ArchivedLogs:Of Mites and Men

Of Mites and Men
Dramatis Personae Jackson, Thea (Cage narrating)	2013-06-09 Jax catches a ride with Thea and finds out about Ivan. (Part of Them! TP)
Location In the air
In a disused parking garage in East Harlem: "I'm sorry about biting you," Thea says again. "I don't wanna hurt you." Her voice has that clear tinge of Jersey in it, The wind whips through both mutants' hair as 'Sugar' races fast through the city canyons of glass and steel. Apparently the dragonfly is named 'Sugar, or at least, that's whats embossed in the pommel of the saddle in front of Jax. The reflections they make are stunning. Jax is riding in front, and Thea is sitting behind him with her left arm around his middle protectively. Her right hand holds Sugar's reins. "It'll wear off in a minute. You just scared me back there..." Thea trails off and she scans the horizon, and nods when she notices the sun going down. It'll be full dark soon, which makes it a /little/ easier to pilot a giant dragonfly through the city. "You said you wanted to talk. I'll put us down over there," Thea points at a disused parking garage. They're in East Harlem at this point, and it looks like nobody with any sense would actually park their car in the dilapidated, concrete structure. She swoops them into the gap to land on the fourth floor, just under the roof level, and sets down between two burnt out old wrecks. Thea releases Jax and dismounts first, and Sugar gives her a nervous glance when she realizes Thea is on the ground, but she still has a rider. But at Thea's gesture, she stays still. Then Jax's phone is buzzing, and Thea tenses, which makes Sugar tense. Thea narrows her multi-faceted eyes at Jax, and waits for his move. "I'm sorry," Jackson says, a little woozily, a little slumped still back against her. "I didn't want to. I just didn't know how else to --" He shakes his head as they land, starting to straighten when Thea dismounts. It takes him a moment to respond to the buzzing of his phone, brow furrowing puzzled before he answers it. "'lo -- no. I mean, yes! M'fine, right now." A pause. "No, /really/ I'm fine right now, things jus' got hectic and I wanted -- yessir. Um. I'll try -- can you tell Micah I'm /really/ sorry?" Another pause. "No. It's okay. That ain't necessary." Then a pause. "I'll call you. Later. Thank you." He shuts off the phone, setting it back in his pocket and turning from the saddle to look at Thea. "M'sorry, miss," he says again. "I didn't mean to scare you an' your friends. I just -- are you Thea?" Thea watches Jackson's phone conversation, peering at him in the growing gloom of the car park. A couple of crappy old lights on the level flicker and come on. "I am," Thea says, in answer to his question. She steps forward, offering him a hand with the dismount, and a hand shake when that's arranged. On closer inspection, each of her fingers has an extra joint it, making them much longer and stranger than usual. She actually still has eyeballs in her sockets, but they are multi-faceted, jet black orbs. It's a little hard to tell exactly where she's looking. She brushes some of her long black hair over one ear, which is surprisingly human looking. Just nevermind the fuzzy antennae poking up through her hair on the top of her head. "Why did you interrupt my work? I've seen you on the news. Even after everything you did for those people... They just try to shit on you." Depending on when her physical mutations started exactly, she looks like she might know a little something about difficulty with humans. Jackson reaches down to take Thea's hand, careful in his dismount. "Thank you," he says, politely, to Sugar, afterwards. For all his glittery nails and missing finger his handshake is firm, fingers calloused and too-warm to the touch. His hands drop back to his sides afterwards, and he tips his head in slight acknowledgment. "M'sorry about the mess back there. I didn't -- want to hurt none'a your --" He gestures towards Sugar. "Folks. I hope we didn't. I just didn't want nobody /else/ hurt, either, was a woman two inches from gettin' run over." The question earns a twitch of his pierced lips, small, wry. "Kinda do, don't they?" he agrees, lifting a hand to skim it over the top of his shaved head. The smile fades, and, in the dimmer light he pushes his sunglasses up to the top of his head; beneath, one of his eyes falls closed misshapenly, lid somewhat sunken over the emptiness beneath. "I don't know. Sometimes I don't really want to. Do nothin' for 'em. Want to take my sons an' take my friends and carve out a piece'a somethin' -- better. But." He turns up a hand, his fingers spreading. "I don't know if that'll change much for anyone but me an' mine. I want it to change for everyone." "I didn't get you name, but you're a father?" Thea sounds relieved by the idea. Assumptions are thick in her voice, but she's still confused. She steps