ArchivedLogs:How to Live

How to Live
Dramatis Personae Hive, Horus, Steve
In Absentia	2016-04-13 "{We /can/ live with a whole lot. That's true.}"
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Courtyard - Lower East Side
This courtyard is the lush central hub of the surrounding Harbor Commons, bound in on three sides by rows of duplexes and triplexes, cutting upward at the sky with the sharp thrift of a minimalist's style, neat lines and bountiful windows, boldened with accents in wood towards the upper stories, stone towards the base, the whole of the compound sealed in by a low stoneworked wall that opens entrance gates to the streets beyond at its two far corners, smaller gates at building back doors. The fourth side of the courtyard is open to the East River, the ground forming a slight decline, controlled on one side by micro-retaining walls to form wide steps where picnic tables sit beneath the nominative shelter of a trio of dogwood trees, accessible by ramp. The other side is allowed to slope at its natural angle, a wide open yard space, until its cut off at the river's edge, where a massive pair of oak trees stand, a staircase leading away up one of their thick trunks. The yard itself is carpeted in an organic flow of emerald grass swirled through with wending channels of smooth-paved cement walkways, flowing naturally away from the building's front entrances, where some are arced by trellis, some flanked by hosta plants, fern and lilies, a few laid in gentle switch-backing ramps for wheelchair access, before forking off at matching angles to sites of small garden installments. Bird feeders and baths suspended from the necks of small lamp posts, a rock-lined koi pond, a sleek gazebo tucked to one side in simplistic varnished wood, its southern side overgrown with a mass of thriving grapevine and a caged-in barbecue pit under its sheltering roof. A play area and proper garden are within sight off another branch, until finally all paths spiral in like wheel spokes to a shared common house at the center of all traffic flow. It's been a mild day but is turning into a crisper evening. The sun hasn't set, but it's getting slowly dim enough that the lanterns are starting to turn on along the walkways of the courtyard and many of the windows in the houses are brightly lit. Construction has ceased for the day in the growing skeleton of what will one day again be Workhaus and is currently a mess of scaffolding, silent machinery, piles of wood and stone and metal waiting to be used. Perched somewhere -- high above the ground, a pair of figures are tucked onto the latticework of the scaffolding frame, backlit by the reddish glow of the dusky sky. For Horus, certainly, settling on a metal bar at roof-height so that he can nibble rice and eggplant off of Hive's plate is No Big Deal. The skinny telepath in jeans and workboots and a corduroy jacket thrown on over faded denim shirt and t-shirt reading 'resistance is futile (if <1 ohm)' could, perhaps, do with some kind of safety gear at this height. Hive doesn't seem any less comfortable than Horus, though, really, working his way very slowly through a plate of rice and garlic-basil eggplant and string beans (in actuality, Horus is eating more of his dinner than he is), kind of watching the boy beside him and kind of watching the ground. Steve emerges from Commonhaus, pulling on a navy peacoat over a sunset ombre long-sleeve thermal shirt and slate gray corduroy pants. He has his shield slung casually over one shoulder and carries a black canvas tote mostly covered with colorful paint splashes over the other. His blond hair is just a touch spiky with recent damp, and his mind is a haze of unpleasant emotions tamped down by the recent judicious application of violence down in the gym. He wanders out into the courtyard. Casts his gaze around. Almost settles down onto a bench, but then, spotting Horus and Hive, heads toward Workhaus-to-be instead. Scaling the structure is little challenge to him, between intimate familiarity and his own strength and dexterity. He hops across the corner of what will one day be a bedroom and nods to the other two. "{Good evening. Mind if I join you?}" in his peculiar, rustic French. For a moment he wonders if Horus know that language, but it's an abstract wondering. With Hive present he has no fear that the boy won't understand. Even so, he follows this with English, "I need to eat and sketch, but didn't want to do either inside." << Or alone. >> Horus continues happily pecking at Hive's dinner, pausing only to warble a quiet greeting to Steve -- one which is actually perfectly intelligible to Steve at the moment. << Yes hello yes of course, join, this is the better dinner-place anyway, did you know you can see everywhere from here? Up-up-up that's where to eat, see everyone coming, see zombies coming, see the Avatar coming, hello hi, Hive cooked all the dinner. Eat eat eat. >> Hive's own greeting is much more succinct, chin