[hatch log] the stealth ship's running out of fuel

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: The Station + Concordia
WHEN: DAY :29 - :30
SUMMARY: A new brood hatches; two new hosts arrive in Concordia.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary.

YOU WAKE UP. Something is different - something unnamable, but palpable. You aren't the same person you were the last time you were aware of yourself.

You might not know it right away, though. What you do know: you're in a just slightly claustrophobic compartment. A gentle white light diffuses from the top panel. You're wearing the clothes you remember from wherever you came from. You feel... good - regardless of what condition you might have been in before you came to this place. Whatever injuries you might have had, whatever agony you may have been experiencing, whatever fear dogged your heels, they’re all gone. It’s quiet. Lastly, there’s a faint pinch at the base of your skull. Reach back to it and there's a small cable connected to the base of your neck and running back into the rear wall of the compartment. Disconnect it. Then it’s not so quiet anymore. Wherever here is, you aren't alone. You can feel that in your head: something big taking up space.

Welcome to Station 72, Mara and Murphy. All new hosts will have one day aboard the Station before being whisked off to Concordia to join the others. Get to know one another, ask the guardians of the Station - Prince and Cathaway - any burning questions you might have, explore Station 72. At the end of the day, a slick stealth shuttle will arrive in the hangar to take you to Concordia.

The pilot of the craft of a young man who buzzes across the fresh mental connection. It's loud enough to be irritating; he apologizes for it a few times during the trip through the pieces of the multiverse, as the ship pops into existence over the planet, and descends into the bustling inner city of Concordia in the dark hours of the morning on DAY 30. Nirad lands the stealth craft in a garden district; once you've disembarked, the ship reverts to an autopilot sequence and lifts off of it's own accord.

From there, it's just a short tram ride to the Bearings Apartment block building. The hosts, Nirad explains, have rented out Level 13. There are still some empty rooms there if you want one (you probably want one). That said-- if you don't want to go to Bearings and meet your new family comrades in arms ...friends...?

No one's stopping you. But some of them might come looking.

---

((OOC Notes: This is a mini-hatch log for Mara Jade and John Murphy; on-Station prompts should be closed to either one another or Station NPCs, but Concordia prompts may be open to everyone.

If you have questions about the mission specifically, direct them to the most recent calendar post HERE. You can find a more detailed overview of the hatching process HERE; you might also want to take a glance at the MISSION CONCORDIA BRIEFING. For all other questions, please hit up either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages.))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

high vantage points are awesome

[adamance]

[Lexa feels him before she sees him. To her, his mind is an unfamiliar one (albeit familiar, like a mind might be when it thinks of things she knows like it's breathing), as she hadn't yet heard the gunshots before the Enemy had attacked her, sweeping through the floor with her quarters. She had just freshly dressed and had been waiting, and it was sheer luck that she managed to hold them off long enough to save herself and her people. In her mind, Titus is still her teacher, an adviser who had been there for her and recognized her potential. He is not her murderer, or Clarke's attempted murderer.

But she knows of John Murphy, the boy they captured and tortured for information, and the boy they sent back to poison the rest of his people to weaken them. She knows of his presence when Finn Collins chose to kill her people, unable to stop them. Her knowledge of him is fleeting, as reported to her by scouts ensuring that she's aware of the conflict with the Sky People, but it's enough.

She sees him out of her periphery, the same pointed features that she had seen just days ago in Bellamy's memory. She watches as he makes his way up to the roof, and then she chooses to follow. It is possible that he doesn't know that she's dead, that he comes from a version of their world where that has not happened. Carata left open the possibility, and given what she knows about him (which is inaccurate information, to say the least), he likely wouldn't be positioned anywhere nearby in order to find out. Then again, he had been in her throne room, in Polis, keeping Clarke alive while ALIE and her City of Light struggled to take over—

When she reaches the roof, she remains near the door, and for a moment, her face is shadowed. This appearance is only helped by the dark nature of her clothing, all purchased in this world, but in truth, it doesn't look all that different from what she had been wearing at the time of her death. (She doesn't know that, either. She doesn't know that by fleeing one death, she fled another, as well.)]

