ArchivedLogs:Fig Newtons

Fig Newtons
Dramatis Personae Mirror, Parley
In Absentia	2013-02-18 Prometheus inmates have a Talks. (Part of Prometheus TP.)
Location <???> Prometheus - Residence
This hall could be one of any, in some generic residential facility in some generic medical establishment. Bland tile on the floors, identical doors with numbers beside them and plastic slots to hold folders of information for the orderlies to identify the people inside. The tiny rooms beyond are identical, too; matching twinned cots with matching white sheets, matching plain wood chairs by their matching end tables, not much personality to any of them. Each comes with a bathroom, small and bare, too. Toilet. Washbasin. Tiny cube of shower with plastic floor and plastic sheet of curtain to pull across. The rooms all lack in windows to the outside, though, and the doors are suspiciously heavy, the small slat of glass set into them bulletproof-hard. It might be morning. It might be the middle of the night. It's been a few hours since the last Meal Time, anyway. The food was not bad. Chicken. Lemony. Garlicky. Green beans. Bread rolls. Tomato soup. Juice. Parley's roommate was not there for this Foods. The door is opening now, though, to re-admit one (1) person. Thin. Tall. Shaggy brown hair. Very dark blue eyes. Angular in his face. A rather haggard-exhausted look, sickly-pale, /stumbling/ rather than walking into the room to collapse down onto the bed, though he doesn't seem at all injured. Despite his /own/ exhaustion his presence is somewhat -- energizing. The orderly who delivers him certainly seems energetic, at least. The room is quiet and empty, the admission of this one person imbuing the environment with an otherwise missing sense of living occupation. Also, Parley is here, which doesn't really break the sense of vacancy. He's sitting on the floor at the foot of his cot, knees loosely drawn up with forearms folded atop them. His bed is neatly made, his scrubs clean. His eyes were closed, but they open when the door does, smudged bags under either eye. He looks from the haggard shape, then past to the orderly. With Parley's presence more of a vacancy than an occupation, it is easy to overlook the shift of motion that draws Parley's eyes upwards. The door closes again with a solid thunk of locks, the orderly humming as he heads off. The humming fades into the distance. Mirror starts to sit up, but this is just accompanied by another wave of exhaustion that sinks him back down again, feelings mostly a jumbled mix of tired and Kind Of Nauseous. His own feelings, anyway. This does nothing to quell the very strong sense of energy his mutation gives off, invigorating, revitalizing, but it does kind of /jar/ with it dissonantly. The touch is light, a mental buffer slowly trickling up along the side of Mirror's mind like a dewdrop, nearly weightless and identifying itself as Parley on contact. Cautiously, a question washes through with it, with a hesitant concern. A mental hand offering stability. It clarifies when he speaks, asking quietly, "Can I get you something?" The touch finds a strange jumble of feelings, to go with it, a sick-tired-dull that is Mirror, buried somewhere beneath a more volatile anger that is borrowed from the man Mirror has become. This new face has hope where Mirror does not, fresher memories of Anything But Here. Eventually, Mirror sits up, for real this time, at Parley's stabilizing, looking at his roommate for the first time. "Did they bring food?" It's a rich deep bass of a voice that doesn't quite fit the skinny-kid looks. Bare feet shift, and Parley gets to his feet. "I'm sure they'll bring yours soon," he answers; his own had been more dissected than eaten, but he slips a hand beneath his neatly made pillow to withdraw a bread roll. Often, if the other misses meal time, he'll ferret away something. "Until then." He seeks to press the roll into Mirror's fingers, settling onto the bed beside the other with knees pressed together and ankles crossed. He reaches up, touching the shaggy mass of brown hair Mirror wears to create some level of order, his mental touch remaining supportive and faint - moreso attentive to the weariness that seems Mirror's consistent flavor than the new skin of anger and hope. "Do you want to talk about it?" Mirror doesn't say thanks, as his fingers close around the roll, but there's a sense of thankfulness all the same in his thoughts, in the tired smile he almost manages to flash at Parley. It's a suggestion of smile, at least. He bites into the roll hungrily, licking off crumbs that spill onto his palm. "I'm not even sure what it was," he admits, once the roll is half gone. "There was a guy. Machines. They needed him to work more. I guess the other -- the real --" Eli, this face's /real/ name is Eli; this springs to Mirror's mind kind of hazily. Elijah. "-- The other me burnt out. Passed out. He was still there when I got there." The