tipping upward in a silent nod of greeting. Spoon gesturing to a free spot of scaffolding. "{Thank you,}" Steve murmurs, sitting down with one leg folded in and another dangling down over the edge. When he looks down into the courtyard, he briefly sees it through the lens of a vivid memory: the grounds swarming with the dead, their rattles and groans filling the darkness. He closes his eyes. Sucks in a deep breath. From the tote he pulls his own dinner -- the same eggplant and string beans dish the others are eating, easily two or three servings of it in a tupperware box -- and his latest sketchbook. The sketchbook he rests on his folded leg while he pries open the food container. "What is the...Avatar?" Hive sucks in a slow breath at Steve's memory, his eyes jerking sharply up and away from the grounds. His posture has stiffened sharply -- for a moment a little teetery, though reflexively with this one leg has curled around a diagonal brace to keep his balance. "Inexplicable fucking movie," he answers gruffly. << Nonsense rubbish nonsense such complete silliness there was no Avatar movie no not ever, >> Horus happily chatters, << don't fall don't splatter brains stay inside the head. >> Still kind of happily, as he sidles a little bit closer to Hive. << When the world needed him most he vanished but I believe the Avatar can save the world. >> Steve reaches for Hive so quickly that the sketchbook in his lap goes tumbling down into the dark. His terror is abrupt and raw, laced with noise and wind and cold that belong to a memory he resists fully recalling only with a powerful (and desperate) will. He grits his teeth and slowly lets go of Hive's arm once he sees that the other man has steadied himself. Only now does he look down. /Considers/ going to fetch his book, but dismisses the thought and opens the tupperware instead. "{Thank you for cooking.}" Though he's kind of just stirring the food around. Frowning. "So...there was a movie? Or there wasn't one? About a hero who vanished and will return." << Christ? King Arthur? I guess it's an old story told many different ways. >> Horus drops himself down and off the beam, wings spreading once he has cleared space between himself and Hive. He swoops easily down to nab Steve's fallen sketchbook -- though he doesn't actually /return/ it, winging away with it off into the dusky evening. A gleeful chorus fades off into the distance with him: << Oh wow what riches what bounty treasures falling from the sky just for me, entire worlds dropping right-right-right here, whose nest will have new stories now, Horus-nest will! Not even finished and already this house is delivering so many -- >> Hive's eyes have shifted to follow Horus's flight path, but his hand has moved to Steve's shoulder even once Steve lets go of /him/. He squeezes gently, slowly looking back to his dinner. "{Should've gone after it. Not sure it'll be in one piece next time you see it.}" He pokes slowly at his eggplant, spoon stirring absently through its sauce. "{There have been two movies called Avatar, and they're both shitty. One unfortunately based on an incredibly amazing animated series, one entirely unrelated.} The series, though --" His lips twitch, faintly. "Yeah. It's about a hero who vanished but comes back. World's being oppressed, he's got superpowers, supposed to help save it. He was, uh." Hive lifts his hand from Steve's arm, rubs his fingers slowly against the side of his head, hand lingering at the back of his neck. "Frozen for generations in an iceberg." Steve leans into Hive's hand. A small noise of distress rises in this throat, but he swallows it. Nods. Takes a deep breath again and lets it go. The noise and wind and cold fade from his mind, though he shivers all the same. He's surprisingly calm about watching Horus soar off with his sketchbook, inured by now to the bird-boy's hoarding. "{I'll find something to trade for it tomorrow -- and if it's no longer in book form...}" /Small/ shrug. His eyes skip aside to Hive. "Really? I'm mildly disappointed and powerfully surprised no one has recommended this show to me yet. There have been a lot of recommendations." "Well. Horus thinks you /are/ the Avatar so he figured it might be awkward to watch your -- past life." Hive's mind quietly solidifies where it is threaded through Steve's, a gentle but firm bolstering that curls in warm and steadying -- not attempting to ease the distress, just settling in supportive presence as he goes back to eating. "Oh." Steve frowns slightly. "Gosh. That's awkward, yes. Not nearly as bad as, say, watching the Captain America film, I'm sure." << Especially not if it's any kind of historically accurate. >> Mentally, he leans heavily on Hive's presence, burying himself in it. The pain retreats back to where it always lives in his mind, a place gone numb from it, leaving his anger and his weariness and -- Hive. Words, phrases, fragments of sentences surface, half-begun thoughts to explain his reaction. But he completes none of them. Just digs into his supper silently. "{This is good,}" he says, after a few bites. Closes his eyes and nods. Then, not talking about the food anymore -- not with any kind of clear notion what 'this' he even means, "{This is good.