Logs:Court

Court
Dramatis Personae Hive, Lucien, Matt
In Absentia Rasheed, Elie, Murphy	2024-11-13 "{The bribe comes next.}"
Location <NYC> Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
This room should be empty, its current resident off away for the latest of many tests. In Hive's temporary absence it has grown a visitor, tucked quietly in a chair beside the empty bed and currently extremely preoccupied with some work on his tablet. Lucien might perhaps be in between other work, dressed rather more elegantly than a hospital visit ought to warrant in a black suit with white pinstripes in a slick modern cut, the white shirt underneath cinched with a forest green tie with a subtle leafy pattern, labradorite cufflinks with a green flash, and black monk shoes embossed with leafy arabesques -- it's hard to say, his mind, as ever, is not betraying much. A deceptively blank stillness over the shifting waters beneath. On the table beside the bed is a small cardboard box, smelling faintly of coconut and pandan, with a green envelope atop it inscribed with Hive's name in elegant silver calligraphy. Hive is getting wheeled back in, after some time. His eyes cut sharp and narrowed to Lucien at his bedside, and the brief squeezing touch of his mind, though he says nothing at all, is distinctly cranky. He mumbles some variety of thanks to the orderlies who are helping him into bed. As they file out he's simply glowering in silence -- not at Luci, but at the box on the bedside with its elegant card. Lucien saves his work and tucks his tablet down in his slim leather laptop case. He offers no greeting, really. He's plucking up a slim thermos, fingers tapping idly against its matte surface as he launches straight into: "{I'm sure many of the irritating hippies you spend time with have been variably supportive of your terrible decisions. As if this decision to live or die has something to do with autonomy, as if it's your personal choice to make.}" This overture pulls a laugh from Hive, rough and startled. "Ai hia," he's muttering, low and incredulous. He does not bother addressing this immediately, though it has at least shaken him out of his tired apathy enough to reach for the box. He plucks the card off of it, sets it to the side -- he's opening the box first, to look inside, draw a slow-savoring breath of the small green cake inside with its elegantly vine-decorated frosting. "{Is this some kind of bribe? The fuck you think I have to offer you.}" "This is a birthday cake, darling. {If it's really to be your last trip round the sun you might at the very least enjoy something a little sweeter than being needled at all day.}" Lucien unlatches the lid of his thermos, and immediately closes it again, the satisfying pop-click sending a quiet soothing ruffle across the surface of his mind. "{The bribe comes next.}" Hive pulls his eyes away from the delicate cake. He's squinting kind of blearily over at Lucien, one eye twitching, small. There's a stretch of silence before intrigue eclipses his irritation. His mind has pressed down again, prickly and curious, but pulls back quick. The herculean effort of restraining himself from just asking after Lucien's coy overture is practically visible in his slow clench of jaw, slow squeeze of eyes, disgruntled hff. What he finally does ask is, "{Who the hell's choice do you think it is?}" There's another riffle, this time echoing the prickliness of Hive's abrasive touch. Lucien's extremely pleasant expression does not echo the ruffle, though, this small mental twinge the only betrayal of his deep (deep) annoyance that Hive did not rise to the bait. "Certainly you are the one making it," comes his light concession, "{but you of all people cannot affect to believe you are an island, in this. Your selfishness here is staggering. Every day so many people are given second chances who add nothing of value to this planet -- or who make it measurably worse. Your friends are falling over themselves to offer you the same and you'll throw it away?}" "So the eugenicist approach is I have an obligation to live." Hive's smoker's-rough voice is gruffly amused, here. He looks down at the cake again, looks over at Lucien. His brows hike, and he's holding a hand out with a small gimme motion. "{That's your pitch?}" "{I didn't say you had an obligation to breed.}" Lucien does not curl his lip in distaste at the thought, but a faint sneering undertone in his voice makes it sound almost as if he had. He bends down, slipping a plastic cake knife together with small disposable fork and disposable but heavyweight plate, all neatly in a large ziploc in a side pocket of his case. He's considering Hive's hands just a moment too long before he offers the whole bag over. "{You do have quite a lot to offer the world still, though.