8900/That Sucks For You

That Sucks For You
Date of Scene:	21 August 2019
Location:	Harry's Hideaway - Bar - Salem Center
Synopsis:	Illyana discusses feelings and murder with the Wolverine.
Cast of Characters:	Wolverine, Magik

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Wolverine has posed:
Harry's Hideway is a goddamn godsend.

Sure, Logan doesn't do a whole lot at the Mansion. He's in charge of 'security' but the fact is a complex full of powerful mutants keeps itself pretty secure, and for the parts that aren't there's hi-tech surveillance. Honestly, he's half-convinced it's just a reason to keep him on a payroll so he doesn't go wandering off.

Logan has wandered off.

At present he sits at the bar in Harry's, broad shoulders hunched over in a faded blue flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of old, worn-in jeans. A half-a-glass of neat bourbon sits in front of him, and he chews impatiently on a toothpick to fight off the urge to smoke in the non-smoking venue. Up on the television, the Metropolis Monarchs are up over the Blue Jays.

"For fucks sake," the Wolverine growls under his breath, turning his face away from the screen for a moment, "the son of a bitch throws like a fuckin' amputee."

Magik has posed:
Illyana does not often frequent Harry's Hideaway, but she really has no where else to go. She can't go back to the apartment, she can't go to the mansion, and she can't go back to Limbo.. all roads lead to some kind of memory, others to facing her demons, but all of them are horrible.

So she goes where nobody would ever look for her. Quietly slipping in with her hair impossibly straight, no adorning bows or clips, and the bangs once more sliced along her brow in a Princess Cut. Her ears are covered, her cheeks are hidden, and her eyes are turned away from looking at anyone.

With a little air of detachment, she pushes into a booth and sits with her hands up on the table, forearms resting against the edge. Eyes fixed upon the black polish that's already starting to chip... scraping at it angrily with her thumb despite the cold way she's just staring..

When it doesn't come off fast enough she closes her eyes, but isn't able to catch the single tear that rolls down her cheek. It doesn't get far before she brushes it away with the palm of her hand, however.

Wolverine has posed:
Almost all of the mutants at the Mansion are known to Logan in one way or another. He might not have spoken to all of them, but he's encountered them in passing. Illyana's is one he knows better than some others, so when the door opens and he picks it up he lifts his head from where he's staring at the stained, beer-soaked runner on the bar. But he doesn't turn, because people don't typically come to bars in the middle of the week to chat.

But after a moment, he picks up the tang of salt on the air as well. A tear. Still hunched over on the bar, his head turns slowly and just enough to look at the Limbo Queen from out of the corner of one blue eye.

"Shit," he mutters to himself as he stands up from his stool and downs his drink in one hit.

A moment later he's standing over Illyana's table, a three-quarters full bottle of Jack in one hand and two short glasses pinched between the callused fingers of the other. He talks to her through the toothpick caught between sharp canines, giving his voice a strange, clipped quality as he talks out of the other side of his mouth.

"You don't want company but yer gettin' it."

And with that, he sets the bottle and glasses down before settling down opposite Illyana in the booth.

Magik has posed:
Illyana is distinctly aware of a great many things in the bar, least of which is the location of every occupant. Most of them are unfamiliar to her, she doesn't really like humans much, but one is. She's not acknowledge him, but neither has she acknowledge the waitress he came over to take her order. Rather she glanced up at this woman and fixed upon her a smoldering stare that wilts plants, dims lights, and darkens souls.

It's true what they say about the Demon Queen, where she goes weirdness follows. Strange tricks of the light flickering even if the bulb is new or longer shadows with each swing of the fan that could temporarily resemble faces or eyes. Whether a direct response to her presence or the embodiment of the darkness that follows her, however?

When the shadow casts over her table, she's once more picking at her nails with her thumb and prepares to fix Logan with that same stare until he all but invites himself to sit. Rather than glancing up, she shrugs, and continues to stare at her work debeautifying herself. Removing all traces of humanity systematically.

Months of work slowly evaporating into a shell of a young woman.

"What do you want?"

Wolverine has posed:
"Stow the Devil's Daughter eyes," Logan says with a dismissive wave of his hand, sliding one of the glasses noisily across the table before the clink-glug-glug sound of the bourbon filling it also fills the silence between them, "Devil's ain't prone to shedding tears, I don't think."

