Logs:Mysteries

Mysteries
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Murphy
In Absentia Matt, Elie	2024-03-25 "--the rest of the family, they're not in danger. Right?"
Location <???> Lucien's Safehouse
It's an airy condo, decorated stylish and modern in a cheerfully bold color palette. The noises that drift up from the street are city noises but somehow less aggressively so than brash Manhattan -- when a car honks it's a brief and startling departure, the voices of passersby raised less often. Just now the door is opening -- no rattle of keys, just a quiet digital booping of the number pad. Lucien is dressed blandly -- a grey striped tee shirt under a blue softshell jacket, jeans, sneakers, a woven reusable grocery bag tucked in the crook of one arm. He is hesitating just in the doorway without entering far, his brows creasing as he surveys the entryway like it has disappointed him greatly by yet again not being home. He closes the door slowly behind himself, shifting his grip on the bag and not yet removing his shoes. The signs that something might be amiss are subtle, but there. They arrive shortly after Lucien does -- the faint yet acrid scent of third-hand cigarette smoke, mixed in with just a spritz of cheap after-shave. A door previously shut, now ever-so-slightly ajar. Or, say, in the kitchen -- where a disheveled intruder, interrupted from whatever fine-dining could be found in Lucien's refrigerator (by the sound of Lucien's arrival) now stands with a steak-knife. Tiny signs like that. Murphy's wearing a burgundy collared shirt with an open leather-brown jacket, his face lined with stubble that's carried over to flat-out whiskers -- that quasi-state between 'need to shave' and 'have a beard'. The knife is held at his side; casual, but still a quiet threat. When Lucien comes into view, his expression cycles through numerous positions in rapid succession -- too many to keep track. It settles on something that looks tense, tired, and -- most of all -- suspicious. "Whhh..." He grimaces and tries again, voice rough from lack of use: "Where do we celebrate mother's day?" As Lucien has moved into the kitchen a knife has materialized in his own hand, though it's half-hidden beneath the grocery bag, less of an overt threat. By the time he goes to set his bag down it has vanished back wherever it came from. "Peculiarly enough, I have rather lost my taste for that particular holiday. Shoes, please." Despite the pleasantry, it does not actually sound much like a request. A long stretch of silence commences -- one that sees Murphy staring down Lucien, his expression fixed and immovable. Until, at last... something snaps. He drops like a puppet with the strings cut, slumping into a chair. The knife clanks down to the table. "What the actual fuck," he mutters, mopping his brow with his hand -- then moving to, almost absently, start tugging at his shoelaces. "Yes, I was going to ask you much the same. Did something give you the misapprehension that I was inviting visitors?" Nevertheless, after Lucien has taken off his own shoes (only at a small delay after Murphy) he's asking, somewhat tired: "Are you hungry?" Murphy glowers at Lucien -- his shoes are off, but he's not sure where to put them. He settles for shoving them underneath the chair he's sitting on, nudging them back with his heels. Like a kid trying to hide his veggies beneath a napkin. "I was about to raid your fridge, figured the dead can spare a snack. How the hell did you --" He closes his eyes and resumes rubbing at his temple, now with both hands. "I mean, I came here. So I knew there was a chance. But I thought -- I didn't think..." For just a moment, Murphy's breathing becomes irregular; the grinding of his hands intensifies, refusing to look up. "What happened?" Lucien's hand moves reflexively to his throat, his eyes lowering as his fingertips touch light to his neck. His quiet hum is noncommittal, hand dropping again so that he can retrieve both pairs of shoes and put them in their proper place on a tray by the door. "I died. Clearly you heard." He is returning to the kitchen to start tucking his food away -- a small glass bottle of milk, a few veggies, a loaf of bread. He leaves out a small tub of fresh cheese, a few shallots, a fresh tomato. "Evidently, with my family, it does not take particularly well. Still, it seemed best to take a small sabbatical until I determine if it is like to happen again. I cannot always rely on some mutant ex machina deciding to take it upon themselves to defy the whims of the gods." The rubbing continues; Murphy only pauses as long as necessary to slide out of the way so Lucien can retrieve his shoes and put them in their proper place. While Lucien is absent, the rubbing graduates to a subtle rocking motion -- but by the time he's bringing food, Murphy seems to hanve a handle on himself. His hands slide down, his breathing... evens out. His expression becomes just a casual, tired glower. He eyes the fresh food like a vampire might eye garlic, but then -- with some reluctance -- reaches out to seize upon the loaf of bread, the knife now used to carve into it. "How did you die? None of this makes any sense. And you coming back from the dead -- is that related to..." His eyes flick up at Lucien, mid-carve. "Is this like, a thing all you Tessiers do?" "I dearly hope not. If anyone has plans to dispatch my younger siblings as well there is a chance I might lose my temper." Lucien seems to have his temper well in hand at the moment, beginning to peel the shallots into a small compost pail. "If we are being accurate, though, Matthieu never died. And our mother --" His lips compress, his eyes cutting sharp and brief to Murphy. Is his clear exasperation about Elie's return from the dead or about Murphy manhandling his bread? It's unclear. He begins dicing the shallots with short quick chops of a nakiri removed from a magnetic knife block on the wall. "Well. That mystery I have yet to solve." Murphy is, by all appearances, criminally negligent in his handling of food prep. At the very least, at some point, he seems to recognize that Lucien has some sort of... agenda, here, and isn't just presenting him with random vegetables to consume. But not before a wad of bread has been shoved into his mouth and roughly devoured. "How did you come back?" Murphy asks, having the good grace at least to wait until he swallows the bread to ask. Behind the question there is a heavy release of air, a relief -- as if by simply asking the question, he's accepting that Lucien is not, in fact, dead -- and Murphy is not talking with some sort of hallucination. "Not of my own power," is the only answer Murphy gets. It comes with a