Logs:Tending Weeds

Tending Weeds
Dramatis Personae Erik, Scramble	2022-06-03 "I can see clearer now our path forward."
Location <BOM> Gardens - Ascension Island
Considerably reduced from what they must have been when this place was actually running at full capacity, there is nevertheless a hefty amount of garden space tucked away behind the main cabin of the compound. Somewhat haphazard in its organization, the rows of plants -- mostly vegetables, with some herbs lining the borders -- seem to be chosen somewhat at whim. Despite the disorganized mishmash of crop selection, the ground seems well-tended, fielding the occupants a decent cache of produce three seasons out of the year. To one side, a fenced-in area with a raised coop houses chickens, often noisily squawking throughout the day. It's the perfect spring day, warm and balmy, the sky a brilliant blue dotted with puffy white clouds. Scramble hasn't been out here too long, pulling weeds in leisurely fashion while smoking weed in also leisurely fashion and just generally enjoying the weather. She's wearing a lightweight purple blouse, black vest festooned with gold geometric patterns, black slacks, and sandals with wide gold straps. Her singing comes in fits and snatches, unself-conscious even when she's not quite on key. "All night, I'll riot with you, I know you got my back..." Humming while she takes a drag. "So come on! Come on! Come on..." Erik, though only just now quietly returning from the toolshed, has been at work here for some time — a disused corner of the garden, close to his cabin, has sprouted new tall arching trellises, bare metal gleaming in the spring sun. There is some soil stuck to his light green linen shirt, more still on the knees of his coveralls. No helmet today — just a wide brimmed sun hat hanging on a cord around his neck. He does not seem like he was looking for Scramble, but there is a distinct change in his pace when he spots her, leisurely-old-man-amble now slightly bolstered with purpose. “Ms Scramble.” His tone is friendly, grandfatherly, the hint of a teasing smile at the edges of his mouth. “Are you, ah, encouraging the weeds to grow more?“ Scramble looks up when Erik appears, offering him a lazy salute as she straightens back up. "Nah, it's more like a challenge." She crooks a lopsided smile. "You don't have to call me 'miz' anything, it's just Scramble. So, what you growin' over there, Mr. Magneto?" She offers him the joint with a slight lift of her eyebrows. "Some tomatoes? Beans? Cucumbers?" Erik dips his head a fraction, a small huff that could be laughter coming at Mr. Magneto. “All of the above, and more as the summer wears on and my old bones allow.” Shakes his head to decline the joint, the edges of his small smile beginning to fall. “I have been wanting to speak with you, Scramble, for a few days now.” A small pause — a metal lighter and cigarette case float gently in front of Scramble, the case popped open for her to pull from should she like. Peace offering made, Erik continues; “You and Natalie were lovers, yes?” Scramble drops one eyebrow and leaves the other arched. "Don't mean to be scarce, just I still got a job out there. Dusk usually know how to find me, though." She hesitates just an instant, then gently pinches out the joint and tucks it into an Altoids tin with some rolling papers, a lighter, and a little mylar bag. Takes one of the offered cigarettes and plucks the lighter out of the air with a smile. "Thank you." Her smile fades quickly at the question, but after another hesitation she lights up and takes a long drag. Blows a stream of smoke up at the sky. "Yeah. For a few years. Never suspected a thing." The case snaps closed, returning to Erik's pocket -- for a moment the lighter feels oddly weightless in Scramble's hand before Erik's power retreats. "Such intimate betrayals sting so horribly -- I wish you didn't know that pain." At the edges of the young woman's awareness, a familiar chemical cocktail churns in Erik's brain, agitated despite the relative calm in his stature and tone. "I understand she must have been quite the spy to fool all of our brothers. That she bargained her safety admirably. But --" Erik glances sidelong at Scramble, watching her expression. "-- no one has told me whether you found it in your heart to forgive. Whether you think she deserves continued amnesty." Scramble casts her gaze out over the gardens. "Bitch used me. The broken heart I can take. Using me, against my people? Shit, her own people?" She shakes her head, gold hoop earrings flashing in the sun. "I can't forgive that -- I won't. So no, she don't deserve amnesty, but Mystique tole us to leave well enough alone and that's probably smart. Whoever she was working for, they ain't come after us." She puffs at the cigarette thoughtfully. "Ain't come after us yet. Could be if we fuck with her, that truce ends. But." She looks back at Erik steadily. "If I had her traitorous ass alone, she wouldn't be narcing on us or anyone else ever again." “As far as we know, the truce remains.” Something has darkened in Erik’s tone, those his expression remains neutral. “Spies and traitors are so famous for keeping their word, after all.” The agitation ticks up a beat, churns ever so slightly faster in the background of the conversation. “Should she cross us again, her fate will be yours to decide.” There’s a soft tug up in Scramble’s hand as the lighter