station72 | sometime after day 5

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sometime after day 5

[ Sam’s never really reached out to the Nest in general like this before, but at this point - well, he’s running out of options. The work he’s done on his mental walls has paid off, and nothing escapes his thick cloud layer except his words, and the soft hint of wind and feathers that flavors his mental link. ]

( Seems like we got a bit of down time, and I’m looking to put it to good use. I’m getting better with my symbiote ability, but I need someone who’ll let me practice it with them.

Simple explanation is that it’s healing, with a side effect that means it’s gonna hurt. Most likely for me. I can get into specifics if you’re up for it. ) [ If it doesn’t bother them or they’re willing to overlook that it means Sam getting hurt, he means, but seeing as he’s communicating with the Nest in general, he’s not gonna say that.

He already knows more than who person who is bothered by it and never seems willing to let Sam use it on them. ]

( I’ll take as many as I can get, more training can’t hurt. )

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You think?

[Shepard likes Sev. She even likes Sev, but there's good clean fun, and then there's the kind of thing that leads a body to try and kill you, for good. Either way, the blue wicks off, fading to nothing more than a few strange lensing twitches in the air, then to nothing at all-- and then Shepard flicks her wrist and the orange glow of her Omni-tool answers the gesture with a long, wickedly sharp blade.]

I don't know where you learned your manners, Seviilia, but you're gonna remember them real damn fast. Before we start.

[The truth is, at one point in her life, she might have had manners -- she was a noble after all. But she didn't remember that time in her life having ever existed. All knowledge of it was second hand. So she rolls her injured shoulder with a forced and false sigh out of her nose.

Sometimes, she missed the company of her fellow knights. At least some of them might have had a sense of humor about it.]

Oh stop.

[Said with a very clear roll of her eyes before she turns her back to Shepard in order to reach down and grab one of her runeblades. She knows how dangerous she could be, and nothing about what Shepard or Sam wanted was unreasonable. She could hardly help being blaise about it after seeing what had happened to her when the Darkling had fed her too much of his power.

Even if she could not (or didn't want to) stop herself, something else would whether she liked it or not.

When she turns back around, she does it slowly, to stop any kneejerk strike reactions. The burn of Shepard's biotics cause her tongue to tingle, and the soft buzz of her delight slowly (and sadly) dies off.

She speaks again: more professionally, and less sarcastically this time.]

Go on, then. I'm listening.

Edited 2017-01-29 07:13 (UTC)

This from the one who decided to spring hey guess what kinks I'm into on us?

[ He's totally unimpressed with her oh stop, and his own eye roll probably makes that obvious.

Really, all of this could probably be considered unreasonable, to some: him and Shepard letting Sev injure them, knowing she was getting off on and they'd be feeling the bleed over from it, all because Sam needed to get a handle on this ability he was still working on understanding. But he does need this, and he believes Sev when she says she needs it, too, so here they are.

Starting with ground rules, this time. ]

We're the ones getting injured, we decide what the limits are. And they're the same for both of us - we're walking out of here with each other's injuries, so we gotta agree about them. I'm just gonna go ahead and veto anything broken right now.

See, what I thought I was agreeing to here, was standing still for something not actually all that dangerous, so that this one, [Sam, here indicated with a sharp, angry gesture, snapping from the elbow.] could get some practice. I let it happen, you get what you need....Practically theraputic, all around.

[Shepard is not happy.]

Everybody's happy.

[You can hear the fuck this in her tone, let alone the roil of her mental state. Shepard has her secrets, but what she doesn't hide is enough to make it seem like there's nothing below it.]

You pull out shit that a normal person's going to feel the need to defend themselves from? That's a problem. You wanna fight, that's fine, but I have had more than enough of your disingenuous information.

Ah-ah. [She addresses Sam's complaint first, gesturing toward him.] Side-effect. Had I thought you might share it, I would have thought to mention it.

[Maybe. But that's not really the crux of the issue. She then turns to Shepard.]

Which part? The part where I require your suffering to continue to possess a functioning mind, or the part where the Nest will prevent me from killing you?

[Still, she understands that she's losing ground the longer she tries to argue, and she can't really afford that in the long run. So:]

Very well, you've both made your positions clear. As I've stated in good faith, I have already tested this on another willing member of our number. You are not in any danger -- however, if you do not wish to take my word for it, then you may take first blood Commander.

[First actual blood, that is.]