}" "Oh shit Shane and Taylor had that fucking. Chorus girl song stuck in their heads a whole damn weekend once." Hive's eyes are rolling, head shaking. Internally -- just growing calmer, steadier, wrapping in closer stronger embrace that weathers anger and weariness with the same unshakeable warmth. The chill in the air is growing as the dark deepens; Hive shivers faintly in his oversized jacket, sliding just a little closer to Steve along the metal beam. "{Well. There's garlic.}" Steve groans, looking up at the hazy sky. "'The Star Spangled Man' is just etched into my soul, I think. I still /dream/ about doing that show." It occurs to him Hive probably knows what he dreams, in any event. Even as he nestles into the telepath's mental embrace, he curls an arm around Hive's body, his own quite warm. "{Maybe it's the garlic.}" Kind of noncommittal. "{But anyway, I like it.}" "It's very catchy." Hive's exhalation is soft -- sort of shaky. He tucks himself up against Steve's side; a brief tremble runs through his thin shoulders and then subsides as he nestles close to the larger man's warmth. "You --" He hesitates, looking back down past where his leg is dangling over the edge of the scaffolding. "{Dream about a lot.}" His leg swings slowly, spoon tapping at the edge of his plate. "I'm glad, though. That you -- like..." He trails off, blinking. Internally pressing a little bit closer. "{Just feel like you could use more /good/ in your life right now.}" "{From what I remember of my dreams, I cannot envy you for overhearing them, but...}" Steve hand squeezes down on Hive's shoulder briefly. "{Probably a lot of nightmares around here.}" He nods slightly, his eyes not really focusing on anything -- staring out at the deepening night. "{There's plenty of /good/ in my life.}" He looks down at his food. "{I can get by on...surprisingly little. I can be /happy/ with surprisingly little.}" But this comes with a quiet anguish that turns again to rage before settling again into the background noise of his mind. He lets out the breath that he'd been holding and continues working his slow way through his supper. "{/Can/.}" Hive closes his eyes, his weight -- kind of insignificant, really, against Steve's much larger -- slumping in against the other man's side. He breathes out sharp and quick, a harsh sound entirely at odds with the soft unfurling that happens inwardly -- a gentle ease, a quiet sense of peace that is nothing like /resignation/ and far more like /resolve/, assurance, lapping up against Steve's rage and anguish without any attempt to mute either one. "{We /can/ live with a whole lot. That's true.}" Steve closes his eyes again, his arm tightening around Hive -- just a touch, governed by a distant but ever-present awareness of his uncommon strength. Some part of him clings to his anger, preferring it to the pain that it drowns out. Yet by slow degrees both begin to fade in the soft enfoldment of Hive's peace. "{And sometimes we must.}" There's no resentment in this. << I'm not really even sure how else to live. >> "{There's so goddamn much to be angry about in the world.}" Hive is relaxing, outwardly, easing into Steve's hold comfortable and snug -- though internally there's a fierce strong flare of longing that he fights back down. "And a whole lot of ways to face those things, too." Somewhere in the back of their conjoined minds there is a thoughtful shifting of perspective. No longer Hive's quiet assurance -- now there's the methodical ticking of a hyper-ordered mind carefully working Life Problems over like equations to be solved; somewhere else a more frenetic feeling mind trying to solve /everyone's/ issues all at once; some other part of their system, panicky and overwhelmed, haplessly (futilely) just trying to ignore that anything is wrong at all and plow on ahead; somewhere else a feeling of exhilarated /glee/ charging headfirst into oncoming Trouble. And on, and on -- None of these thoughts -- or all of them -- Hive, now. He lifts a hand, rubs fingers against the side of his head. Their minds settle back into its previous tranquility. << Is this how you want to live? >> /This/ comes with a faint mental thread twining around Steve's own mind, among his myriad, briefly lifting that anger back into prominence. Steve pulls in a sharp breath at the flare of longing. Cants his head to study Hive. The hazy beginning of a question drifts into his consciousness, but it never resolves into a coherent verbal thought. He accepts the parade of mental shifts with equanimity, only tensing once or twice despite considerable disorientation. He grits his teeth hard at the question, though. "No." Hardly more than a whisper, its not an answer so much as a reaction to the pull on his subsumed anger. "{No, but...I want to keep fighting, and I'm just not at all sure I can do it anymore without that anger.