Logs:Boys Don't Cry

Boys Don't Cry
Dramatis Personae Bryce, Dallen, Quentin
In Absentia Tok, DJ, Jax	2024-12-06 "I apologized a little." (immediately following the confrontation with Tok.)
Location <XAV> Gardens - Xs Grounds
From indoor gardens to outdoor, though without the protective greenhouse glass the back gardens do not last all year round. Still, the gardens out here are well-tended and well-worth spending time in, as well. The paths wending through the beds of flowers and herbs and vegetables spread out through the school's back grounds, tended by students as a credit class. Benches offer seating and a small pond is home to koi and turtles, as well as a few frogs. At the far back edges of the garden, a droning buzzing marks a few stacked white boxes as beehives. The bright cold day is hovering just around freezing, and the Dawson Allred memorial beehives are quiet, wrapped up cozy against the fast-approaching winter. Beside them Dallen is wrapped up, too, but maybe not quite cozy enough. She's wearing a rich purple corduroy jacket and versatile gray a-line skirt, her knees pulled up to her chest and her heels braced on the edge of the bench, the hem of her long skirt tugged carefully down to cover her legs, leaving only the toes of her black boots visible. A wide soft red scarf is draped around her shoulders and pulled up partially over her head, slightly hijab-like even though plenty of her hair is visible. Bryce is not really wearing anything at all, to protect against the cold. Even his Xavier's tee shirt is heavily chewed up, its manymany holes looking far more prominent and raggedy now without the thick bristling of quills that had until very recently been poking through. The brilliant red feathers atop his head contrast with his large falcon wings, the grey fur down his arms and thick soft red and white fur on his face; his huge compound eyes and the armored pangolin tail swinging agitated behind him jars with every other part of it. Beneath his shirt his shoulders are flexing and unflexing in a small but restless flex, a twinge of sick discomfort stirring every time he moves. He's determinedly dismantling this feeling as they approach the beehives, though he isn't entirely sure what to replace it with -- strewn across his mind there are jagged blocks of confused uncertainty and gnarled blocks of accusation, blocks of hurt and anger growing ponderously heavy but dusty from disuse where they've been cast to the back -- ultimately he is plucking old familiar ones, worn smooth from overhandling, to carefully put together an appropriate approach. "Hey-y-y, um. You okay? We just saw Tok." Quentin is more bundled up, red coat and black and red hat and scarf. He hops lightly up onto the opposite end of the bench, his leap over its back seeming considerably more agile than he should be able to make so casually from a near standstill. He's perching on the back, one boot on its arm and one on the seat. "Fuck Tok." Dallen curls in tighter on herself at the boys' approach, arms tightening around her knees, head turtling into the shelter of her scarf in an effort to hide the hot flush of shame. Her inner world is a garden of chaotic nightmares she's mostly been containing, but now they start creeping out. The shadows of the plants around her start sprouting meaty appendages at odd angles, pulsing and twitching, and her own shadow is growing claws and fangs and spikes to fend them off. She pulls toward her brother instinctively, reflexively blinking back tears from a lifetime of "boys don't cry", but she isn't a boy, so why does it still feel wrong? "I'm sorry," she mumbles into her knees. "I didn't know what to do and I told him to stop and he acted like it was nothing and I should have come to you and I'm sorry." The flesh-plants in her mind are disgorging weird furry shadow creatures that tumble to the soil and scurry away laughing, uncertain attempts to even conceptualize what happened between her and Tok, certainly well beyond her ability to verbalize. There are other blocks -- this one an exhaustion that feels somehow older than he is, that one just perplexed -- that Bryce is toying with and then just as doggedly ignoring. He skirts (a little gingerly) the strange plant-tendrils that are sprouting (<< -- turning a lot like Mr. Jax -- >> a little undecided in his mind about if this is a good thing or not) and is perhaps going to take a seat beside Dallen. He doesn't, just hooks his thumbs into his beltloops, his eyes fixed on the jagged claws her sharow is sprouting. "I -- don't -- why are you apologizing to me?" is genuinely baffled (somewhere in the dusty corner of his mind, hurt grows a little larger, though he still does not pull it out for use. "Tok attacked you, that's their fault. I just wanted --" He bites his lip. "Just want to make sure you're okay." Quentin's leg is bouncing. Quick, jittery. He's flipping the corner edge of his scarf between his fingers, and his eyes have tracked away to the beehives. "The hell are you apologizing for," comes out considerably harsher than Bryce. "Tell me you didn't apologize to that creep too." Dallen shakes her head, and her whole body starts twisting a little from side to side, then just as abruptly stops. "I don't know, it's just -- all. Wrong. I wanted to tell you --" << -- (wanted you to be proud of me) -- >> inserts itself unbidden into the disordered growth of her thoughts, and she immediately shrinks from it. "-- but I was afraid maybe you would be mad because I did a dangerous thing," she tries, lamely, still unable