Logs:Live in a Society

Live in a Society
cn: references to white supremacy/anti immigrant sentiment/violent chauvinism/america
Dramatis Personae Hive, Polaris
In Absentia	2021-11-21 "I believe that Dawson was making a difference, but me?"
Location <PRV> VL 403 {Geekhaus} - East Village
This is a small, two-bedroom apartment, the living room semi-open to the kitchen and dining area, a single bathroom situated between the doors to the bedrooms. The common areas are beautifully appointed with solid, matching handmade wooden furniture in intricate geometric mosaics. The kitchen table is ringed with coordinated but not identical chairs, two of them modular with low scooped backs, designed with winged bodies in mind. The wide, low coffee table fits neatly into the corner of a modular sectional couch, and the immense television is enthroned in an entertainment center that also houses various consoles and video games. The walls are lined with bookshelves laden with comics, roleplaying supplements, board games, speculative fiction, and a grab-bag of technical texts. The walls in between are adorned with some framed posters of classical science fiction and fantasy media along with a few pieces of gorgeous if unusual original art. There's a frustrated rattle of keys outside. It takes Polaris a couple of tries to unlock the door with frozen, shaking hands. The thoughts that preceded her were already more or less a solid stream of profanity, guilt warring with anger in the chaos of her mind. All this eases to some extent when she tumbles inside, though there's another uptick in cursing--some if it aloud, if quiet--as she struggles out of her coat and boots. A whisper of cold air still trails her as she stalks to the kitchen, dropping a plastic bag with a takeout container on the counter. She gives brief consideration to eating it--very brief. Instead she pulls a bottle of whiskey from the liquor cabinet and pours herself probably entirely more than is wise for someone who's been sober for months and who has not eaten. Hive has been sitting cross-legged on the couch, his coffee table cleared save for a stick of incense though his holographic projector is lighting up the space above it with a slow rotation of transient imagery; a large banyan tree, a seated Buddha, a Black Lotus Magic: the Gathering card. A subtle tension creeps into his shoulders when Polaris enters, and he doesn't immediately open his eyes. It's only after she goes for the whiskey that he does, blinking them open to watch her with a steady focus. "Rough time at church?" Polaris stops, gripping the handle of the mug tight though she does not lift it. "Sorry. I can, uh go and let you--" Her attention drifts reflexively to follow the holographic images. "I mean I can definitely get sloshed back home, too." A flush of shame, then anger and impatience at that shame. She scrubs a hand over her face, having long since ruled her makeup a lost cause. "No um. Church was--fine." << (Was it though) >> For a moment she debates leaving it at that. << Jesus Lorna he's not your therapist fuck I still need a new therapist (again) >> "I had brunch with Lily, after." The surge of her fury is raw and elemental, followed by more shame. "You want waffle? There's waffle. I don't want it." "S'it cold," Hive replies, an eyebrow lifting. "Don't want a soggy cold waffle." His fingers squeeze down against his knees, and he lets his eyes close again. "Sounds like brunch went great. Anyone get stabbed?" "Uh..." Polaris starts on a vague mental calculation that just trails off, without resolving, into, "probably cold, probably not soggy, syrup was on the side." The echo of her rage is less overwhelming this time, but it does finally push her over the edge. She downs half of her drink at a go, the relief that follows almost intense enough to drown out the shame that also follows. << "It must be simple for you--" >> Lily's voice in her mind would be barely recognizeable without context. << Did I overreact (always overreacting) I started it (always starting shit) >> "No one got stabbed, we just--yelled. Okay mostly I yelled. Fuck." "Eh," is Hive's judgment on the probably-cold waffle. "What's simple for you, now? Shit, she's not mad you're joining the cult she left, is she?" Though now he cracks opens his eyes again, watches Polaris gulp down the whiskey. "-- You are still joining them, right?" "No--yes? No. Maybe a little." Polaris turns and leans back against the counter. "No. She thinks I'm naïve about the Church and she's probably right about that! She said I could only see the good in it because I'm new and I think she's wrong there, but it wasn't even what we were fighting about." Her own words bring her up short. << Maybe she thought it was what we were fighting about? >> "But I