ArchivedLogs:In Which Communication Is Not Happening On The Same Wavelength
| In Which Communication Is Not Happening On The Same Wavelength | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
2015-11-26 "We're not them." (Part of Flu Season TP.) |
| Location
<XS> Conservatory | |
Tall panes of glass keep this large indoor garden warm year round. Tended to by the school's groundskeeper, the conservatory is lush with plant life, a carefully cultivated paradise within Xavier's walls. The room serves as a classroom as well; in the center of the garden a ring of seats forms a small circle, a favorite locale for some teachers to hold court. The influx of new faces around the school means less and less place to find space to yourself, fewer quiet spots to sit alone and think. The green refuge of the conservatory is -- -- not one of those spaces. At the moment there are raised voices coming from a back corner, sharp and angry in irritable Japanese. Taylor is exchanging none-too-pleased words with a tall skinny teenage girl in dirty torn clothes, her long black hair pulled back in a ponytail and one finger jabbing the tentacled teenager in the chest as she speaks. Eventually, though, she throws up a hand, stomps off out of the room. /He/ drops down heavily to sit on a bench, grimacing as he rubs at his temple with one limb.
There's the sound of a startled yell from the hall a few moments before Jack comes into the conservatory. Even invisible, the way he's tensed gives away how annoyed he is. Just jeans and a blue hoodie today, he's got his backpack on one shoulder which is a little strange considering the lack of classes. He stops when he almost walks into K.C. though, stepping carefully to the side so there's no collision. Disposable gloves on his hands, he slips something into his pocket before looking past K.C. to see Taylor and lifting a hand to wave. Taylor's jaw clenches up, a muscle jumping in his temple as K.C. approaches. His shoulders tighten, eyes squeezing shut. He rubs harder at his temple, exhaling slowly and, finally, giving his head a small shake. 'No,' he finally just signs back, tired. 'Not me.' There's a small exhausted slump to his shoulders, here. His chin lifts slightly to Jack. K.C. relaxes, stepping back forward away from the door. "Good." She nods, firmly. "But her." She's looking in the direction the girl had just fled. Not looking at Jack, though. Kind of frowning, weight shifting a little from one foot to the other. "... tired?" she hazards, when Taylor denies being angry. Jack just gives K.C. a long long as she speaks but lets it go with a sigh. He moves to find a place to sit down, signing once he makes sure his gloves are on right. 'Tired of the new people seems more right' he signs. At least he's tired of them already. Taylor looks between K.C. and Jack with a frown, a harder rub at his temple. His jaw stays clenched. 'Her, yes.' His eyes drift past the others to the glass walls, the dark night outside. There's a long hesitation, his sign in response hesitant as well. 'Don't know.' His head shakes slightly. "I think I passed tired a week ago." His voice certainly /sounds/ tired, though. "If it had been us --" His head shakes quickly. 'They'd have let us die.' "Passed tired," K.C. echoes, frowning. "Passed tired -- what's after tired? What's after... what's after tired." Her fingers stop their fluttering, curling into a fist, then uncurling. Reaching out for Taylor, then dropping to her side. Then lifting again, resuming their repetitive motion in the air. "If-if-if. Not them. Not us. We're not them." Jack's shoulders slump as Taylor signs something Jack has been thinking and he nods. 'They would,' he signs. 'Jerks' he adds. There's a little laugh in reply to K.C. though. 'No. We aren't them.' One side of Taylor's mouth hooks up in a very brief curl of a smile. It fades, soon. "I guess we're not." His arm drops, wrapping in around himself. "After tired..." His eyes drop to the ground, head shaking slowly. 'Dead.' K.C. leans in closer, /frowning/ deeper as she examines Taylor. Now she /does/ reach out a hand, /poking/ hard at his shoulder. And then huffing. "Still alive. Don't lie. Don't /lie/." For once, there's actual inflection in her monotone voice -- just a small sharpening emphasis on this last word. Jack frowns too but it is unseen. He reaches out as well to place what he hopes is a reassuring hand on Taylor's shoulder. He doesn't know what to say but he wants to help somehow. He glances at K.C. at the change in her voice, surprised by it. There's no comment from him though. Taylor lifts a hand, fist circling against his heart when K.C. huffs at him. It puts a small crooked smile back on his face, though, rumpling up the bandaging still wrapped against his jaw. "My bad. I'm just -- ready for all this to --" His head shakes. 