back, and walks a small circle, spreading her arms to indicate the city at large. Her long, gossamer wings trail on the ground behind her. "Then you /must/ understand. There is only our families to take care of. Lions don't care for water buffalo. Rhinoceros don't raise pelicans. /They/ don't care about us or our children. They want to jail us for /existing/." She spreads her wings in a long slow flutter so she can hop up and sit on the hood of the closest burnt out shell of a car. "We have to shield our loved ones." She smiles over at Sugar who folds her own wings back and trots over to Thea to nuzzle her head in Thea's palm. "I'm Jax," he tells her, "and yeah. Three sons. All mutants. He turns, a small smile touching his lips at Sugar's nuzzling. "-- She's beautiful," he says, first, and the soft wonder in his voice suggests he really means it. It takes a quick shake of his head before he reroutes his thoughts back to a quieter: "... I do understand." He spreads his hands in front of him, and the by-now habitual layer of illusion over him fades away, leaving one arm, the side of his neck, the side of his face, all etched and marred by a wealth of pitted scarring. "I've seen a lot of what they do to us. Sometimes it's real tempting to --" For a moment there's a brighter light in the gathering gloom, a fierce glow that shines bright-hot in his palm. And then vanishes. "Just take everything an' screw 'em. Except I don't --" He draws in a slow breath, his head shaking. There's a fiercer sort of determination to his words when he speaks again. "It ain't /them/ I'm tryin' to protect, Thea. This thing's bigger'n any of us. There's a lot of ways to fight it but doin' it with the destruction an' -- that just gives 'em more ammo to use against all of us." His hand drops back to his side. "S'places that are safe, already. For you an' your family. An' ways to fight. An' people to fight /with/." "Does it really though?" She's not asking pedantically. She's set in her ideas, but she seems genuinely engaged in the debate. "They don't /need/ any more ammo. The registration is happening. It's /going/ to happen." She shakes her head and slides down off the car, one hand still scritching behind Sugar's antennae, the other reaching up as she approaches Jax. "And look at you," she says, caressing the scarred side his face with her abnormally long spider-fingers. "More beautiful than ever, but they make you want to hide." The sadness is so deep in her voice, it can only be sincere. She asks even more quietly, "Did they do this to you? They did, didn't they?" She sighs and looks down, letting her hand drop back to her side. "You could come with me, you know. You've seen my work. I try to be careful about who gets hurt. But they declared war on /us/. And I just want to make a place where we can live without fear. That's going to take money. And a lot of hard work. But it'll be /ours/ in the end. Why not come with me?" "It's gonna happen," Jackson agrees, soft. "But it won't last forever. Thea, I want a place like that more'n anything. But I want the whole /world/ to be that place. To be ours. To be a place we can live without fear. It's -- gonna take a /lot/ of hard work. To change things." His eye closes, for a moment, head turning just slightly into the touch of her fingers. "But it's work we can do. Work we're already trying to do. You could join /us/. I don't want to work against you. I want a safe place for /all/ our families." This last elicits a slight wince, though, in him. "-- some of mine are already missing," he says, quieter. "Was actually what made me even more keen to talk to you -- cuz one'a them, he talks to bugs, an' I was hoping one'a your friends might -- maybe have -- heard somethin' about him. If he's OK." "Those people have taken /everything/ from me..." Thea hisses. "Everything." Sensing the hostility in Thea, Sugar rustles her shimmering wings and shuffles her feet. Thea coos to the creature and squats down to comfort her, face to face. She puts her cheek against Sugar's, who starts to calm down, and then Thea stands again, leaving a gentle hand on the back of Sugar's head. "I'm not at war with you, Jax, and I didn't start the one I /am/ in. But I'm through with running and hiding from these people. I'm going to take what I can, and find somewhere to make a safe place for our kind." She takes a deep breath and sighs. "And yes, I know where Ivan is." She jumps right to using his name. She knows where he came from after all. "But he came to us on his own. He's safe, and happy." "His parents miss him," Jackson says quietly. "/I/ miss him. And there was three others gone besides him, without a word. His friends. His girlfriend. It was - we were worried, there's been a /lot/ of people disappearing lately -- it. Can I see him?" His eye flicks towards the dragonfly, his head dipping slightly. "I'm sorry," he says. "I weren't asking you to run