ArchivedLogs:Circles

Circles
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Isra
In Absentia	2014-11-21 Choice and parenthood. Trigger warning: addresses prenatal personhood, complicated moral quandaries.
Location <BOM> Beachfront - Ascension Island
Largely rocky and desolate, the majority of the waterfront on this small island is an unwelcoming place. Craggy and forbidding, lined with jagged black rocks, the coast here can take a fair bit of scrambling to navigate. Here and there, though, the coastline levels out to narrow sweeps of pebbly beaches littered with shells and seaweed carried in on the frigid tide. Occasional old trunks of fallen trees dot the narrow beach, victims of the storms that frequently plague the island. One small stretch of the western shore holds a small dock, a few boats usually moored there. Tucked off the mainland coast in Jamaica Bay, the buildings and lights of the city can be seen far across the water. It's cold. Pretty damn cold, and colder /still/ right next to the water up atop the bleak-black rocks that line the waterfront. Dark and frigid and foreboding, it wouldn't be most people's first choice of middle-of-the-night /hangout/. And yet. In addition to salt-spray and seaweed there is, to those so attuned, a whiff, in this one craggy stretch, of cigarettes and tequila, a sharper tang of blood. Dusk's gargoyle-crouch profile is less /immediately/ distinctive than it tends to be, wings draped over by a thick long cloak tossed over them like a blanket; he's got thick corduroys on, thick boots, thick cable-knit sweater, scarf, cap, convertible mittens. One peeled back into gloves, the other still wrapped up over his fingers -- /that/ hand is curled around a bottle of /pretty/ expensive booze, the other, faintly shivery with fingers exposed, lit faintly by the glow of his cigarette. Reflective eyes stare out across the bay, looking at the lights of Brooklyn far off in the distance. His pale-pale skin is scuffed and coloured and marked, in between the dark scruff of beard. A very impressive shiner, a puff-swell of split lip, a jagged torn gash down one cheek. It's been a good Friday night. Coiled beside Dusk, swathed in a dark gray cloak of her own, Isra does not seem very troubled by the cold. Her head rests on his shoulder, her face turned up to the sky, eyes unblinking and distant as the cold stars they watch. Any injuries she may have sustained fighting earlier are not immediately evident. "I told my parents." This abruptly, if quietly. "About the egg. They weren't pleased." She takes the bottle from him and sips delicately. The heavy exhalation from Dusk comes out in a thick stream of smoke. A thick stream of steam-white breath. He moves his cigarette to his lips, draws in a long deep drag. His quiet words come out on a thick stream of smoke, too, and his eyes don't leave the city-lights across the water. "-- Should they be?" Isra turns her head, slowly, mindful of her horns, to look toward the city. "I've no notion of how they /should/ feel about it, but I am not surprised." She takes another sip from the bottle before returning it to Dusk. "I'm reasonably sure no one is pleased about it. I went to them for advice, and they gave it, I oughtn't to be ungrateful, but..." Her wings shift beneath the outer capelet of her cloak, settling with a faint rustle. "...I was hoping for a little more moral support and a little less blame." "Blame?" Dusk's brows hike up. "I don't -- what were they -- /blaming/ you for, /not/ being infertile, I --" His head shakes, a somewhat incredulous note to his tone. There's a pause -- a bit of reluctance when he asks, "... what advice did they give?" He takes the bottle back, pulling a deep swig in contrast to Isra's sips. "It was mostly my mother, and I don't think she had much of a rationale for it. I think she would have preferred if I led a life of isolation and celibacy." Isra's tail grows restless beneath the heavy cloak and thumps against the ground a few times before she curls it back against her body. "She wants it terminated, Khalida wants me to keep it, and Father..." She curls in closer to him, one taloned hand squeezing his leg. "...Father wants me to look into prenatal X-gene suppression therapy." A deep growl, rough and harsh, rumbles in Dusk's chest. His teeth click against the lip of his bottle. His next pull is a little smaller, before he passes it back. His cigarette bobs quick and jittery between his cigarette; he pulls once more, long and deep, before flicking it off towards the ocean. The wind takes it; it disappears, a tiny glowing ember that may or may not make it to the water. "What do /you/ want." Flat. Still growly. Isra accepts the bottle and takes a long drink, then rests it against the ground. "If I knew what I wanted, I might not have bothered asking them." This with a long sigh. "For all my education, I cannot wrap my mind around this. I don't know what's more wrong--to end an unborn child's life, to bring it into a world like this, or to change it into something this world might abuse less. It /all/ seems rather wrong." She buries her face in his shoulder. "If it were a normal /human/ pregnancy, I might be less torn, but the egg is...less like a fetus and more like a preterm neonate with very minimal needs. I don't feel like I have the same right to..." Her hand waves, a gesture of vague exasperation that ends in the sign 'CHOOSE.' It takes some finagling for Dusk to be able to wrap his wing around her, in this cold. A shift of his cloak to free his limb from it, a rearranging of the garment to drape it /back/ over his wing once he's curled it over her. But he does, sliding the soft-fuzzy wing over around her and squeezing in gently. "In terms of dependency, maybe, but in /development/ it's --" Though he hesitates, shoulders slumping. "... Who knows what it is. I just. Even if it /was/ a totally