}" Hive's hands are none too steady. This doesn't stop him from taking the bag from Lucien and fumbling the cake knife out of it. He's staring for several seconds at it, then just holding up the plastic knife to Lucien, eyebrows raised like, seriously. "Ffff. {Offer the world or offer you.}" Hive can sense the turbulent but tightly contained storm of Matt's mind well before he hesitates down the hall upon sensing Lucien. It's a minute hesitation, but encompasses half a dozen drafts of conflicting thoughts and emotions he's ill-equipped to untangle. He pushes through it, quickening his steps against a change of heart, and raps softly on the door before opening it sans invitation. He's actually wearing a jacket today, a light gray affair with a faint silver sheen, a seafoam shirt with a slim silver tie in tessellated star patterns, a green floral scrollwork vest, charcoal trousers, and black derby shoes. He's carrying a small box tied with a slightly crooked golden bow, and his smile does not dim when he spots Lucien's cake, though it does inspire an outraged inwardly string of sacres and very slightly delays his "bonne fête, my dear." To his brother, just a small incline of his head. "{Am I not of the world?}" There's a deep private amusement buried here; insofar as it surfaces in Lucien's mind, it does so only in the mental image of several feather-edged rowan leaves, rustling quietly in a fragrantly floral-scented breeze and then vanishing before they become clear enough to make out the many smaller snips of memory-thought that comprise them. He's tipping a hand elegantly outward towards the card. The knock at the door draws the quick flit of his eyes -- then quick narrowing, sharper and tenser in only a flash before his expression relaxes back into neutrality. "You've some gall being here." "Think you'd see a picture of your whole damn family next to some gall in the dictionary." Hive has been starting to cut into his cake -- hitching at that first feel of Matt's mind -- then continuing until the man enters. He's slowly, carefully, lifting the piece to the plate a moment before he glances to the box in Matt's hand. "If I offer this to you are you gonna say no out of spite? You know this shit's fucking delicious." He's offering the plate out to Matt anyway, regardless of answer. Matt sets down his box and raises his eyebrows, laying one hand on his chest with more perplexity than innocent affront. "Some gall to... visit my best friend? These hallowed halls of healing? Or am I too close to Astoria?" He wasn't angry before, but with this comes a sudden gust of fury that he has to wait until Hive's check-up to visit. It comes also with the blank, nearly simultaneous acknowledgment that this is unfair. He accepts the plate with a heavy sigh that he doesn't actually feel. "Cake is better than spite," he opines, mildly. "{How are you feeling? Any medical professionals need terrorizing today?}" "Is cake recompense enough for scuttling his chances at life? {I'm sure you all thought to profit tidily off the tumult over at Toure but signing your best friend's death warrant is cold even for you.}" Lucien is zipping his bag back closed. Inclining his head politely to Hive as he pushes his chair back and starts to rise. "{I'd be wary of taking him up on that offer, unless you want yet more of your care team six feet under.}" Hive has started to open the card, careful small flicks of his finger, which he's inspecting afterward for papercuts. He hasn't yet taken the card out when he looks up, his frown deeper. "What the fuck are you --" But the answer has caught up to him even before he finishes asking. There's a heavy thump of pressure against Matt's mind, squeezing down fierce and angry though he yanks this back before any danger of Repeat Coma. "{You fucking killed him?}" Matt gazes steadily at his brother, jaw tight with the effort of biting back a quip before it's fully assembled. "{You've every right to be cross with me for your own sake, but --}" He'd broken off to evaluate how confidently he can defend himself against the stark reality of his own psychosis, but the press of Hive's mind sends him into a cold panic, and the questioning accusation whips him right back around to rage. The reflexive reach of his power to defend himself from Hive quickly turns on Lucien, though he does not squeeze down, clinging frantically to the possibility this is a cognitive artifact of the tumor growing in his friend's brain. Lucien's fingers tighten slowly against the handle of his computer case, at the familiar touch of Matt's power. There's a iced-over terror that Hive can feel, crackling chill across the quiet surface of his thoughts. He breathes out slowly, head tilting very slight to one side and his eyes lifting steadily to his brother. "Goodness, though I'm sure he hadn't the stomach to pull the trigger himself, his Court certainly did. {Was doing it on the eve of Hive's surgery an intentional cruelty, or did you just accept it as an inconvenient collateral?