sixthiterationlogs | [closed] i’m feeling electric tonight

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[closed] i’m feeling electric tonight

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: House 42
WHEN: September 23rd
OPEN TO: Mark Watney
WARNINGS: N/A

The longer he stays in the main village, the more it feels like a mistake. He should be running again, he should be fending for himself against the foxes--and if he loses everyone he knows in the meantime, so be it. From the sound of Margaery’s panicked prediction, he has worse things to worry about.

Margaery’s prediction is its own problem.

Kira walks up the porch, leafy plants brushing at his knees. For a moment he tries to focus on that: the itch and slide, the wood with its slight give beneath his feet, the grain against his heels. The world has a texture and a scent, is firm beneath him, is sharp and real around him. Mark and Helen live about as far removed from the village as he does, and this long after the sun goes down, it’s quiet. He isn’t standing saturated in the panic of a gathering, or trying to cook through the hunger of a dozen early risers.

He’s alone enough on the porch that it’s just his own fear, his own exhaustion. In one hand is the folded pages of notes, Mark’s name across the outer edge, and he stoops down to shove it under the door. It’s been more than a month since the ability came back, but for ever brief reprieve, it’s gotten worse, not better. He’s done his best to track the timing in the notes, explain the severity, own up to the fact that Margaery’s new burden might be from a vial with his name on it.

He doesn’t expect Mark to fix it, but someone needs to know. If only to excuse Kira’s desire to hibernate under the dog until it’s all over.

When he gets up, he stumbles enough to catch himself on the door with a dull thud. It doesn’t seem loud enough to warrant a hasty retreat, he takes another moment at the bottom of the steps. There will be quiet and calm at home, but it won’t smell this green, and there’s another walk through occupied houses between him and his bed.

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I'd been in the back of the house — Puttering, honestly, even if that description reminds me, occasionally painfully, that I actually am old enough now to be somebody's grandparent. Bucket in hand, I'd been plucking off dead leaves in what we call the plant room — I'd claimed it early on because, at least until the sun had been up constantly, it gets the best light.

The sound at the front door is more like the drop of something heavy than a knock, and I set aside my bucket to investigate, eyebrows pulling together in worry when I first accidentally step across the pages pushed under the door, and then open it to find Kira wobbling at the bottom of the steps.

"Kira?" I ask, stooping to quickly gather the notes. I don't realize quite how bad off he is until I glance up again.

"Sit down," I insist as I step quickly off the porch, papers clamped in one hand.

"You're not my real dad," is as much protest as he gives, even as he reaches out a steadying hand to comply. Waving the concern off and wandering away is more effort than compliance, even if concern has always tasted like barley tea and a loose filling. Part of the calm in this place is Mark and Helen themselves: the risk in staying is the annoyance of explaining himself, not being overwhelmed.

Next time he sees Margaery being weird across the way, he's walking in the opposite direction.

"I'm alright," he says, hand on the post as he lowers himself to a bottom step. "I didn't want to bother you." The subject of himself is perhaps the only thing he doesn't bother people with; any other day he'd at least hassle Mark for some weed.

Kira's never been one to make a fuss, not even that first day when I'd found him at the fountain and he'd just barely avoided frostbite. I glance down to the papers, shifting them back into a neat stack, and then look back to the disenchanted kid on my porch steps.

"What is this?" I ask, because asking after his health would probably be pretty pointless. If I take this route, maybe by the end I can convince him to lay down inside and wait for Helen to get home.

They've both been in that room, thoughts wandering between columns of real and pointless, question marks drawn around words like clones and props. If he frames it like that--adding to those notes, raising new questions with which to form the shape of an answer--it doesn't have to be anything more.

It affects him; it's not about him.

"They're doing something to me," he says, pushing a hand back through his hair and leaving it bent to his palm. People disappear, strange creatures haunt the village beyond the gap--but this is different. "They did something to my gifts: Margaery has one part, and mine keeps getting worse. Neither of us can control it, I think it's how she found the room--she saw it out there before she even went looking.

"It's in there," he adds. rubbing his face as he lifts it and gestures to the papers. "I made you some notes."

That's the smartest thing he could have done, and even though Kira's always been one to see the value of writing things down, I'm still proud of him. I want to read what he's got here, but his health is a more pressing issue — I just can't tell if the issue is physical, emotional, mental or all three.

"You're seeing things?" I ask with an uncertain tilt of my head. We've never exactly sat down and laid out precisely what Kira's supposed abilities entail.

His laugh is short, dry, and passes almost entirely through his nose. "No, I haven't seen anything since I arrived. Margaery is seeing things, and it's worse for her than it ever was for me back home. She practically fainted when I found her at the edge of the trees. She's been having dreams, getting headaches. But who else would that come from? No one's ever said they could predict the future."