was mad cuz--" This brings her simmering anger back to a boil. "She blames the Church for Dawson getting kicked out and I'm all for holding the Church--every church-- accountable, but it's like she was doing it to defend her--their parents?" She tosses back the rest of the whiskey and very deliberately sets the cup aside. << Yeah that was probably too much oh well I'm making it count >> "But like, it was her Church and her family and her literal personal history where do I get off talking over her? She's traumatized and he was traumatized and I wasn't fucking there all I know's what Dawson said." << "--if that's what he said--" >> Her memory of Lily comments from across the table. Her rage suddenly crumples into doubt and fear. "I'd been so sure, for a while now. I know the Church is a mess, and I think it's a mess worth cleaning up, and I believe that Dawson was making a difference, but me?" She pushes the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. "Fuck. I don't know." "Defending --" Hive's eyes have drifted back to the slow rotation of his holo-projector, during this, his fingers curling down against his knees. A very small hff is the only other out-loud acknowledgment he makes while Polaris talks. By the time she's done his eyes have closed again -- still and quiet, it looks, almost, as though he's returned to his meditation. The flare of anger that whips out through her mind a moment later does not feel very meditative, though. It lashes at Polaris with memories sharpened with grief and distance -- parents looming larger than life in a child's mind, his father explaining a dutiful brother would put his family first, his mother pointing out the danger -- and disgrace -- he's already brought to them; searching, terrified and confused, for a safe place to try and sleep in the bitter Salt Lake cold -- quickly realizing that as obvious as he was there was no Safe Place -- -- the same thoughts recontextualized, bitter, wry, hurt, but insufferably Dawson as an adult now: << No kid of mine will ever have to feel that way -- >> translating into no one in his ward, in his stake, in his life, ever feeling that same sense of rejection, of loss of community, of being lost. << 'we were there.' >> the multitude of Hive's voices hisses under these thoughts, harsh and venomous in Polaris's mind. << you could offer a lot more good to the world than some bitter coward bitch who thinks she's done something good by leaving the church but keeping all the worst of its poison right there in her. >> Polaris was just starting to consider another drink when the memories come, with all their anger. She leans harder on the counter, but only flinches once, not even trying to pull away. Her own rage pieces itself back together, sweeping aside anxious speculations about whether her anger was misplaced, how she might have approached the topic differently, if she had been right to confront Lily at all. She presses her palm to her mouth, blinking back tears, her fury roaring loud. Following fast, just as strong if not stronger, a surge of fierce protectiveness, little though she can shield Hive from what's already done, much less Dawson. But others... A flash of her own parents' admittedly less catastrophic rejection. Of DJ, lost in a strange world, hurting so badly. Of liberating Dirac, Lily beside her and part of her--part of them. << She could offer so much. Wants to? Has. >> There's nothing plaintive in this, angry and frustrated. She suppresses the impulse to go track Lily down and make her understand somehow. Alcohol forgotten, though her steps are already just a touch unsteady, she pushes away from the counter and sinks down to sit on the couch beside Hive, her eyes fixing on the projections without really seeing them. << Is this why he never sought her out? >> << fuck her, >> comes Hive's furious reply, << she's not one of us. she's not going to be 'us' again. >> He's plucking Lily's nasty-sounding retort out of Polaris's memory, pulling it back foreground. << She wants to feel like her fucking guilt is absolved. She's already happily forgiven theirs. >> There are new memories that come up, now. A thousand aborted phone calls, emails unsent, birthdays spent fretting over whether or not to reach out. << They threw him away like trash, >> he answers. << She was there. She knew what happened. If she gave a single solitary fuck in the intervening decade and a fucking half since they left him for goddamn dead in the streets, the Church keeps obsessive track of every single member who's ever crossed their doors and she knew that too. And he knew she knew that. Most of his family didn't want to find him and after how they treated him -- kind of seemed on them to make the first move. >> Polaris closes her eyes and breathes