ArchivedLogs:Sleepwalker

Sleepwalker
Dramatis Personae Flicker, Jax	Monday, 24 February, 2020 "Some things aren't worth saving." (Part of future past TP.)
Location Subway Car
Long, gray, and very tubular, there is very little to distinguish one subway car from another in New York City, aside from their serial numbers (if you care to stare at them long enough to commit it to memory). Seats line the walls and poles divide up the spaces between, allowing passengers to hold on during their speedy journey through the tunnels under the earth. There are ads on the walls to break up the monotony of gray and glass, political and commercial pops of color to distract the eye, allowing people something other than people to study while they ride. There's no movement in this traincar. Hasn't been a long-long while, to gauge by the state of it. Its outside is well covered in graffiti and rust and dirt, its seats chewed-up and falling apart. Surprisingly clean on the inside, though, considering the years' accumulation of ratshit and trash and slime molds growing on the tunnel walls outside. Somewhere above, this part of the Bronx is war-torn, barely inhabitable and barely inhabited. Down here it shows, transit long since fallen into disrepair, many of the tunnels squatted by those who can defend what little turf they've carved out. This place was never a station, never a real platform. Kind of a stopgap repair tunnel in between stations, less-trafficked than some. The scraping on the walls shows where the car was lifted, /dragged/ bodily down to its new home. Flicker's new home, today. Maybe not next week. But right now. It's been swept out, tidied up insofar as is possible. Some of the chairs torn out and moved aside, some old sheets hung up by way of curtain-partitions to give the car a semblance of /bedroom/. Two of them have their curtains drawn right now but a third is thrown open, not much inside it but a backpack, a sleeping bag, a very dirty and much-abused small tribble. Probably colorful once. Kind of now a filthy brown-black. Flicker is just wriggling up out of the sleeping bag, dressed in boots and dirty grey cargo pants, dirty canvas jacket over grey Columbia hoodie over several layers of clothes, fleece cap over his head. He digs a water bottle and a granola bar out of his backpack, flitting quietly to the jammed-half-open door of the subway car to lean against it as he opens the bottle to take a sip. In the dim and grimy tunnel outside there's series of quiet footsteps, bare toes slapping on damp stone. Breathing, rough and slightly too-fast. A small uncertain hitch -- maybe a sob? Then slower breaths, deeper, calmer. "Okay," even in whisper Jax's voice carries its once-familiar thick drawl. "Okay. Dreamin', right. I think. I think dreamin'. Real -- cold -- dark. Dreamin'." Somewhere in the murky-gloom outside he's -- not really dressed for a war. Cheerful, bright, definitely not in outerwear. Silvery-foil leggings with bright mismatched stripey legwarmers, a black miniskirt, pink 'I'm one of the bravest girls alive' tee over a bell-sleeved black and purple shirt, bright mismatched armwarmers, blue-and-silver dragonfly eyepatch. Vividly pink-purple-blue hair. Nails in cheerfully pink-dark pink ombre. Shimmery purple-silver makeup. No shoes. /Kind/ of shivery as he wraps his arms around himself, takes cautious steps down the tunnel towards the (not-quite) abandoned traincar. Just inside the half-open door, Flicker's breath catches, too. An echoed hitch. His tentacle curls tighter around his water bottle. His other hand, less sure, less steady, fumbles and drops the granola bar to the subway car floor. He leans down in a hurry to scoop it up, jam it into a pocket on his way out the door. He reappears behind Jax, a short distance off in the darkened tunnel. Quiet, for a moment. Muscles tensed and coiled hard -- breath now held. Darkness or not, it doesn't stop Jax from turning at the motion. Doesn't stop a faint shimmer of wall from materializing between the two of them. Then vanishing a moment later, replaced by a faint silvery-white glow that bathes the tunnel in wan light. His eye flicks up over dirty clothes, tentacle, much-more-scarred face. "Oh. Oh, honey-honey --" -- is about as much as he gets /out/ before Flicker is launching towards him, a couple quick hops and then arms wrapping tight around the other man. A fierce hard squeeze (that smells unfortunately of way too long spent living in sewers and abandoned tunnels with way too few showers in between), face pressing into Jax's bright hair. His fingers dig in against Jax's back. Running up against spine. Shoulderblades. Like /familiarizing/ himself with this terrain. It takes a moment for him to pull in a shaky breath. "... should get you inside. Jeez, man, you don't even have /shoes/." Shiver-blip; a half-moment later they are in the train, lit here by one small electric lantern down against the floor. "-- hnk!" Jax doesn't have time to protest suddenhug, but then again he isn't resisting it anyway. Leaning in despite grime and bad smells, curling his arms tentatively back around Flicker. "Uh -- you. No. I. Didn't. Exactly -- plan for this?" In the subway car he shivers, settling down onto a seat and curling his feet up beneath himself to get them off the cold ground. "What /is/ -- this. I mean, Jim said -- be ready. But. But I don't even know. What we're supposed to be..." He trails off, a little bewildered. "I mean, I was -- I think I fell /asleep/ workin'..." Flicker settles in on the seat beside Jax, shucking his jacket and hoodie both to drape the former over Jax's shoulders and the latter over his lap. "What, you don't just sleep in full tac gear?" His tongue clicks against his teeth. "Jane would be disappointed." His eyes flick over Jax. Small smile touching his lips. "Could be worse. Coulda planned on sleep. Be here in pajamas." Jax's cheeks flush. He burrows into the jacket, pulling the sweatshirt over his legs. His nose crinkles up with a quick-bright grin. "I don't