He's never really said it either, so it's possible--it's the timing that gets him. His powers growing, the missing half growing in someone else. "I'd worry more for her, it's hurting her, and she doesn't know how to control it."

The implication sits with his hands in his lap, that he does know. "I'm not seeing anything, but I'm starting to sense people again. All the frustration and paranoia, I didn't enjoy that last meeting: I don't know if I could even go to another right now. It keeps getting stronger."

"Margaery isn't sitting in front of me right now, you are," I point out. Not to mention that as far as I can tell, Margaery has a fairly extensive safety net, whereas Kira makes an active point of pushing people away.

"Come inside, I'll make you some tea and roll you a joint," I add with a motion for him to follow me up the stairs. "If one doesn't help, the other will."

Holding the door, I look back to him. "You know, I think you may be thinking too narrowly about where these abilities come from. We've had folks who were able to manipulate fire and ice, and I can't recall anyone ever claiming to have had those abilities back home."

Mark offering to put in some of the work to help Kira get high is the real sign of concern; usually he just leaves it on the porch for people to fill up and leave him alone, and Kira has to go the extra mile. It's a bit of a reversal to be bothering his drug dealer to smoke with him instead of the other way around, but it's the most mundane reversal this place has thrown at them.

"How can I resist an offer like that," he says, staring down at his hands. It takes a moment, but he finds the will to stand back up, walk up the steps. He doesn't have another bed to crash in anymore, but Bodhi's hardly ever home. Bodhi's used to him disappearing for hours or days at a time.

"Maybe you're right, maybe that's why she's struggling so much more with them. It isn't the easiest thing to be rational about."

"No," I say, leading Kira through to the back of the house. "I can't imagine it would be, and if she either doesn't have the ability or experience to control it, I'm sure it's more than a little overwhelming. Probably scary for her, too. Sit."

There's a little table in the middle of the kitchen, and I point to a chair as I move to light the stove. I was never a tea drinker back home, but boiling the water has always seemed like the safest route here, and between Helen and myself, the kettle's always on the stove.

"Did the empathy come back all at once?"

"It's terrifying for her," he can confirm: and there were times it was like that for him, where a prediction could just as easily slump him in one of Mark's chairs, but they never caused him actual pain. He didn't struggle to contend with them, or clutch at his head in their wake. Mark could be right--it's something or someone else.

Kira sits where he's pointed, his sprawl hardly unusual, but at least one hand grips an edge of his seat as if to keep him there. "No," he answers, glad Mark seems to have enough grasp on the concept to name it. "It was as weak as when I arrived, then disappeared again. Every--it's a couple of weeks, then days without, then it comes back, stronger than before. I had a kind of token, to help me control it, but I don't know how to make a new one. Which probably sounds crazy, but Bodhi claims to have hauled freight in space and grown up in a magic crystal religion."

"It doesn't sound crazier than anything else in this place," I toss over my shoulder as I open the cupboard, find us a couple of cups, and then go on the hunt for the tea and marijuana. They're both in porcelain canisters, and at one point I'd written "WEED, NOT TEA" in bold capital letters on the front of one. At the time, it had seemed like an error Ravi was actually capable of.

"Before you had the token, was it ever like this? Or is this something new?"

"It was worse," he answers honestly: the gifts in his family could be strong or weak, varied or specific. His mother excelled at binding her power to objects, using language and prayer to manipulate a part of the world most couldn't even see. "It wasn't there when I was born, it came in over time. I wasn't prepared, and I was in Manhattan. Worse, I was around other tweens seven hours a day."

Fuck this place, but sometimes, bless whatever rule or plan kept the number of teenagers at a minimum.

And bless Mark for continuing to grow weed. "My mother wrote charms on my tarot cards. She could do that, I can do, this," he says, drawing a hand down in front of himself. "It made it bearable."

As he speaks of it, he loses the thread of his own complaints, picking up another about the village. He picks his head up to look at Mark: "Maybe they do something similar, when we arrive."

"I don't think you really want me getting into what I think happens when we arrive here," I say with a knowing arch of my eyebrows as I set the cups and two cannisters in front of Kira.

Among the items stocked in the kitchen had been several tea strainers — The old kind that sits on the lip of the cup — and I pass one over before finding our modest stash of joint-worthy paper stacked in a nearby drawer. The kettle starts to whistle.

"Can you create your own token to help you control it?" I ask as I fetch the hot water and settle into an adjacent chair.

"I don't know, it wasn't something I did, back home." Mostly, he told fortunes when his mother was out of the shop and maintained her website, because heaven forbid she trust the concept of video chat or html.

Tipping his head back in the chair, he lets the other comment slide: he really doesn't want more of Mark's theories, even if he's taking notes for the man. "They might not even work if I did. It's magic, and that's up to our keepers. Weed still seems to help." A smile finally draws the edges of his mouth: "Even more if the company is smoking it too."

