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

[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.]