Logs:Continuing Revelation

Continuing Revelation
cn: alcohol, brief mention of suicidal ideation
Dramatis Personae Hive, Polaris
In Absentia	2020-11-13 "Keep deciding that we can do better than the history of the world has.
Location <PRV> VL 403 {Geekhaus} - East Village
This is a small, two-bedroom apartment, the living room semi-open to the kitchen and dining area, a single bathroom situated between the doors to the bedrooms. The common areas are beautifully appointed with solid, matching handmade wooden furniture in intricate geometric mosaics. The kitchen table is ringed with coordinated but not identical chairs, two of them modular with low scooped backs, designed with winged bodies in mind. The wide, low coffee table fits neatly into the corner of a modular sectional couch, and the immense television is enthroned in an entertainment center that also houses various consoles and video games. The walls are lined with bookshelves laden with comics, roleplaying supplements, board games, speculative fiction, and a grab-bag of technical texts. The walls in between are adorned with some framed posters of classical science fiction and fantasy media along with a few pieces of gorgeous if unusual original art. It's Friday night in the East Village, and outside the nightlife is only just getting off the ground. Polaris, however, is somewhat uncharacteristically not participating in anything of the sort, although she is somewhat inebriated already. She's just managed to unlock the door the Geekhaus, after a lot of jiggling at the lock--the key was the right key, but it always sticks. "If this were a movie," she slurs, irritated, "I would be able to pick locks with my brain." << ...and stop bullets... >> She opens the door and spills inside. "Well, I could pick some locks, I guess, if I learned how, but. Most pins are brass." Closes it behind her host and leans against it. << Please tell me you have more booze here? >> Hive tumbles in after Polaris, propping one hand against a wall as he tugs off one sneaker and then the other. "You could pick locks." His voice is gruff. "With practice." He doesn't bother turning the light on as he flops himself over the arm of the couch, stirring Cat's indignation as the calico has to abruptly scramble to the side to avoid being lain on. One hand flails vaguely toward the kitchen. "We have. So much whisky." Polaris starts in, but years of training kick in and she slides down against a wall to pluck her bootlaces loose. << Frak, frak, frak... >> It's a bit of work wriggling out of those boots even then, and then out of her black canvas motorcycle jacket, hanging this up haphazardly before padding her uneven way into the kitchen. << Guess I start again tomorrow--stop again? Better stay drunk while I can. >> "You want some?" she asks as she pulls open the correct cabinet on just the second try and extracts a bottle without even reading the label. << Didn't even think he drank...maybe he didn't used to... >> Hive's outflung hand gestures, beckoning toward the bottle at the offer. "Lotta things I didn't. Used to..." He lets this trail off into nothing. And then, abrupt, a snort of laughter. "I would've made a good Mormon. Before." Polaris takes two mugs down from a cabinet--one of them the heat-reactive TARDIS mug and the other a blueprint for the Death Star (that they are more-or-less matching shades of blue speaks perhaps that she is paying a small amount attention. "I believe you. I mean -- Buddhist, right?" << All kindsa Buddhists out there, though... >> She fills both mugs (since the whisky is room temperature, the TARDIS does not appear), carries them both to the couch and sinks to her knees. Offers Hive the Death Star plans. "I woulda made a shi--shirt one. I guess. Probably still...would." She salutes Hive with her own mug and takes a gulp. "There are many. Kinds of Buddhists." Hive's eyes stay closed until Polaris brings the mug over. He wriggles just enough upright to reach over and take it, weight half-propped on his other elbow. "I had a headstart," he allows, "lots of -- being -- Mormon -- experience. And I didn't bone, didn't drink, s'already fucking -- halfway there." His brows scrunch together. He taps his mug against Polaris's, swigging from it after. "Look just drink less coffee and you're nearly there too." His eyes narrow at her. "Are you still going to?" Polaris chuckles, dropping her forehead to the couch cushion. "Frak, I've had more luck with booze than with coffee, and look where I am." << Didn't think lay Buddhists had to...not bone? >> She rolls her head to one side and peers at Hive out of one hazel eye. "I...I dunno. Don't think I'm cut out to be a Saint." She blushes, staring down into the mug. "So, what happens if you believe, but you're just not good enough? Or...good enough, but don't believe?" "Not a Buddhist thing. It's just -- fucked up. With my brain. Don't know how to..." Hive shrugs. He wriggles himself