normal kid -- would you -- are we." He stops, closing his eyes and resting his chin against the top of Isra's head. "It does. All seem. Kind of wrong. This world." One long thumbclaw flicks back, towards the island behind them. "/Our/ world. I want to be less scared than I am." A faint rumble rises deep in Isra's throat--not quite a growl, but not exactly a purr, either. "We're not. Ready to be parents. We probably wouldn't be even if we led a less dangerous life." She nestles into his wing, face tucked against his neck. "I'm not sure /anyone/ is, but we're definitely on the extreme end of that curve. Maybe...the least awful choice /is/ to terminate it." Her tears are warm and wet against his skin, though no sniffling and hitching follows. "Isn't it?" "We don't have any kind of good life to offer it." Dusk's eyes are dry, at least, but his voice is very hollow. He reaches a hand for the bottle, lifting it for another long gulp before setting it back down. His wing tightens around her. "I love you. And for so fucking long now, you know, it's been like. I look at the future and I just see this long-ass goddamn fight ahead of us. And lately -- lately I see someone here to fight /with/." There's passion in both halves of this statement, but it sparks fiercer in the latter. His head bows, though, after. "But that fight, that's a fucking /choice/. It's not something you just /drop/ a kid into. It's not something they should just be /born/ into. What are we going to do, get a -- bulletproof sling for babywearing on the run? Toddlerproof a fucking terrorist camp? This isn't. A life for." His shoulders sag, somewhat deflated. Isra nods, working one wing out from beneath the outer layer of her cloak--and beneath Dusk's wing--to wrap around his shoulder. "We fight so that someday children like my students, or like--" She cuts herself off and just lets the rest of the breath out unvoiced. "So they can have better lives than we. We can't give up that fight, and we can't give up the egg, either. Even if we found a family willing to accept the financial burden and the emotional uncertainty and the...who knows what kind of special needs, it's still going to grow up with the deck stacked against it. But that's where I--" She isn't crying anymore, but for a moment her voice drops away and she just growls softly. "It's infuriating. Would I say the same about a child who was going to be born blind, or deaf? I just keep going in circles." "It isn't the /same/. Isra, my whole /family/ is deaf. They don't -- they don't take /deaf/ people and lock them up and cut them open and experiment on them and /murder/ them, they don't make laws that it's illegal to /be/ deaf, they don't talk about rounding them all up into camps or just slaughtering them wholesale, they don't -- it's /hard/, don't get me wrong. It's /hard/ but there's no. It's not." The growl is rumbling back up into Dusk's voice. "And for all of that we need to fight. But we can't..." He swallows, leaning up into Isra's wing. "I don't think I can do it." It's almost hard to hear his half-whispered words, over the seaside wind and the growling. "I -- want to, I've been telling myself that whatever you choose I'd --" Now his voice does break, spoken words and growl alike. "I just don't think I can /be/ a parent. But I don't. Know what else we can. I mean, abor -- term -- /killing/ it, that feels --" "Humanity has gone down that road many times with many different groups." Isra's voice is small and almost lost beneath the wind. "I know what they do to people like us; I just don't know how to weigh the cost and benefits of living /at all./" Her ears press back so far they almost turn downward. She braces one hand on his his and pulls back far enough to look Dusk in the eyes, her own still wet and glowing bright green in reflected city lights. "I don't want make this choice on my own. It's.../ours./" Claws dig into his sweater, their points dimpling his skin. "I want to find a way to give this child some kind of life worth living, but if you don't think that can be done...then." She does not blink or flinch or move. "Then killing it is the only way out." Dusk's eyes are still dry. Black-black-black, meeting Isra's a long while, though when he turns away from her towards the city again they shine sheeny-yellow-green as well. His muscles cord up hard beneath her talons, shoulders tightening. His head shakes. And shakes, and shakes, and /shakes/, and finally a sharp ragged exhale is all the sound he manages. He turns aside sharply enough that taloned-grip leaves runs in his sweater, jerking away from Isra to stumble-hasten a short ways down the steep incline. The wind mostly steals away the sound of his retching, though his doubled-over hunch and the sharp jerky twitch of his shoulders is easy enough to see, mostly nothing in his stomach but blood and tequila to splash back onto the half-frozen rocks. Isra half-rises--startled, perhaps, ready to take flight--and loses her balance momentarily, wings flaring out instinctively to wobble in the wind. She winces her wings back in under the capelet and goes to Dusk. From the folds of her cloak she has produced a handkerchief and offers it, her other hand finding and rubbing the space between his wings even through thick layers of clothing. "I love you." If she says anything else, a howling gust of wind steals the sound from them. Dusk takes the handkerchief mutely, wiping his mouth and beard dry. His shoulders are still tense, muscles knotted hard beneath Isra's hand. His eyes slip closed, one hand coming up to touch fingertips to his forehead. His wings tense, fighting hard against the gusting wind; it catches at them, rocks at /him/, threatens, almost, to push him off the slick-wet rock until he scrapes claws firm against it, pushing supple-strong muscles back against the gale to wrap around Isra again, and hold tight.