Logs:Confess your sins, lest you suffer these punishments

Confess your sins, lest you suffer these punishments
cn: violence, blood, suicidal ideation
Dramatis Personae Lily, Polaris
In Absentia	2020-11-17 "Four years in there and now I'm here comforting you?"
Location '<NYC> Chimaera Arts - Dumbo'
This is just one of the many abandoned warehouses in DUMBO, and like many of them it has recently changed hands. Unlike most of those, however, it does not have some corporate developer's sign out front promising a transformation into luxury condominiums or a boutique shopping center or the latest concept restaurant. Instead it's marked by a piece of weathered but wildly colorful plywood propped up on a stack of broken pallets, which reads "Chimaera Art Space!" above "chimaera.org" in smaller letters. The warehouse is moderately large and decorated with graffiti art in various styles--some of it recognizable as the work of renowned local street artists. A pair of monstrous scrap metal sculptures, perhaps still works in progress, flank the entrance. The building itself has undergone significant renovation recently, complete with wiring, plumbing, and a modular partitioning system. The grounds, too, have been cleaned up, ramshackle fences torn down and rusting detritus removed in favor of reclaimed (and brilliantly repainted) outdoor furniture ringing an impressively engineered firepit. It is late, and activity in Chimera seems to be drawing to a close for the evening. On one end of the warehouse, volunteers are taking down a partition, though an easel pointing to a de-escalation training that took place in that partition remains untouched. Most of the participants have dispersed by now, though a few linger asking questions of the organizers, holding folding chairs close to their chests. Lily, behind another partition, is ignoring all that activity in favour of swearing, in most un-Mormon-like fashion, at the table saw. Her blue overalls are covered in sawdust, as are her Blundstones and the long-sleeved heather grey shirt, despite the protection of the overalls' bib. Her hair is out of her face in a low braid, but still manages to get caught in the ear protectors and safety glasses as Lily pulls those off her face. With a grumble she tosses them onto the table, pulling the splintered piece of two-by-four off the saw for a closer look. Polaris is one of the trainers' pets helping break down the partition and put away chairs. She evidently came straight from work, still redolent after all these hours of good, strong coffee, wearing a black canvas motorcycle jacket open over a black fitted t-shirt with a silver graphic of an intricate origami unicorn and black jeans, her heavy black boots shot through with steel hardware. Her makeup is starting to blur, though her winged black eyeliner at least is still sharp, her hair twisted up at the back of her head, casual but not messy. She's just dropped a couple of the partition segments back in storage and slows to a stop at the sound of Lily's voice. Hesitating outside for a long moment, she finally slips into the workshop, knocking belatedly on the inside of the partition wall. "Whatcha making?" she asks quietly, her eyes making a long, slow pass over the tools before settling on the other woman. “Oh, sh-“ Lily starts at the knocking, dropping the stripped piece of wood with a clatter onto the warehouse. She scoops it up before turning to face Polaris, holding the fresh-cut face of it to her body. “Sorry. You startled me.” Her eyes flicker from Polaris, to the wood in her hand, to a tabletop set aside on another bench, covered in a beautiful mosaic pattern. “I’m trying to make table legs,” she answers after a moment. “Emphasis on trying.” One hand goes to her ear, twisting at the stainless steel industrial lodged there. “Were you at, uh -“ Her head nods vaguely in the direction of the easel, the remaining chairs, “the training?” "I don't mind if you swear, either." Polaris follows Lily's gaze to the tabletop on the other bench. Drifts over to it slowly. "I haven't actually converted and I'll probably be a shitty fucking Mormon if I do." She rests her hand on the mosaic, her breathing deliberately slow, her shoulders tight. "Guess you didn't--learn it with him? I don't know why I imagine twins just doing everything together." She looks back up at Lily, trying and failing to smile. "Only child, you know. Until I found myself a sister, anyway." Her eyes dart in the direction Lily indicates, and she nods. "Yeah. I've mostly been escalating out there lately, but I'm trying to look at my place in the resistance like, long-term, you know. Joining up with the Care Bears." Her eyes start to drop to the table again, but she fixes them on Lily with a will. "You with the medics now, right?" A faint flush rushes into Lily’s cheeks for a moment, then a sigh of relief. “I was a pretty shitty Mormon at the end, too.” She hefts up the wood back onto the table saw, aligns it with the blade and leaves it there. “We didn’t do everything together - but this, we did, for a while. Spotting each other so we didn’t cut off our fingers.” She takes a step back, hugs her arms to her torso. “I just didn’t - keep up with it, after they kicked him out.” A small shrug. “I’m rusty.” She presses her lips together for a moment at ‘resistance’, but nods approvingly at the mention of the Care Bears. “Yeah. At least until I figure out what’s next.” Lily leans back against the table, not dropping her gaze from Polaris. Her tone warms a little, loses the nostalgic edge.