed to it. Maybe the telepath is asleep. Maybe. For the moment he’s just a skinny heap of bones bundled up small and pale against Flicker’s chest. Still and silent, outward and in, his mind has pulled back into itself to leave the room quiet mentally as well as audibly. His face is turned in against Flicker’s shoulder, eyes closed and expression almost peaceful. Perhaps it was expected, as the mental ache recedes its tempest-throb back to a night now changed and terrible, that some flotsam in the tempest's wake might wash in with time. The outer door can be heard thumping open - if it's a burglar, they're polite enough to use a key, clumsily, scratching at the lock before sliding home… though apparently /not/ polite enough to close the door behind them with anything beyond a rushed sweep of back heel. Approaching footsteps, then silence. Then footsteps again, and without grace of a knock, Jim is pushing the door open. If the light hadn't been on in the bedroom before, it blooms into illumination now, exposing the heavy-set man in kilt and hawaiian shirt, grizzled overgrown hair unbound and wild around his constricted face. Just staring, for a moment, at the two shapes in the bed. And breathing loud, in the quiet of the room. "He's not dead." Flicker may have been expecting this. His eyes barely move, when the door opens and lights come on. His arm does curl just a little more snug around Hive's back. "Little panic, I think, but he's. Not." Oddly, he doesn't sound happy about this. Little choked. His fingers rub slowly against Hive's back. "Khh," is all Hive has to offer in addition to this. There's a light flutter of mental touch that ghosts out against the others' minds, soft and brief and then gone. It feels almost apologetic. He doesn't look up, though, staying nestled under the blankets tucked in against his roommate's side. There's no huge sigh from Jim, still filling the door a time longer, unblinking - his mind in roil, in ebb, with his breathing, rustling like dry leaves beneath that quiet telepathic touch. He nods to Flicker mid-rub down his face, producing a soft wet sound somewhere in the midsts - maybe his nose is runny. A nighttime bedroom makes all movement prominent, him finally slumping forward like a dog towards the bed, which he's gained enough experience of to plant a knee on, keep it from swaying on its chains. Both of his hands extend, to find Flicker's head, like he could so nearly knot his /fist/ amongst the teleporter's hair. The other finds Hive's head - gentler, to the spiky fuzz. And he stoops over to rasp out only, "What happened." Flicker's shift of posture is automatic, natural, an unthinking adjustment to both make room for Jim on the bed and to resettle Hive comfortably once Jim is there. It doesn't take much, he doesn't /weigh/ much, repositioning Hive to rest the telepath's head up against Jim's knee. "Dream." His own head rocks up against Jim's rough fingers. "One of those. We had... Hive was /in/ it. In the future. Sewers and murder-bots and war and -- us." Hive's eyes slowly crack open, but close again shortly. They're still kind of reddened, face still splotchy. He curls an arm loosely up around Jim's knee once he's been moved, the motion as unthinking-automatic as Flicker's had been. "Didn't /have/ one," he corrects, hoarsely. "We -- I." After this, a pause. The breath he chokes in is wet, uneven. His fingers clench inwards. "... they're. Me. I think they've all been. Me." Jim settles in wordlessly, amongst the mammal-warmed blankets, scooting back onto the bed to pull one folded leg up onto the mattress, body turning towards Hive and Flicker that they occupy a semi-lap territory, solid arms encircling the region around the both of their heads to cast them in shelter from the light. Something in his mind, as he listens, grows stricken, creaking with sick dread (memory fragments clattering amongst the words: sewers << -eight million people- >> murderbots <<-some days I still can't talk->> war << (a can of cat food in frail, dirty little green hands) >>). << … >> And he doesn't wilt so much as grits his teeth and /constricts/, muscles hardening down forearms to draw /in/ Flicker and Hive both to him, and erupts out a quiet, /hard/, "- I'm so sorry, Hivey. So /fucking/ sorry." Flicker's eyes are still shining, bright and hot and stinging and as he thuds his forehead down against Jim's arm he's gritting his teeth and tensing