upright, slumping back against the cushions. "Fuck. I don't know. Get good, I guess?" His hand scrapes through his hair. "Don't know how to make myself believe shit. All I know is I want --" He breaks off. Shakes his head, takes a smaller sip of whiskey. "I don't think anyone's cut out to be a Saint." Polaris props her chin up on the knuckles of one hand. "Like...cuz you read everyone's minds? Or like you might uh..." She scrunches her face up. "Yoink. Everyone's minds." The laughter bubbles out of her unexpectedly. << Just be more good! >> "Oh man. Get good. Well. I guess believing seemed pretty impossible, too--until it happened." << Between the two of us we're almost one whole Mormon. >> Rights herself unsteadily and studies Hive. "Was he?" The ache of just the thought of Dawson cuts deep into her. << -- want to be with him. >> "If I don't know where I end and someone else begins its -- it gets hard. To know. Who really wants..." Hive stares down into his mug. He lifts one foot to rest on the edge of the table, knee bobbing restlessly. "I don't -- fucking know if. If he was a good Saint. But he was a good man. That has to be..." His shoulder hitches jerkily. "How much could it hurt to cover my bases. Go in the -- dunk -- water. Leave off the --" He lifts his mug in indication. "Maybe I'll find the right heaven." Polaris nods, slow and unsteady. "That makes sense." A fleeting frown as she leans back into the cushions. "I think? S'rough, though. Or--would be rough, for me." She looks down into her mug and takes another sip. "But yeah it's like a...super specific Pascal's gambit...wager, whatever." << This is his life partner. Who the frak am I-- >> She swallows. Lets out a shaky breath. "Was kinda my plan, too, I guess. Kinda counting on it being enough, to be a good man. Or. Whatever." "It's rough." Hive's voice is low. He clutches his mug tighter. Snorts again. "Got a -- lot work ahead. You wanna be a good man." His head rolls back against the cushion. "By our powers combined, maybe. I can do that, you know. Mormon teamup. You bring the heart I'll bring the --" In the dim light it's hard to tell whether the next rough breath he hitches is a laugh. He chases it with a swallow of whiskey. "-- Discipline." "Sorry. I feel you, though. Except for the whole..." Polaris gestures vaguely at her temple. << Though I dunno if the Church would actually be super pleased with the whole celibacy thing in the long run this ain't Catholicism... >> It takes her a moment to fully process what Hive means by her having a lot of work ahead. Then, "Oh shi--" as she slaps a hand to her mouth to stifle the profanity and the bark of laughter alike. "I tried out they/them pronouns for a hot minute, that's like...quarter of the way to Man, right?" A faint, nagging sense that she probably just said something problematic, even if she can't quite sort out how at the moment. She twists to face Hive more fully, elbows braced on the couch cushions, hazel eyes wide and sincere if not very focused. "Alright. Mormon teamup. I'm down." Perhaps it's the alcohol, perhaps the sheer desperate loneliness beneath it, but there is genuinely no fear in her at all. "Take me." "Everybody has been experimentally nonbinary," Hive replies with confidence, "it only counts if you commit." He's slouching back in his seat, eyes closing and his mug resting on his stomach. The coil of his mind around hers is a heavy thing, a firm pressure that swells into a hard mental thrust. It comes with a rush of sensation, mind recalibrating to the (somewhat alcohol-fuzzed) feel of many other minds around them. Hive's own, prominent among them, is a bleak and muddled thing. The thought that he might be reunited with Flicker in death is almost a mantra of its own by now, steady and looping and stayed from actual action by a combination of his current telepathic minder and the uneasy uncertainty about whether or not he needs to be Mormon first for this tenuous plan to work. Currently baffled on this front, what's left is just a deep yawning ache, hollow and unrooted and continually trying to reach for a part of him that is no longer there. << don't think the D&C says shit about telepathic -- >> Whatever word he's reaching for here falters, fumbles, ends in only the safe and steady feeling of Dawson's mind twined with his. Polaris, quite clearly a psionic novice and not helped by Hive's inebriation or her own, reels at the sudden flood of other minds, losing track for a moment of her own misery. << Well, I'm theythem now, bitches! >> is faintly hysterical as she takes another swig of her whisky against the faint whisper cautioning her to slow down. Her thoughts are not quite so chaotic from the inside, if for no other reason than that the constant bombardment to the sensory aspect of her power is comprehensible, now. The world around them hums with fields--every appliance and every wire and every living thing and even the planet