ArchivedLogs:Hearts and Minds

Hearts and Minds
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Flicker, Isra, Jax	2015-04-26 "But if you can't change the system and you can't change the people in it, what's left to change?"
Location <NYC> The Unicomplex - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
Flicker and Hive split the basement in this apartment; coming down the stairs emerges into an open expanse of shared space, with a pair of desks on opposite walls and large cabinets holding an enormous library of board and card games. The bookshelves here are packed predominantly with sci-fi and fantasy as well as a mass of roleplaying sourcebooks. The walls are eclectically decorated. A replica of Arya Stark's Needle, a few bright-colored but anachronistically somewhat morbid paintings of Jax's, a Mega Man X poster, a stained-glass suncatcher hung in the window and a collage of feathers framed on one wall. Up near the ceiling there's a large square hanging frame strung with netting -- a nearly ceiling-wide sort of hammock though it's hard to immediately discern how to access it. A side door leads to the bathroom, small but neat in pale stone tile. Towards the back there are walls dividing off the actual sleeping areas, tiny-cosy rooms mostly only large enough for the bed-dresser-closet combinations they contain. It's generally easy to figure out which one of the bedrooms is Hive's from the large amount of /clutter/ contrasting Flicker's perpetually tidy space. Flicker's full bed can be folded up into a recess in the wall, while Hive's larger queen hangs from the ceiling by sturdy black chains. Outside the Commons there has been -- on Friday a deluge but by now, thankfully, more like a steady but smaller stream -- of hassle. Often in the form of media, but sporadically in the form of hecklers. Throwing insults, on some occasions throwing rocks, on a few brighter occasions, paintballs. More creative hecklers. This might be why Jax is looking Kind Of Frazzled this evening as he hastens down the stairs into Geekhaus's basement. His face is very pale; there's a splatter of bright red paint on his jeans, the air around him is a little shadowy-dark with twisting smokey wisps. "... /gleh./." One enormous wing curls out to wrap around Jax and draaaag him in close. Coincidentally enough, Dusk is kind of smokey today too. In decoration rather than /aura/, though; the skin of his wing has been coloured a fiery range of red-oranges-yellow-white overlaid with wisping curls of dark smokey grey-black curling up over the entire expanse. He's sprawled over an enormous beanbag, head tipped back upside down to watch Flicker's screen -- though he's lifting it now sort of halfway to look at Jax instead as he pulls the photokinetic in for /snuggling/. "Yep." League of Legends is happening on Flicker's screen -- otherwise he'd totally be looking up, honest. "Scramble was over for lunch. Someone asked her if she felt in danger around you." A smallquick smile dances across his lips. "Think there's splinters of that camera all up and down the street." The breath Jax lets out is shaky, and kind of hollow. He sinks into Dusk's embrace gratefully, curling in close against the other man's side. His face mooshes down against the vampire's shoulder, arm (fiercely overheated) curling around his midsection. "Wonder if they knowed how much danger they was in from /her/, oh gosh." Dusk's wing rubs gently against Jax's back. His head curls down to press his cheek against the top of the artist's head. "I'm sure we could find you somewhere else. To stay. If this all gets too much. It was fucking nuts for /me/ and I'm not nearly --" His shoulder lifts, slightly. "... you." "Or," Flicker suggests brightly. "We could break /all/ their cameras." "Hfff." A ghost of a smile crosses Jax's face, fleeting. It's accompanied by a small shiver, though; his eye squeezes tighter shut. "M'sure we /could/. But you gonna find a new place for m'whole family through all this, too? New school for Spence? New jobs?" His head shakes, the dark shadows around him deepening. "Feel like they was jus' waitin' for this. An' it's some kinda powder keg that ain't gonna --" He presses his lips together tightly, breath hitching in quick and sharp. "... they offered t'let me plead down t'a misdemeanor assault. For assault three the max sentence is only a year." A low growl rumbles in Dusk's chest. "They fuck with the kids, I'll --" But whatever threat might have followed cuts off here. So does the growl. Just silence. And then a flat: "But." More silence. "You know that's a /bullshit/, right?" Isra descends the stairs near silently, the long talons tipping her toes just missing the edge of each step so that only the soft swish of her red wrap dress precedes her. Most of her body looks a darker stony gray than her natural skin tone--smooth basalt like a newly cooled lava flow--but her wings show vivid molten red and orange to match Dusk's. Her glossy black horns and talons, in light of the theme, resemble polished obsidian. She carries a battered Cornell University Astronomy canvas tote over one shoulder and a mixed four-pack of Izze sodas dangling from the fingers of the other hand. The smell of mezze accompanies her, and blooms more prominent when she sets down the tote beside the beanbag. "Good evening." This as she wraps one wing around both Dusk and Jax, the other brushing Flicker's back, more gentle and circumspect to avoid disrupting his game. It is certainly not owing to any interruption, but Flicker's game comes to an end -- not victoriously, judging by his grimace. Scowl. Small hiss of breath. He swivels his chair away from his desk a little more forcefully than necessary. Of course, that may as well be the current /conversation/; his frown doesn't ease. "But --" It's a bit sharper than Dusk's flat tone, though it comes nearly in tandem. His head bops in against Isra's wing. "They're just going to paint you like this -- violent thug who goes around /beating/ helpless women. 