Logs:Useful

Useful
Dramatis Personae Lily, Lucien	2022-03-25 "You do this often? Stare into a stranger's soul and pick apart all their problems over lunch?"
Location <NYC> Natsunoya Tea House - Woodside
It's a grey sort of day, heavy clouds sludging their ponderous way across the sky without quite making up their mind whether to shed their watery burden on the chilly streets below. It hasn't encouraged a wealth of people out onto the outdoor patios and streeteries dotting this section of road -- currently the outdoor tables at this small tea house only have one lone customer. Lucien is casually dressed -- tailored slim-fit jeans, a subtly striped blue button down under his black leather jacket -- and his expression, currently, is far less relaxed than his clothing. A tight frown has pinched his face, fingers rubbing at his temple. The Bluetooth headset in his ear has its telltale light on to signify he's not just talking to himself with his softspoken: "-- have the report in front of me. I've no intention to waste your time, certainly; if you have more pressing priorities than these labs I'm sure my contact at the Times would be happy to -- mmm. Thank you, yes." He's tapping lightly at his phone, adding a calendar entry before giving his phone call a bland sign-off. The menu on the table in front of him gets a restless drumming of fingers, his eyes searching the clouds overhead now rather than its offerings. Lily hasn’t literally just appeared in the street outside the tea house, but she has been quiet since she spotted the back of Lucien’s head on her path, waiting for the light to flicker off on the earpiece before approaching. She’s in an orange oversized long-sleeve corduroy buttonup shirt, a black camisole strap visible in the open neckline, tucked into black barrel cut jeans that are cuffed above her boots. A silver chain is looped on one of her belt buckles, attached to something hidden in her right pocket, and her black fanny pack strapped across her chest. Over her left shoulder she carries an empty black tote bag emblazoned with the silhouette of a tapir and the subtitle “horse”, and over her right rests the main length of her braided hair. She gives a small wave, pausing in the posture of someone who is about to dash off again just a foot or so from the edge of Lucien’s table. “The Times?” Lily asks, a slight flush hitting her cheeks almost immediately. “Sorry. I was just going to say hi, but I overheard.” The pinched look on Lucien's face melts away when Lily's wave catches his eyes, displaced smoothly by a polite neutrality. "Lily." His head inclines, and he shifts slightly in his seat to face her. One brow ticks up at the question, and there's a moment of hesitation before he reaches for his phone, tapping at it a few times and flipping it around to show her the screen. The man on it is reedy, balding, dressed in a smart blue suit where he stands behind a podium. "Do you recognize this man? I don't know whether your time in Pennsylvania would have overlapped with his." Lily leans forward, hiking the tote further up her shoulder as her brows knit together. It’s only a moment before her eyes light up with recognition. “Bob?” It comes out almost excited, but Lily quickly pulls her expression into something a little more somber and uncomfortable. “Um. Dr. Windsor. He was — not my supervisor, but, one of my mentors. He was looking at, I think it was the F-R-L family of X-alleles and telomerase expression?” The edge of fascination has crept back into Lily’s voice. She glances at the phone again and adds, a bit ashamed, “…and doing crimes against humanity in the halls I didn’t have access to. I assume. What’s the podium for, is he wiggling out of it?” Lucien studies Lily thoughtfully, his expression not much changed for her flicker of excitement or the answer that follows. "Genetics conference in England. He was speaking. He's made himself quite prominent in certain circles. Enough to catch the administration's notice, at least -- he's about to secure himself a cushy appointment as Biden's Science Advisor. Exactly the sort of man you'd hope is driving our science policy, mmm?" “Oh.” Lily’s frown is slow to develop, a touch of confusion in her expression. “I guess I’ve — fallen out of the loop. A bit. I thought —” She glances to the open seat, then back to Lucien to mouth ‘May I…?’ while pointing at the chair. “ — with the inquiry. Anyone who’s ever worked there was going to be, at minimum, blacklisted? My whole intern cohort got suspended from the program. I thought — I hoped —” Lily chews at her lower lip. “Fuck.” "Please." Lucien tips his hand out toward the empty seat in invitation, nudging the menu toward Lily. "Are you hungry? Their butterfish and their agedashi tofu are both excellent." He draws his phone back near, flipping it face-down on the table. "I expect they'll make an example of many of the lower-tier workers to show they're Taking This Seriously, while the higher-ups..." He glances down to his phone with a small press of his lips, though he doesn't turn it back over. "Still. He has not yet been confirmed, there is time yet to scuttle his ambitions. It does make me curious