'Not sure how much more sitting around here waiting to hear who else is dead I can take.' "My bad. My bad. My bad..." K.C.'s head shakes. "Bad, yeah, bad, all bad. Don't wait." Her hand bats lightly at the air. "I can tell you. All the dead. Or don't wait. Where would you go? Where else." Jack lets his hand drop after a moment, eyes closing. 'Waiting sucks' he signs in agreement. K.C. just has him looking as confused as empty clothes can. Shaking his head, Jack considers Taylor a few moments. "{Anything I can do to help out?}" he asks in Spanish. Taylor's arm is lifting again, rubbing once more at his head, his eyes squeezing back shut against some unseen pain. "What else can we do but wait?" His eyes crack back open. The look he gives Jack is wry. "{Bring back the dead?}" K.C.'s fingers flutter at the air again. "What else, what else. Look, search, find. What else." "{Sorry,}" Jack murmurs. "{They left that out of my ghost instruction manual,}" a half hearted attempt at a joke to lighten the mood, still in Spanish. And then he's looking up at K.C. in surprise and confusion again. He signs something carefully to her. 'Search for what?' he glances at Taylor before looking back to K.C. with an unseen frown. "{I've been doing some detective work...}" he trails off. "{You'd think that would be important. Priority. Or -- I guess, if you knew how to bring back the dead it'd thin the ranks a bit, wouldn't it?}" Taylor manages a very small smile, though it fades soon. He lowers his snakelike arm, stopping the rubbing at his temple though his grimace of pain doesn't cease as he looks at K.C. "Search? For --" He shakes his head in confusion, though looks at Jack with a trace of surprise. "Huh? {Detective -- wait, what? What have you been -- what?}" The Spanish mostly just goes over K.C.'s head, her brows furrowing as she stares off towards the windows. Jack's motions draw her eyes somewhat back towards the others, though, and she nods. 'Search. Information. Search answers. Always searching. You're always searching. I'm always searching.' "Better," she says aloud. "Better than waiting. Better than dying." 'Search for what information and answer?' Jack signs again, confused by K.C.'s reply. He takes a breath and runs his hand through his hair, knocking his hood off in the process. He looks around to make sure no one is listening in on their conversation before pulling his hood back up. "{I started just...looking to see if I could figure out where this whole...epidemic started. Maybe get an idea of a patient zero or something. I needed to do something to...not be waiting,}" he explains, looking to Taylor. "Woah. Really?" Taylor's eyes widen; he's looking at K.C. with an uncertain frown and then at Jack with a blink, a small straightening of his previously slumped posture. "{I mean you're -- but -- have you found anything?}" 'Sick answer. People dying. Not getting better.' K.C. shakes her head, a deep frown on her face. 'Who what when where why answer.' "Really, really." Her fingers close, open again to spread out wide. The screech of jangling dissonant static in her mind grows louder. The empty hood nods and Jack exhales slowly. His thoughts are filled with a mix of worry and quietly thinking he might be crazy. "{Yes but...not what I was looking for. I found out the whole thing seemed like it started in certain specific neighborhoods. And a lot of the earliest people infected were...mutants,}" he says. "{And I'm getting a very bad feeling from this,}" he says, rubbing the back of his neck. He looks up at K.C. and nods a little. 'I have been looking around here too. Trying to figure out that,' he signs. The tip of one of Taylor's tentacles rubs against his unbandaged cheek. His brow furrows deeply. "But -- it's a /disease/, you don't think..." He hesitates, uncertain. "I mean, a disease that spreads by talking, if even just a couple people had it, it'd make /sense/ for it to hit a certain population first. Wouldn't it?" He doesn't sound entirely sure. "Because people are more likely to talk to other people -- like them..." His head shakes, kind of in denial. 