ArchivedLogs:Sometimes

Sometimes
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jax
In Absentia	2014-07-03 After triage. Part of Prometheus TP.
Location <NYC> The Mendel Clinic - Lower East Side
With its sharp crystalline edges and sleek lines knifing up into the sky, this building is one of the most /distinctive/ new additions to the neighborhood. An angular structure in glass and steel, the tall tower has a deceptively slender look to it that is belied by the heavy security as soon as you enter the doors. The front doors are frosted with the Clinic's logo -- a rising sun over a rod of Asclepius -- a motif echoed in many places throughout the building. Visitors to the clinic must first pass through a small mantrap, guarded by some of the Clinic's security guards; once they make it through the metal detector and airlock's double doors they emerge into the much more hospitable lobby. With dark wood floors underneath and comfortable black and red couches at its edges, the high windows give the room an airy feel. A bank of elevators to one side carry visitors to the many destination floors, while the wide welcome desk at the other side is manned by a security guard ready to help point visitors in the right direction. The clinic has had its hands full, since the team's return. Even the consolidation of some of the worst of the injuries only did so /much/ to help -- a few of those people still had considerably amounts of shrapnel and bullets buried /in/ them that continued doing damage even after Hived!Mihail's mitigation, there were a couple critically injured who /hadn't/ received such treatment, and a whole lot more /serious/ injuries that still needed a world of care. It's the wee hours, now -- Wednesday night, Thursday morning, the boundaries kind of blur when nobody's had a chance to sleep. Eloise and Mirror are lending their assistance to Kate and Corey and the Clinic's medical team is working overtime -- Rachel's gone straight into helping her fleet of nurses, and though Joshua is unconscious in a bed somewhere he'll likely be up and assisting the healers as soon as he has some energy back. Flicker is still in surgery, a strange blend of neatly healed and riddled with embedded metal that needs taking out before it kills him all /over/ again. And so Hive is waiting. Just waiting. It's been tense but /quiet/ on the mental network, crowded with minds but crowded with minds that he is keeping tightly /muted/, clearly audible to /him/ but there's not a whole lot of leaking across the wires. Just -- tense. That much can be felt, a coiled hard clench that is likely not helping put anyone at /ease/. Thankfully there's people lurking to help with that /too/, between social workers and empaths and Lucien's calming-numbing touch. 'Surgery', in a place very much not built for it, is taking place -- wherever it can. Cafeteria tables and doctor's offices and Hive is sitting, at the moment, in Rachel's otherwise-empty office, down the hall from where medical staff is doing their best with what they have at hand. He's dressed as he has been all day, jeans and a Grumpy Bear t-shirt and sneakers and though he looks haggard and rumpled and worn where he slumps in a desk chair he, at least, given his position on this team, has made it through unscathed. Outwardly. As Priority List goes, Jax isn't -- thanks to Hive's renegade intervention -- very high up on the list. His leg has been casted in vibrant rainbow tie-dye, his ugly but cauterized wounds causing him a lot of /pain/ but not a lot of immediate threat, with Dusk's blood running through him; though they've been dressed, further intervention will likely have to wait. His face is probably still a hideous mess, though at the moment the burned half has, at least, been hidden beneath clean white bandaging. He's in a wheelchair, broken leg propped up in front of him, and with his broken ribs and gut-wound at the moment he isn't even moving /that/ on his own power but wheeled here by a very pale Mendel guard with pitch-black eyes. He doesn't knock, when he comes in to Rachel's office. Just nudges open the door, letting Nightmare push him in but then dismissing the other guard with a quiet thanks. His good eye focuses over on Hive, his mind churning with a discomfited /blend/ of thoughts. A bright-hot anger blended with an uncomfortable sort of relief, a wonder if that was not the best course of action, a /guilt/ -- not at being alive, for once, but over Hive forced into a position where -- << What was that. >> That is, finally, what surfaces, quiet and level against the background of more chaotic thoughts. << What was what. The part we got fucking ordered to kill our best friend? >> Hive's softly echoing mental voice shivers into Jax's mind in a whisper that manages /harsh/ even while quiet, hissed out in a sharp burst that only barely manages to contain the lingering rage behind it. Only in a (still angry) afterthought is: << Or Ryan. Or /you/. Fuck you. Fuck him. How much have you fucking asked of us and we've always -- but that? >> << People were dying. >> There's a tightness in Jax's voice that isn't trying to be /defensive/, just exhausted and hurt and frayed to the end of his nerves. << /Someone/ was going to die there. At least we had a choice -- could /willingly/ -- >> << /Fuck you/, >> snaps back fiercely again, a twisting nauseating stab of pain twined through the anger, this time, guilty-sick, heavy, struggling. << Yeah. Right. There's always a choice. /We/ made a fucking choice, okay? >> Here, Jax is quiet. His mind turns the afternoon's events over -- and over, and somewhere behind this there is the thought of Flicker acid-pitted and near dead, Jim a charred-burned husk of tree trunk. Hive on his farm tucked into a hammock beneath the boughs of a human-faced cherry tree. A ruined bloody mess of flesh and bone mangled and twisted in the back of the van, barely recognizable beneath the brunt of so many accumulated injuries. A quiet fading mind shivering out of existence. << Sometimes -- >> << Sometimes there's no good choices, >> Hive answers back, and now here there's Jax's face with jaw bloodied and half-missing, Vector's tired droop on the old fire escape at Lighthaus. << Feel like we end up there kind of a lot. >> Jax pushes the other images out of his mind, clearing his headspace into something blanker, shifting mass of uneasy colours. << We just -- still need a team who -- >> << Lets you fucking die? No you don't. And we wouldn't be part of that fucking team anyway. >> The twisting notes through Hive's mind don't slacken. << (not sure) (we can be) (on /this/ team) (anyway.) >> In exhausted cloudy background concepts it's just -- exhausted. /Done/. He dredges that image of Flicker back up, holds it there a moment before letting it sink away. << Too fucking much of -- >> There's a pause, slow and uncertain. << Should just get our fucking head fixed. Go back to /building/ buildings. >> The feelings this stirs up in Jackson are muddled, a surge of relief at the idea of Hive finally getting treatment, a surge of dismay at the uncertainty how on earth they'd pull any of this /off/ without him; it comes out in the end only in tired acceptance. << You should take care of yourself. First. Always. >> This is answered with a thready note almost of laughter. Hive drags himself up from the chair, grabbing his cane to lean on it heavily as he shuffles past Jackson towards the door. << We're all so good at that. >> He leaves Jax in Rachel's office, stopping only to tell Nightmare to go wheel him back to bed.