“Your sister. When did you find her?” "Bet I'd be shittier." There's a glint of humor in Polaris's wide hazel eyes, here, though she still doesn't smile. "I mean, I dunno. Heavenly Parents are probably more interested in how we treat each other than how much coffee we chug, anyhow." She raises dark green eyebrows, glances down at the wood that might or might not be destined to become a table leg. "Rusty, huh. Glad you still got all your fingers." There's a vague note of concern in this, her eyes automatically dropping to the other woman's hands for confirmation. "Is it weird? To like walk in his..." She frowns, shaking her head, finally heaves a frustrated sigh. "Nevermind, that's--sorry. I met Wendy freshman year of high school. I don't know how or why she put up with me back then, but--she's been there for me ever since." Her cheeks flush faintly pink. "I try to be there for her, too." Lily lets the corner of her mouth quirk upward, in what could be the beginnings of a smile, waggles her fingers to confirm she still has them. Her mouth opens, closes as Polaris interrupts her own question. “It’s okay, really,” she offers, but Polaris has already gone ahead. “She sounds like a good friend. Good family,” she corrects herself. Lily fiddles with her industrial again. “Was she with you, when you met Dawson?” This is asked hesitantly, her gaze dropping to the floor for a moment. “Sorry. It’s hard, figuring out what questions are okay, which ones are off-limits still. You don’t have to answer.” Polaris licks her lips, wearing away the remnants of her shimmery lip gloss. "It just feels like you're--I mean not trying to replace him, but." She looks down at the mosaic tabletop again, her fingertips delicately tracing the inlaid wood. "I don't really know where I was going with that." Her head shakes again, a tress of green hair working itself loose to hang down beside her cheek. "She's amazing," this agreement is soft, reverent. She looks back up, blinking. "Yeah, actually. She was. We--we were all uh..." Her eyes squeeze tightly shut. "We were locked up--in a secret government mutant research lab together." The shrug of her shoulders is tight and jerky. "Not exactly a...meet cute." “But like I’m trying to replace him.” Lily sighs, leans further into the support of the table. “You certainly aren’t the only one who thinks that. And it’s easy to see why.” A glance at the tabletop, at the table leg. “I like to think. If I got here sooner. I could have been friends, properly, with some of you.” Her eyes widen as Polaris’ close, hand reaching out for the other woman. “I’m sorry to remind you. Of all that.” Now there is a tremor in Lily’s voice, faint underneath a layer of artificial calm. "Not trying to accuse you," Polaris adds, though it doesn't sound as conciliatory as she perhaps intended. "I mean. Everyone processes grief differently, right? And the circumstances are so frakked up. But..." Her hand is trembling, and she presses it down hard against the smooth surface of the wood. "I dunno if we'd have been friends, but I think it woulda been easier to try. I was...aiming to be your sister, eventually." She's looking everywhere but at Lily, now. "I think about it all the time, anyway." Her tone is striving for dismissive, but doesn't quite get there. "Probably shouldn't have just. Dumped that on you. We don't usually talk about it with folks who weren't--you know, involved." “I’ve been thinking about that, too.” Lily’s tone, in contrast, has slipped into something earnest. “I think it would have been really lovely to be sisters.” Lily is looking at the green-haired woman now with a sad smile. “And you’ve been, I think, the most willing to see me of everyone I’ve met here.” A moment passes as a complicated expression working its way over Lily’s features. “I think I may have been involved, actually.” This sentence is hesitant, slow to work its way out of Lily’s throat. Her eyes drop to Polaris' hands, looking at the rings there. "Yeah. I think it would have been--" Polaris's eyes are brimming, and she has to visibly fight back the sob trying to work its way out of her. "I get why people are having a hard time with you. I'm having a hard time with you. But you lost him, too, no matter how complicated that was and I just..." She lets out a long, shuddering breath, the tears finally unshed. "I don't know. I'm trying. To be the kind of woman he would have been proud to call wife." Lily's admission at first draws only a blank look from her. Then her brows furrow slowly. "May have? How?" “I shouldn’t have mentioned -“ Lily bites her lip. Her eyes cast around the room, flickering over the blades that linger everywhere in the woodshop. When she speaks again, her voice is low, barely above a whisper. “My mutation is easy to hide. Prometheus wanted me as a scientist, not a test subject. I bought everything they were saying, and I don’t know how to make it right, now.” Her eyes are trained on the floor again. “Been trying to figure out how to ask. Who to ask.” Polaris's eyes open very wide, her lips parting too, though no words come out. An ominous rattling rises all around them, steel hand tools threatening to leap from their neatly arranged pegboards and racks. "You--" she finally manages, her voice shaking with fury. "You--" Half a dozen tools do escape from their assigned places and fly at Lily. They're fast but not particularly well aimed, some missing their mark altogether and some thudding painfully into her before falling to the floor, but one chisel tears through her sleeve and slices her forearm open. Polaris gasps, eyes still wide though as much with panic now as rage, slapping her hand to her mouth. The rattling around them subsides as abruptly as it started. Lily flinches, but doesn’t move from her spot when the barrage comes. A screwdriver thuds into her stomach, a