mental link, v important questions;

[narcissithstic]

(Tell me, have any of you spoken to Cathaway within the last two months.)

[The newer Hosts are the most likely suspects, but perhaps through the link—

Perhaps he feels nothing not because of distance, but because she's chosen to keep him locked out. The possibility is a nagging itch at the base of his skull; he'd rather know for certain.]

Comments

[narcissithstic]

(Do you think I'm an idiot, Lexa?

I know why she isn't here, and I know why she doesn't guide our hands - I don't need it.

Don't mistake my curiosity for desperation.)

[Even though it pretty much is at this point.]

[adamance]

( You made a mistake in giving yourself away so freely. )

["To me" could be the final two words here, but she doesn't say them. Lexa assumes that if he's so open with her, he's the same with other people. Weak. Suffering without someone to hold him up.]

( Request a return to see her. I don't believe you're the only one fatigued by this mission. )

[narcissithstic]

[He's so offended by the suggestion that there's a bitter pang of distaste running across the line; he'd never slink back to Snoke's side for guidance in the heat of a mission (though in truth, reaching him through the Force would have been easy enough).]

(I'm not so weak as to abandon a mission for the sake of my own comfort. If it lasts ten years, I will endure it.

By the time we're finished here, she will be satisfied.)

[adamance]

( Satisfied by what? )

[Idly, she does wonder if this might compel him to consider his actions and how they reflect upon him.

But she doubts it.]

[narcissithstic]

(By our success.)

[It's like a pen pressed to a tablet, bearing down hard enough to gouge into the soft tissue of its screen: he gives the answer that she wants, but not kindly.]

(And by my role in it.)

[adamance]

[Lexa knows that she walks a fine line between goading Kylo Ren into stupid action (and thus having a reason to finally put him down) and potentially ridding herself of a useful tool (which she doesn't yet want). Her mind is restrained but calculating, giving the sense that she's doing the math over what outcome she wants from her words.]

( Why would your role matter more than mine? )

[It could be read as a boast. She's well aware of that. But it could be read as Cathaway seeing them on even ground.

She assumes he'll take the former route.]

[narcissithstic]

[His response is instantaneous, painted with the echo of his grandfather's arrogance:] (Because you interest her less.)

[adamance]

( And how did you come to know this? )

[There is nothing about his words that get through to her, that irritate her.

In fact, it's a little like playing with Petre, only there are much higher stakes.]

[narcissithstic]

(Not even Prince was permitted to challenge me.)

[Her counterpart, her closest companion - that kind of favor would be gutting to lose.]

[adamance]

( Challenge you how? You sound as if you want to brag. )

[If she needs to lead him to the information she wants, she will.]

[narcissithstic]

(No.) [Preen, maybe. Cinch the idea of security ever tighter around his own waist - but there's little to brag of when it comes to the conflict he and Prince share.]

(But his authority ends where Cathaway's begins.

The Nest is hers - you'd be a fool not to see it.)

[adamance]

( If that is true, she may be prolonging this war, leading us to be the victims of our Enemy so that her people can live on.

If that is true, she's the cause for your grandfather's death.

Is she truly deserving of this reverence, Kylo Ren? )

[Some of this is her own suspicions, some of this is meant to shake his faith in Cathaway. Her own meetings with the woman hadn't led to this impression that the Nest belonged to her. Rather, she got the idea that she was the voice of something greater than her, especially since she could give some, but not all, the answers Lexa needed.

(Her effort to try had meant that Lexa would go to her over Prince. But that was all.)]

[narcissithstic]

(You were there when we were reborn. You saw there was -nothing- left of her people aside from him.

I felt it, sensed it, her devotion.)

[As she must have when they lost Adam Parker - to a lesser degree for not sharing the blame. But then, his idea of affection is gravely skewed.]

(We are her people. Even when I'd argue more than a few don't deserve it.)

