Logs:L'dor Vador

L'dor Vador
cns: overt discussion of the Holocaust, religion and ethnic identity
Dramatis Personae Erik, Polaris
In Absentia	2022-05-23 "What does God have to do with anything?”
Location <NYC> Freaktown - Riverdale - The Bronx
It is warm this evening in Riverdale, the cool of night creeping in slowly as the sun drops towards the horizon. In the balmy evening, the patios and poolsides of the autonomous zone are full of mutants. A very small child is learning to swim from another, slightly bigger child with gills and a fishlike head, while a gaggle of adults observe with varying degrees of concern. This mansion has two dining areas, for no particular reason — the full dining room on the main floor and this breakfast nook on the second floor that looks onto the small gathering below. A pot of tea is cooling in the center of the nook’s table, a mug in front of each of the current occupants. At the side a studded face mask and a pair of sunglasses are just within Erik’s reach, a denim vest tucked into the corner of the nook. In front of Erik, his plate of food from the communal supper has been long demolished — he finished well before beginning this story. In the telling, the sleeves of his lavender dress shirt have been rolled up to his elbows, the number on the inside of his left arm deliberately exposed. “…we probably should have walked to the Soviet line,” Erik says dryly as he winds to the end of this particular chapter, “but I had no sense of anything east of Warsaw, and west was the direction of home.” He reaches for the teapot, and tops up both mugs. “If I had known, after that long starving trek to France, they were going to send us both to a camp not far from Nuremberg, perhaps we would have gone there first and waited for the Allies there.” There’s almost a flicker of amusement in that — almost. He doesn’t lean back into the bench cushions after setting the teapot down, instead propping his arms up on the table to look at Polaris. “This takes us to… I believe I was sixteen, yes.” There’s a small furrow of this brows, a vulnerability in his voice when he adds, soft — “How are you feeling?” Sitting across from Erik, Polaris has been been listening with rapt attentiveness and looking perhaps paler than is usual even for her. She's wearing a seafoam green three-quarter sleeve blouse trimmed in yellow, a leaf green handkerchief skirt and another beneath it in lilac--rotated so that the points of one fill in where the other is short, the effect distinctly floral--and mary jane pumps in a dramatic yellow and black monarch butterfly pattern. Her hair's hanging loose and wavy and she's wearing little makeup--subtle black eyeliner and shimmery lavender lipstick--her wrists adorned with steel link cuff bracelets and her fingers with the usual assortment of wire rings and the single silver CTR ring. She stares at him blankly at the question. Looks down at the tea as if unsure where it came from. "Uh." It takes her a moment to conjure actual words. "I'm--fine?" Perhaps she did not intend this as a question. "Sorry, everything I can think to say sounds either shitty or foolish or both. Like, that's a lot, but obviously you know that's a lot this is your life and. I thought I had some idea but I didn't. At all." She sniffles, her wire rings uncoiling and braiding together idly as they've been doing on and off through out this mostly one-sided conversation. "When I was sixteen I thought cutting class to smoke weed was rebellious and taking the bus was a pain in the ass. You escaped Auschwitz and then walked from Poland to France." She's apparently remembered what tea was for and lifts the mug for a small sip. Very softly, she adds, "I'm so sorry." “Tch. What do you have to be sorry for?” Erik shrugs. “I do not tell you this for you to be sorry — I tell you because you must know.” His face softens. One arm swings out to rest on the table’s surface, fingers pressing lightly to the wood. “I know it is not a happy story. I need to tell it, and if you need to say something foolish to wrap your mind around it, you should do so, or tell me if this has been enough for one day.” His gaze drops from Polaris’s face to watch the wires braid and unbraid. “What is the joke? ‘Uphill, in the snow, both ways’. It is always harder for the generation before. I am so glad she —“ Erik cuts himself off with a frown, rephrases, “ — that you had a real childhood.” The smile he offers Polaris across the table is tight, the pain in his eyes that began much earlier in this conversation still lingers. "I appreciate it so much, but it's painful for you to talk about it and..." Polaris frowns deeply, struggling for words. "I don't know how to like--orient myself? To it? I'm not...Jewish. I tried to convert to Judaism when I was