wrench into her shoulder, and the chisel cuts her open, but it’s not until the tools drop and a hammer lands on her foot that Lily actually gasps with pain. It’s a moment before she notices the blood trickling down her arm. She makes no move to stop the bleeding, just stares at the wound. “You missed,” she says at last. “Won’t bleed out fast enough, there.” Lily's voice finally breaks Polaris's horrified trance. "Oh God," comes out in a choked whisper. She moves resolutely from where she's been rooted, stretching a hand out to the first aid kit mounted to the wall--the case is not metal, but something inside it must be ferrous, for it flies to her unerringly. "Sh--" Somehow, in this of all moments, she manages to bite back the curse. "I--I didn't--" Her hands are shaking almost too badly to get the kit open, but at length she manages to extract a thick gauze pad and, pushing Lily's sleeve up roughly, clamp it down against the wound. Only now does she look up at the other woman's face, her own pale and her expression unreadable now. "Did you know?" Her voice is very small. "What they were doing to us?" There is a bit of a glassy look in Lily’s eyes, her focus trained on the blood dripping down her arm, stain forming where the fabric catches some of it. Wherever she’s gone, her attention doesn’t come back until Polaris has taken her arm and pressed gauze to it. Her free left hand comes up, holds up the sleeve to keep it out of the way. “I swear I didn’t know. On Dawson’s memory, I swear I didn’t,” her voice cracks, “I didn’t even make the connection until last week.” There is a small bubble of something in her throat, a sob choked back down. “It’s a fucking bullshit excuse, I know, but - I never - we only got cell cultures. DNA strands. Told us it was donated.” Her cheeks are flushed, eyes damp. Polaris's hand tightens on Lily's arm--just for a painful moment, until she catches herself, letting out the breath she had been holding. "It's not an excuse," she replies at last, soft. "It just--is what it is. And what it is frakking blows." The tears finally do spill from her eyes in a rush. "I was in there four years. Wendy too. She kept me together, but I don't know how much longer I coulda..." She sucks in a sharp breath. "Then he swept in like an angel of the Lord and led us to freedom." The same breath sighs from her, soft and shuddery. "I loved him and--he loved you. That's--I don't know what that is, but it's not nothing." Her hazel eyes are wide and fearful. "So. I need to know you're gonna be safe. I mean..." Her eyes drop to the gauze pad in her hand, just a hint of red beside where her whitened knuckles are pressing. "I'll help you clean this up, but. I need you to be safe." Behind Polaris, a saw blade, shaken loose by the barrage of metal, rotates slowly in the air, just a little above the floor. The cutting edge points towards Lily, hovers threateningly there before dropping with a clatter to the ground. “God. Four years. I am so, so sorry.” Her voice is hoarse, ragged suddenly. When she looks at Polaris again, Lily’s eyes are wet with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry.” The repetition unlocks something inside, and the tears finally flow freely. Lily’s hand presses against Polaris’ hand, pushing on the gauze and clinging to the other woman’s hand. When she can speak again, her voice is wet and trembling. “I just - I don’t know what to do. I can’t go home now, knowing what I’ve been part of, what I did - but I can’t stay?” It’s unclear what she means - staying in New York, or staying on this mortal plane. “I can try to be safe. For you. For him.” A pause. “But you don’t - owe me - your sympathy. I shouldn’t have even - said.” Polaris glances back at the saw just as it clatters back to the floor, her expression faintly puzzled. The saw, then the various tools she had flung at Lily, start slowly returning to their places--or to places, at least, if likely not the correct ones. "I'm not sympathetic." She stares hard at the bloodied chisel where it fell, struggling to keep her voice even. "I'm really fucking angry and I have no idea how to even think about this yet." Her lips compress. "But yeah, you shouldn't have. It's frakked to put your absolution on people you've hurt and -- shit." Her eyes are a little wild, her hitched breath caught between a laugh and a sob. "Four years in there and now I'm here comforting you?" The tears don’t - stop, exactly, but they slow as Lily breathes in, breathes out, focuses on the space between her and the other woman. Slowly, every movement deliberate, Lily slides out from where she is pinched between Polaris and the table saw, steps away from the potential table leg. Her hand easily takes over applying pressure. “Would you let me comfort you? Would you have if I hadn’t said?” These questions come softly. “I’d like to earn your trust. One day. But.” She bites her lip. “I seem to have fucked that up right now.” Her purse is on a chair near the partition - Lily grabs it with her right hand, glances back at Polaris and the tabletop. “I’m sorry.” Polaris releases Lily's arm with some apparent difficulty, and though her hands are shaking now she takes a certain care in handing over the first aid, not wholly pulling away until the other woman's hand is in place. She does not move from the spot she was standing immediately, though. Does not turn to face Lily. Her breathing is fast and shallow. "I don't think you can now," she says, her voice shaky and uncertain. "I don't know if--if you could have, anyway." She finally does look up at Lily as the other woman heads to the door. "I can't speak for one day. I can barely speak for right now. I guess--we'll find out."