He moves the bottle, pouring another portion for himself and then setting the bottle upright on the table with a thunk with the top still off. He takes a sip of his drink, running the fiery sweet liquid over his tongue before letting it burn its way down his throat. He lets the silence hang there, the toothpick still rolling around between his lips. Pointing this way and that like some half-mad antenna.

"You don't got to tell me what's bothering you," he finally says, "And I ain't gonna pry any further than this. But cuts heal."

Magik has posed:
Illyana watches the ritualistic manner in which the glasses are placed one in front of herself and Logan, the sacrifice of the cap from the top of the bottle, and the systemic gurgle of the amber-brown liquid sloshing down into her glass. The whole while she rubs the tips of her fingers on one hand around a silver skull ring worn on the middle finger of the other. Absent gestures for a woman who usually sits absolutely still staring at nothing for hours without even moving a strand of hair.

She's still quiet long after the silence has settled in. The heat has left her gaze, but her gaze has not left the wild man seated across from her. Pale-blue eyes are locked in place, unmoving, unflinching and barely seeing him for how they gaze beyond into some other world or memory until they focus hearing his assurances that he's no intention to pry.

"Then why you are here?"

Simple question for a complicated woman.

She reaches for the glass and pours it down her mouth with only a hiss of air and temporary sneer when it burns down her throat. Once she's set it back down, one finger reaches out to slide it closer to the bottle, then points with all five fingers extending as if requesting another.

Wolverine has posed:
"Because drinkin' alone hasn't ever fixed a problem since Adam was a boy," Logan sweeps up the bottle again as soon as Illyana settles her glass down, refilling it with the same practiced hand, "Believe me, most of the drinking I do's alone."

The Canuck doesn't down his own drink quite as fast, taking it up for a sip and letting the flavour settle. He clasps it in one hand, staring off into space and just letting the silence of Harry's Hideaway fill the space between them. Over by the bar, the Metropolis Monarch's star third baseman hits a home run and the muted cheer of the crowd from the television fills the air.

"You got that real tough shell. I figure it'll be a lot tougher and a lot thicker by tomorrow, huh?"

Magik has posed:
Illyana inclines her head at Logan, watching him refill the glass laid out beside the bottle. Once it's full she finally looks away, but only so she can take that shotglass back towards her with little spilling over the sides. This one she savors... at least she tries to. She's clearly not much of a bourbon drinker, but also clearly wants the alcohol. Maybe she needs it.

It takes her two slow sips to finish and ultimately ends coughing into the back of a raised hand. Brushing the thumb along her lips as if they're tingling, she glances down at the table as the question is posed to her. Head dropping into a single nod.

"Da." She answers simply, "Do not know what is tomorrows bringing, I only know it will not be like this then. I could go to Limbo, spend months there earsing from my memory these things..." Holding up a hand, "I am gone from Earth only a minute, two at most... and I come back with no pain."

Her eyes shift back and forth, possibly asking herself why she /doesn't/ do that.

Wolverine has posed:
"What d'you get out of that, though? Running away and forgettin' about all of it."

Logan sighs, finishing a long sip of his bourbon before putting the glass back down on the table. He pulls a face at it and shakes his head, "Kids drink. Might as well be a strawberry milkshake."

Back to the matter at hand, his eyes flick back to Illyana's: "I can tell you a little somethin' about memory, darlin'. They hurt to have, I know. But they hurt even more to lose. All they leave behind is numbness and a terror you wake up sweatin' from in the middle a' the night. Lemme show you."

The man his hand on the table, fingers clenched into a fist. He takes a moment to look this way and that, ensuring nobody is paying them much attention. Nobody is. A moment later three razor-sharp, metallic claws plunge forth from the places between his knuckles with a 'snikt'. Blood pools forth as the flesh tears, staining the table, and then just as quickly they disappear back into his hands.

With each motion his features contort just slightly, the wince of pain that he must feel as the claws rend flesh to cut their way free. But just as quickly as the wounds were formed, the flesh knits itself back together until only a smear of blood on otherwise unmarred flesh remains.

"Pain is shit, but you can learn to live with it. Learn to use it. Physical pain and emotional pain, both. But the absence of pain? Of feeling? That's worse. You never get used to that. I've seen men beg to die because they couldn't feel anymore. You need the pain. Reminds you that you're living."

