station72 | [hatch log] everything happens so much

[hatch log] everything happens so much

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: The Station
WHEN: DAY :039
SUMMARY: New faces and old losses - a hatch occurs and a number of older hosts go comatose. Coma'd hosts include all auto-piloted dropped characters to date.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP and suddenly you're a different person. No. That's not right. You're you and there's no suddenly about it. It's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like waking up from a very deep, extended sleep or like surfacing up from the darkness of the ocean and right there in your own head there's something both familiar and strange. You know intuitively that you've been unconscious for more than just a blink of the eye. While it’s impossible to tell exactly how long ago or how exactly you escaped the danger that had been breathing down your neck, you're certain it was more than a moment ago.

But here you are, a small miracle of the multiverse: lying in a small faintly hexagonal chamber, a gentle white light emanating from the surrounding walls. If you were injured during your escape, those injuries have been healed. If you were anxious or frightened or distraught, those feelings have been briefly calmed. There's something strangely peaceful about waking up here. That feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But once the tube's disconnected? Things get loud. A wave of emotion fills that peaceful void - fear, uncertainty, relief, a sense of purpose or loneliness or anxiety. Maybe some of these emotions are yours, but they can't all be. After the initial sensory overload, the mental buzz elongates: stretches out into a murmur like the sound of a party happening behind a closed door.

You can sit up - barely -, and shift out of the pod. There’s a ladder at your feet and a little cubby just before it with anything you brought with you as well as a set of crisp, loose-fitting white clothes; while your injuries are healed, whatever you’re wearing is in the exact state it was before. Maybe it's time for a change? Drop down the ladder to the floor of the Nesting Deck and you’ll find you’re not alone. The closer you are to these stranger, the louder the sound in your head becomes. --Actually they're not quite strangers either, are they? Something is wound about and between you and these people, whoever they are, are as familiar as this place you've never been is.

Welcome to Station 72. The air buzzes with activity. Somewhere deep in the Station, other minds call to yours. They are bright, brilliantly celebratory spots in your subconscious. They are sun-warm gentle, or they are fire and the taste of ash, or they are a vibrant frenetic whirl, or they are a tangled garden, or they are the feeling of flight through dense cirrus clouds. No two links are exactly the same, but you know for certain that you are connected to all of them in at least some small way.

Which is why it's easy to tell when something goes terribly wrong:

OLD HOSTS
THE ENDORPHIN RUSH of making it back to Station 72 (relatively) unharmed, having successfully acquired exactly what you'd set out to get your hands on can't be denied. Even if you're not necessarily the type to celebrate, there's no ignoring the thrumming celebratory sensation from those Hosts who are.

After a few hours of being back in the void, something else stirs in the air: the clear, prickling sensation of new hosts hatching on the Nesting Deck. They're a rush of mental information - as if someone's turned the volume on the radio all the way up -, a cacophony of sensation and emotional feedback for anyone unprepared to shield against it.

The swell of feeling might make it easy to miss what follows immediately after: the dull, gut-deep quiet as The Darkling, Chuuya Nakahara, and Nasu Rei go suddenly comatose.

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for all new hosts. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care do. You can find a more detailed overview of the hatching process HERE. You can find additional setting information about the Station HERE If you have any questions, please hit up either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

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[Shepard sees Shiro take the hit and then feels the echo of it, one-two punch, exactly like the echo of a physical sound. First you see, and then you feel it. The proverbial celeritas from which time derived its arrow. She looks away, helpless-- it is in this way that Shepard is a coward.

She remembers when it was Sirius, a man she'd barely known, and yet when he'd gone, he had left a hole like a lifetime-sized night of blackout drinking. She kept seeing the evidence of his presence, in little tells, memories half-known and irretrievable. But the reference was no longer there.

But this was, perhaps, a little different. She'd known Darkling. They'd competed together, for a definition of "compete" that involved the ABA!. She knows grief like that, has known it, even before the Nest, when she looked down from a window and--

The boy runs among flowers, chasing a plastic ship through an imaginary sky. The boy struggles to manage a door too large for him-- why don't they help him? Why doesn't anyone help him? The blast-- red light, laserlight, impossible power, the blast-- the roar of engines, she looks away. The smoke is black. Coward. Coward!

Shepard offers Shiro a fresh mug of coffee, without asking. She keeps her own trauma behind her teeth, for the moment, swathed in shields like fierce water.]

So. How you holdin' up?

[This is her professional voice, the one she used to use to check on her crew, when the war seemed like it might crash down and swallow them all. That's a different grief.]

[It's not until someone speaks, sets another coffee down near him that he realizes he's been mindlessly spinning a spoon in this one so long it's gone lukewarm. He stares down at it, then at the fresh one. Trying to pull his head down out of the clouds (not literally, and not metaphorically like those in Sam's head) long enough to piece together the immediate surroundings.]

