Logs:In Which Some Patches and Some Labrats Are Heading Toward Becoming a Colorful New Quilt

In Which Some Patches and Some Labrats Are Heading Toward Becoming a Colorful New Quilt
Dramatis Personae Joshua, !Karrie, Karrie, Daiki, Echo, Nahida, Naomi, Sriyani, Taylor	2023-08-13 "Maybe just being here can be a first step."
Location <NYC> Evolve Cafe - Lower East Side
Spacious and open, this coffeeshop has a somewhat industrial feel to it, grey resin floors below and exposed-beam ceilings that have been painted up in a dancing swirl of abstract whorls and starbursts, a riot of colour splashed against a white background. The walls alternate between brick and cheerfully lime-green painted wood that extends to the paneling beneath the brushed-steel countertops. There's an abundance of light, though rather than windows (which are scarce) it comes from plentiful hanging steel lamps. The walls here are home to artwork available for sale; though the roster of prints and paintings and drawings and photographs changes on a regular basis it has one thing in common -- all the artists displayed are mutants. The seating spaced around the room is spread out enough to keep the room from feeling cluttered. Black chairs, square black tables that mostly seat two or four though they're frequently pushed around and rearranged to make space for larger parties. In the back corner of the room is more comfortable seating, a few large black-corduroy sofas and armchairs with wide tables between them. There's a shelf of card and board games back here available for customers to sit and play. The chalkboard menus hanging behind the counter change frequently, always home to a wide variety of drinks (with an impressive roster of fair-trade coffees and teas largely featured) though their sandwiches and wraps and soups and snacks of the day change often. An often-changing variety of baked goods sit behind the display case at the counter halfway back in the room, and the opposite side of the counter holds a small selection of homemade ice creams. A pair of single-user bathrooms flanks the stairway in back of the cafe; at night, the thump of music can be heard from above, coming from the adjoining nightclub of the same name that sits up the stairs above the coffeehouse. The sign on the door says CLOSED, quite clearly, but both the cafe and its adjoining nightclub are bustling. Not quite with business as usual; tables have been set up with Evolve catering trays, with large hot and cold beverage dispensers, the usual staff nowhere in -- well, okay, some of them are in sight, but none of them are working. There is music coming faint from upstairs, a lively danceable thump of beat, and down here it is cheerful and bright. Over in the back there are a couple different games going and to one side a station with plentiful fabric scraps and a wide and varied number of accoutrements for decorating them, and through this Prometheans both old and new are catching up or getting to know each other. Joshua, perhaps, is working -- not the cafe, thankfully for anyone who wants good food, but he is just arriving in a blink, with a tall and angular woman whose skin is covered with a wealth of sharp porcupine quills and a frizzy-haired redhead, freckles heavily pronounced from the California sun and green eyes a little wide behind her glasses. The older woman is just offering her thanks and sauntering off to get food, but Joshua and Karrie both are paused -- his expression is flat, hers is inquisitive. "This is a weird joke." She doesn't sound upset, really, just puzzled. Joshua huffs once, small and quiet. "Oh, she's very serious." Perched on a stool beside the quilting station, the same frizzy-haired redhead (though, currently, absolutely swimming in a pair of khaki cargo pants and a cheerful tee-shirt for a family reunion that, likely, nobody present attended) looks back up at the newly arriving pair with a glasses-free squint. "Your people are over there," !Karrie says with a gesture across the room. Nahida is not one of Karrie's people, most likely, but she is Over There, tucked at a table near to but not at the clusters of gaming. She's whisked some of the quilting supplies away, a small heap of colorful cloth scraps and blank yellow square and scissors and fabric markers and glue, but having done this because it seemed like the respectful thing to do she's been staring at it, normally creative mind just as blank as the fabric in front of her. She's thinking of Dusk's stage-whisper sorry while she was at her prayers and of a skittering horde of Sentinels; her eyes flit the crowded room intermittently with something like wonder and something like horror, a mingled: << {did they pull all these people out}? >> and << ... {were all these people in}? >> Echo's preferred style of glasses frame are back on her face, so she is wearing a sunset-cloud lavender tee over high-waisted jeans. Whatever fears she had about ensembles being too casual or too solemn were forgotten upon stepping inside the crowded cafe for the first time; she pretends to vacillate by the drink dispensers to have a chance to take in the scene. << community's bigger than I thought >> << all these people knew him? >> << should I really be here... >> Echo pushes the last one to the back of her mind as she catches sight of Nahida, and after a moment resolves to slip her way