[hatch log] a lonely, distant place

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: Closed to Misato, Beth, Seviilia, Shepard & NPCs
WHERE: The Station
WHEN: DAY :045
SUMMARY: Somewhere far away from Concordia, new minds gain awareness.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary.

YOU WAKE UP and the person you were a moment ago is gone. --No. Not a moment. It's been a while, hasn't it? Something feels off - a combination of the strange and familiar right there in your own head. You know intuitively that you've been unconscious for more than just a blink of the eye, but it’s impossible to tell exactly how long or how exactly you escaped the danger that had been breathing down your neck.

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 and that feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But when you disconnect the tube things get loud and 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 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. Drop down the ladder to the floor of the Nesting Deck and you’ll find you’re not alone - and that those sounds in your head are louder. For two of you, the sense of familiarity runs so deep between you it might as well be cellular; one of you doesn’t share their connection, but you still feel like you know them somehow.

Welcome to Station 72. It’s quiet, still. Beyond the Nesting Deck in Life Support, there are a series of small personal rooms, all of them without doors. Some of them have personal belongings and a sense of life, but all of them are empty and it’s unclear how long they’ve sat that way. The only thing that’s obvious is that people are missing. For the time being, you’re alone with whatever (or whoever) has been left behind.

---

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for the new hosts. You’re welcome to make your own logs separate to this for your time on the Station, but please be aware that until the current mission ends that you’ll be unable to play with older hosts currently away on Concordia.


Additionally, you can find a more detailed overview of the hatching process 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 )

Comments

[travailed]

[Visibly holstering a gun is an extremely significant gesture, and Beth watches it with keen eyes, jumping back and forth between the woman's face and her hands. It doesn't necessarily mean she's not a threat, but it is a show of good faith. Beth wants to return that. She has to. It's important.]

... Thanks. [She smiles in a flicker, almost like she doesn't mean to, corners of her mouth spread up and out, then drawn back in.] I probably am better in my head. I mean, everybody is, right?

[She says it like a joke, but it's true. Everything sounds better when you say it to yourself, in your head. No matter what you're rationalizing, or how.

She swallows. Her stomach keeps roiling and her chest feels tight; she's starting to understand how this works, how the two of them are like water colors seeping together on the page.]

Sorry. If it bugged you, or somethin'. I don't think I know how to make that stop.

[wille]

[ Misato would disagree on that point. The surface she presents to others is miles better than the thoughts that roam her mind. They think her caring and warm when she is long past that, heart calcified beyond redemption and fueled only by contempt, which is why it isn't hard to believe that the fear belongs more to her than to the girl. She doesn't want her thoughts heard as clearly as the girl's singing, but that's a moot point, isn't it? Somehow it doesn't trouble her as much as it should.

She tries a smile, sad but reassuring, along with a slow shake of her head. ]

I never had ears for music, but I don't mind it.

[ But beyond the soft songs and church hymns lurk something darker, something more familiar. A father but a beloved one beheaded amid gunshots and screams. She clenches her fists, fingernails digging into her palms. Despair found at the bottom of an elevator shaft. What's the point of living? She takes a breath, truncated when she finds her lungs incapable of taking in so much air, then extends a hand in greeting. ]

It's Misato.

[ Katsuragi is her father's name. The silver cross around her neck, too, is her father's. ]

[travailed]

[Misato. Beth repeats the name in her head, mouth silently testing out the syllables— to a girl from deep Georgia, the phonemes feel strange on her tongue. Misato, Misato. She knows the weight a surname could carry. Everyone knew her father, before, knew their family; she and her siblings were always them Greene kids even though they were all only related by half.

Then she's suddenly cold all over, freezing, goosebumps springing up across her arms even under her sweater. Her fingers twist without thinking in the silver chain around her neck, heart pendant pressed between her thumb and forefinger. Her throat feels tight, like she's either about to cry or about to scream, and it takes a moment for her to be able to find room for words again.]

Hi. [She's let the moment to shake go on a little too long to not be awkward, but she reaches out to clasp Misato's palm anyway.] I'm Beth. Did you— [She wants to think about something else.] Did someone... find you? Is that how you got here?

[She doesn't remember the "getting here" part, but if the puzzle pieces match up...]

[wille]

[ It's funny, watching Beth shiver in the comfortably warm room, clutching her necklace like a lifeline. Like watching a too-good imitation of oneself, and humans are notorious for being incapable of seeing their mirrored selves as they are. It's uncomfortable to watch. Does she always seem so frightened? So vulnerable? That's downright pathetic.