itself, faintly sensible beneath it all. << I think technically you have to be baptized, at least. >> This thought is buttressed by snatches of relevant passages from the Book of Mormon, all in an effort to forestall her own steady yet steadily resisted wish for death. << But I can't with the idea of loving Heavenly Parents damning people on technicalities. >> Her faith, a pinprick of stubborn light, flares brighter, strange and fierce in the vast darkness of hertheir minds. << Or for love, telepathy or no. >> She pulls unconsciously toward the memory of Dawson's mind, desire and anguish alike so abrupt and suffocating that her breath actually stops for a moment. << I can get dipped. I can do the good -- person -- things. >> Vague grasping memories surface here. Dawson with his medic bag on geared up for a protest. Crouched down to refill a tray of food for a small flock of fledgeling birds. Behind a table in Tompkins Square ladling up bowls of hot stew. << It's the faith part that -- fuck. >> He's trying to come up with an image, Dawson out in his own lush tropical planet somewhere but it splinters and falls apart, shattering into a constellation of feelings instead. The warmth of Dawson's head on his shoulder, the brief wicked slant of his smile behind a DM screen, sleepy silent breakfast in the early morning quiet, the alert-bright flit of his mind darting in vibrant flashes through the darker canopy of Hive's. "Shit. Damning people for technicalities feels like the history of the world." Underlying this, the wondering -- how someone stays so faithful in a world of so much pain -- churns more in feelings than words. Tears trickle quietly from Polaris's eyes at the touch of Hive's memories. << Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true. >> The words from the Book of Alma surface somewhat automatically, but she doesn't pay them much mind. She's trying to coax a different memory--but it does not come until she struggles gracelessly up onto the couch, more or less where Dawson had been sitting the moment she found her own faith. << "I'm not more loved because I'm faithful, I'm faithful because I love Them." >> It's not just Dawson's quiet, reverent voice; his presence in her thoughts is hyper-real, right down to the wholly unique brightness of his nervous system to her electromagnetic sense, his touch when he takes her hand an indescribable physical rush that takes her breath away yet again. "Decided," she blurts aloud. "Didn't find it. I decided to believe << (love) >>." Then an almost immediate wave of frustration at the inadequacy of those words to the warmth and light that filled her then--faded, now, to that tiny spark, but not gone. << "Love is -- always a decision." >> "Have to keep deciding. All the time, I think. Keep deciding that we can do better than the history of the world has. That Heavenly Parents want us to, not as some arbitrary test but because They love us." Then, just on the very edge of verbal thought, a kind of matter-of-fact understanding that gaming the Plan of Salvation with only the goal of finding Dawson again might not actually work so well as striving to live a genuinely loving and compassionate life, even without faith. The little spark grows infinitesimally brighter. << Is that...revelation? Can revelation be boring? God I wish we could talk about all this with him. >> There's a stirring of disgruntlement in their mind at this understanding, butting up against Hive's own just go through all the right motions, the faith part is extraneous approach to Finding The Correct Heaven. He lifts his mug again; the swallow of whiskey feels sharp and harsh in their throats. A thread of their mind clings, tight, to that feeling; the brightness, the touch. The heavy twist of longing it pulls from Hive. "Made a decision a long time ago to --" What follows is a jumble, chaotic and messy; the stark fear of the labs, the feeling of so many other pained and terrified minds around him, the feel of other minds pressed into submission or crushed out beneath the sledgehammer weight of his own. The brightness (fierce) (warm) (angry) of Dawson's steady belief he was worth saving anyway -- steady support in the years since escape. << do better, >> surfaces as the conclusion of this, but what he actually says aloud in a rough whisper is: "-- love him. Guess I should. Keep deciding." Polaris leans hard into the memory; leans, as well, into the longing, heedless that it hurts and unable to keep from adding her own, however different. The rest she just receives, in all its untidy intensity, breathing through it as steadily as she can manage. There's a dizzy-tumbling sense of awe, here--and not just because due their mutual intoxication--at Dawson to be sure, but also at Hive. << You're a good man, too, >> wells up out of her unbidden as she slumps deeper into the couch. "Better man than I am," she adds aloud, then drains her cup. << We can do this. >>