'Cuz that's what we /do/." "Well --" Jax pulls in a slow breath, releases it again just as slowly. "... yeah." He wriggles a little more upright to brush his cheek back against Isra's wing, then slumps back down against Dusk's side. "But they're going to do that no matter what. They're always going to -- to do that. It's just a question of if they do that over the next year or two while harassing my family and maybe callin' violence down on 'em, or if they do that for the next couple days an' then it blows over cuz I'm gone an' the humans got their /justice/." "Justice," Dusk echoes in disgust. Not enough disgust, though, to stop him reaching for the bag of fooooods and hooking it closer to sniff it eagerly. Then start unloading it onto the floor. "Their fucking pound of flesh, more like. Let them keep trying to goddamn /kill/ us for having the audacity to exist in public. You can't honestly be thinking about letting them?" Isra's expression registers no particular emotion, but her tail sways faster as she catches the drift of the conversation. "Do you hold out much hope that fighting this case will change the justice system, such as it is?" She sits on the floor, long legs folded primly beneath the hem of her dress as she separates some of the containers from the rest--their lids marked with large Vs--and takes one box of kibbeh, V-less, for herself. "Or do you hope that the attention..." Her lower vocal chords engage rather abruptly, to ominous effect, as she tilts her head to indicate the media outside with a general 'up there' motion. "...will help win hearts and minds?" Flicker slides forward out of his chair to fold himself into a seat on the floor. He reaches for an Izze, first, pinning it between his knees as he unscrews the cap. "The attention is going to be pretty ugly. But there's not a /lot/ of us better for -- winning hearts than Jax is." 'Hope'. Jax doesn't actually /echo/ this word, but his lips form around it silently. The shadows around him darken to solid inky-black coils. He struggles upright in the beanbag, sliding to its edge and curling his legs up under himself to reach for a V-marked box at random and peer inside. "No, I --" His tongue flicks out quickly to wet his lips. "I haven't --" He fiddles with the lid of the box, metallic-nailed fingers twitching restlessly at its edge. "I ain't -- I jus' --" His eye lowers, fixing down on the V. "I mean, /not/ fightin' it sure won't change nothin', right?" "Not fighting," Dusk agrees with a sharp smile, "never changes anything." The smile fades as he snags a box of MEAT for himself, too. His wing curls out to drape around Isra. "... but I'd be lying if I said I had any hope the goddamn /justice/ system was going to be changing." Reflexively, his eyes dip to his ankle, even if its chunky monitor is no longer strapped there. "Hearts and minds, though, c'mon, surely some of them out there have to be -- malleable." Isra pops the lid from one of the larger V-boxes to reveal a stack of flatbreads, nudging it toward Jax. "Unless you want to eat that baba ghanoush with a spoon." Something in her faint emphasis on /spoon/ suggests that she considers this course of action decadent and worthy of scandal. "Something like hope, then. You have not ceased to fight." She fixes Jax with a steady gaze. "Know that we will stand by you." One of her wings unfurls out and settles across Flicker's shoulders even she leans back into Dusk's, a faint sigh escaping her. "Even if I do not personally feel sanguine about changing hearts and minds." Flicker's brows draw in at Isra's first comments. Small furrow. Small press of lips. He studies Jax's expression for a moment. Looks away towards the ceiling as he takes a first swig of soda. "Something like." /He/ settles into Isra's wing, the faintest hint of restless tremor in his shoulders. "But if you can't change the system and you can't change the people in it, what's left to change?" Jax shifts slightly in his seat, a small discomfited fidget before he reaches to pluck one round of bread from the box. He tears off a piece, though just fidgets with this as well a moment before actually remembering to scoop up some baba ghanoush and eat it. He chews it over slowly, his eye lowered still, a faint unsteady shiver of murk in the air around him. "I sometimes," he finally replies slowly, "feel like the day we stop fightin' is the day we die. Ain't really much of a choice, is it?" Chomp. All this talk isn't diminishing /Dusk's/ appetite any; he is digging into his food hungrily before speaking. He gives Jax a long uncertain look, leans forward to press a small kiss to the other man's temple. "S'funny," is all he says, "how that wasn't actually an answer, was it?" "Sometimes we only have questions for answers." Isra pops several kibbeh into her mouth, one after the other, without evident pleasure. Her tail sways slowly, sweeping the floor behind her. Then, after a good long pause, more than time enough to chew and swallow. "But someone taught me that if you're already falling, you may as well try to fly."