}" Hive leans over, snatching the plate back from Matt. "{I think I'm finding space to be pissed at you for a lot.}" Matt freezes, inside and out. He does not even react to the plate being taken back, but his hand clenches hard enough around the plastic fork to snap it, and the jagged break digging into his palm snaps him out of the trance and into "esti de tabarnak de crisse de viarge de câlisse" all in one furious hissing breath. "{That's a godsdamned -- }" But this cuts off into a rapid sequence of memories, little more than snapshots of convoluted Court paperwork he could not reconcile, Elie's breezy dismissals that somehow still do not clock as particularly concerning evasions, and the chaos of the days between the election and -- "Rasheed." There's little space for even his numb grief in the clawing, tearing apoplexy that dims his vision. He jerks his power away from Lucien before it starts to dig in. "It was fucking -- {I thought the bitch was after you I tried to warn you!}" "{Oh, she was,}" comes with a distinct shade of Elie's breeze, Lucien's hand fluttering vague in the air. "{They tried that, too, the same night --} did you not know? Truly?" In the airiness of his tone it's hard to say whether he believes this or not, but somewhere in his mind a sharp jag of fury is replaced soon enough with a ripple of amusement. Then quiet, again. "{Goodness but what sort of Bishop are you.} Two assassinations in one night under your nose. Well, one assassination and one fumble, I suppose." He's slowly folding himself back into his seat, green eyes glimmering with amusement and his small twitch of smirk half-hidden behind the hand he's cupped against his face. He opens his laptop case again, only to retrieve a second plastic fork that he offers to Hive. "{My sincere apologies. Your friend does not want you dead, he's just far too incompetent to help you live.}" Hive grits his teeth, and smacks Lucien's hand away with the offer of the fork. He's digging a knuckle hard into his eye, his breathing quickening. "{You fucks are unbelievable.}" His eyes are bright with tears, his voice hissed low. "You really buy the fucking marketing, don't you. {This shit is all just some goddamn game.}" He looks down at the cake with eyes narrowed, hand trembling -- the small hitch of motion seems for a second like he might throw it at one of the brothers, but, unable to quite decide which, he sets it back on his lap. His fingers clench hard at the envelope with its card, relaxing a moment later to smooth at it though its elegant calligraphy is already slightly marred by the crumpling. "Selfish, not selfish, I'm gonna be glad to leave this shit behind." Matt still hasn't moved, still hasn't let go of the broken fork. For an instant his wrath turns on Lucien again, then himself, before zeroing in back on their mother. But then he looks at Hive and shoves all of it down with a stifling empty grief. "{If I thought it were a game, I wouldn't have stayed out of it for so long.}" There's no inflection in his voice and no expression on his face. "{It's not his court in name, but it never was. This may still be the work of his agents.}" There's no light in his eyes, either, when they track to Lucien. "{Mother is a piece of work to be sure, and so am I. But you are her son, too.}" "Yes, I know. {Everyone else on the Court is a conniving snake, save you. Everyone else on the Court unprincipled, unconscionable. All our squares were bought in blood and yours no less than mine, I haven't seen you complaining about the luxury it's earned you all these years.}" When Lucien pulls his hand away there's no smirk remaining. Just faint tired lines starting to etch into his brow. "Small wonder you two have always gotten along." He's twirling the untouched fork now, quickly up and down between his knuckles. His eyes close, briefly. Careful and slow, there's a shifting in his mind, a complicated repositioning of his artificially constructed psionic quiet. Where his thoughts open up to Hive's perusal they're a richly colored intricate thing, unfolding in recursive layers. It's Rasheed, yes, a memory of him focused and patient and careful going into hour five of Hive's last surgery, but on closer inspection the memory itself is woven of a thousand memories more. Here, Rasheed laughing with Matthieu around the Tessiers' dining table; here, Rasheed offering to pay off the rest of the medical debt from Matt's many treatments that were burying Luci; here, long hours the