to put words to the wrongness. "But he -- he -- took it and I was all wrong and I had to stop him." She's proud of it, and ashamed of it, and confused by it. << (fierce quite fierce quite fierce quiet) >> Her shadow rises off of the ground and surges up to coil around and around her, a mass of thorny vines shifting constantly into different chimerical monsters. "I apologized a little," she admits, sinking deeper into her scarf. "I'm mad because he hurt you." Bryce's answer is gentle, and it's true, or true enough. There are several other madnesses, for sure -- mad that Dallen didn't tell him, mad that after a lifetime of cowardice-as-a-boy she's decided that being a girl is the time for brawling, mad that maybe Tok's gross wishy-washy uncommitted toying around with gender is somehow rubbing off << hard enough to get people to take her seriously -- >>. But mostly, fiercely, yes, mad that this monster dug his claws into his sister and tore something away. His shoulders shift (with another twinge -- uncomfortable, unsettled, he's feeling a strange guilty-sick reeling that he is not quite sure how to place but is quite sure doesn't belong in the realm of Proper Masculinity), wings hitching in a small shrug. "And mad I wasn't there, I could've handled it. I'm sorry I've been -- so busy, I." Another small shrug. "Maybe this weekend we could stay at DJ's? I don't -- I don't know what you need right now." "Shouldn't apologize to guys like that," Quentin says, authoritatively. "The way they were talking like -- like it just didn't matter what they take from people. From other mutants. Honestly, I think they're just jealous. Either of you is worth five of them, steal what they want they'll never close that gap." Dallen relaxes slightly, and the fleshy mutated plant shadows start to subside. "It didn't hurt." Her memory of it isn't physically painful, exactly, but the sense of suddenly losing her grasp on the edges of the surrounding light is still deeply disconcerting, like someone else is manipulating a part of her that's paralyzed. "I was just wrong, and scared." << (scaredy cat fierce scaredy cat quite fierce) >> "You would have handled it. I kind of just fell on him and freaked out." She starts rocking lightly back and forth -- actually a good sign, to familiar eyes. "DJ's, yes, please. I don't want to be around Tok." Maybe it says something that the idea of being with their (wise) (powerful) (holy) big brother is much more reassuring than being away from her assailant. Quentin's words still her slow incipient rocking. << (big deal what’s the big deal make a big deal) >> Behind the patter of her internal echolalia a single glowing vine gives a single luminous flower, a memory of Mr Jax returned to them from federal prison dim and cold. "From other mutants," she echoes, "mutants. Either of you." Her eyes glide over to Bryce. "Either of us. Did he take your --" She isn't quite sure what the right word is, but she's quickly checking over her brother's features as if she could divine if anything were missing that should be there, as often as he changes his body. "Did he take your --" She tries not to sound more incredulous asking this of Quentin, which feels disloyal to Bryce. "Can we stop him -- they -- Tok. Stop him from taking. Us." "I know. I mean, I know it was scary. If he ever messes with you again, tell me, okay? He shouldn't..." Bryce trails off, and though his shudder is largely repressed, not much visible through his thick fur undercoat, the ripple of anger across his mind is brighter and starker. "Shouldn't..." Again he's not quite sure what words to put there -- only shoved-down memories of leaked security-cam footage and whispered horrors following him around school. "I'm fine," is what he finally says, firm and determined to believe this is true. "I don't know if we can stop him. Maybe we can teach him better though." The uncertain hope in his voice does not entirely jive with the very fists-centric lesson in his mind. "But not right now. Now we should get the train." "Pfft, they didn't touch me." Quentin is helpfully supplying a heaping dose of the incredulity that Dallen is attempting to suppress. "Tore the quills right off Bryce, though." He hops off the bench, shoving his hands into his pockets and stomping a little bit in place. "Push enough in the right place you could stop just about anyone doing just about anything, I'd bet. Think your brother'll teach you some better moves?" He's looking to Dallen as he asks this. One hand comes back out of his pocket to jab-jab at the air. "We should bring him to Christ," Dallen concludes, earnestly. "I don't know if we can teach him better, but Heavenly Parents can. I'll still tell you if he messes with me again." She bristles inwardly at the thought of Tok taking Bryce's quills -- Quentin's phrasing conjures a much more bloody process than what actually happened -- and the bristling shivers out into her already spiky shadow. She pulls in on herself again, hugging her knees closer. "I don't -- I'm not -- I can't fight. This was...different." She frowns, ducking down into the folds of her scarf. "...it's good to be able to defend myself," she hedges, finally, "but I think I should push a different place. You didn't need to fight them." She looks Quentin over, as if if she could divine what protected him from Tok's power, though she's sure enough it must be his power. "You don't need to beat bullies. You just need to make them afraid." She is unfolding herself now, though. "We should get the train. DJ will know what to do."