John Murphy. [The name feels unfamiliar on her tongue, largely because she hasn't said it in some time. Before, he had been a means to an end, and she wonders if he will see her and recognize her for who she is: the leader of the people who used and tortured him. It occurs to her that with her plans here (plans to make them more efficient, to keep them from slipping and becoming tools like her people had become tools to the Mountain Men) may be complicated by this fact. But she keeps that sealed away, far from the surface of her mind.]

[wrackful]

[His full name in an unfamiliar voice sets a thread of tension through him that might be alike to hackles rising. Not that it being in a familiar voice would be any better, but at least then he'd know it wasn't yanked out of his head, or being shared around by Bellamy. He doesn't turn all the way, just looks over his shoulder, ready to make some snap about it. It dries up in his throat before he even gets close to voicing it.

For a second he thinks she's a ghost. Half hidden in shadow, gaze steady and hard like she's ready to pass some kind of judgement. But if he was going to be haunted by anyone, it wasn't Lexa.]

You're dead.

[It isn't a threat. Just a declaration of fact, blunt, as he turns the rest of the way around. How much more screwed up could this place get?]

[adamance]

[At least she can respect him for that much: he doesn't hold back the obvious as if it will protect her in some way. Bellamy's offering of that revelation had been swift but regrettable. With Murphy, it comes swiftly. There is no need to drag it out of him, but then, she already knows that version of the truth. This version of the truth involves a different sacrifice: the sacrifice of her life with her people, the sacrifice of her body to a different purpose, and the sacrifice of her autonomy, even if she struggles to cling to it and will struggle until it seems as if she can do it no longer.

She strides forward, the light on the rooftop hitting her face. Though her eyeshadow and braids are done (by her hand, as they often are done in the battlefield), the extensive eye makeup is missing.]

Not here I'm not. I don't recall my death.

[But her eyes shift over his face, recalling him not far from Clarke, pumping black blood into her veins. She knew exactly what that image meant, and it lurks in the surface of her mind.]

I owe you my gratitude. [Likely more than that for all her people have done, but let's be frank: Lexa doesn't feel as if that was anything more than a necessary action for when it occurred. She can't sink into regret over everything she's done.]

[wrackful]

[If he hadn't already done the is this ALIE gauntlet when he'd first woken up, he'd be doing it again, her words far too similar to Jaha's crazy there is no death in the City of Light. But she's real, here, and another of the voices connected in his head, images that had to be from Bellamy pressing forward, Clarke sat on the throne and Murphy with his hands buried in Ontari's chest. He can't help it, in the moment, a different scene echoing and overlaying, the sound of a gunshot and Clarke's face: desperate, immediate grief.

He wrenches it away. Physically turning as if to step back, realising in the movement that there's nowhere to go, the sheer drop of the building's edge behind him. His eyes flick to the door, past her, one hand lifting to rub over his nose. Would she let him pass?]

Yeah, don't worry about it.

[Too distracted to manage anything sharper, but he still doesn't know what to do with gratitude. He doesn't get it often.]

[adamance]

[She won't. Gratitude is not a look that she carries easily or proudly, and admitting it to someone who is a relative stranger in her eyes doesn't come easily. She chooses not to dwell on that thought, instead focusing on the flicker of memory, the bullet hole lacing through her, the grief on Clarke's face, and just about every question that might come from that.

Trained like anyone in her culture, she notices the glance past her, but doesn't step aside to offer him that escape. Sometimes, Lexa is more like an immovable structure than a human being, trained to be every bit as stubborn and unwavering as Titus believed she could be (but flexible and wise in the moments that mattered).]

Who held the gun? [A moment passes.] I don't recall because I was taken before I could experience that. But from what Clarke's wearing, she was preparing to leave, wasn't she? I remember that day. [Too much. Her last moments with Clarke were what she believed would be the final moments for a while. She never once believed that she would be here without the chance of seeing Clarke or her people ever again. Lexa carries both losses greatly, but it's not a thing she lets others see. That would make her too vulnerable, and she's better left without that.]

[wrackful]

[Murphy shakes his head. Irritation rises over the fact his mind can just leak like this, and he grasps it, pushes it up to the surface like it might hold as some wall blocking anything else from getting through.]

I'm not who should be telling you this.

[It should be Clarke. Someone who cared, knew Lexa, knew how to say things so maybe they wouldn't hurt so much. But she isn't here, and Murphy knows it has to be him. He doesn't want to. It's selfish, but that's the problem. He's always been the opposite of Clarke.