word 'Elijah' is shaped through Parley's lips, silently, at the same time it slips through Mirror's mind. He pulls up his legs and, while Mirror eats, he shifts back on the cot to sit behind the other, laying hands over either thin shoulder to compress the muscles in delicate kneading. "Will you have to do it again?" The kneading finds muscles tensed and hard, as well as a confused tangle of emotions to go with it; an instinct to pull away, a conscious decision not to. Mirror is slower in eating the second half of the roll, nibbling, now, his brow furrowing thoughtfully. There's still a quiet energy seeping off him, less quiet with contact than it was with just his presence, but none of it touches /him/ or the exhaustion he carries. "Probably. They're doing -- I don't know. Building things. He was a friend -- my friend?" Eli's friend. These distinctions are difficult for Mirror to make. "Things to kill. He can work much longer with me around." Another nibble. "You looked tired." "I've been shifted back into test rotation," simple, quiet words, followed by a weighted silence. Parley's head tips slightly, a subtle furrow forming between his brows at the wash of energy, and he cautiously withdraws his hands, "-- You look worse. Does it hurt when that happens?" "You -- oh." Mirror swallows. "I could go for you," he offers, quietly. He finishes the bread, licking at his palm again. "Lots of things hurt. Eli hurts. I try wearing new faces, but," he says, his smile curving quick and wry, "I can't find any here to wear. That don't hurt." "You're not going for me," Parley says, reinforced with a vague sense of patient /steel/ settled beneath it. "I'm not being hurt." His emphasis tries not to weigh on the 'I', but it does slightly, looking blankly down at his hands. "Just... pushed. They want me to shift -- more. Between people. Than words. Sensations. Mng." He closes his eyes, makes a thin smile, "Just wear mine again." A small warmth blossoms in the back of his mind, subtly bitter, but soft as a thick undercoat of colorless-gray fur. "Pain hurts less." "Can you do that?" Mirror considers this thoughtfully, a spark of curiosity lighting over the backdrop of tired and discomfort that he wears. "I try the guards, sometimes. They don't really like it when I do that, but they --" There's a pause, and then, silently, << Know things. I never told them, you know? That I get memories. I don't know how much they noticed. >> "-- don't like to see freaks with their faces, I guess," is what he finishes out /loud/. "I guess we'll find out," Parley makes a dry, tired exhale, even if he doesn't smile. "I think I've become someone's thesis - they've reorganized how they're running the tests from last time. Before, they gave /me/ --" he slips his eyes up towards the ceiling, "...sensations. To pass on. Now," he slips off the cot, "They think I may have more success transmitting from one person," his left hand opens to one side, "to another," his right hand opens opposite it. It's this hand he looks at for a long moment while slipping into the bathroom. He returns with a paper cup of water from the sink, offering it to Mirror. With it, a press of concepts - the eyes of guards, flicking back and forth restlessly, the increased work loads of pressure on test subjects, tired faces of orderlies. A cool curiosity. Compiling together: Things are tense. I wonder why. "Thesis." Mirror's forehead furrows at that. "Are you," he wonders, slowly, eyes tipping up towards the ceiling, "flattered?" It's dry. Maybe it's a joke. He takes the water, drinking it down slow and steady. Through this drinking things filter back. The face he wears -- relatively new to the place -- but familiar with the process. Been there before. Broken back /in/ and freed people before. The one he'd been sent to energize, a technopath. New technology coming in. New /weapons/ coming in. They seemed pretty determined to make the technopath keep working. Before Parley's eyes, Mirror is shifting. The constant refreshing energy that he had held fades as he shifts. A little shorter, a lot more female. Long hair tied back in a bun. Round face with the beginnings of lines around her eyes. A familiar enough round face to most of the labrats -- lab tech. Cool and professional throughout whatever horrors are going on around her. Mirror closes her eyes, breathing slow and deep as Eli's memories quiet in her head. "I am overwhelmed with /sentiment/." /What/ sentiment, Parley does not say, taking the cup back from Mirror when she's done with it to return it to the bathroom. He shares a three dimensional vision of bright stars in a sky - except that they aren't stars but /minds/, the minds of mutants mostly, whoever isn't shielding themselves, above and below and to either side of them beyond the ceiling, floor and walls. Many are subdued, infected, angry, sullen - though through Parley, these sentiments are cordoned off and filtered into recognizable