[Breathe, echoes in his mind. Someone else's voice. Phantom fingers in his hair. I'm here follows, sharper, greener than the other.]

[Okay. Okay, he's back.]

I'll get back to you on that when I know the answer.

[When there's a word for it. He shifts a bit, awkwardly pushing the old cup away, moving to pull the new one closer. All of it one-handed. All of it using his left hand. Because twitching the right one pulls the pain back up into focus again. Sharpens it all.]

Thanks. I don't remember when I made that other one.

Oh, I've heard that one before.

[She says it as if she truly has. Usually in that same tired tones, actually-- bent over a console, trying to make things add up. Dead family. Burning cities. That sort of thing.]

It could be worse. [It could always be worse. Shepard sips at her own mug, contemplatively.] You ever have to write one of those letters?

[He's the commander of his little unit, one way or the other. That was her impression, anyways. The hardest duties fall to those in charge, in the quiet moments when everyone else can rest. But not the two of them, it seems.]

Y'know. Dear Mr-somebody's-parents, your kid isn't coming home because I got him killed. He'll be missed, blah, blah blah [This last Shepard buries in another sip.] I hate that part of the job.

Letters?

[He doesn't speak on the first part. Too many people have said that to him since he's been here. Like every coping comment out of his mouth is been there done that. He focuses on dissolving sugar into dark coffee.]

[On reality. And not the dull pulse of pain in his metal arm.]

[It almost works. Up until she elaborates. Then the spoon falls from numb fingers, and cold snakes through his chest, some sort of roaring noise in his ears cutting off her last words. Dear Mrs. Holt, Dear Katie, your family isn't coming home because I lost them -- they're gone -- I left them and Dear Coran, I lost Allura too and Dear Everyone I let you all down one of us is gone and ... ]

[and]

[Dark hands]

[He realizes he's gripping the counter so hard it wants to buckle. Warp under alien metal fingers. Every inch of him feels cold. He hasn't spoken, doesn't know how long it's been. Maybe this wouldn't have hit so hard, another day, a different time. But he's already on edge, and those simple words threaten to pull him under again.]

No. No... I... no.

[His voice comes out hoarse. He doesn't try to correct it.]

[Shepard isn't anything like Kaidan Alenko. He'd had that soft voice and the gentle touch that pulled hesitant rookies out of their corners. Sam had that too-- the right words, the right time, easy confidence, easily established. Oh, maybe it was harder than it looked, but it looked effortless.

She wasn't gentle, wasn't soft, wasn't often kind.

But sometimes, she wanted to be. Often, it seemed, that trying only made it worse. It was like comparing a sandy cove to a rocky outcroppping; some people are a safe harbor, and others only bring death. She sipped her coffee and let Shiro breathe through his horror, through the rising sense of bile in her own throat. Dammit

She didn't know what else to be. So she let him work through it and let herself be... just there. Shields like warm water, rushing, inviting, but not enveloping, not moving to protect when Shepard didn't know how. She didn't know how to be a harbor.]

Shiro. You didn't fail. [She's usually so good with words.] This wasn't your doing.

[Breathe echoes through. Breathe and he latches onto it. As if letting go means he's going to drown. Means dragging everyone else with him. And he can't do that. He can't be the one to hurt them all. He has to stay in control.]

[Allura's face composed and accepting and her voice telling him to be that way, to stay that way. But the doors are closing but he's being dragged off but nothing he can do.]

[Why is there never anything he can do?]

If... not me then -- [If not him or Clint or Bellamy or] -- who else?

[He's the leader. He's the one who should be held accountable, shouldn't he? The leader, the head, the pilot. The strongest person I know, the one who always said you can do this.]

[He can feel the counter dent. But can't make his fingers release.]

I blame myself. [She does. Shepard blames herself, can think of a thousand ways she might have decided different. But it's always that way, you can dodge the bullets by imagination alone, in your head. It wasn't reality, it was more like solipsism.]

Sometimes, bad things happen for no reason. You can do everything right. You can warn them early and fight your hardest and sacrifice everything you have, and still things fall apart. People die.

[The memory of her own voice intoning, soldiers die in war. The close-up flash of a Reaper's beam. Cold weight in her hands, dog tags in the snow, twenty-one names lined up on the wall. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four...

Mr. Williams, my name is Jane Shepard, I was your daughter's commanding officer aboard the...]

That's not failure, that's life. Burden of Command, they call it. You're not carrying this alone.

Edited (fights with dialogue) 2017-05-16 06:27 (UTC)

[He feels his head touch something. Realizing, belatedly, it's the countertop. No, he doesn't want this. Doesn't want any of this. But he was chosen for it -- he was handed the lives of two people first, then four. Then one who mattered to the entire universe and...]

[And out of all of those, there's only four left, aren't there.]

