Logs:Hey Babe
| Hey Babe | |
|---|---|
cn: mentions of violence in genocide/war | |
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-02-09 *(Hive --> Polaris): XOXOXO (in the wake of HAMMER's Brotherhood raid.) |
| Location
texts & <XAV> Phoenix Room - Xs Third Floor | |
The message that ends up making it through to Polaris's phone -- in uncannily rapid succession -- takes a somewhat different tone from the ones Hive actually wrote:
The guest rooms at Xavier's are spacious and comfortable, well-furnished suites readied for visitors. This one is among the smallest of the available suites, consisting of a small sitting room, a bedroom with queen-sized bed, and a large bathroom. The windows look out over the side yard, with its playground and playing fields. The decor in here heavily favours rich reds and dark woods, and the artwork that graces the wall leans fiery in theme. There is a fireplace, here, stocked with wood in the niche beside it; on the mantlepiece above it, small glassworked figurines of birds in reds and oranges and yellow look half on fire themselves, when they catch the light. There are raised voices coming from behind the guest room door. Or, okay, one raised voice, edged with a frustration that does not need the telepathic connection to come across. Probably there are several more useful things Hive could be doing, right now -- for example, actually opening up the first aid bag that he's clutching tight to his chest. Instead, though, he has opted for being minimally helpful and maximally obstructive; he's leaning up against the bathroom sink, the better to properly berate his partner in agitated Thai. "{-- some crazy-ass shit for people who wanted to fucking kill you! If the situation were -- no, you know, it wouldn't be reversed because you're not a murderous fucking terrorist.}" The telepathic connection has, anyway, been put solidly on mute, and while this was originally to spare Hive a good deal of echoed pain, possibly at the moment it is also a blessing for DJ. Out of a polite respect for Hive's obstructiveness he has perched himself on the edge of the tub, instead, stripped down to his garment shorts -- the rest of his clothes are in a soiled and bloodied heap in the corner together with the shattered remnants of his prosthetic arm. The wounds torn in his side and calf look ugly but manageable, though his teeth are gritted as he rinses his leg and he's looking pretty pale. "{I am a terrorist,}" he's objecting, considerably less sharply than Hive. He's turning over murderous in his mind alongside a rapidfire assessment of How Many Murders he has done that gives up long before he lands on any solid estimate. "{-- so are you, for that matter. But 'what would the Brotherhood do' isn't exactly my benchmark for morality, either way.}" Polaris bursts into the suite frantic and touseled, still in her black work clothes--still in her, apron, her hair loose from its updo despite the intricate wire-weave holding it in place. Her thoughts are a kaleidoscopic jumble of fragmentary images from the hallway outside, peppered with ineffectual attempts at grounding herself in the immense thrum of the geomagnetic field. Some of the mental noise resolves into << (oh thank God) (looks like Hive) (sounds like Hive) (did his phone/brain get hacked?) >> and then << (oh my God) (there's a whole med lab downstairs) (should I avert my eyes) -- >> when she sees DJ. "What the fuck happened?" she demands, strangely anxious when she goes to tug the first aid kit from Hive's grasp. << Babe? Seriously? >> "{Sure, technically, but you can hardly compare -- that's not the fucking point, I wouldn't have told you if --}" Hive's eyes are snapping toward the door shortly before Polaris enters, and though his thoughts are re-railing his language isn't, still in irritable Thai when he replies: "{This motherfucker was out trying to get himself killed.}" He relinquishes the first aid kit without protest. "... babe?" This is just confused, but at least it has switched him back into English. "Cerebro," DJ prompts Hive. "It was a friendly hacking, anyway. And I think you'd still have told me." He's a little more hesitant after this, shutting the water off so that he can gesture for the first aid kit. "There was --" << be news soon anyway >> "-- an attack. At your -- at the Brotherhood's camp. Feds, I assume. A lot of Sentinels." His jaw has tightened, and he's very determinedly quieting the replay of the carnage that has started to run through his head. "I don't think your dad was there, but a lot of people died." "Ohhh." This doesn't quite capture Polaris's relief and new puzzlement. << (why didn't he just say so) (why didn't he text me himself) (was that supposed to sound like Hive) >> But the only part that makes it out loud is, still, "...babe? Seriously?" Any further questions she