like, 15, but my pa--the Danes wouldn't have it and I'm sure the poor rabbi was relieved." She gives a small, jerky shrug. "I get that it's not all about the religion, but it's not all about genetics, either. There's more to heritage than blood and pain." She starts to lift her tea and puts it back down. "Even Jewish heritage. I've never been a part of it and I don't see how I can be. I'm Christian. Actually, it's worse than that." She looks down at her hands and slowly works the CRT ring off of her index finger. "I'm Mormon." Erik’s expression changes in small discrete steps as Polaris goes on — his brows furrow first at not Jewish, lips press together hard at the Danes, jaw tensing just fractionally at heritage. He’s lifting his tea to his own lips when the Christian revel sideswipes him, has just managed to try to take a calming sip when the final blow comes. His eyes jolt wide open, and only with great care does the tea not get spat all over the table. “Mormon?” Erik repeats, incredulous. “Of all the insults—“ Wherever this sentence was going, it’s quickly truncated. “Hm. This changes little — you can only orient yourself to it as a 'Jew'. You are a Jew by birthright, you do not need the approval of your mother nor a rabbi. Stop with this Jewish nonsense — religion has hardly anything to do with it.” Few others could sense much less viscerally understand the sharp sudden bristling of Polaris's bioelectric field. The affront never makes it to her face, stalled into frowning perplexity at Erik's explanation. She mouths more than voices "what", her jaw working another beat after that before she manages, "I don't--but mom isn't Jewish--a Jew. And if she's not then I'm not, unless I go to the mikveh isn't that how it works?" This does not sound demanding or even all that baffled so much as genuinely unmoored. "I'm sorry she kept me from you, I really am, but she did and I'm a whole adult with my own baggage that isn't going to magically disappear just because--just because--" She swallows hard, shivering, and does not finish the sentence. The sudden stiffness in Polaris’ field does not go unnoticed — there is a quiet thrum in the air as Erik’s own field tenses around them both. It’s a moment before he declares firmly, “Bah, blood is blood. Passage through the mother was always about controlling our women and the mikveh —“ Erik snorts dismissively. “What need do you have of that tepid bathwater? It does not change who you are. To be a Jew, to be a mutant, they are both immutable. You can deny them, yes, but at your own peril and expense. Whatever you are feeling will be the way a mutant Jew should feel because that is what you are. You can purge this… goyische thinking from your mind as you go, as we all do the trappings of Homo sapiens.” He is not so much ordering this as declaring it, willing it into being. Something softens at the end as Erik looks up with a furrow in his brow. “Nu, just because what?” Polaris is just staring in open confusion now. "I get this isn't some simple, paint-by-numbers deal. Not everyone has the same ideas about identity. I'm pretty solid on the whole being a mutant thing, but like nobody--" She shuts her mouth decisively, then opens it again. "Just because--you're here now. Just because I'm your blood. It doesn't make me a Jew to everyone else, or God, or heck even myself. I don't know what to do with that!" The quiet thrum of metal shivering around them is accompanied by a palpable pressure around both magneto-kinetics. “The world can be swayed, your own mind can change with time, but — God? What does God have to do with anything?” Erik’s eyes are narrowing, the corners of his lips curled with distaste. “What has God ever done for you that you should care what he thinks?” Polaris blinks at Erik, perplexed and hurt. "God, creator and ruler of our universe and probably bajillions of other? They have a lot to do with...so many things." She opens her right hand, which had been clenched around the simple shield shape of the CTR ring. "Our faiths are both kinda like, about covenants with Them. Heavenly Parents gave me life, I care what they think for...kinda the same reason I care what you think?" “Heavenly —“ Erik’s eyes have gone wide, disbelieving, threatening to burst from his face. “Gave you? They — he — God didn’t give you life, your mother did. Here on Earth. If there is a God, he is cruel and uncaring, otherwise how —“ his left arm curls out to thump against the table, tattoo prominent in the space between father and daughter, “— could this have been allowed to happened? I would not invest my faith in such a being — I only believe in our people. There are no gods but us.” "She did," Polaris agrees, evenly. "But I have a Heavenly Mother, too and--look, you don't have to believe