or to hide. I want you to fight /with/ us. I don't know what you been though. But I know this city's getting -- this /world's/ getting more and more terrible every day." His hand lifts skims over the top of his head with a restless shift of motion. "An' I know we're gonna have to work together if we want to /make/ that place. S'people working for it already. We can use all the help we can /get/." "I'm sure a lot of people miss him, Jax. I've only known him a few days and he's already dear to me." The topic of fighting wars is dropped for now. She looks genuinely concerned though, adding, "I don't know anything about these other three. Ivan's door has always been locked from the inside. He's been able to leave the whole time. They even have a phone there." Thea studies Jax's eyes for a long moment with her flat black orbs. "If you promise not to try and take him against his will, I will take you to him. And prove we don't have the others." "His phone was broke so we didn't know --" Jackson shakes his head, drawing in a breath that seems pretty relieved. There is a note less tension in his shoulders as he nods. "I don't plan to nothin' against nobody's will. I just want to --" He exhales again. "I'd appreciate it. Thank you." There's the tiniest hint of smile that curls his lips, and for a moment before he drops his sunglasses back into place his expression lights. "... s'mean I get to fly on Sugar again?" He sounds brighter here. A little more excited. "Of course." A warm smile and squeeze of Jax's shoulder precedes Thea leaning down and making a fluttery, purring sound with her mouth, much more like a rolling of her R's, but it sounds remarkably like wings flapping. Sugar trots right over and does the Big Dog Lean against Thea's hip. "Ride behind, this time. And hold on tight." Thea flips a leg over and settles onto the saddle, leaving plenty of room for a passenger on the back half. Once they're settled and in place, she jiggles the reins and Sugar's wings resume their heavy beatBEAT rhythm of a double wing set. Soon they're soaring out over the dusky, nearly-night of New York, high above the streets. "You know, it could go the other way too. You could come work for me." Thea glances over her shoulder to try and gauge his reactions, but mostly focuses on flying. "I've read up a little on the Xavier school since Ivan came to me. I have to say, it feels like your people are putting the cart before the horse. Lets make a place that's safe for mutants, and build a school /there/. We're going to need people like you there." What could possibly go wrong in the process? "Thanks! Um. And thanks, Sugar." Jackson climbs back up, settling into place behind Thea. Behind his sunglasses, his reaction is hard to gauge, expression not betraying very much. He's watching Sugar more than anything, face turned towards her beating wings. "Don't want to work for nobody. Want to work with people. And like I said, I don't just want --" He stops, quieting a moment. Watching the city beneath them. "-- The school /is/ a safe place. I want the /world/ to be a safe place. We're gonna need everyone we can, to get there. Ain't gonna happen if we leave the world to its terrible." "You don't work for Xavier then?" Thea asks the question and then immediately shakes her head and waves her free hand to dismiss it again. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to argue with you. What I mean is, it seems like we have to start small. Make a whole town safe. And then a city. Maybe a state or province after that. Slavery wasn't wiped out all at once, right? We have to start small and build influence. Sway hearts and minds." She shakes her head again, "I just don't think it's going to work, trying to turn the behemoth of the American government in a full U-turn. It's too much, all at once." You get two guesses which of these riders is a little ball of sunshine, and the first one doesn't count. It's not that Thea is a pessimist, not from her tone anyway. She just has a harsh view of the world, and the humans in it. Something twitches upwards at Jax's lips. The smile fades son, though. "We don't do it all at once," he agrees, "but it's hard to sway hearts an' minds when they're running away from you terrified. Some'a those folks I was with on the ground down there? They was mutants, too. Some'a them not, but folks who've been /with/ me, riskin' their lives for /us/ when the cops were --" His teeth click shut abruptly, and for a moment his grip tightens slightly, like trying to hold himself steady. "An' they coulda been serious hurt in all that," he continues eventually, softer, "-- could /died/ in that. They was scared and upset and that ain't swaying hearts no direction that's gonna help /build/ something stronger. You're right. We do gotta start small. But if we ain't keeping each other safe right /now/ how're we gonna make something bigger?" Curiously, the 'evil