Logs:In Memoriam

In Memoriam
Dramatis Personae Jax, Steve, Tag	2020-10-29 "I think that's perfect."
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. Jax may not have been teaching his old classes here lately, but the past couple weeks have seen him around Chimaera plenty enough regardless, helping keep the supplies organized, teaching medic trainings, helping with the decoration of the banners and protest shields. He's not engaged in any of those things just at the moment -- the weekly bridge training has finished some time back, and he's bid goodbye the host of paramedics and doctors and nurses who came for it. He hasn't yet left the room, tucked cross-legged up on the desk in the front in marbled black and red skinny jeans tucked into tall stompy boots, an impossibly soft red-and-black striped sweater. There's a sketchbook in his lap, a pencil in his hand, brows knitted deep as he works. Steve has been cleaning up the space, quiet and unobtrusive. His mind is less quiet than he, buzzing through the day's news, the predictions about the upcoming election, the number of people probably still out there in the streets right now, the new medics just sent home reeling with heads full of too much information and worry. << Lord please, just one quiet night. >> He's dressed in a paint-splattered black shirt and jeans, scuffed up combat boots likewise dotted with color. Finally he wanders over. Sets a small bottle of cranberry juice on the desk beside Jax. "Hey. Space is pretty much ready for close-up, I think. Whenever you're ready." Tag actually fell asleep on the couch after the class wrapped up, his breathing rhythmic and calm up until just a short while ago. His restlessness scatters into wakefulness when Steve speaks and he struggles upright, blinking in the light. "Gan," he mutters, << {Goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch,} >> is far more elaborately profane in his mind. Then, "Sorry I..." He runs a hand through his red and black hair, which transforms in that very moment to rainbow and black, though in somewhat uneven bands. Much less colorful than is his usual wont, he's still wearing his black "Elves Speak For Ourselves!" t-shirt from their scenario earlier, gray quick-dry hiking pants, and black-and-rid hiking boots. "Sorry, I meant to...help..." He darts a guilty glance at Steve. "...with all that. Thanks, though." Jax looks up as Steve enters, a deep flush coloring his cheeks. "Oh! Oh, gosh, m'sorry, honey-honey." He twirls his pencil quickly between his fingers; eye dipping to the juice and then back up to Steve with a flutter of guilt in his mind that doesn't quite displace the very focused grief that had been there. He sets the sketchbook aside -- the half-finished image on it is Dawson, binoculars in hand and a flicker darting across the sky -- to pick up the juice instead. "Didn't mean to hold you, just -- kinda distracted tonight." Steve shakes his head. "You're fine -- both of you. Done plenty of work tonight and anyway..." He shrugs, pulling a chair over and settling into it backward. "I didn't have any plans. Actually a nice change of pace to do something simple and useful...away from the fray." His eyes drop to Jax's sketch, his own grief welling up like a physical hurt in his chest from where he'd shoved it down into the vast emptiness of so many losses. << How long will it be before I can draw him again? >> "That's --" He draws a deep breath around the pain, through it. "-- that's beautiful." << He was beautiful. God, hope he believed that... >> Tag yawns, rolling his neck slowly. "Always lots of stuff like that need doing if you need a break from the street. Just cuz you're..." He gestures expansively at--all of Steve. << ...made entirely of muscle and stubbornness... >> "...strong, doesn't mean you gotta be out there all the time, whatever your role." He sits up straighter and follows Steve's gaze to the sketch, the deep hollow ache that never went away entirely resonating with the image in a flush of colors, some of them utterly alien to unaugmented human vision. "Oh...is that for the mural?" He reaches for the sketchbook, lifting eyebrows at Jax for his permission. Briefly flashing across Jax's mind, the image of Steve settling backward in the chair tints itself pink, purple and blue. He nudges the sketchbook closer to Tag, gesturing permissively. "It's --" A number of vivid-bright pictures shift in his mind -- Flicker quick and agile on a rock face; laughing at a gaming table; carrying a child in green scrubs from a cage; his face illuminated by a campfire; bent over a half-finished chair. "It is, but I'ono if it's -- it's missin' something, I think. Ain't quite sure what." Steve bows