slowly, deliberately. It does not make her any less angry, but then, she is not trying to be less angry anymore. << (fuck them all) >> Fragments of conversations with Dawson about his family of origin surface, gaining new dimensions with Hive's memories and with knowledge about the Church she has now but did not yet then. << How many others would excuse them for having been brainwashed by their cult? >> She wraps her arms around herself and curls her legs up, tucking them under her voluminous skirt. << There's no excusing them. There were no extenuating circumstances. The Church didn't make them do it. God didn't make them do it. >> The thoughts are careful, measured, a nebulous attempt to anchor herself in the truth. << However they rationalized it to themselves or their other children, they knew exactly what they were doing. >> << this whole goddamn country's a cult, one way or another. >> Some of the initial force of Hive's rage is wearing down, not lashing now but just creaking old and tired and worn. << Everyone buying into some part of the bullshit, >> Now there's just a litany of Random Garbage he's had Americans parrot pompously at him since arriving here, bootstraps and we built this country, city on a hill and the freest country in the world, the near frothing rage some people have shown when he fails to be Sufficiently Thankful for the Opportunity America Has Bestowed Upon Him, the slavish devotion to the founding fathers -- -- all trickling down to, over and over and over, a knee-jerk defensiveness on the occasions they've tried bringing up the labs with non-Prometheans -- if the Law is doing it, it has to be okay; what did you all do to get yourselves thrown in there, then? Clearly Daddy Government had to have a Reason. "Fuck is the difference," Hive grumbles now, aloud. "You all want to pretend we kowtow too much to our parents back home but your whole fucking society's built on this incestuous goddamn obsession with deepthroating anyone's boot who's got a shred of power over you." Polaris subsides, not composed but slowly collecting herself. Her eyes have not opened again, but her attention--slightly addled between her fading wrath and nascent inebriation--is plain enough to Hive. She bristles at the cavalcade of American exceptionalism and the fascism to which it is inextricably bound. Though the words are familiar, refrains she's been fighting against for a decade, there is more ferocity than usual in her desire to personally tell off the chauvinists. Then suddenly that degree of leveraging-my-privilege-for-justice separation is gone and she's fresh out of Blackburn, terrified, disoriented, in near-constant sensory overload. Her father is telling her she'd turned out just like that terrorist, and what did she expect was going to happen if she kept breaking the law? Her mother is so relieved she's alright, but is it really safe for them to be talking to her? They'll love her no matter what, of course, but if she'd only stayed on the meds and stayed in school and stayed in line-- A quiet breath shivers from her, the answering shiver of metal in the apartment quiet, too. The hum of the wires all around, the beautiful chaotic tangles of living bioelectric fields, the slow steady thrum of the Earth's pulse all feel oddly distant. Even her indignant knee-jerk bridling at "you all" << (but I don't!) >> is subdued. "It isn't all that different," she admits at a delay, trying to focus on Hive. "If people want badly enough to--fit in, or 'succeed', or please The Powers That Be, they'll rush to throw each other under the bus, unasked." << We live in a society >> has a giddy, hysterical edge to it. "Kkkhh." There's a disgusted edge to the breath Hive releases. His head shakes, his bony shoulders tensed up hard. "Fuck knows my family's got problems, but there was never a second any of them thought to ask what I did to deserve being thrown in torture-jail and almost none of you lot don't have someone fretting about which misstep earned it for you." There's something very dark in his bitter amusement when he adds: "-- or twisting into contortions explaining away how it's totally fine, really, to throw your mutant children straight into their claws, parents shouldn't get any blame at all." He slumps heavily back into the couch, a small tremor running through him -- but straightens, as he watches the still-calmly-shifting images on his projector. The incense, burned down near to a stub. He adjusts his posture, mouth twisting slightly to one side. Breathes in, breathes out; clenches hard at his knees, but then eases his grip. << Sure -- >> the anger isn't entirely fled, in his voices -- not quite as vastly layered as they were -- but it's just a quiet trickle, now, << but we don't have to dwell in its gutters. >>