may have about Hive's antisocial friend are entirely derailed by the explanation (that she can understand). She goes to DJ and holds the kit open for him while she struggles to pull words out of the confused chaos of << (dad!) (oh thank God) (wait why wasn't he--) >> "--wait why were you there?!" Now she's rifling through the list of other people who might be dead or captured, a nebulous cloud of community members whose ostensible terrorist activities she knew better than to ask after, but the one that tightens her chest with heartbreak, fury, and abject horror is, << Leo? >> "I started to text you but I was doing a little too much freaking the fuck out." Hive lifts his hands, dragging both down the sides of his face with a shaky exhale. "We noticed the Sentinels before they attacked, DJ went to warn them to evacuate but." His teeth are gritting, and somewhere -- reluctant, grudging -- he is forced to acknowledge he perfectly well knew DJ might stay, could hardly imagine a world where DJ simply abandoned people to that slaughter. "-- but stayed to try and. Help. -- Leo's been across the damn world, never thought I'd be thinking thank fucking God he's in a warzone but he's been seeing to folks in Gaza for a minute now." Though DJ is trying to quiet it, now he's trying to bring those memories back up, tamping down his own sick upset as he sifts through for familiar faces. "... don't think Erik's given a shit about their safety for a while." "I can imagine that world." DJ's voice is quiet and steady, but his thoughts are whirling. In his mind the blood freshly soaking into the muddy forest floor is mingling with bodies strewn across the torn-up ground of a detention camp after an uprising. Snatches of conversation replay across the years, thoughts of those who dismissed the dangers of looming genocide and those who turned tail and fled without a thought for the ones who couldn't. The decisions, made and made again each grueling day, to stay and fight. The constant unsettling dissonance of this world and its ugly veneer of peace laid over all the same warning signs. The tense hypervigilance that comes with trying to balance building a life with knowing it could shatter at any moment and the weight of responsibility to keep that vigilance so others don't have to. The sense, furious and oddly disappointed, that if anyone understood that responsibility it should be those who've already lived through genocide. "-- I think you wouldn't like me much, in that world." Somewhere in here, only half-thinking, he's folded Polaris into them, not intentionally to share this cascade of musing but to more efficiently guide her hands to help with wound packing. "He ditched them months ago." There's some vague background calculation going on in his mind, how many lives might have been saved if the feds knew that, that he dismisses in short order as Not Helpful. Instead he's moving on to a detached assessment: "-- they won't stop there. They never stop there." He's thinking of the safehouses scattered through the city, of Freaktown, of the school itself, of any community anywhere, really, that's A Little Too Mutanty, of the very little pretext the government needs for this type of witchhunt. "We're all terrorists when its our genes they're afraid of." Polaris is well accustomed to emotional rollercoasters, but usually on a longer timescale than this, and she's again bouncing from << (oh thank God) >> to << (in Gaza?!) >> She's outwardly quiet while she tries without much success to reconcile her already complicated views of her father--whatever his flaws, deeply passionate about his (admittedly also flawed) Cause--with this new information. She can't really come up with much more than perplexed rage and disappointment that, however different their provenance from DJ's, harmonize with his when their minds join and processes more readily now to a resigned, << I owe Wendy a few more bracelets... >> "In that world, we would struggle with the same decisions." She doesn't say that they already do, even in the microcosm of Hive's decision to tell DJ and DJ's decision to help, toward which she hypocritically shares Hive's anger, knowing she would have made the same call in his place. Beneath this, she is trying to quiet a cold dread that she will find herself targeted, even if no official records reflect her true parentage. That Prometheus's interest in her genes, mere months after the Liberty Island Incident, was no coincidence. That the terrorism charges they used as justification were never actually dismissed. But grounding comes more easily now, bolstered by the sturdy roots that know the earth as well as its awesome lines of force, and by the steady work of herhistheir hands seeing to wounds they know how to heal. What finally comes out, in quiet but vehement Thai, is "{We give a shit.}" | |