[You lost Allura. You left the others behind. You hurt -- and there's Matt's face staring up at him from the floor, betrayed and in agony and there are hands pulling him away and he never gets to explain --]

I... don't think I can... do this. Talk about this.

Not now.

[Because now it feels like every failure is threatening to crush him under its heels. Like losing the Darkling was just a catalyst kicking off a bomb in his broken head. And her words were the trigger.]

[He can feel, under it all, the stirring of that familiar anger. Like some great animal rising to its feet.]

And -- and it doesn't change the others. Not going to bring them back.

Edited 2017-05-17 05:25 (UTC)

[Shepard stops when he asks her to, sensing the hard, angry lump in his mind like the warning tremors of a Thresher Maw Nest. She's not afraid to fight Thresher Maws, but the only reason to do so on purpose is to serve a particularly persistent death-wish.

...She's not entirely sure how serious he is about that, because he keeps going, but Shepard does know, if nothing else, exactly how he feels. And not just because she can feel it along with him.]

No, you're right. It's not going to bring anyone back.

[The Butcher of Torfan.]

But neither is feeling sorry for yourself about who's fault anything is. You don't have control of who lives or dies-- and if you spend all your time worrying about what might happen, you're going to miss out on what else you might do. Maybe something great.

[The way she says it, it almost deserves a capital letter. Shepard reaches out, but doesn't quite put her hand on his back. She hesitates, then compromises by putting it down on the table next to his own. Not touching, but vulnerable. Honest. She sits there, quiet, for long enough that it'd be awkward, if she weren't working up to say something. It'd be more than awkward, if she weren't projecting that intention to anyone with a symbiote, so focused on the effort that her shields dipped back and rushed in again, like an uncertain tide.]

I've spent years killing myself, trying to save the galaxy. I was supposed to be the Hail Mary pass that found a way to save us all, but instead I'm here, and Earth is burning. The human race is coming to an end.

[Her voice is calm, dispassionate, as remote as if she were reading it from a mission report rather than relating a war to end the world. She knows, if she thinks about it any harder than that, calm will be the last thing she can be-- so this, this disassociation is the best Shepard can manage.]

So, I know what I'm talking about. That's all. [She grimaces-- she really had meant to shut up.] Sorry, I should go.

[She doesn't take her mug, but she does turn away. Stupid. Stupid, should've just shut my damn mouth in the first place and let it go.]

[She says "great" and he almost wants to laugh, or cry. Isn't that what he was supposed to be doing already? When he was just The Kerberos Pilot? But now there are so many things piled on top of that, he wonders if it's even still possible.]

Pretty sure that's already... out of my hands. Got handed that kind of thing...

[He means it to be a joke. But, on the other hand, bad jokes are Shiro's way of deflecting. Of downplaying himself. Not the best coping mechanism, but it's what he's got. Maybe it would be better if he could catch his breath. Focus on the steadying grip in his mind. On the reassurance she's trying to offer.]

[But something about it doesn't click in like he feels it should.]

[... is that going to be him someday? That burned, that bitter and remote. Is that what being a Defender of the Universe is going to do? To him, to all of them -- all the team their faces looking up to him young and trusting and they're just kids they're all just kids... ]

I... yeah I. Don't doubt that.

[He swallows. Takes a few long moments to focus on what words are running in his head. What he's being offered on two fronts.] Maybe -- another day. It'll be easier to talk about.

[An apology, for coming undone in front of her. Offering to make it right. To put things to rights like he's always trying to do.]

[Shepard offers that sentiment a snort, already halfway to the door. There's no maybe about it, that conversation is coming-- if Shiro intends to remain in a leadership position, it's inevitable that it will arrive. The saying goes, If you didn't then, then you never will. What it means is, you get to the point where you either crack or temper-- or escape.

But she stops, not far away, as if suddenly remembering something.]

Ah, shit. [It comes out in a mutter.] That's not even what I came in here to say.

[I'm losing my edge.]

Look, Shiro... [She stops again. No, this probably isn't the time. Later, then.] ...Nah, don't worry about it. It'll keep.

[Something feels like it cracks. Something feels like it's being torn. On one side, the assurance it's okay, he can step back. He's allowed to not be okay. And on the other, you need to do it, the need for control and confrontation and to not be broken and reformed and --]

[What do you want from me?]

[-- feels like it's screaming through his head alongside a roaring sensation. A surge of anger and adrenaline he knows comes from the thing in his head. It's only the training, the constant work, that keeps him from losing himself to the symbiote and its anger. He feels metal fingers wrench through the counter.]

[And forces himself to stop. To breathe. To listen to the voice in his head he's come to trust as much as Pidge's.]

... Suit. Yourself.

[It comes out harsh through gritted teeth. Through tightly leashed control over emotions otherwise left to run wild on grief and flashbacks.]

I'm not. At my best right now.

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[hatch log] everything happens so much

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