doctor spent by Matt's bedside when his time was growing short and Lucien's hours at work still far too long. And here, Murphy Law's unlovely face grim and blunt explaining he's found Matt, alive, very likely in one of those labs; and here, the piles of paperwork when Matt had died, all so meticulously in order it hardly seemed possible someone could have faked the whole thing. And here, Rasheed's own intricate intimate knowledge of Hive's convoluted and much-abused brain; and here, Rasheed, on spycam footage secreted out of Lassiter, "I had known him since -- Well. Long before he was Dr. Allred. Came to us so unstable it was a miracle he got here in one piece."; and here, an oddly Star-Trek looking handheld scanner on a table in front of him, a gruff voice -- "If he turns up dead, that key to evolution ends up on the evening news.". On, and on, so many threads of so many memories woven together to stitch a picture no less enraging for its complexities. << By this time tomorrow, >> Lucien's words are summoned up quiet and clipped, << Feilong Industries will be announcing its plans to bring rapid mutant detection to production. Honestly, I can hardly blame you if you want to check out now, but I daresay your friends will have more need of you in future than ever before. >> "I am." The fork stops twirling, held tight between Lucien's middle two fingers. "I simply no longer feel that that needs to define me." It's Hive's turn to go very still. His eyes widen, his face a shade paler. There's a reflexive reach, his mind pressing down around his once-and-maybe-future best friend's with a sort of desperate panic; in the brief painful touch there's only cold fear to be found. He yanks back his thoughts, and his shoulders sag a moment before he reaches to take the fork, after all. He slices a small corner off the cake, and doesn't eat it. Instead he's finally tugging the card out of its envelope with a faint and resigned sigh. He looks at it only a moment, closes it again, his eyes pulling up sharp to Luci. << What, then. >> 'thuds' hard and exhausted against Lucien's mind. << Your Court for my dreams. You're showing me a world not even worth dreaming in. >> He presses his hand down against the sturdy paper, and shakes his head. "{It should be your Court. That's your damn job, and of the two fools sitting here I know one who's proven love doesn't mean shit if it stands between you and --}" He exhales hard. "... I don't even know what the fuck you want anymore, Matt." "{I counted myself with her. It was never self-righteousness --}" Matt stops himself and looses a mildly irritated sigh. "{-- wasn't all self-righteousness. I was afraid, for all the good that did me.}" The pressure in his mind is so intense he doesn't panic this time at the touch of Hive's telepathy, doesn't reflexively push him back. << {What is it?} >> He doesn't really expect an answer, and though his eyes narrow at Lucien he also does not really his brother is going to hurt his friend -- now. "{I don't know what the hell was happening before you slapped it out of me. I wanted to protect my family -- that doesn't make any godsdamned sense, I'm very well aware now -- it's what I thought I was doing all along.}" He looks down at the broken fork and drops it into the trash. "{I still want that, I want some fucking leverage in this hell world, and I want to build something of worth.}" He rubs at the indents in his palm. "{And I somehow thought Mother was --}" He goes still again, angry and frustrated and a little confused. "{If she was behind this, I will destroy her.}" << Your dreams, my Court. >> The rippling tapestry of Lucien's mind is fading back beneath the mirror-blank surface. << Eight months my mother has been running it and she's rolling out the red carpet for genocide. Do you really want her there longer? You may not be here to see it but how many of your loved ones will? >> "{Dealing with your cruelty was a lot to swallow, but not near so much as dealing with your cowardice. You're traumatized. You don't know who to trust or what to believe. What a difficult burden that must be -- can't even trust your own blood these days.}" Lucien rises again, more decisive now when he picks his things up. "The world does not have time for your self-indulgence. You have no idea the horrors unleashed under your nose while you've been wallowing in your own pains." He shakes his head, and then inclines it to Hive. "Think about it. It's a good dream. And you have as little stomach for weaklings as I." He's slipping, quiet, back out of the room. Hive closes his eyes. He's drawing in a long breath, letting it back out slow. Finally, he takes his small forkful of cake and slips it into his mouth. "Fuck," he mutters, aggrieved. "This is goddamn amazing."