small displeased press of lips, as if Lucien feels this inability to raise himself from the dead a rather embarassing shortcoming to be admitting. He's adding a good-sized pat of butter to a saucepan and waiting for it to heat as he fills another pot with water. His eyes fix on the pot as he sets it on the stove to boil. "My brother seems to believe I orchestrated my family's captivities. I barely knew much of Prometheus when they spirited him away, and certainly did not have the connections to arrange for our mother's imprisonment, especially not given I had thought her quite dead at the time." It takes him a moment to dredge up his question, eyes pulling slow away from the heating pot and landing reluctant on Murphy. "Did you have any hand in it?" "Did I--" For a moment, Murphy looks equal parts baffled and offended at the very nature of the question -- but then he rolls his eyes to the side and sighs. As if him having a hand in any of that would probably be the least ridiculous thing that could have happened, at this point. He slumps back into the chair: "No. Like I said, I thought she was dead. Maybe... does she--" His attention ricochets back to Lucien, eyes narrowing: "Does she have a mutation? Maybe she can bring back the dead -- even herself. Maybe she brought you back. Some sort of... fuckin' power-move. Some sorta... 'I bought you into this world and decide precisely when you exit it' shit?" "She does, but what precisely it is, even Prometheus was unable to discern. It certainly is not resurrection, and if it were she would not have resurrected me. She is the one who wanted me dead in the first place. I expect she'll be rather as displeased with this turn of events as I was with --" Lucien shakes his head and uses the blunt edge of the knife to slide the shallots into the pan. He's turning his attention to a tomato, next, chopping it more roughly than the shallots. "I am certainly not going to live here forever, but I admit I haven't much notion yet how to persuade Matthieu that I did not sell half my family into torture. I expect he will also be somewhat displeased to see me home if he still believes her." "Hn..." Murphy is lost in the process of Lucien's chopping, eyeing the rapidly-dissected tomato with what almost looks like sympathy. "Matthieu thinks you..." he starts, the thought terminating before he even finishes it. "Shit." There is a moment of silence; only the metallic tap-tap-tap of Lucien's knife is audible. "Maybe she's a nutcracker? Heard that it sometimes runs in the family." He entertains this possibility for just a moment, before: "...but you'd probably have picked up on it if she was." Lucien is shaking his head even before Murphy makes this suggestion, just shortly after that shit. "Telepathy was one of my first thoughts after seeing the privileges she'd connived for herself at Prometheus. I've looked quite extensively at the files Ryan's team retrieved from Lassiter, though, and they quite thoroughly ruled out psionic ability. Besides which --" He's tipping his head in acknowledgment. "It would be exceedingly difficult for someone to tamper with my mind or Matthieu's without either of our notice. I revisited the files rather carefully this past week, but I will send them along to you. You are nothing if not thorough and perhaps you might catch something I did not." His hand curls a little tighter around the knife handle, his chopping just a little choppier. "I admit it would be comforting to think Matthieu would only harm me under a mind-controller's influence, but at the moment I am forced to accept perhaps he simply wanted me dead." He sets the knife down, adding some tomato paste to the sautéeing? shallots. Stirring it for a few seconds before the fresh tomatoes go in as well. "I suppose I can hardly blame him. If I had put him in there I would agree I deserved it." "Hnh." Murphy's acknowledgement of Lucien sending the files over is comprised of little more than a low, uncivil grunt. It's clear he's thinking -- cogs are churning inside of that massive migraine-factory he calls a skull -- but he's clearly not satisfied with any of the conclusions it's bringing him to. "I mean, she fucked with your heads when you were kids -- right? You don't need a mutant power to control someone's mind -- not when you know them -- not when you got history..." His voice dwindles, his eyes focused on the pan that Lucien's stirring. "...even if you did, it's not --" Murphy's face contorts; something angry -- far angrier than his usual casual level of anger, something fierce and fresh and ready to fight -- bubbles up. He clamps down on it with his teeth and looks away. "So he finds out -- thinks he finds out -- you put him away or something, and he just... goes straight to murder? Did he even try to just... talk to you about this, first?" "She was our mother," Lucien replies, terse, evidently thinking it answer enough for the first half of this. He exhales hard, sprinkling a pinch of salt, sugar, some cracked red pepper, in with the shallots and tomatoes before going to pinch a few pieces of basil from a plant growing in a windowbox. "He did talk to me. I told him I couldn't possibly have arranged to put her in Prometheus because I had already very much arranged to put her in a grave. In retrospect, clearly not the most sound defense strategy I might have employed. He got a touch more upset." Murphy grimaces in reply. His hand rises up to rub at his nose. "...shit. Yeah. Alright. Obviously, you've got to lay low until we unravel this fuckin' gordian knot... but -- what can I do to help? Do you want my help?" There's an edge to this question, like Murphy's half-expecting the answer might be no. But before Lucien even has a chance to answer, he adds: "--the rest of the family, they're not in danger. Right?" Lucien's jaw tightens. He stirs the sauce again and then covers it to simmer. When he turns aside to open the fridge again, it at least obscures his expression briefly. Possibly he takes longer than really necessary to come back with only a small bunch of broccoli rabe and a very tiny tupperware with minced garlic. "I do not believe so." He's very soft, when he returns. Starts sautéeing the garlic separately from the sauce. "Not -- imminently. She loves them. Perhaps that is its own harm." "I didn't mean from her. I know she's dangerous. I mean -- from Matthieu," Murphy responds, but there is a deep softness to the question; voiced so quietly that one would be forgiven for not hearing it at all. "No." This comes very quick, if not all that much louder than Murphy. "...okay." Murphy exhales, and a little more tension slips out of him. "Sorry. I --" He shakes his head. "We'll figure this out."