Misato frowns, displeased with herself, and the smile that follows the girl's introduction is weaker than before. She sets Antarctica aside and tries her darndest to focus on sunny days in the city when their biggest worry was a broken air conditioner. There. ]

I don't remember . . . [ She's genuinely apologetic about this, already assuming the weight of responsibility. She feels as if she needs to know all the answers and all the right things to say to the girl, and she simply doesn't. ] I was attacked, then someone came to save me. The rest is a blur-- Are you hurt?

[ She saw her earlier, checking for wounds under her shirt. Guilt constricts her chest. That pain should be hers alone to carry. ]

[travailed]

No, I'm okay. I mean— I was. Hurt, before.

[The cast is even itchier and more restrictive now that her wrist doesn't hurt at all. She skims the heel of her other hand against her forehead, where there were stitches last she remembers. It's just scar tissue now, drawn pale against her skin. It was punishment. Dawn had hit her with the edge of a broken picture frame, splattered with blood.

The stomach pain was so bright and so severe that she feels like she should bring it up, but it ebbs strangely and she hadn't been able to find any injuries. It makes her worry more about Misato's state than her own, in a way she doesn't completely understand.]

I'm not now. I don't— [She tries to find the words she's looking for, and fails.] I don't know what's going on.

[wille]

[ Now closer, she can see the scars marking Beth's forehead, so out of place against her too-young face that she wants to believe that they are fake. But she knows surfaces can be deceiving. They are both battered and bruised, with wounds hidden in plain sight. She feels a keen ache in her chest for her, something someone else might call sympathy but Misato has never cared about the names of things, only that it drives her to reach out for Beth's hand so she can clasp it between both of hers. ]

We're blurring into each other. Somehow.

[ She softens her voice, tries her hand at being a mother after failing a thousand times before. ]

You shouldn't have to-- [ See what I saw, feel what I felt ] --be here, but we'll figure it out. We'll be okay.

[travailed]

[Incidentally, it's not her mother Beth thinks of first, but her sister. Bright-eyed and confident and tough, but— scared, too, beneath everything. Beth's never thought of that as weakness; it's strength, and something she's still not sure she has herself, as much as she tries. She'll never be Maggie.

Her fingers curl a little around the edge of Misato's palm.]

It's not just me. That's good. [The blurring, she means.] You don't gotta worry about me. We just have to stick together, right?

[She doesn't want Misato to think of her as a load, or as someone to be protected. She's always been that, someone else's burden. She's determined to pull her own weight this time.]

[wille]

[ It's an apt comparison, because Misato is always afraid. Of the dark, of being alone, of others, of dying, of living, of being lonely. She would admit it, if asked, because denial gets you nowhere. Face the facts, turn your weakness into strength, fear into fury and keep going. You're still alive, heart beating, lungs pumping air, so that means you can't just decide to stop and die. You can't. That's a law of nature. It wouldn't be right, even more so when others have died to let you live. Surviving carries a heavy weight.

She grips Beth's hand tighter before letting go, an approving smile on her face. ]

Alright. [ A woman after her own heart. ] Sorry for the noise. I'm not exactly music to your ears.

[ Joke. ]

[travailed]

[Beth shakes her head.]

No, it's okay.

[It's familiar, she wants to say, but that would sound weird, so she doesn't. She doesn't want to pry into Misato's life any more than she already (accidentally) has; her father always taught her to be respectful of people and their boundaries.

But still. Air in her lungs, survival like a yoke on her shoulders. It's familiar.]

Songs get stuck in my head all the time. And not even always the good parts. [She smiles back, even if it's a small one.] So you shouldn't apologize till you've gotten through that.

[wille]

[ It's part of the Japanese culture to be mindful and respectful of boundaries. Isn't that what she said to Asuka? When she herself is bent on bulldozing through any barriers erected against her when it suits her own purposes. Somehow she knows that it would be in her best interest to keep Beth close, no, that sounds too clinical. Somehow she knows they are already bound together, under the same yoke, for better or worse. She finds she doesn't really mind it.

The fear again, a small thrill in her heart. She grins, trying to lighten the mood. ]

The bad parts give way to the good eventually if you hold on through.

[ The eternal optimist. ]

[travailed]

[Her smile gets bigger. That's maybe the most familiar piece of all, whether it's about life or just about the crappy pop songs that get stuck in her head. She's always thought so, always needed to think so; otherwise she didn't have anything at all.]

Yeah. [She brightens up a little, inside and out. Hopeful, always.] Yeah, they do.