}" Where the anger had been after Hive allows it to fade again is a tapestry of grief and weariness and profound guilt. "Maybe in time." His head shakes slightly as if to underline his own significant doubts to that end. Then, hesitantly. "{Is this what /you/ want?}" His 'this' is not illustrated with nearly as much skill and clarity, just a distorted recollection of the many minds and their perspectives, all Hive. "{It /is/ a useful tool.}" There's a distinct note of 'but' in Hive's tone, though it doesn't gel into words either. He looks down at his plate, shivering again in the high-up breeze despite the shelter of Steve's larger body beside his. His brows pull together, slowly. << Want? >> There's a blankness in his echo, a puzzled noncomprehension as he turns this question over in his mind. "{This is what I am.}" Steve only gives a "Mmn" of dubious agreement. Shrugs out of his coat and drapes it over Hive's thin shoulders before pulling the smaller man up against his side again. His own body not /indifferent/ to the cold but certainly more than equipped to cope with it. "{I know, but what you are...}" << What /we/ are? >> "{.../changes/ -- at your will, however complex a proposition that is.}" He pauses, suddenly uncertain how to pursue this line of questioning. He doesn't really have a firm enough grasp on the working definition of 'self' in the situation. Something stirs in their mind again -- another longing twinge, brief and aching as Hive settles back in against Steve's side. It does not last long; there's a very conscious /shift/ -- not so much of feeling but of identity, Hive's mind carefully detaching itself in some places, reaching out and pulling new minds into his pool; the twinge tapers itself off as he reforms himself. << {What we are is --} >> He shakes his head, looking up at Steve. Then down again, with a small twitch of smile. "{Somehow I can't imagine you losing your fight. Anger or no. There's shit needs doing, I'm pretty sure you'll find it in you.}" Almost instinctively, Steve /tries/ to follow the shifting currents of Hive's minds, but he hasn't either the skill or the power to manage it properly. << You are not two people, and you are not one person. >> The thought comes out in Garnet's voice. "{We are an experience.}" He smiles, too. Softly. "{It's not a lack of /fight/, exactly. It's...everything else in here.}" The index finger of the hand holding his spoon taps his temple. "But..." He chuckles, kind of suddenly, his amusement mild but genuine. "Yeah. You're probably right." Hive draws in a soft gasp of breath at this thought, his eyes briefly squeezing shut. It puts a smile on his face, but the warmth that surfaces in his mind is somewhat complicated with a twist of hurt. "{Do you feel like one?}" It's quiet curiosity -- underlaid by a muted kind of denial that is not actually directed at Steve, just incidentally shared with him through the overlap of mind: << -- (not quite accurate comparison) >> << (we're always alone) >> He scrapes a bit of rice onto his spoon, staring at it like he is giving Very Serious Contemplation to taking another bite. Doesn't, though. Just adds, a little wryly: "Well. I do know you pretty well, right now." Steve frowns down at Hive, a faint twinge of sympathetic pain echoing what he felt second-hand. << {I'm sorry, I didn't mean hurt you.} >> He considers the question for several long seconds, the churn of thoughts his mind as much images as words: his drawings of the people in his life spanning the slow improvement of his skill as well as the dark gulf of the decades. Finally, "{Yes, I think so.}" Hive's...failure to eat reminds him of his own food, which he /actually/ eats. << I don't know if I can really understand that. I have felt alone, but -- not the same way, I'm sure. >> He's not actually all that sure. << If there's ever any way I could help. You know I will. >> Then, perhaps a comment on his own thoughts as much as a reply to Hive's /spoken/ comment, "You might know better than I do." << {You didn't.} >> There's a more distant quality to Hive's voice, now, something inwardly withdrawing, pulling back, carefully sectioning off the connection between them into a /neater/ kind of partition. It does leave behind the gentle warmth, though, the careful bolstering support Hive has wrapped strong and steady up against Steve's own thoughts. His shoulder bumps lightly against Steve's, his smile quick and then vanishing again. "I know you will." He shakes his head, though, tucking his spoon between his teeth; he holds his plate in one hand, his other arm hooking down around a rail of scaffolding as he swings himself down off his perch. Hangs for a moment before dropping out of sight onto a rail below -- then a brace, then the actual catwalk so that he can make it to the ladder and climb back to the ground.