He makes for the door. She'll probably move to stop him (he would, he'd want the truth) but he needs to try, to get out of this.]

[adamance]

[Almost as if on cue, her hand does reach out. As she's used to hold people before (Rey, Parker, and now Murphy), her strength is apparent in her grip. It's no secret in their world that Lexa is a warrior, but there's something about her hold now that makes it clear that she is stronger, drawing upon a force of inhuman strength. (She may hesitate to use one aspect of her symbiote abilities, but not all of them.)]

You shouldn't have been there to witness it. [Above all else, that is clear: though John Murphy has every reason to want to draw blood from her people for what's been done to him, she also knows that he had been a target in part because he's weak. (By their standards.)]

Why were you? [Yes, she agrees: he shouldn't be the one telling her this, but for some reason, he knows.

And she lives in frequent denial of the possibility that Clarke will ever turn up here.]

[wrackful]

[The only reaction to her grip on him is a bitter cut of annoyance, pain tolerated easily. He's had worse, and he'd been expecting it. Even if he hadn't, he's long past the point of reacting to physicality with active fear. She could be holding a knife to his throat and get the same response: stillness, gaze cold and practically challenging as it meets hers.]

The same reason grounders are always grabbing me. I know something they want.

[adamance]

[It's not an unexpected response (all in all: she's not surprised she doesn't meet more challenges around the Nest), but it doesn't inspire her to loose his arm, either. If anything, that's going to be a stalemate. Her grip lightens but doesn't let go, as she intends to hold him in place and wants the means to do that easily.]

You shouldn't. [Have something her people want, that is. "Shouldn't" is really going to be the key here. They already used him for everything that he had, and had him return as a vessel for a temporary disease. What more do they need?]

Not if you were in Clarke's quarters. Why are you so reluctant to say this?

[wrackful]

[Bitter amusement blossoms, dry and cynical. Shouldn't hadn't meant shit for a while, even before this new set of shouldn't circumstances, standing on an alien planet facing off against a dead woman he was mind-networked to.]

Because I know what it's like.

[Someone you trust trying to kill you. Titus hadn't been targeting Lexa, but Murphy had seen enough of Clarke and Lexa together to know the betrayal of the real plan was about the same. Lexa might have forgiven him, but that was on her death bed. Like she'd said: she was alive here.]

I don't really feel like getting a repeat beamed into my head.

[It's true, to a certain extent. It's also a lot easier to fall on than acknowledging any concern for her feelings.]

[adamance]

[It's a sentiment that she can hardly disrespect. One of the greatest difficulties of being in the Nest is that she can't put a lid on other people's emotions, and she has a feeling that this would be as difficult as it had been with Bellamy the times she had been around him before. Then again, Murphy's emotional state is so wildly different from Bellamy's that she can't help but see how it would go differently. Cool, restrained, and aloof: none of these things could ever describe Bellamy Blake.

(Or Octavia, for that matter.)

Her hand frees his arm, but she doesn't seem as if she's intent upon relenting.]

I will leave once you either tell or show me. Or you can feel free to do the same. [But it doesn't seem like she intends to take a raincheck on this.]

[wrackful]

[It's ridiculous. He's been here barely five minutes and he's already caught in an ultimatum - with a grounder, no less. He takes a step away from her and has to laugh, a dry huff, shaking his head.

He doesn't want to try and wait her out, or use the thing in their heads to try and get someone else up here. What could he say? I know how she dies, and she won't let me leave until I tell her. Bellamy would tell him to do it. Most people would, because she has a right to know. More right than he does to keep it from her.]

It was Titus. [He says, finally, blunt but not sharp. He can't do soft, can't make this nicer than it is, but he isn't going to attack her with it.] He shot you. He was planning to shoot Clarke, blame me for it, but you walked in.

[And Titus obviously had no idea how sensitive a trigger could be.]

[adamance]

[The emotion that wells up inside of her is quick and abrupt, but she seems to mentally slam the door shut on it. For now, at least. Revealing it to a boy that her people tortured more than once is not something that she wants, nor does she expect him to be grateful for the experience. Compared to Bellamy, the feeling he gives off is cooler, more like a knife cutting with precision; in that they aren't so different.

Still, it was Titus. Another thing to grieve. If she had lived through it, she would have had to cut him many times before stabbing him clear through. Even if she had sworn to live another way, her people would not abide by that. He would have tried to kill one of her ambassadors, and he had taken up the forbidden weapon to accomplish it.