what I believe but I am asking you to respect my own relationship with God." She looks down at the numbers tattooed into Erik's forearm, the shiver in her field longer but less sharp this time. "Free will. God gave us free will as a means of learning from mortal life, and horrible things happen because people chose to misuse that gift." Her powers shift and carefully knit a scaffolding around the diamagnetic metal in the CTR ring, lifting it from her palm. "This gift is from you and God, too. But I don't think it makes us gods. Not yet. There's more to Exaltation than power." “Horrible things happen because your God gave out free will.” Erik’s reply is, vocally, just coolly unimpressed — but Polaris can sense the agitation rippling through Erik’s bioelectric field in waves. “But if we were all saved, including the Nazis, such things would never happen again, yes? This is the promise of your church? Your church that would steal our dead in the name of Christ? I know from Mormons, and I owe them only the disrespect they have shown our dead. Our dead,” he repeats, voice rising and speeding up, “your grandmother and great-grandmother and aunt and sister—“ Erik’s voice cracks just a moment before he cuts himself off. The spike of anger translates into a quick flex of power, catching the silver ring in his own invisible cat’s cradle and yanking it to float above the table between them. “Do not ever imply that this power was bestowed upon you by any 'higher being'. So many people have died for you to be able to feel the Earth this way and I will not have you dilute their memories with this nonsense.” "We're not--" Polaris starts, but doesn't seem to know where she was going with that. The expressions that pass over her face in rapid succession resolve into--disappointment? "Yeah, I guess it's pretty redundant, since you already think you're a higher being." She swallows. "I am not defending the Church's attitude toward Jewish people and I know what it's like to be honed like a fucking weapon on other people and if I could go back in time I would raze that place to the ground with you but how does it dishonor anyone's memory for me to to believe in God? I get you're angry, you have every right but you can't just waltz into my life and dictate who I should be!" She stands up, hands still gripping the edge of the table, wide hazel eyes fixed on Erik, ignoring the ring now. "I didn't take that shit from Arnold and I'm not about to take it from you! Is this just what men think fatherhood is--?!" She breaks off, all righteous indignation grinding to a half. "Wait. Did you say sister?" Erik doesn’t let Polaris finish her thoughts before he’s raising his voice as well, yelling over her words with nostrils flared, the ring spinning in the grip of his power. “A weapon is that all you took away from this?” He stands, too, leaning over the table, palms pressed against the wood grain. “I pull fillings from the teeth of my people and burnt their corpses you think this is just the experiments? Just that in the face of all the rest? How can you not see have you not been listening? Of course you haven’t clearly your mother wasn’t listening either —“ He doesn’t cut off exactly when Polaris asks him to wait but fast enough after that ‘sister’ lands, heavy, loaded, in the silence between them. The ring clatters to the table. His eyes are still wide, wild, angry, but there is shudder in his field reminiscent of the choked breath before a sob. It’s a few breaths before he can speak, voice low and tight. “I think that is enough for today.” Polaris does not shrink away when Erik shouts in her face, but neither does she shout back. Her words come out clipped and tightly bitten. "I didn't say it was just--oh my fucking God you're not listening. And where do you get off comparing me to Suzanna?" Her field is like a bundle of elastics strained to its limit and about to snap but then relaxing slightly when the sob completely blindsides her. She comes up short and reaches for him, then hesitates. "I'm sorry," she mutters, lowering her eyes. "That was shitty and I've hurt you." She finally straightens all the way up. "Okay. Yeah, okay." She manually scoops up the CTR ring and her mug, wrapping both arms around herself as though cold. "I--I'll see you around." Erik stares down at his hands, eyes loosely focused on his bare right ring finger. Doesn't seem to notice Polaris gather her things and excuse herself, not until she's begun to step away and he begins to sink, slowly, back into the cushioned bench. "Her name was Anya, named for her grandmother. You should have been named for your grandmother, you should have --" His voice, already quiet, cuts off again. Doesn't look up at Polaris when he says, with a heavy finality -- "I will send for you."