over, carrying a glass of water. "Hi," she says in a small voice, putting her hand on a chair but sort of hovering in lieu of sitting down. "What are you..." she gestures at the quilting square. Taylor is very much not at work, though in dress it's much the same; jeans and a Batman logo tee shirt that has been cut through liberally with holes to allow for his sinuous mass of extra limbs. He's double fisting coffees, right now, though admittedly these are both held in slim serpentine arms and not in his hands. The game of Evolution he's been playing has not quite ended but has come to a pause, two of its former players vanished to get drinks and, perhaps, fallen too deep into drinking them to return. "Erry last one of 'em come out there," he's confirming, with a lift of his chin towards Nahida's table. "Most of 'em with Dusk's help. You Lassiter kids, right?" One of his arms is flicking towards himself as he offers, "Rosen, like, hundred years ago," as casually as if he's discussing what his alma mater is. "Spence was in Rosen." Sriyani also has not quite known what to put on their patch but this hasn't stopped them, carefully beadazzled with a colorful plastic-jeweled "THANK Y" that is still in progress. Possibly their eyes are fixed more firmly on the patch than is necessary to avoid looking over at the squiggly mass of tentacles that has been parked so veryvery near their spot. "Did you know Spence. -- Hi Echo!" There's a brightness in their tone that carries over far more complicatedly to their mind, genuine relief and cheer that this Jail Comrade is okay, a flood of unhappy memories that her face inadvertently triggers. Despite themselves they are looking up, though, peeking over towards Taylor and trying Very Hard not to stare at the tentacles as they examine his face in a highly uncertain attempt to guesstimate whether he means an actual hundred years or a metaphorical hundred years. Do Squid People age normally? Sriyani is uncertain. Daiki has been around since well before the event started, unobtrusive as is his habit, even if his long acquaintance with many of those present makes ignoring him virtually impossible. Perhaps that's why he retired into the office for a time, though his excuse -- that he needed to finish up some paperwork -- is entirely real, if not one that would normally have taken him more than five minutes. He's dressed as is his habit, in a slim, unassuming black suit, crisp white dress shirt, a silver-blue tie, and black oxfords, and has both hands cupped around a mug of tea as he fetches up beside Taylor. "There's a lot of Rosen," he offers quietly. "It was the biggest raid by far -- until yours. I'm Daiki." It's only a fraction of a beat before he clarifies, "That's my name. I came out of Penfield." "Oh -- oh!" Nahida looks up with a flush and a startled blink -- at Echo? At the large squid-person answering her thoughts? Maybe both. A small and polite smile answers Echo's greeting, though it fades as she looks down to her work-totally-not-in-progress. "I'm -- not sure," she replies with a small wobble of head. "Some people have made such beautiful things. I don't know how to..." This doesn't finish aloud, though in her thoughts it twists into something knotty, gratitude and guilt and respect and uncertainty all writhing together like -- -- her eyes flit to Taylor's arms, and then back down with a darker flush. "Do you like to sit." She nods towards the chair Echo is leaning on, and only after steeling herself some does she look back at Taylor, nodding. "Lassiter. Rosen was --" Her brows are knitting in brief thought, brief math on how old is Spencer, how old was Spencer. "-- some dozen years? Did you know Spencer? Do all these people know each other?" << {did all these people know him}? >> << {were all these people} -- >> finishes more in feeling than in words, thinking of Avi and his bright supportive warmth, thinking of Roscoe and his helpful stream of information, thinking of Rainy Ogden looming over Naomi, trying to guess by appearances where any of these people might have fallen within their labs. She dips her head again to Daiki. "Good to meet you, Uncle," although she's not entirely sure whether or not that should be true. "I don't know which one was Penfield." Sriyani's greeting induces a palpable sense of relief in Echo, who offers both them and Nahida a smile as she tugs the chair backwards enough to squeeze in. She turns curious eyes to Taylor and Daiki now, remembering to pull her gaze back to their faces despite some inevitable slides down to the tip of one or another tentacle. Echo's got a blurry last page of a haphazard pamphlet in her mind; her voice, still a little shaky with the shock of their raid and of intake, replays beside her, reading "four oh nine Penfield" as she blinks. "Fourteen years...oh, I'm Echo," she says with her present voice. The names on that page had seemed like hope, when she'd read them, but in this setting she is wondering how many scenes like tonight's they'd caused. Her shoulders hunch in guilt as her gaze returns to Nahida's empty square. "Can you...tell us about him...?" "Yeah, shit, twelve years this month." One of Taylor's arms snakes loosely around Daiki's shoulders in a small squeeze. His brows lift -- curious, impressed -- at Echo's replay, and he nods affirmatively. "Less Penfield here than there should