'This is already so ugly.' "Spreads by talking. Spreads by talking -- doesn't spread by talking." K.C. shakes her head. "No, no. Doesn't spread by talking." "{I really hope I'm just crazy. But I've been finding stuff about where the infection started up and...yeah, I think it might be uglier than it already is but I'm getting to the ends of what I can do here,}" Jack sighs, gloved hand scrubbing at his face a moment. He really hopes he's just imagining this and the bad feeling isn't right. An unseen frown is directed at K.C. a moment later. 'How is it spread then?' he signs. Taylor's brow rumples. 'Writing too, right?' He shakes his head. "Do you -- think someone spread it? Like... on purpose? I know two years ago they said -- they said Jax and Dusk did but that. Was bullshit. Right?" Now he sounds kind of apprehensive. 'Not writing. Not talking.' K.C. shakes her head again, more firmly. "Communicating." 'Different-different.' "Communicating. Understanding. Have to understand. If you don't understand..." She frowns over at the window again. "Jax spread it. Jax and Dusk spread it." Her weight rocks back and forth a little bit faster. "{Not them, obviously. But...yes. That is the bad feeling I had. That someone did this...all on purpose,}" Jack's hands tremble a little as he says this. He clenches them into fists, the latex gloves squeaking a little. At first, K.C. gets him tensing and light objects around them rattle with an angry telekinetic pulse. He fights back the anger though, registering his misunderstanding. Frustration rises in him as he tries to remember the signs to say what he wants. 'What do you mean? It isn't just hearing and seeing English?' Taylor winces, one eye squeezing shut again and his head dipping at the anger risng in Jack's mind. "No, no. They didn't. The news just said that, it wasn't true. I don't -- I /don't/ understand." A shudder passes through him. "But if someone did do this on purpose --" His shoulders slump, again. "God. We're really fucked." "Communicating. Knowing. Understanding --" K.C. is rocking back and forth a little faster, her face scrunching up and cheeks puffing out, though the flat monotone of her voice hasn't changed. Her fingers poke at something in the air, one place and then another. "Same words, different meanings. No disease if you're not -- on the same wavelength." The flutter of her fingers describes a wave in the air. Her hand falls to her side after, her eyes scrunched up. "... hard to explain. I'm never -- on the right wavelength. How do you find who started it." "{I...don't understand it all either,} Jack admits quietly. He just stares at K.C. though, confused. After a few moments, he takes a small notebook out of his pocket and flips a few pages before starting to scribble some notes down. When he finishes, he signs something and shrugs. 'Been researching online.' Taylor's crooked smile is kind of wan. Brief. Not really all that amused. "... not on the same wavelength? That means you're safe then, right?" He doesn't say it with any particular seriousness. One hand scuffs over his bald head. Much /more/ serious is his question to Jack: "... what would you do if you found them?" "Safe. Safe, safe, safe, nobody safe." K.C. bats at the air, the motion sharp and quick like shooing /that/ idea away. She shoves one hand into her pocket, turning aside to start for the door. "Online. Online. Yeah. Me too. Always online. Find sickness. Find cases. Find crimes. Internet has all the information." Her head bows towards the floor as she trudges back towards the exit. Jack stares further as K.C. goes, frowning deeply at that news. He still doesn't understand her at all. Taylor's question gets a pause and Jack gives a laugh devoid of any real amusement. "{You can probably guess what...part of me might want to do. But...I'd probably do something else. Would just depend on what I found and stuff,}" he shrugs as he says this. There's a long pause before Jack tries a smile even if it can't be seen. "{Want to go get a snack and find something to distract ourselves from waiting for awhile?}" "Wait, crimes?" But K.C. is already leaving; Taylor just looks after her in puzzlement. He rubs a tentacle across his eyes, stiffly getting to his feet and nodding to Jack. "{A snack sounds amazing. If we're really lucky, there'll be something in the kitchen besides beans.}" Pushing to his feet too, Jack tugs on his hood to make sure its still in place. "{Then lets hope we're lucky.}" | |