exactly how many of these people they intend to repurpose, Operation Paperclip-style, under everyone's noses." He sounds slightly wistful when he continues, "What would be the real prize is knowing who ran this program, rather than playing whack-a-mole with the ones currently jumping ship." Lily sinks into the seat, slips the tote off her shoulder and onto her lap. Glances briefly at the offered menu. “Only if you aren’t waiting for anyone to join you.” She doesn’t study it for long before her eyes flick back up, curious. “Is that a thing you do. Scuttle political ambitions between matinee and evening curtain?” The fingers of her right hand twist around the silver chain at her hip as she presses her lips together. “I thought someone on the team had that information already. Figured that’s how D- how people knew about me.” Lily's tone is a little cautious but mostly just confused. "Goodness, no, who has the time for that?" There's a quiet lilt of amusement in Lucien's tone. "It's strictly an activity for the one-performance days. We all need hobbies, no? Collecting stamps was not quite filling the time." His blue eyes fix on Lily with a searching regard. "The files they have contain a lot of information on the day-to-day running of the lab but there's very little about the people above who keep the whole program going. -- I confess," he adds mildly, "I was of the vague impression that you had disclosed your activities to the team yourself. That was not the case?" The brief flicker of a smile quickly fades from Lily’s expression at the question. “Sort of. I mean, yes, to most of the team, but I — had to be brought up to speed on what Prometheus was, first.” There’s a soft clink of metal as Lily twists the chain at her side. She goes on, her tone a bit drier: “The on-boarding documents failed to mention anything accurate about their ‘sample acquisition’ methods.” A sympathetic wince flits across Lucien's face. "I'm sure that was a very pleasant conversation." He's briefly derailed from whatever he was going to say next by the arrival of the server; there's a brief exchange between the two of them in Japanese before he orders (agedashi tofu, miso soup, a pot of genmaicha.) Only once Lily has had a chance to order and they're alone at the table again does he turn his attention back to his companion. "Pardon, but if I have this correctly then -- you learned your estranged brother had passed, came to mourn him and discovered you had been an unwitting accomplice to the people who very likely had him killed, then fell in -- somehow -- with an entire group of people they had been torturing to try and take them down. That is -- quite a year, no?" He has propped an elbow on the table, his fingers splayed loosely against one cheek. "What exactly do you intend to do next? I dearly hope it includes some time to decompress." Lily orders quickly (by dint of just copying Lucien’s order, sans the tea), slumps back in her chair “Mm.” Lily dips her head at the end of Lucien’s list. “Don’t forget the inter-dimensional twin. That goes in there somewhere. Key plot point.” She folds her hands onto her lap, green eyes meeting Lucien’s gaze for a moment before dipping back down to the table. “I — don’t know. Wait for another upsetting revelation to point me at something, I guess. Housesit and medic until then. Try to be useful.” She chews on her lip. “Which. Would a staff directory from 2019 be useful? For your guy at the Times.” "Mmm. He's been having a time of it, too. What --" The beat of hesitation here is almost quick enough to overlook, before Lucien continues: "-- what are you, to each other?" He's started to trace a finger in slow circles against the matte back of his phone case but stops, pressing his hand flat to the table instead. "It would be useful. Is that it, then? Just pinball through life ricocheting from one catastrophe to the next? It sounds --" This time, the pause is more deliberate. "Unsustainable. If you require crises to give your life direction, though, no doubt you will keep finding them." Lily blinks, hands clenching at the canvas tote. “To each other is — a question I can’t answer by myself, I think.” Further explanation doesn’t come — instead she pulls out her phone and types a reminder across the scratched glass. “I might have some other stuff from when I was digging up S—“ Lily cuts herself off, hits enter and flips her phone over. “I’ll send what I have.” She waits out Lucien’s pause before minutely lifting one shoulder. “I was going to be a doctor. That was a direction. Probably would have also been full of crises. Now — sure. Pinball. People keep up unsustainable lifestyles every day.” "Yes," Lucien agrees, easily enough, "people do all kinds of things daily. I had only," his head tips down here, his tone apologetic, "had the impression --" He gives a small shake of his head. "Désolé, it is not important." There's not quite a smile on his face, but the glimmer of warmth in his eyes gives the impression of one anyway. "I do hope, in that case, that your future crises prove fruitful. Gods only know there are enough of them, in that crowd." Lily’s brow furrows again, ignores the well-wishes to