be," comes with a small tight squeeze against his friend's shoulders. "And there's been more than we'd like -- but none quite like this. I be damn proud when I go if I touch this many lives. Dusk was --" His expression softens, fingers drumming light against the table in front of him. "Like the Prometheus Welcome Wagon. Went way the hell out his way whenever any of us got out that hell to make sure we had a friend if we needed one." Up against Daiki's mind alone, this phrase blossoms more vividly colorful in its imagery, amused but in no way mocking -- Dusk's wicked-sharp smile as he curls a wing around Daiki's shoulders, whisking him away from board games and into the bedroom; some idle speculation is layered beneath of just how many lives in the room he has in fact Touched. "Far as I know," and this comes with a questioning-brush against Daiki's mind, the only one here who got out before Dusk, "we ain't even have much of no community before Dusk made a whole project of making sure we ain't fall through the cracks." "I'm Sriyani," the teenager offers, tongue poking out the side of their mouth as they continue their careful task of punching the rainbowy bright plastic rhinestones in a neat row into the fabric. << what happened to the Penfielders >> is on the tip of their tongue, but then they look at Taylor -- look at his arm around Daiki's shoulders -- look at the room and a stark image of Brendan flashes through their mind, the crack of gunfire and the blood soaking into the grass. They punch one of the rhinestones a little more aggressively. << are we going to fall through the cracks >> << (we should fall through the cracks) >> << what cracks where do you go >> starts to spin off into fanciful-horrified thoughts of Neverwhere, of New Haven Below, of opening a door and coming out an invisible person, there-but-forgotten and left behind as -- They look up quick, a mental swat batting this daymare away. Hesitant and a little unsure if this is Rude, they ask uncertainly: "Did you -- want a -- community, I mean, were people in your labs not..." Their eyes go a little wider and they're hasty to assure their tablemates, "Not like you I mean you guys were great but you know, like, there were some people in there I'd be kind of happy to not ever see again you know?" Naomi has been sitting with a very different Jail Gang reunion, on the edge of a round of Dixit. The black dress she's wearing is backless, the exposed scales helping her fit in with the other monsters contemplating the painted cards. She's not playing this game, nominally working on her square -- currently just as empty as Nahida's in her hands as she searches the cards for inspiration (this round, the word is "flight"). She's listening for it too, twisting her body just a touch more to follow the conversation at -- << dang, can we make a whole Spencer Fucking Holland Gang table o'er there >> she thinks, a touch wry but mostly uncertain -- that she should be sitting there, that she shouldn't be there, that maybe Sriyani is talking about her in particular (that this thought is at once wildly unlikely and justified, given the horrors Lassiter taught Naomi how to do). She wishes she could speak without speaking the way Echo does, for in this crowd of veterans talking about their teeps, their mind controllers, in tones both conciliatory and vengeful, she feels less like she can trust her own voice. Her attention caught onto 'welcome wagon', though. Naomi shifts again in her seat, still sitting at Monster Dixit but facing more intentionally toward the other table, smoothing the quilt square over her lap. The clumsy pitch of Naomi's thoughts is practiced for some other telepath, aimed for curling-twisting hair and not sinuous-writhing arms, but maybe Taylor will know she means for him to hear her question -- << how did he do it? >> comes with a shimmery reflection of B's holoscreen, a sinking sense that the task Naomi's signed herself up for is too big for any one person, for any group. A small correction: << how did he do it? >> Daiki leans into Taylor's embrace, the barest flush in his cheeks making him somehow abruptly more interesting, more compelling, and more -- whatever he already is, if anything, to those around him. "Before Franklin -- that was Dusk's lab -- we had mutual support and the beginnings of a sense of us, but he pulled it together and started doing things systematically." He looks at Sriyani and inclines his head, and it's hard to tell whether he's nodding once or bowing slightly. "Prometheus didn't just hurt us, they made us hurt each other. That doesn't make it alright, but those who accept responsibility, and stick around, and put in work to heal the wounds they caused -- I think they're worth being in community with, even if it never stops hurting." He's thinking of Hive, the pattern of scars on his head, the terrifying weight of his mind, all the weight he's carried himself, patient and steady. "You may not agree -- our experiences were very different, but having a community gives you access to people with a whole range of experiences, and you're a lot more likely to find someone who might be able to understand yours." He adjusts his glasses slightly on the bridge of his nose. "Sometimes it felt like Dusk was better than most of us at understanding the experiences that weren't anything like his at all. But I think