[Which then circles back around to a sharpness, a needling dig of a thought pressed down across the distance:]

(And if you try to use my grandfather as a weapon against my loyalty again, you will regret it more deeply than you ever thought possible.)

[adamance]

( No, I believed there was nothing. Nirad and Carata banished those suspicions when we first met them. )

[Admitting this concern is no problem for her.]

( I want one thing clear, Kylo Ren. I am my own people. I lead my own people. Being here does not change what I was born for, which is a fact that a desperate individual like you will never come to understand.

No torture you can imagine can compare to what I've already experienced. And unlike you, I have always had my loyalties in order. )

[As far as she is concerned, he is desperate, reaching out to cling to something, to make it his everything. He may have abilities, but he has no true strength.

No matter what, Lexa doesn't think that Kylo Ren has the imagination to hurt her, not without dragging it all out in the open. And what then? What would he accomplish? Nothing, other than granting her the indication she needs to rid the Nest of such a volatile creature such as him.]

[narcissithstic]

[Were it up to him, he'd force Lexa to bend to the Nest's will— or better yet, force her out— but Cathaway demands he do neither. Be patient, she had told him as she healed his wounds, urging him to trust that the others would find their own way in time.

For that, Lexa should be grateful to the woman she so despises - instead, she's grateful only to herself. To her archaic, useless world of insolence and dogfighting.

But to think to sway him with the suggestion that Cathaway might have pressed Anakin to his death, to even dare and attempt to lift her chin above his own, his thin-skinned temper has reached the limits of its tolerance. She is arrogant.

And he is dissatisfied.]

(How certain you are.) [The words are vitriol incarnate, he punctuates them with the Force as he strains himself to reach across the distance and mercilessly grip her mind in his own, as he'd done to the Scavenger while she'd still been locked down in the his clutches. Twists the knife with each passing second, hunting for the echo of her memories.] ( —And how foolish.)

[adamance]

[At least one point remains true: what he begins to attempt is not outside the realm of her imagination. Her teeth grit where she stands elsewhere in the Bearings, heart racing as she tries to build a mental wall to resist and ultimately fails. What control she has, what mental control she has, all relies on her ability to repress her emotions. It is no real control; rather, it's based on her ability to shove aside how she feels. It has helped her, but it has cost her. None of her real training began here, and she has known the fault of that since the day when she grabbed Bellamy's arm to protect him from Sam (and before that, but she realized the truth of it then).

Her first thoughts are ruthless, but meticulously so: to kill Kylo Ren, to rid them of the threat that he poses because his power is not so great that they cannot live without the risk he poses. Her ire toward him is both personal (because of his act right now) and that of a methodical leader. No matter what power he bears, he proves time and time again that he is a chaotic risk to the Nest, and to her goals—

But this is only the surface level of her thoughts, and without any real way to control it, her complications surface too quickly. If she were not here, she'd be dead, and with her death comes the destruction of all that she worked for with her people—the foundation she created is unstable, and a flicker of a second-hand memory surfaces, people strung up on crosses, people acting without any control—people who are nothing but mindless beings, cut away from pain and everything else that makes them human.

There is the sense that she's afraid of this—not only for her people, but for herself. For anyone in the Nest that gives themselves too freely. This fear drives her, drives her even in this conversation, to plant seeds of doubt so no one gives to the Nest too freely—

Knowing that she is not Clarke, knowing that she does not have the strength and will of Clarke to protect these people from this fate nearly brings Kylo Ren to Clarke, and to the agony she feels from missing someone she had finally felt herself love. Instead, she desperately reaches out before Ren gets there, reaching out to the one source that she can manage in her weakened state, helped along by the bond of brood (and it may actually be the first time she's leaned on it since she's gotten here):]

( General Hux— ) [She reaches out, reaches without bothering to hide that she is, because she doesn't have the strength or control to successfully manage that. It's desperate, and it goes against everything she is to ask for help. That leads or comes with the expectation of trust, and she doesn't trust most people here.]