up his shoulder and trying his damndest to keep the tears from spilling over. Not from any machismo, really, just an uncertainty how much more /explanation/ will be forthcoming if he starts. His side twitches, a gesture that has no arm there to move. In mental space there's still a limb there, strong and sure to curl protectively around Hive. "We were with that -- Strange. Psychic guy. And -- I think -- Maya. But it hasn't -- a lot can happen in. In -- how many years." But even as he says it there's a hollowness rattling in his mind, a heavy weight behind his words. In mental space, his arm curls tighter. Shuts out the /world/. "Was with Strange. Was with Magneto. Was -- They both said. That it all -- depended on." Hie's teeth grind, hard. His shoulders shudder, breath rasping out and a mental touch shuddering up against their minds again. "There's a million fucking telepaths out there," he agrees, through his teeth. "But you've seen --" His head leans up against the strong solid buttress of Jim's arm. His mind leans up against the strong solid prop of Flicker's. Through all their minds there's a slow blossoming unfurling. Fire and heat, not in sense this time but in image, a rippling of uncurling flames. << (something happens.) >> << (we saw.) >> "We can't. Just /leave/ that. To -- maybe. It's everything. /Everything/. The whole fucking -- /everything/, Jim. And I -- I'm. I have to." His fingers scrunch against Jim's leg, shaky, his grip unsteady. "... where do we even start." Jim swallows hard, wanting to deny it before any more is said, to stamp it into silence, but too much of him is... old, and set, and hard, and not sure which part of himself he hates more. Inward, he digs in roots that want to envelop the room, to invade these soft human-tissue bodies with bark and wood and thoughtless, prolonged sunlight and cool earth. One arm, as he draws the two of them in harder, finds itself looped beneath Hive's chin-- << (-grappling, the two of them, in a different world, on his old livingroom floor, fighting Hive to release just /one/ more mind, reclaim just a trace more of himself, when he'd /had/ more fight, more muscle (more /self/) to reclaim) >> -- and for a pitched moment, he folds his arm just a hair more snugly against the front of Hive's neck, compresses that familiar warm body firmer against his chest for a long, silent moment. The twisting in his stomach comes to a pitch. "--It depended on what." He asks, the pressure easing, speaking slow-even through his teeth. "What did they say. What do you remember. /Fuck/ them." Said in that order. "That Hive was the key," Flicker says softly. "To fixing all of -- all of it. We were trying. To change the world. To change -- something big that had happened. Or /everything/ that had happened, I don't know." His brows furrow uncertainly, the memory-echo of flames rising in his mind too, again. "... I think Xavier's blew up." A deeper frown. "Maybe everything blew up." His fist finally lifts, scrubbing hard against his eyes to scrub away the unshed tears. "We seemed pretty hopeful." When his hand drops, it drops to Hive's hair, fingers tracing through the fuzz. Drawing down along the scars alongside his skull. "Have to nothing. And /you/ nothing. /We/. If anything, it's /we/. Whatever happens, it's --" << (not alone.) >> His legs curl a little inward, and he pulls the blankets up over them higher. "... You were really lost." There's a sicksick drag in his words here, too. Glazed-glassy eyes in his mind, vacant-slack staring blankly at dank sewer walls heedless of the metal soldiers incoming (staring blankly at apartment walls heedless of the mindless horde outside.) "If you're helping project these -- messages back in /time/, it -- takes some serious mental firepower, I think." His eyes shift up to Jim. "He was -- a lot of him. A /lot/ of him." Somewhere inside, his arm tightens. Firm. Strong. "On me. That we'd lose the war, lose the. Everything. Without. Me." Hive's fingers keep flexing, mindlessly curling and uncurling. "Was working with Strange and Maya I guess, I -- I don't know. I think Magneto and Flicker were. Keeping us safe or. Something, I. I don't. Don't know. Trying to. Change the past. Change the world. Change the something. Problem with messages in a bottle, I guess." His eyes scrunch shut, slow and tight. A ripple of nausea flutters out through the room. "I guess I'm. Going to need to find a. Someone