it was less understanding a more a willingness to accept what he could not understand." Less Penfield than there should be triggers a similar line of thought in Nahida's mind, though hers ends with Brendan alive and eager, poking his way through one of Nevaeh's visions as he outlines them a plan of action. She toys with a scrap of fabric as the older Prometheans speak, listening quite intently. At Sriyani's question, at Daiki's answer, they made us hurt each other, she is thinking about Naomi, though having never been in an actual lab session with the mind controller this is more abstract than emotional -- a rabbit hole of uncertainties cascading into one another. What does being in community mean; who is our community; how much did Prometheus make them do anything -- how much could Prometheus make them do anything without the complicity of people like Naomi; what does responsibility look like in this kind of situation; what does understanding look like between a victim and their tormentor, and even moreso when they are both victims of something larger. None of this comes out aloud -- instead, after sorting through and discarding several options, translating several others into English, what she does say is only a slightly dry: "And if the hurting isn't worth it, then, what? We go, the people who hurt us stay. Because they're sorry." Echo's trying to imagine quilt squares that account for the image Taylor gives them, though what comes to mind first is, ridiculously, a wagon with bat wings, but she looks up when Daiki responds to Sriyani, leaning into his words. She's nodding slowly at first. His words are persuasive and...comforting? Hold a promise of purpose, atonement -- but when her gaze turns to the community around them, she is seeing the wound. "Yes, what -- about the things that can never be healed?" Echo adds softly, trying and failing to sharpen the single memory she has of Dusk, one blur of wings pointing the way to safety. << they must know it's our fault >> Taylor doesn't immediately answer, and maybe this is just because of the very slow drink of coffee he's taking as he leans a little bit more up against Daiki's side, but maybe not. "One of their team died when Rosen got liberated," he replies finally, slow. "Two of them died breaking out Penfield -- and a quarter of Dai's labmates, too. Man who killed most of them -- under mind control -- at Penfield may be dying now, he got hurt bad-bad fighting to free Lassiter. Was it our fault for being in there? Think that evil's always gonna rest with the monsters that locked us up." He doesn't speak any louder, but his words and those the others speak aloud echo stark-clear to Naomi's mind all the same, making it that much easier for her to follow the conversation. "Being in community and being friends, that's waaay different shit. S'people 'round here I never want to share no coffee with. Still want them to be free to build a good life, you know? I'd still work for that. And the thing I found is, the ones who don't give a shit that you hurting, the ones who ain't interested in respecting the space you need or doing jack or shit to make up for that -- they gone be in the wind anyway. They ain't sticking 'round to even try help put the wreckage they left back together." His brow creases over another long swig of coffee, draining one of his cups and setting it down empty on the table. "What that work looks like, gone be different for different people. It is too big for any one of us -- s'why a community's a community, yeah? Some of us good at cooking, good at finding people jobs, some good at keeping people safe, ain't nobody good at everything. He was good at listening to people -- figuring out what they needed, meeting 'em where they at." Nudging up against their minds there is clarification, sharpening -- not her memory but her memory accentuated, like coloring in a sketched outline, breathing life into her fuzzy memory of Dusk. It comes not just in imagery (though that clarifies, too, deceptively gangly limbs and sharp wingclaws and shaggy hair filling out with Taylor's much clearer mental picture of the man) but in feel: Taylor's deep love and respect mingling with what psionic reflection he has of the other Promethean. Fierce care that had to fight its way out through his everpresent rage, the deliberate choices he made, again and again each day, to act with compassion and gentleness (despite? harmonizing with?) the hunger clawing at his mind and the terrifying strength he carried within himself. "Man was a literal vampire who could crush your skull with his hands. Maybe that's why. Couldn't get what it was like for any of us but maybe he didn't have to, to know that we're all fighting all the time -- to be the people we want to be, to build the kinds of relationships we want to build, even when it'd be easy for us to wreck them again in a flash. It's never easy, but it's still worth it." "Most of you didn't put yourselves --" Sriyani is starting, still unconvinced on the question of fault. When they look back up it is, at least, easy this time to fix their eyes on Daiki and not on Taylor, even if their mind is turning this mental image over curiously (<< really a vampire, gross -- >> << really-really a vampire? cool! >> << really-really-really a vampire, that's gotta be -- >> tough is somewhere around where they're settling