but harmless sensations. Some of them are indicated; that one has heard rumors similar; this one has been pulled off their tests and rushed instead into weaponization. The small gossamer threads of communication, trickling from what minds that can share, passed on to those that can't. Someone seems to think something is going to happen. And soon. There's an initial rise of irritation, revulsion almost, at the touch of mind to mind that was not there a minute ago when Mirror was Eli. But here now as Simone she is initially tempted to withdraw, to tense at the intrusion, to brush off the rumours as only so much pointless chatter among the test subjects. It's Mirror underneath that forces through a calm, forces herself to listen, to think, to accept. << If they have a new weapon, they'll need people to test it on, >> is her rather unhopeful eventual judgment on Something Happening. But then, too, << -- If they're /rushing/ a new weapon, maybe they're worried. >> Brief snatches here, dragged back, of Eli-memory. Eli-/existence/, proving that people have broken out. That people have broken others out. Some of the winking stars go dark, one after another. There is no emotion associated with the vision, the message is clear enough: they are already testing something on people. Parley is settling a hip onto his own cot, drawing up a knee to rest his chin on. People have broken out. People have broken others out. ...And now, some have been re-taken. He shares these concepts mostly with visions of the sky, stars torn back and forth by black hands formed by cloud cover and lightning talons. << Worried others/escapees/liberators might come/attack/rescue/liberate. >> He drums his fingertips thoughtfully on his toes. "I'm going to work very hard to get results in these tests." Spoken suddenly, conversationally. Mirror's lips thin as the stars wink out. << If they're taking people's friends, they just might come. >> This comes with a wry admission, wry undertones: /she's/ here. Nobody's worrying. "I'm sure that will delight them to no end," is crisper, cooler, but with a sharp undercurrent that might be amusement. "Get someone top marks on their thesis." Laying his cheek over his knee, Parley's head has tipped on side to smile wider, thinner, his eyes blank and heavy-lidded, "Maybe I'll get a cookie for good behavior." << I want (to learn/for them to TEACH me) to be able to hurt them. >> He runs his fingertips up the back of his neck, grooming fingers through the fine tawny fur and then smoothing it down again. He's considering Mirror thoughtfully - or possibly the person she has become. The smile fades and disperses. "Don't push yourself too hard." "Once," Mirror confides, with great seriousness, "they had Fig Newtons." Her hands open, cookie-package sized. "Whole box." Though there's a trace of melancholy that comes with this thought. She pushes her pillow back against the head of the bed, nestles herself up against it. << Maybe they'll let you near them. The -- ones who got out. The technopath does not seem very communicative. >> Hence, ripe Parley-fodder. << Maybe they know. Where to hurt. >> The gestured shape of cookie package is considered, Parley's dark eyes taking on for a single moment the vision of something savage and hungry. His voice is quiet, chilled and even, "I miss Fig Newtons." His mental presence is pulling in, like a crumpling parachute, its corners folding up upon itself into a tight-packed ball, that settles against the side of Mirror's mind. A tangle of concepts describe a sentiment: Parley is nothing if not useful at streamlining the communication process. He depicts streamlining as something sandblasted bare of any frivolities or irregularities. A dry-seared cleansing by fire until it's molten-wet smooth and frictionless. << Maybe if/when you are retrieved/returned/back with him, he could be told this. >> In mental presence, when he grows still, his presence disintegrates into obscurity, even at close proximity. Like rosettes breaking up a tawny shape against the savannah, visible perceptible again only when he adds. << Be careful. >> "They were a little dry," Mirror laments, her head bowing. She closes her eyes, for a moment just /settling/, too, against that presence. << I will let him know, >> she agrees, and then, at the caution, << I've been here five years. >> It's an oblique sort of thought, tangled up in five years of testing and five years of constant changing and five years of molding herself into something too useful to kill. Five years of careful. She shifts, again, tugging the pillow down so that she can lie against it. Her hands fold neatly against her chest, resting against the pale scrubs. "There'll be more Fig Newtons," she says, softer. Hopeful? Maybe not. She isn't particularly attached to Fig Newtons. But there's a cluster of thoughts here, too, of break-outs and break-ins. Or, at the very least, a lenient orderly bringing cookies to lunch.