That day, she had asked Titus to trust her judgment. To understand where she came from. It seemed that he had, but it had been a lie.

She has lost so much since she arrived as a Host. What's one more person, even the man who was like a father to her?

(Murphy's other words are still clear to her. Grounders take him because he has something they want. Titus took him again for that reason. The reason itself isn't clear, but she won't ask. Not yet. If ever. What do reasons matter when it means that the one who believed in her most thought she had ultimately failed as a commander?)]

I'll leave you to the view, [she says, words coming out with more purpose than they have any right to. But internally, it's like the door is trying to creep open against all her strength, but she can't let it.]

Thank you. [For the information.

For saving Clarke, keeping her alive as she took the Flame and was chosen (wisely, she had chosen wisely).

There will be other matters to deal with later, but there's no need to prolong this particular moment.]

[wrackful]

[For a second the feeling that comes off her is achingly, painfully familiar - and then it stops, cut off like a blade coming down. He's thankful for that, at least, but it doesn't remove the knowledge that it's there, behind the silence of her walls, the set expression of her face. Was she always like this? He'd only seen her in her death - now, he looks at this woman and can't see what would've made Clarke care about her as much as she did.]

He's dead, by the way.

[He couldn't really say what makes him say it. She's about to walk away - he could just wash his hands of the whole encounter and make sure to never let her stand between him and a door again. But it's a completion, maybe, though he wouldn't know if she'd want it for vengeance or to be able to get all the pain out of the way in one go.]

He helped Clarke get out, then he slit his throat.

[And left Murphy to fend for himself, but now doesn't really seem like the time to raise his own complaints against the old man.]

[adamance]

He would've known what he was owed, and he would never have been able to live with himself otherwise. [Without seeing the event, without seeing what happened, Lexa can guess just the same. She knows Titus well. Death has always been held over the heads of her people as punishment, a sign of shame, and a sign that someone had failed to survive. There were few who failed to recognize that Titus favored her above all the other novitiates back in the day, and that his loosening hold on her had been a sign of him fearing that he had been wrong.

It occurs to her that he may have done the same in her world before she was taken, and even if he didn't, what came of her absence? Would he have blamed Clarke? What about John Murphy? Oddly enough, she hopes that he had been given a merciful death before he could have brought about more pain and chaos in a desperate attempt to turn the tides among her people.

Lexa knows she has more to consider. Clarke weighs heavily in her mind. To her, Clarke is not someone who can just be forgotten—and she doesn't know that expecting her to just accept another loss would have gone well. But that is not a conversation for her and John Murphy. Or for her and most anyone here.]

Is there anything else? [Her fingers curl loosely into fists, not quite clenching, but it's a sign of the control that she's holding on to for the moment.]

[wrackful]

[It's the response he should've expected. Murphy realises it as soon as the words are out of her mouth. She's a grounder. She might as well be the grounder. Bitterness rises, cold, an edge of cynical amusement that tugs the corner of his mouth sharply. If there's grief in her, pain, it doesn't matter, because she wouldn't let it matter anyway. And here he'd been worried about her feelings.]

What he was owed. Right.

[Like Finn. Finn whose execution Murphy had only heard about second-hand, unable to watch it, only now he has a snippet of live footage straight from Bellamy's brain. It gives that particular thread of guilt a proper home to root from. It gives him even less idea of what the hell Clarke had been so upset about at Lexa's deathbed.]

No, don't let me keep you. [He gestures towards the door, a sweeping arm.] Commander.

[He says it like he used to say Chancellor, insult dripping from every syllable.]

[adamance]

[That icy bitterness isn't surprising considering all that he's gone through. If anything, he had nearly been framed for Clarke's death, and she knows exactly what he would have been owed in the aftermath of that. Her eyes lock on his face for a long moment while she conceals everything underneath. Her gaze is unwavering.

And then it moves, right toward the door that she said she'd be leaving through.]

Speak to Bellamy about our arrangement. It extends to you. [The unspoken words are clear: "Whether you like it or not." It wasn't an arrangement made with Bellamy, anyway, but Clarke.

Her motions afterward are swift and fluid as she makes her exit. She may not be wearing a long flowing cape like she has many times before, but she walks as if she does. In this moment, it felt important to have that particular stride in play.]