So she gives the only thing she can, a wash of calm through her mind. Ease, comfort, not forcing, not dragging her down the way she does when she needs Petre or Aoba easy around her: but to how she spoke to Shiro or Bellamy. Soft, no sharp edges, all giving and the hopeful feeling of soft falling rain the first time she had stepped off the ship on Avera.
There is a possibility and she feels it every day she wakes up with a free body and a free mind. ]
(I'm sorry about your family. I hope you do. )
[ she presses there a moment, and she doesn't share much of life, of what the hive meant, what good is it? Those first days had been awful. The life before it was a tragedy to her father's cruelty and madness. Of being powerful, being superhuman, didn't save you. That sometimes life was unforgiving, and then you died. Who in their right mind would discuss it, tell others?
The only consolation was in seconds like this. Where maybe that understanding could help someone else. ]
( My... abilities make the mental link easier for me than others, I know. But it also came at the price that before I arrived here, I had spent my life locked in a room, with no human contact except the scientists that experimented on me by my... father's orders. It got worse after I was drugged. When I arrived, I couldn't stand people touching me. I wanted to throw up all the time from the withdrawal. Ahsoka... Ahsoka had to carry me because I couldn't walk.
I still have days like that. I forget how to move my arms and legs. I forget that people are real, and I'm not just dreaming. Someone touches me and I jump a foot. Sometimes it's too much and I even miss the awful collar my father put on me because I feel like my body isn't mine and I can't control it. I am never sure it'll ever really feel like it is mine.
And I know I'm not the only one, even if I can only, in the end, speak for myself. Maybe not those circumstance specifically, but how hard this can all be. We all were someone else, before we came here. I know how it can be to not feel like a victim. Like you don't have any choice. I never had any, and to start with, I just laid there. I was so ready to die that this was - impossible, in so many little ways. Someone was forcing me to keep breathing, and I thought my lungs were going to fall out of my chest in sheer protest.
But for all of that... I wouldn't trade this. Because what being here, being part of this... means to me at least, is possibility. I have choices here, that I couldn't have otherwise, that I might never have known before. I have people that will listen to me, that will consider what I have to say. That if I asked for help, would give it just as gladly as I would give it to them.
So I guess, what I mean is? This is something you can use, Pidge, it's not something that's just happening to you. You are happening to it, too. You can do anything you want to with it. You're not its victim, you are a person living your own life and you're not helpless. You're strong, and you can survive this and do much more than that. )
[ Bites her thoughts off there, and - doesn't want to preach. She might not understand home or homesickness. What does she have to miss? Less than nothing. But she knows powerlessness, that prickling feeling of having to watch and just accept and feel like there was nothing to do but self destruct.
Then, Cathaway had taken the control collar off, and the light rushed back in. ]
no subject
So she gives the only thing she can, a wash of calm through her mind. Ease, comfort, not forcing, not dragging her down the way she does when she needs Petre or Aoba easy around her: but to how she spoke to Shiro or Bellamy. Soft, no sharp edges, all giving and the hopeful feeling of soft falling rain the first time she had stepped off the ship on Avera.
There is a possibility and she feels it every day she wakes up with a free body and a free mind. ]
( I'm sorry about your family. I hope you do. )
[ she presses there a moment, and she doesn't share much of life, of what the hive meant, what good is it? Those first days had been awful. The life before it was a tragedy to her father's cruelty and madness. Of being powerful, being superhuman, didn't save you. That sometimes life was unforgiving, and then you died. Who in their right mind would discuss it, tell others?
The only consolation was in seconds like this. Where maybe that understanding could help someone else. ]
( My... abilities make the mental link easier for me than others, I know. But it also came at the price that before I arrived here, I had spent my life locked in a room, with no human contact except the scientists that experimented on me by my... father's orders. It got worse after I was drugged. When I arrived, I couldn't stand people touching me. I wanted to throw up all the time from the withdrawal. Ahsoka... Ahsoka had to carry me because I couldn't walk.
I still have days like that. I forget how to move my arms and legs. I forget that people are real, and I'm not just dreaming. Someone touches me and I jump a foot. Sometimes it's too much and I even miss the awful collar my father put on me because I feel like my body isn't mine and I can't control it. I am never sure it'll ever really feel like it is mine.
And I know I'm not the only one, even if I can only, in the end, speak for myself. Maybe not those circumstance specifically, but how hard this can all be. We all were someone else, before we came here. I know how it can be to not feel like a victim. Like you don't have any choice. I never had any, and to start with, I just laid there. I was so ready to die that this was - impossible, in so many little ways. Someone was forcing me to keep breathing, and I thought my lungs were going to fall out of my chest in sheer protest.
But for all of that... I wouldn't trade this. Because what being here, being part of this... means to me at least, is possibility. I have choices here, that I couldn't have otherwise, that I might never have known before. I have people that will listen to me, that will consider what I have to say. That if I asked for help, would give it just as gladly as I would give it to them.
So I guess, what I mean is? This is something you can use, Pidge, it's not something that's just happening to you. You are happening to it, too. You can do anything you want to with it. You're not its victim, you are a person living your own life and you're not helpless. You're strong, and you can survive this and do much more than that. )
[ Bites her thoughts off there, and - doesn't want to preach. She might not understand home or homesickness. What does she have to miss? Less than nothing. But she knows powerlessness, that prickling feeling of having to watch and just accept and feel like there was nothing to do but self destruct.
Then, Cathaway had taken the control collar off, and the light rushed back in. ]