ArchivedLogs:No Answers

No Answers
Dramatis Personae Bruce, Hive	2016-06-19 "There's always something bad happenng. We're surrounded by it."
Location <NYC> {Geekhaus} - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
There's an open airy feel to the floorplan of this unit. The door opens up into a wide expanse of common space that is not so much divided up into rooms as it is simply multipurposed. Ash-grey resin flooring underfoot runs up against the paler grey of the exposed stone in the walls; between the stone support there are wide floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the river on one side of the home and the Commons' central yard on the other. Half of the space has a ceiling at one-floor height, though half of the space is left open with a balcony up on the second floor overlooking the living space below. A slatted stairway heads up to the second floor balcony; on the other side of the room, a fireman's pole running straight down to the basement provides a quicker way /down/. The wide open space here is combination living and dining room; in a recessed pit near the windows there are a pair of couches and large armchair around a wide coffeetable; further off a steel-and-glass dining table is surrounded by eight tall black chairs. A full bathroom behind the stairway is done up in dark granite; the glass-doored bathtub/shower is rather expansively large. The kitchen is tucked off in back, beneath the half-height ceiling; in here the appliances and cabinets and shelving recessed into the wall are in brushed steel, wide grey sweeps of tempered glass countertops running around the edge of the room and a large central island holding stoves and oven and deep double sink. Adjacent to the kitchen, beneath the ceiling as well, is a sitting area structured largely around the enormous television against one wall, a wealth of video games for a number of consoles held on the shelves around the television. Crates and beanbags and one low futon folded against the floor are arranged in good viewing distance; opposite the television, a sturdy large pen built out of wood shrines a couch amid a sea of brightly colorful playpen balls. A door in one wall opens up to the apartment next door; a door opposite leads down to the basement. It's quiet in the house, Sunday morning -- far too early for Dusk to be awake, Flicker not yet home from church. Quiet in the living room, where Hive is seated on the couch in faded jeans, black undershirt, no shoes, an enormous fluffy calico cat draped sleeping over his lap. There's a laptop in front of him -- open, but currently untouched. His stare is a little fixed -- not, really, even looking at the computer. Not, really, even looking at anything. His fingers run slowly over the cat's back. Pet. Pet. Pet. Bruce walks briskly across the courtyard, in a purple-and-white striped seersucker shirt (the sleeves rolled neatly up to his elbows), gray linen trousers, and darker gray shoes. He comes up short and studies the recently completed building before striding up to Geekhaus's door and knocking three times, firmly. His mindscape is as busy as ever with equations and memories and notes about ongoing tasks of all sorts ranging from the mundane to the abstruse. A sharp, clear thought cuts through all of this, << Hive? Are you home? {Please, answer the door.} >> On Hive's lap, the cat's ears prick. Hive's do not -- at least not outwardly. His eyes stay fixed forward; he does not move. There's a considerably delay before an answer comes to Bruce. The mental presence that knifes into Bruce's mind is jarring, painful, a sharp stab of psionic touch inflicted on the other man's brain; for all its unpleasantness, the voice that it carries with it is distinctly Hive's in all its quiet smoker's-rasp gruffness and bastardized-nowhere accent. << Home. Right. That's -- sure. Yeah. >> Bruce winces at the harshness of the telepathic intrusion. Deep beneath the brightness and movement of his conscious mind, a wholly different presence stirs in semiconscious alarm. But he gathers himself shortly, pushing his thick, black-rimmed glasses higher up onto the bridge of his nose. << May I come in? >> << Oh. >> Just as knife-sharp as before. Then silence. But after a pause: << Oh, right. Yes. >> Bruce opens the door and hesitates briefly on the threshold before entering. He's not actually expecting to see Hive in the living room, and gives a slight start at the sight. "Are you unwell?" He closes the door behind him and goes to Hive, though he remains standing beside the couch. "Yesterday, I felt..." He does not even try to describe his sudden ejection from Hive's network in words, but the memory comes up in a quick, bright flash of pain and disorientation, then nothingness. "And you haven't answer my texts. I grew worried..." The cat looks up from Hive's lap, finally, when Bruce nears. His response to Visitor is lethargic, a small twitch of the tip of his tail, slowly flopping over onto his side to return to his nap. It is, however, more energetic than Hive's -- complete lack of movement. He does not shift, does not look up. It might at first seem that he's ignoring Bruce altogether, but at length his answer comes on the same piercing sharp mental wavelength. << I hurt you. >> The bright flash of memory is echoed back to Bruce -- this time with an undertone of vague regret. Bruce's jaw tightens, then relaxes. << I'm fine. Hulk was...more alarmed. But it didn't do either of us any harm. >> He kneels so that he's more or less on the same level as Hive's eyes. << Are /you/ alright? You seem like you're quite all here. >> Hive's eyes fix -- mostly through Bruce, at first. But then shift their focus, slowly, to the other man's face. He draws in a breath -- quick, unsteady, through teeth that are creaking in a slow grind. "Oh." Actually aloud, this time. "But /I/ am. Here." He blinks, frowns, looks at Bruce again a little more directly, now. "... is Hulk. Okay. I didn't mean to..." This trails off with a small shake of head. The tension eases slightly from Bruce's shoulders and his mind when Hive looks at him. "Hulk...I'm not sure. They left a bit of a mess in the lab, and did not record a message for me, but I suspect they were also worried something bad had happened to you." His head shakes, too. "I'm not here to fault you, I just..." Pausing, he considers and discards several phrasings of his statement in repaid success. "What happened didn't seem like a normal occurence, by the standards of your brain." "Something bad --" Hive echoes this with a deep furrow of his brows. A much smaller tightening of his shoulders. "There's always something bad happenng. We're surrounded by it." "I know, but.../to you./ Yesterday. When you dropped us." Bruce tugs his glasses off, folding them and then unfolding them again before finally slipping them into the breast pocket of his shirt. "You don't owe me any explanations or apologies. I just want to know if you're alright and if you need any...support." "There's always something bad happening," Hive simply repeats again. "All around us. All the time." He looks down at the sleeping cat in his lap, fingers stilling between their ears. "{If you see it all and don't do anything, doesn't that...