Magik has posed:
"For me it would be months." Illyana looks to the empty glass in her tilted hand, rolling across her fingers with the tip of her thumb guiding it, "For you it is thirty seconds. Nothing is changed for me.. I deal with pain and embrace it. I make it part of me like all other scars." The glass clicks down on the surface of the table suddenly. A sharp sound, hollow, eyes once more up on Logan.

The razor sharp claws slip from the flesh of Logan's knuckles and Illy watches as detached as if waiting for flowers to grow or paint to dry. Whether that's a true measure of her interest is difficult to read, however. Her expression is as locked away as her mind is.

The message, however, is received. She nods once.

"I am nine years old." She says to him, which is obviously untrue. "I am taken from Earth to Limbo where I fight, I kill, I conqour.. I do this for nine years and when I return, only moments have passed. All of me is a facade. I could live a lifetime in the blink of your eye.."

Now she is the one reaching for the bottle, pouring herself another glass full with less practiced ease at the task, but an untrembling hand that turns the bottle just so to keep any from spilling. "I can live longer in a second than most people live in their lifetime..." To what point, exactly?

"It is nothing for me to return to Limbo and deal with this in seclusion. Come back older, wiser, stronger... more fierce. More dangerous." The glass slides closer to her, "I am not hiding from pain, either way I am feeling it. I am staying to make sure everyone else feels it too."

Wolverine has posed:
"Maybe they ought to feel it," Logan suggests with an indifferent shrug, "Maybe you owe it to someone to stand up and say: 'Here I am. You hurt me. I'm stronger than you. I come back. I survive. I conquer.'"

He finishes his own glass, only one deep while Illyana powers through her third. He doesn't drink to get drunk (he couldn't afford it), but he has no idea what kind of constitution the Limbo Queen enjoys. All the same, he's there with her and he doesn't try to wrestle the bottle from her grip.

"You've got those killer eyes," the Wolverine says in a low voice, his own similar yet altogether different stare locked on hers, "That thousand yard stare. I have a saying about how I like to deal with emotions. I take all that pain, that anger, that frustration, that misery and I sharpen it all into a point - "

A pause, his voice as cold as a winter night.

" - and I fuckin' stab somebody with it."

Magik has posed:
"They will." Illyana is not verbose, at least not if she's got nothing to say, which is her neutral setting. It was necessary to explain her situation, so she spoke plainly. She is a killer, a monster when she needs to be, and a weapon that even Jean sometimes thinks they should let loose when a message needs sent.

But she's also a woman.

Who has seen too much to ever enjoy being a young.

Done too much to ever really come back from it.

She powers through the third drink as quickly as the first and turns the glass over to rest atop the table signalling she's had her fill.

"I have done a lot of horrible things. I do them because someone has to do these things. Someone /will/ do them." Her posture, usually so impossibly straight, loosens with the alcohol that burns off quickly but affects her in every bit the same way it would any young woman her size. She's intoxicated, though not sloppy drunk.

"I like this saying very much." Said quietly, looking back to her fingernails with a twist of her lips, once more scratching at the paint as if removing it is all important to her. "Tomorrow I will find dealers who sell Hook and I will hurt them very badly... and people look at me like I am evil because I /am/ evil. They will worry for my soul because they /should/ be worried for my soul. And I will feel relief in the sadness in their eyes.. I went to them... I tried to be like them... have them.. care.."

She snorts and shakes her head, "They said nothing. There was no shoulder for me only harsh words when my anger is too great and my sadness spoke in words I am only knowing. So now... I guess I do it my way, mm? But this is tomorrow." Her pale-blue eyes flick up from her nails at Logan, head canting slightly.

Wolverine has posed:
"Do it your own way."

Those are words that Logan seems to live by. He's the sort of man who has worked as part of team after team, yet always lives a life apart. The one people can know for years and not know the first thing about him. Where he came from.

"Then I guess I feel sorry for those Hook dealers," his words are quiet, his eyes narrowed slightly as he looks at something past Illyana that isn't quite there in the moment, "But you're doing it right. Make those things that are evil about you in something you can rest easy knowing you did it right."

When her eyes flick to him, one hand stretches for his own glass and turns it upside down on the tabletop also. He leans back slightly in the booth's bench seat.

"That's tomorrow."