on, this conclusion arrived at less by their own logical processes and more by attempting to get their mind around Taylor's description. "Okay but like, what if you're not good at anything, where do you fit in then?" This isn't self-doubt; despite their guilt they aren't thinking about themself here, but they are definitely thinking of any number of other Lassiter inmates, a large number of who in their mind are only good at things like 'stealing Gae's lunch' and 'horrific assault'. Naomi could probably look back at the game cards with Taylor's psionic microphone broadcasting the conversation in her mind, but her attention is being pulled to Daiki anyway, her green eyes staring at him with unrelenting focus and perhaps not quite enough blinking. The refined image of Dusk in Lassiter, rendered with such love and care, matches briefly to some (same) other vampire, thin and gaunt among many thin and gaunt prisoners in a jail far, far away from here. Splinters from this single note into an incomplete chord -- Queen Bee's wings, sharp and protective; Beau's strength carefully balanced around the trumpet in his hands (Rainy's offhand blow breaking her nose, and Leonidas's unfettered power breaking his in turn); her, now, discordant, her own overwhelming rage spilling out fatally, her brother's pain still aching in the new skin on her palms where they rub against the fabric square. << Sorry >> she projects again, self-conscious of the horrors that are surfacing, horrified at how much tragedy Taylor must be hearing from around the room, hoping that everyone else has happy memories of Dusk, and not just the blur of escape and death she and hers bring. << (what is community)(where do we fit)(do i fit) >> She rolls Daiki's words around her mind, letting them pull her attention and her memories -- -- here, another time, a wolfcub reassures her there is family to be found, no matter how frightening she might be -- -- back there, then, Roscoe's sharp voice from behind wide eyes, words still cutting sharp << "what are you even talking about, us, Lassiter?" >> -- -- and further still, everyone around her mourning someone other hero, Spencer, tired and thin, head bowed, but still assuring her he was part of your community, too, and did he know then how true that would be, -- -- and almost now, two identical sharks, one of them seeming to get her existence in a way she isn't sure she yet understands, reminding her << "they need people who get it, too," >> and now she's wondering if that was this so-loved vampire's mutation, to understand just enough -- "Do you need to be good at anything?" Her voice is quiet but it carries, twisted as she is to face the other table fully. She looks over at the Lassiter trio for a moment before her attention tracks back up to the veterans, searching for approval of her next words: "Maybe you can fit just 'cuz, for one other person, you get it enough. If you try," And already she's doubting herself -- but if the mind-controller who killed so much of Penfield could find a place here, why not Naomi? "Maybe you jus' --" she shrugs one scaled shoulder, more casual than she feels about this sentence, "-- become good, as you go." Daiki does not physically nod along to Taylor's reply, but the attentive tilt of his head speaks louder than the most emphatic agreement. "A good community makes space for people who've done harm, those who've been harmed, and all the shades of hurt in between. It's always not easy figuring out how, especially when compromised minds are involved. There was a lot of that at Penfield, long before the raid." He does nod at Taylor this time and leans just a little harder into his warm as with a flutter of grief thinks of Hive again, speaking Japanese with the same blunt, serious cadence as his brother, dead fifteen years ago. "When we first got out, it hurt me just to look at him. Now, I love him. And it still hurts." He looks at Sriyani, his smile thin but not displeased -- just reserved, maybe even shy. "Most people are good at something, even if they don't realize it themselves." He tips his head at Naomi, then turns so he can keep her in his sight along with the other teenagers they're speaking to. "And I don't think you need to be good at anything. If you want to help, there's almost always a way to do it, even if it doesn't look like what you imagine." He casts around the room and mentally nudges Taylor to let him know when Scramble arrives. "But also, yes -- you can learn. I was young when I went in and this community raised me. Taught me to be good at..." He glances aside at Taylor, scrunching up one eye slightly. "...maybe two things? At least two." His smile almost shows teeth this time. But not quite. "There's also something to be said for being bad at things and doing them anyway." Echo's eyes go wide as her memory becomes a living thing. This is -- new to the teenager, love as action, love that bares teeth; she wants to hold onto it even when it fades. In place of a wagon in her mind there's a sharp-edged heart now, veins and arteries curling outwards to encircle the city. This is certainly too ambitious for a fabric square, but though Daiki was...probably not talking about art just now, Echo stands up anyway. "I'm going to get some material," she says, giving both older Prometheans a small smile. "Maybe just being here can be a first step."