pulls gently out of her grip. Erik lifts a cigarette of his own to his lips. “I promise you vengeance, as much as it is within my power.” Scramble lets go of the lighter. Studies Erik closely. "If she cross us again, we probably gon' have bigger things to worry about than vengeance." She smiles around her cigarette. "But if we do somehow catch her alone, maybe best let Cletus do the honors after I..." Her free hand describes a messy rotating gesture at her own forehead. "...do my thing. Waste not and all that." Her tone does not sound as enthusiastic as she perhaps wants to sound. "Thanks. I take it you been there and done that?" The lighter floats up, striking at the end of Erik’s cigarette. "I admire your pragmatism. I doubt Mr. Kasady will object." The amusement, slight as it was, fades from his face as he breaths in. "Betrayal and abandonment are well familiar to me. Vengeance, for some years, was my ever-present companion." The smoke wisps up around him, eyes gone distant with recollection. "Your situation is not wholly unfamiliar to me." Scramble nods, just once up and once down. "Guess some things never change, huh." She seems very matter-of-fact about it. Takes a long drag on her cigarette and tips her head back again. "I'm sorry you had to go through this -- or something like this." Her dark eyes search Erik's distant expression. "Did a girl stab you in the back, too?" A slight dip of the head. "Men and women both. More fool I for letting it happen more than once. Yet for our work, perhaps constant infiltrators are inevitable." Erik takes a long drag, the nicotine sanding over the jagged edges of spiking neurons, pressing down the jut of manic paranoia. A small crease forms between his eyes before he lets the smoke out. "It makes it difficult to trust, yet we have no choice but to put faith in each other." He sounds mostly resigned at this. Scramble does not respond immediately. Her eyes drift from one garden plot to the next, then finally back to Erik. "There's always a choice, ain't there?" This doesn't sound altogether rhetorical, but it's not exactly a challenge, either. "I think that trust has to be part of a true revolution, not just a means to an end. It takes trust to fight together, and it takes a more to build together. To build community we gotta work to overcome the shit that makes it harder to trust, whether it's here..." She taps her temple with one slender finger. "...or here." With the same finger she taps her chest, just over the heart. "I haven't let my crazy take community away from me, and I ain't gon' let that traitorous bitch do it, neither." Silence stretches between the two mutants after Scramble finishes. There’s a tensing in Erik’s jaw, something shifting in his neurochemistry as his brow furrows. “May your tenacity be an example to all our people.” He flicks ash off the edge of his cigarette. “And may you never have to rebuild community from ashes. Many other things can take community away.” Still, his gaze lingers on where Scramble tapped her temple with a slight frown. "Amen, Brother." If Scramble was bothered by the brief silence it doesn't show in her expression or posture. "Helped build one up from worse than nothing, but that ain't the same as seeing one destroyed and starting over. I got mad respect for you and anyone else can pull that off." She tilts her head slightly and considers Erik for a brief moment before tapping her temple again, more emphatically. "My power makes me crazy -- literally, it fucks up my brain chemistry. Can fuck up other folks', too, temporarily." Her gaze is steady and thoughtful. It's at a slight delay with a slighter lift of eyebrows that she adds, "Or unfuck them." Erik meets Scramble's gaze steadily, a slight flare of nostrils accompanying a cascade of chemical firings. "I value your gifts, Sister, and appreciate what you bring to our cause." A slight furrow in his brow when he half-turns away, quiet for a long moment. "If it appears to your senses that I do not know my own mind," he says, slowly, "I ask you keep your touch light, and this, our secret." "Ionno if you know your mind," Scramble says philosophically. "That can be all kinds of complicated, because it ain't never just how you feel. But however you relate to it, I do know from episodes like that." There's no outwardly sign she's doing anything, and when Erik feels the effects of her power it's very subtle -- with more clarity and less agitation, his thoughts become easier to sort as his mind quiets. She leaves him above baseline with the energy and keenness that entails, but the pressure of barely holding back every impulse is gone. "Now, this won't stop it happening again in the future, you need meds for that." There's an almost imperceptible tension in her frame that wasn't there before. She takes a long drag on her cigarette and breathes out slow. "But I don't judge folks about it one way or another, and I won't tell nobody." The shift in Erik's posture is minute -- a slow release of tension from the shoulders, a brief unfocused gaze in his eyes before he looks back to Scramble with a new clarity. Scramble can feel the spike of agitation at the mention of medication, as well as the ease with which Erik's own self-moderation smoothes it out. Whatever he was going to say comes out instead as a thoughtful hum. "Thank you. I can see clearer now our path forward -- and what you might do to bring us there."