}" This, too, trails off. Bruce sits back on his heels, thick black brows wrinkling. "{I don't know, but I do think the way that /you/ see it all is a little different from how most people see...anything, really.}" He pauses, turns over several phrases in his mind--they appear as brightly color three-dimensional blocks that adapt to each others' forms when placed in certain orders. "When you encompass other people, you become them, but they are not solely you. They have their own volition and their own lives. I can't imagine it's easy to decide whether to intervene /through/ them. And even if that /were/ easy to navigate, I doubt you can focus on righting all the wrongs all the time. You, too have your own life." This last with a nod at cat and laptop and a sweep of his hand at the room around them.' "Do I?" The question sounds puzzled, not challenging; Hive's brows knit deeply in mirror of Bruce's. "{If I've /become/ them and they're hurting someone -- and I don't stop it --}" His hand lifts, fingers raking along the side of his head. After a long stretch of quiet: "... I hurt someone." "I have observed it, from time to time." Bruce bows his head slightly. "Your own friends, interests, work." Images of those spin through Bruce's mind in fast-moving clusters. "You are more qualified to say, I suppose, but I still don't see that it's so simple. You are not wholly those whom you become--they are still themselves; and you are not wholly them--you are simultaneously other people, including yourself. As I see it, your complicity in what your hivees do is something /between/ that of a witness and that of a perpetrator. Something not easily encapsulated by traditional ethics or even semiotics, I fear." << I am being no help whatsoever. >> He sighs quietly. "But...that's all easy for me to say, in the abstract. It must be difficult to experience it, and to have to make that choice." "Difficult." Hive's fingers still rub at the side of his head, his jaw clenching -- teeth slowly grinding. "I don't. Know what I am anymore." This admission comes quietly, his hand slowly dropping back to his lap. "Yesterday it felt less complicated. Like /obviously/ if I feel someone getting hurt by -- like I could just --" He tenses, a faint outward ripple pressing -- in uncomfortable squeezing pressure at Bruce's mind before it pulls back. "But today it's. Less clear. Maybe there's no -- answer." "You are an compassionate, intelligent person with an unusal ability--one with complexities that are not easy to navigate." Bruce reaches out and takes Hive's hand gently in his own. He tenses precisely as Hive does at the press against his mind. Deep beneath the surface of his thoughts, the other presence stirs and reaches for Hive. "Maybe there isn't. At the very least, I suspect there is no /single/ answer. But, in this case--yesterday, that is--did you try, or succeed in stopping someone from getting hurt?" Hive's eyes slip closed when Bruce reaches for his hand. There's a faint tremble that runs through him -- felt easily in his hand and echoed in the unsteady tremor of his mind's pressure up against Bruce's. His head bows, hand half-lifting towards it -- carrying Bruce's along with it. But then pausing -- not really lowering. Just fixed with a small puzzled frown as he looks at the other man's hand on his. "{No. I tried -- I wanted -- I don't know. I hurt someone worse. I always -- hurt someone worse.}" Bruce closes his eyes when he feels that tremor. The surge of emotions in him is sudden and unfamiliar--a mix of sadness, tenderness, and a distant ache. When Hive lifts their hands, he starts to let go, but then pauses. "{I'm sorry.}" His hand turns and curls around the other man's, grips it tight. "I cannot speak for other people, but you helped us--me and Hulk--and did not make it hurt worse. Surely, we cannot be the only ones." Hive's eyes open again, faintly wider than before, his hand squeezing Bruce's tighter. His /mind/ squeezing tighter, an heavier clamp of pressure that lets up after a few uncomfortable seconds. His head lifts slowly, eyes meeting Bruce's with more steadiness than the rest of him. "... did you come here just to check on me?" Bruce's eyes open, as well. He draws a deep, deliberate breath and exhales shakily through the discomfort of the telepathic pressure. Inwardly he's reaching for Hive, inexpertly, but the sense of it is not unlike an embrace. The /other/ mind buried deep beneath his stirs yet again, but does not wake. "Yes. I--we--were worried." The breath Hive pulls in is shaky in echo of the one Bruce exhales. His head tips forward, bowing further to rest his forehead against the other man's knuckles -- for a brief moment, at least, before he releases Bruce's hand and slumps back. His mind responds with more intensity, twining into the reach of Bruce's, gripping tight, a fierce flare of longing ache easy to feel even through the discomfort of his presence. The mental contact cuts off abruptly, though. Hive curls a leg up towards his chest, partially dislodging Cat from his lap to the couch cushions instead. When he does speak again it is only to ask, "Do you want tea?" Bruce's eyes open even wider, his breath catching at the sheer strength of Hive's longing. Something very similar--desperate, fearful, and hungry--answers from a neglected corner of his mind, though he reins it back in with startling speed and expertise. Even so, he settles heavily back onto his heels, blinking rapidly. << {Sorry. I didn't mean to...} >> He doesn't actually know how to finish this thought, but aloud he says, level and soft, "I'd love tea, and I'm not particular. {Thank you.}" "{Please don't apologize.}" Hive's voice is very quiet. His hands have folded together tight -- wringing at each other, releasing. He stands slowly, nodding. << {Then I'll make you some.} >>