"There's no harm in trying if it's something you think might help," I point out. Even if the "magic" isn't correct, there's something to be said for psychological effects of something like that.

"I really need to carve some pipes," I absently add as I dole out the tea and pour the hot water in our cups. "I know we're just using scrap paper here, but it still seems like a waste."

Contrary to my current reputation, I have never actually carved a weed pipe — I was too obsessed with other plants when I was in school to take part in that stoner rite of passage, and surprisingly enough, NASA frowns on recreational drug use by employees.

"Yeah, a waste of weed rolled in shitty paper." Kira's sleep-dragging eyes roll over, like this is one practical concern he can't pretend to shoulder today. "There's a kid making it by the Hall. It feels like stale fruit-leather but it takes ink." Not any help in the weed consumption department, though.

Keeping an arm hooked over the back of the chair, he maintains his slouch. When he keeps answering, it's with eyes averted, a distance forming in him around the exhaustion and--fuckery of it all. How is he here, how has it been so long that this is just his life? Bodies on hooks, and Sonny promised not to let them bleed him dry, but Sonny isn't here anymore. "I've got some carving tools I'm not using," he says. "And I know how to make one out of an apple, I guess I could do the same shit with an apple-size hunk of wood."

"That's good, I was sitting here wondering how I was going to carve a pipe with a paring knife," I reply as I settle back in my chair. "Can you carve a token too, or is that something more like a rune stone?"

Yes, I too actually have some dim knowledge of ancient religions and fantasy fiction.

"Well, if I don't make it, you can have dibs on those and my journal of incredibly useful observations on the new ways we've all learned to do laundry."

Kira's knowledge is equally dim, and his eyes tip into a roll that matches the rest of him. Given the choice to explain it or let Mark keep making bullshit up, he still doesn't launch into specifics. He takes the time to lean forward across the table, busying his hands on the thin papers and little jar of weed.

"The shit I can do with people, my mother does with stuff. We're not the same, even if we can both pick up a pack of cards and tell you not to get on the midnight train next Tuesday. I could probably carve the same symbols into something, I do remember what they look like--but what they're made out of isn't as important as the power of the person making it. I can write them on the tags of my clothes and see what happens, but I can't count on it."

I don't really buy the idea that whatever Kira's written down is so pedestrian as that; knowing him aside, he was working with Veronica, and I was gifted with her surprisingly thorough notes after she disappeared. If Kira's bothering, I'm guessing the info is more useful than how to keep your whites white.

"It doesn't hurt to try," I say as I settle back in my chair. "If nothing else, it might help you focus just to have one. Help shut out all the noise."

Would that it were that easy; would that it weren't up to the sociopaths or the code in the machine--or however Mark's put the puzzle together. "If it means we get to stop talking about it, I'll give it a go."

Even his mother, in full understanding of their gifts, could get his hackles up on the subject.

Using the arm already flung over his chair, he reaches the joint back to catch the paper on one of Helen's candles, and the first hit is just to catch the weed itself. "I feel like I owe you a round of guessing how outer space works," he says thickly, holding the second hit while he offers the joint back to Mark. There is something to the concept of focus, his nerves easing for the familiar push of smoke well before it hits his system. "Is it also a series of tubes in which no one cares about your opinion?"

Contrary to the weed canister in my kitchen and the dried sheafs of marijuana I set out for grabs on the front porch, I don't actually smoke that much. Not that it isn't tempting, but most days I figure it's best that I keep my wits about me — There are always questions to answer and problems to solve, and unlike someone like Ravi, I've never had much of a problem relaxing.

Today, though, I probably deserve a break, and I'd been puttering anyway, so fuck it.

I shake my head, and then pause to take a slow drag. "No," I say, voice tight around the smoke before I sigh it back out. "It's a lot of nothingness in which everyone's opinion is irrelevant."

"The universe doesn't care," he says, paraphrasing something his mother used to say--as if he'd been sitting here smoking with Mark for an hour already. "That's why we have to." It makes him miss his mom in the moment, wondering if he'd ever get to sit down and smoke with her, see what really wild shit she might come up with.

"You've got that part down, at least," he adds, looking at the tea and weed set on the table, knowing most of what Mark does is to keep their collectively stupid asses alive.

"Not to get Marxist on you, but it really is true that when you lift everybody up, you get lifted up, too," I say with a tilt of my head. "And I'm not saying I don't like helping people for the sake of it — It feels good, all of that. But the everybody for themselves mentality would be a massive headache in this place. At the end of the day, it's just less work to be nice."

"Jokes on you," he says, bowing his head as he takes his second hit. "I was expecting the Marxism when you invited me in for tea and weed out of your quaint little cabin jars." His voice draws tight before he exhales, and he chases that hit with a third, enough stress stored in his body to threaten a headache that might rival Margaery's. "I'm glad you've taken up the cause, Comrade Watney."

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[closed] i’m feeling electric tonight

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