villainess' just nods and is thoughtful for a long moment of flying. "You're right," she admits. It sounds like that wasn't easy to say, either. "That job was sloppy. There was no reason to go up top like that." She sighs, and nudges Sugar around and through an area less likely to be full of people. "Tunneling under and hitting places at night has been our thing before. Safer for everyone. But we ran into some savages in the underground. I guess I'll just have to buckle down and plow through them. Better in the long run." "They wasn't savages," Jackson tells Thea, a little apologetically. "It wasn't right of them to attack your friends. They was scared, too. Thought they was under attack. They've carved out a home for people like us down there an' -- someone up top kidnapped a bunch of their folk recently. Did some horrible things. They're a little nervous about intruders. I think if you introduced yourself they'd --" He stops, shaking his head. "I don't know. One'a their folks died. Another's been hurt now. It might be hard. Please don't -- they're like us, Thea. And they /don't/ got nowhere else yet that's safe. Their home needs to be." Thea cocks her head and looks back at Jackson briefly. "You /know/ them? My pets don't lie to me. I was told these people took the money we offered, and /then/ attacked my people. People I've had with me for years... I still can't believe I'll never see Lady Green again..." Thea goes stiff in Jackson's grip as she stifles the sadness, stuffing it down for another time. Finally she takes a breath, and her voice is steady. "We didn't /kill/ anyone, and we fought in self-defense. I don't how they define 'savage' where you come from, but 'unprovoked attack' works in my book. They'll just jump me if we set up a meeting. What am I supposed to do?" "I'm sorry," Jackson says quietly. "I wasn't there. I don't know what-all happened. They said one of their men died, though. Before any of the others saw your people. I don't -- know." He pauses, a moment, looking down past Sugar's beating wings to the ground below. "I could try to talk to them for you. Just please don't -- there ain't many places that are safe for us. If you -- plow through," he echoes her words a little uncomfortably, "-- there, it's. There'll be a whole lot of people with no place left to go." "If you think you can talk some sense into them, I'll talk through you. But I sure as hell don't see how I can trust them when they're telling people /we/ killed someone." Thea looks down and sees her hands shaking where they squeeze the reins much harder than necessary. Fortunately she keeps them pretty loose and they aren't tugging on Sugar at all. She takes a deep breath and tries to steady herself. "Jackson, we were digging half a /mile/ from their home. Because I didn't want to upset them. How much of the underground do they want? Because they can't have all of it. And I want the money they stole." "I don't know," Jackson admits. "But I can try, at least. To talk to them. An' if they don't want to talk then --" His teeth sink down against his lip. "Then I guess we'll have to cross that bridge when we get to it." Behind her, he slumps, his posture wilting. For a moment, his forehead drops forward against her shoulder before he straightens again. "I'm sorry. For all of it. Everything's just kind of been terrible and I want -- it all to stop. S'gotta be a way to get everyone to work together." Thea's tone softens, and she reaches up and back, surprisingly flexible, to stroke the back of Jackson's neck when he leans forward against her. "You know I don't blame you, right? You don't have anything to be sorry for. And hell, none of this would have even happened if it wasn't for Them forcing us to hide. /They're/ the ones. The norms. The goddamn humans." She grits her teeth and says, "They turned those tunnel dwellers savage. How many of them even /want/ to live underground. I bet most of them are down there because they can't 'pass', right? I feel most at home down there, but hardly anyone would /choose/ it over living up top." The pair find themselves descending toward the particular rooftop of an abandoned apartment building in one of the worst parts of Hell's Kitchen. Thea brings them down in a slow, lazy spiral, either because she's checking for danger, or maybe she just likes having a conversation with another mutant. Maybe both. "Most of them can't pass," Jackson agrees, quiet still, and this time when his head tips forward it stays. "My kids like it down there with them. But mostly cuz they got friends there. My sons are -- very -- blue. Claws. Gills. Ain't easy for them up top, neither, I think it's -- nice to have a place they don't gotta be scared." His eye closes, but opens again as they drift downwards. He's quiet for the descent, watching the dragonfly's wings beating the air, quiet breaths lost in the steady thrum of noise that carries them downward.