really sleep in much at all." Flicker snorts, head dropping back. His bionic arm curls out around Jax's shoulders, pulling him in close. "Like I /said/. Could be /worse/." A turn of head presses his lips to the top of Jax's head again. "/God/. It's really you. Jax..." His arm squeezes tighter. Head lifts to look Jax over again. Jax tucks his head against Flicker's shoulder, nestling up close to the younger -- now older? -- man's side. "What happened?" Flicker's lips press. Thin. "To you or to the world?" Jax answers this with a small shrug of shoulder. "All of it. I guess. To. To everything." Flicker's eyes close. Slow. A tightening pinch that creases lines at their corners, drags the ragged scars in his face into deeper pits and valleys. "Two years back. Or so. There was a bomb. /Big/ one. Blew up half of Westchester. Part of the Bronx. It was -- there's nothing up there, Jax. Everything, everyone. It's just a wasteland. It was a schoolday, though. You -- and everyone else there. Cyke, the Professor, half the team just. Gone." A shiver passes through him. Up his side, not really carrying as much through to the tentacle coiled around Jax's shoulders. "Things really just fell apart after that. DHS said the Brotherhood did it but -- nobody really knows. They used it as an excuse, though. Sent the Sentinels in -- they took /over/ the city. Shane --" There's another tightness in his face. "He'd joined. What was left of the team. After you died. But..." His words stop. Halt for a moment over a hard swallow. Jax's shoulders are tightening through this, stiff and harder. His knees pull up against his chest, chin dropping onto them. "What happened to Shane?" It's a small shaky question. "Where's /Spence/?" Long beat of hesitation before Flicker answers. "Sentinels got Shane." A little gruffer. Little discomfited. "Spence -- nobody knows. He hadn't been doing well already. Powers kind of -- malfunctioning all over the place /before/ the world went upside down. And after you and Shane died he --" Shrug. "Disappeared. People looked. Everyone looked." Jax's eyes close. His arms curl against his shins, fingers digging hard into the sweatshirt. Flicker is quiet, too. His cheek drops to rest against the top of Jax's head again, arm rubbing slowly against the outside of Jax's. "And the world?" Muffled against the sweatshirt, Jax's voice is quiet. Flicker's is low as well. "Things -- just. Got worse. They started detaining telepaths. Started detaining anyone registered too high. Then the Brotherhood freed a bunch of telepaths and one -- assassinated the President. And then they just started detaining /everyone/. Every mutant everywhere -- required to go to these horrible camps. And you know Oscorp's gotta be making bank off this, they're running the camps, they're making the bots." Jax's breaths are slow and steady, even if around them the pale dim light is trembling. "Okay. Okay. Okay." Under Flicker's arm he is trembling. Maybe it's the cold -- maybe not. "Okay. So we stop -- we stop. That. Stop the assassination. Stop the bomb. Stop Oscorp developing the Sentinels. We find those threads and we pull them, right? And it'll all unravel. All this will unravel." "That's what we're hoping." Flicker nods, slowly. "But the thing is we don't even know where these threads start. And what's left of us, man, it's like. We're half-starved in the sewers or locked in camp or depowered, how're we going to break into Oscorp or DHS and find this information? We don't have the numbers /or/ the tech or the anything. Which means if we're going to get information back to you --" "... we have to get information first?" Jax's tongue presses up beneath his upper lip. Flicker's hand lifts, turns up. Apologetic. Sorry, bro. "It would help if we had some kind of schedule, you know? Something to work with to -- to /know/ when this was going to happen so we could get people together. Ready." Jax's smile is a little tired -- a little lopsided. "Or I could just sleep in body armour with a full backpack of supplies /on/ me every night." "Would do Jane so proud." Flicker's breath huffs out in a shivery-small laugh. "She was working for Dr. Toure, last I heard. He's basically what's left of the Clinic." His head shakes, small, tired. His hand, somewhat shivery too, reaches out to rest on Jax's arm. "Just -- please. I feel like I've been /running/ for so long while everyone out there is -- fighting and dying for --" His teeth grit. "I just want this to change something. I need this to change something." Jax frowns at the shivering. He pulls the sweatshirt off his knees, draping it /back/ over Flicker and instead just snuggling close to the other man. "Ain't really never knowed you t'run from the fight, honey-honey. You're fightin'. Jus' fightin' a little different." His teeth press down against his lower lip with a click against his lip rings. "... but if we /do/ change the future. If we stop all this, then y'all -- I mean, all this -- you won't --" Flicker's jaw tightens harder. He turns away as he pulls the sweatshirt back on. Looks back towards the drawn sheet-curtains in the back of the subway car. "That bomb killed a million people. The war that's been since -- I can't even count." "We'd be killin' a whole entire /world/." The light around Jax flares brighter, briefly. "That's more'n a million. That's more'n a couple-million. Feel like win or lose we -- lose. /You/ --" "/Tss/." Flicker cuts into Jax's words with a small hiss. "You'd be /saving/ an entire world. From /becoming/ this one. This isn't worth --" His arms curl around himself after he has his sweatshirt back on, wrapping around tight. "They're going to kill all of us. Back then, that world, we've still got a chance." The light dies back down. Jax lifts his hand, fingers tracing lightly against the scars in Flicker's cheek. He curls in close against the other man, tucking his head at Flicker's shoulder. "A chance for what, though." Flicker doesn't answer. Just curls his arm back around Jax's shoulder. Squeezes in tight.