loop back to: “Impression?” There is a new sharp edge in her tone. “Might not be important but we got time — you had the impression of what?” Lucien's eyes open just fractionally wider, his hand lifting palm-out in surrender. "My apologies, I hardly know you well enough to be making assumptions." His hand drops back to the table, forefinger tracing slowly against the edge of his phone case. "It's only seemed as though you were keen on -- trying to be useful, as you say. A challenging goal for any of us, but perhaps a touch moreso if constant upheaval keeps you always -- reacting. Harder to make the choices you want from a position of perpetual unbalance, no?" Lily studies Lucien for a moment, eyes narrowed as she leans back in her seat, still tense. “What I want.” She presses her lips together for a moment. “DJ said something similar. Haven’t really made much progress on building a foundation, here.” She lets out a small huff, eyes growing distant. “What I want is to go back to Philly and finish my program. Be a whole doctor. Kind of at odds with being useful here, and I already made that choice.” "Have you been trying to build one? That seems kind of at odds with -- waiting for another upsetting revelation to give you direction." Lucien is, at least, relaxed, leaned slightly forward in counterpoint to Lily, his chin now resting on loose-curled knuckles. "You could go finish your program and be more useful here when you return. You could transfer to a program here, there are excellent medical schools. You needn't put your dreams on hold on the chance that --" His hand turns upward, fingers splaying. "I'm not certain, really. That trouble will find you and make you valuable?" His eyes narrow, faintly curious, on Lily. "What do you think being useful is, exactly?" "Sort of. Maybe. Not well." Her eyes widen a touch at the mention of transferring, before Lily simply deflates into her seat. "Already dropped out. Also," she traces a loop on the table, "see previous conversation point concerning Prometheus student-interns being suspended, expelled, etcetera." Green eyes meet blue again as Lily considers the question. "Being useful is... giving away whatever I have to give. My access to Prometheus files -- useful. My boots on the ground at the protests -- useful. My training. My mutation, on occasion. My surname." Lily traces more circles onto the table surface. "You make me feel pretty stupid, Mr. Tessier, when you point out the irrationalities in my approach so soon into one conversation." "School is just so much bureaucracy; there's always loopholes in paperwork. Do you want to return? I'm sure we could figure that out." Lucien holds Lily's gaze steadily; a tiny twitch of smile now tugging at his lips. "I confess I have never been adroit when it comes to small talk. I assure you, that is hardly my intention. I do not think you are stupid. I do think it is difficult to truly make yourself useful without making connections, and challenging to do that when your approach is to simply open yourself up and pour everything out. Has that been working well? For you? For the people around you?" Lily's eyes slowly go wide. "Oh --" comes out as a breath, "-- do you... have? That kind of time? Between your other hobbies?" A cautiously hopeful expression works its way across her face, though her voice is still disbelieving. "It's worked well enough," she says without conviction. "But there's not much left. To pour. As you've already pointed out." Lily leans forward, propping one elbow on the table and cupping her chin with the same hand. "You do this often? Stare into a stranger's soul and pick apart all their problems over lunch?" "Paperwork is not a hobby, it is a passion. Besides, what good is being a monied white man if you can't badger some doors open now and then?" Lucien pauses here to allow the delivery of their food, offering a polite thanks to the server before returning to Lily. "Has it? If you left the city tomorrow, how many people would care? The thing about being useful is it takes a lot more than an impressive resume of skills. The people you want to be useful to have to trust you, want you around. That --" He spreads both hands, now, over the table. "Takes a certain amount of staring into souls. I think you could be wonderfully useful, if you build the relationships needed to do so." He's very deliberate about arranging his food just so in front of him, folding his napkin precisely in half to lay it in his lap. His voice is softer -- hesitant -- when he continues: "And you are hardly just a stranger. I may not quite run in the same circles you have been, but. When you fight alongside my brother, your lives are in each others' hands. I may not yet know you, but I have good reason to care." Lily is quiet, a faint pink spreading across her cheeks. “You make good points.” She looks down at her food, takes a moment to get the chopsticks into something approximating proper placement in her hand. “Caring about people because of who they are to your brother was, I thought, my whole deal.” She’s attempting to get the chopsticks around a piece of tofu when she adds — “I’ll do my best to be worth your effort.”