his head slightly. "I know. I just get -- restless." What stirs in his mind is not so much restlessness as just rage, but this at least he tries to stifle. << This is awful enough on Hive as it is (he's got rage all his own) (our own?) >> He pulls closer to the images in Jax's mind, his attention riffling over each, ungainly but with gentle reverence. "Mural?" he echoes, his eyes refocusing on the physical world with a few rapid blinks. "Where are you going to paint it?" Though without intending to he's already picturing the place Dawson fought his last -- the daily protests there, the violence police casually dispense to quash them, the flowers and candles and stuffed animals that keep piling up. He swallows hard. "Something that ties the movement of the bird to -- him, maybe? Especially if it's going to be big. A banner, or text, or a rainbow in the background?" "I like it. Like that he's looking--up." Tag picks up the sketchbook and studies the drawing, his mind idly adding color though he manages not to actually dump it out onto the page. "Or could add more birds? Like, around the edges, framing him in wings." Then shakes his head, dismissing the imagined additions. "Probably too busy. Rainbow's queer and has...religious? Significance?" He sounds very uncertain about this last part, looking up from Jax to Steve and back. Jax's lips purse; as the others make their suggests the drawing blossoms with color, shifting in time with their ideas, though his expression remains dissatisfied. The image reverts in short order to its previous unfinished pencil sketch. "I don't know," he frets, "Jus' cuz he was queer, I -- doubt that's how he'd want to be remembered, I feel like that's -- kinda us projecting. There's a line 'tween fighting for acceptance an' havin' something be a central part of your identity and I --" His head shakes, uncertain. "I don't know. Church angle's maybe good?" He bites down on his lip, brows knitting. Steve nods, slow and thoughtful as he watches Jax's illusory additions shift. "Fair enough." He bites his lower lip, reaches out to take the sketchbook from Tag. "I'm having a hard time imagining how he'd have wanted to be remembered at all, but I do think acknowledging his faith is important, yeah." He fumbles through his woefully incomplete understanding of Dawson's faith, pieced together from quiet late-night conversations, from leafing with bewilderment through unfamiliar scripture, from the other Mormons who've been showing up steadily to the protests these last few weeks. Yet it's Hive's voice that speaks up in his mind, a soft leafy susurrous, << ...and they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honeybee. >> "Maybe...a beehive," he says aloud, and traces an arc up and around the drawing, almost but not quite circling it, "and a swarm." Tag hands over the sketchbook and folds his legs up onto the couch beneath himself. "Yeah, you're right." His shoulder hunch. "I think it's always hard to tell how someone would have wanted to be remembered, but I trust your take on this." His mind's eye travels over Dawson's woodworking tools, well-loved, well-maintained, and neatly arranged. Doesn't quite get around to fitting them into the drawing. He blinks at Steve's suggestion. << Well. Hive was a pretty important part of his identity, too. >> "Could work," he hedges, but looks to Jax for confirmation, "create some depth with it, have the leading bees closest to the viewer." The lump that sticks in Jax's throat at the thought of how Dawson might want to be remembered does not summon up any further imagery; just a formless shadowy anger that he deliberately pushes back down. The classroom wall shifts, reforming itself into the flower-strewn stretch of storefronts where Dawson died. Across one section of brickface, a new image. Not a swarm but a handful of honeybees dotting a path to where Dawson is in the middle of constructing a beehive box, glancing up with a delighted expression as a flicker crosses the sky overhead. Jax bites down on one knuckle, studying the illusory mural with a pensive frown. "Oh..." Steve says softly, though he feels like he's just been punched directly in the gut. He sets the sketchbook down and gets up out of the chair, lifting his eyes to the mural. His breath comes just a touch unsteady now. His thoughts flit agitated and half-formed -- Dawson guiding his inexpert attempt at putting a saw to a plank of wood, a northern flicker hopping from one branch to another in a circular view through binoculars, then calmer, at Hive's quiet, solid presence in the back of his mind. It still takes him a moment to summon actual words, and even then his voice breaks when he says, "I think that's perfect."