who. Can --" This doesn't finish. Just another ripple of nausea. "... I need my pills. My head. Hurts." "Fuck that." Jim says again, not actually to argue so much as just maintain that he remains resolutely /unswayed/, "We been getting these apocalyptic wet dreams even when you were future-/dead/." << ...or were we… >> Inquires some treacherous inner thought. If these memories were extending ripples of may-bes, it wasn't impossible some were merely vestiges of timeline that never-were -- << oh just jerk off already. >> "And /fuck/ if I'm putting one /iota/ faith in either of those knobgobbler's /problem solving/ methods. C'mon, /Magneto/? WE," this resonates deep, with depth and ferocity and gnarl-fisted love, grateful agreement with Flicker, "Are gonna--" << -what. make everything alright with just the power of love and unicorns and friendship? c'mon, jimmy. >> He realizes he's looking back, into Flicker's green eyes, and shuddering at 'a lot of him'. "--take this." He says, calmer, quieter, less snide, no less /hard/, "One thing at a time." He blinks out of this moment at Hive's last words… and second to final last words, leaning away towards the nightstand (which dumps the telepath more fully in his lap) to root around that familiar bottle of pills, ( << damn, no water >>), "...Someone who can what." "... that was in our dream, too," Flicker admits with a crooked-twitch smile. "Future-us /remembered/. A past where we -- died? Or -- well, /we/ didn't but Strange -- Hive and I were helping him. Keep the timelines straight. Sort out what we'd already changed. Keep track of -- so we knew. That we were -- having an effect. We /remembered/ changing the past already. We remembered that -- raid failing, remembered /dying/. Time is -- I don't understand it." His eyes move to the nightstand while Jim leans to it, brow furrows almost in time with Jim's realization. He's vanished from the bedroom in a shiver of motion, disappeared out the door. Over in the bathroom, the faucet runs. He returns with a small green glass of water, slipping back into bed. "Sun's coming up." He sounds surprised at this. And very abruptly tired. Hive just tips a shaking hand upward, quiet and hopeful when Jim retrieves his painkillers. "... Tsss. You need more fucking sleep. You fail orgo you're never. Gonna be a doctor." He grimaces, lifting his head just long enough to claim a mouthful of water from the glass Flicker brings, then settling back into Jim's lap. His eyes close. "... cure cancer." Jim only snorts (bitterly, despairing, angry, confused, /tired/, /overwhelmed/) at Hive's last statement. Once he manages to muscle the /cap/ off Hive's pill bottle, he'll dose the skinny bastard as needed, helping him prop his head up for the water Flicker brings. Their movements together retain, here again, that same absent teamwork, Jim unthinking in taking the glass of water from Flicker and helping his one-handed climb back into bed by holding back the blankets, whomping them back into place once the teleporter has settled. "We can mount our offensive against some fucking… arbitrary point in the /space time/ continuum after I've had my coffee. After I /wake up/. Or Hive comes down from his goddamn /happy pills/. Or -- you pass your fucking... /exam/, christ, what the fuck are you doing." Being all… awake after a traumatic wake-up. He's settling back as well, sitting propped up still but with back leaning against the wall, both legs drawn up onto the bed, his own mind still revving on like an old truck engine, though this is quieter, as he relaxes his cells into something so faintly greener smelling, sagey from work in the greenhouse. "Becoming a doctor," Flicker answers Jim, an actual laugh creeping back into his words. "Or trying." He settles /down/ where Jim settles back, nestling low and snug in some desperate hopeful bid for comfort. Physical even if he can't find it mentally, like /maybe/-maybe he can snatch another hour or two of sleep. /Maybe/. His jaw tightens at the mention of curing cancer, arm sliding around Hive. "Maybe. One day. If I pass my exams." Hive swallows down his painkillers, snorting quiet. "Great. Future of the fucking world rests on how well you've studied. Why couldn't /you/ be the Asian." At least there's a smile back on his face -- small, but there -- as he rests his head against Jim, breathing in deep the greener-growing scent as /he/, at least, drifts back off.