[ He's not actually sure he believes that she would have told them if she'd known - but then, she seems like the kind of person to at least know what's to her best advantage, and not telling them when she'd known they'd find out anyway doesn't seem to be to her advantage.

But no, that's not really the issue. Shepard and Sev have obviously already got some experience with each other, and Shepard... Shepard is a soldier, and if Sam hadn't already suspected she was one with PTSD, he would now. She's triggered and angry and used to the fight in a way that screams survivalist with trust issues.

Doing this, letting someone injure you without fighting back against them, it takes a hell of a lot of trust. And honestly, if Sam hadn't asked them to be here, if he didn't have his symbiote ability, he wouldn't trust either one of them with that.

He did ask, though, and he does have it. He'd said he'd help Sev with hers if she helped him with his, and he still will, even if he can't help but try to give Shepard an out. ]

Look, if you two wanna fight this out, I'm not gonna stop you. But you don't gotta be here, Shepard. You said you'd come down and get the specifics, and you got it. I can heal what you've got and that's it, you've held up to your end of the deal. [ His gaze shifts to Sev. ] I'll still hold up mine.

[For just one, very strong second, it's Sam she wants to clock, and not Seviilia. There's something very like pity about sympathy, and having laid out the options so openly, Shepard can't leave now, not on her own terms. And she's damn well not doing it on anyone else's.]

Last I checked, the point of being here wasn't to fight anyone. Or get my damn trachea caved in.

[She hates this, regrets coming, regrets staying, tastes bile, and if it's suffering Sev is after, well. Mission fucking accomplished. What she'd expected had been a knife, a cut, and then the healing of said cut for practice, whatever the hell that meant in practice. Whatever else Sam says, that much is bull: Shepard hasn't upheld shit.

Shepard swallows, and quietly deactivates her omni-tool. The blade fizzes away, rendered back into its component omni-gel as quickly and efficiently as it had been manufactured. Outwardly calm, she offers her other arm to Seviilia, wrist-down.]

Age before beauty?

[Seviilia can't help her sadistic little smile when Shepard refuses to back down, stowing her blade the same moment the other woman chooses to stow her's. She will show her neither pity nor sympathy -- after all, she had called herself a warrior. If that were true, a bit of pain should be standard.]

Age before beauty.

[Her clawed fingers find the flesh of Shepard's arm -- her touch is cold, as if it had been sitting near an open window for too long. She lets it numb her for a moment, more a courtesy than a real desire to make her feel better. The pierce of her nails is slow, there's no question at all that she's savoring it for what it is, because there's a good chance she won't get the opportunity again.

And as she pinches the vein between her nails, the shared headache between them dissolves, replaced by bliss -- the touch of kin, a soft press at the temple, warmth at the back of their necks, the hunger absolving into dust.

And then she releases Shepard almost as swiftly as she had grabbed her, with great force of will -- like a rubber band, she forces some distance between herself and the other woman, so that Sam could move in and do what it was that he needed to do.

But also so she wasn't tempted to go farther -- and she is tempted. No matter how hard she swallows, how pointedly she tries to separate their minds, she fails. Its a curse, one that snaps at her heels and begs her to return to tearing skin from bone, punishing her for yielding.

But it is something. Some small relief, a relaxation of pressure, even if the need for contact doesn't quite evaporate.]

[ Don't get cranky at him for trying to be a decent guy, Shepard, it's not his fault she's apparently so contrary that when someone agrees with what she wants and attempts to make it a graceful exit, she stomps back in and stands there being pissed off about every second of it.

In retrospect, he probably could have said he wouldn't be surprised, with what he's read from her, but still.

He's on edge from what he's getting off both of them - anger, bile at the back of his throat, fight or flight instinct raring up mixed in with pain changing to pleasure, warmth and comfort and something that could almost set him at ease, if he didn't know where it was coming from. Sam keeps his shields up as much as he can, and normally they'd be good enough to block it out - but he can't make them as thick as he needs to when he's focusing on his symbiote ability and needs to keep his connection to them open.

It's now that he thinks about what Ilde had brought up to him, about what would happen if he took from those who weren't human to heal himself. Would it work, he wonders, if he let her take her fill of what she needed from him and then used her to heal himself? He doesn't say anything, both because it's something that needs more thinking over and because it's not something he's going to bring up in front of Shepard in case she takes it as him giving her another way out.

But because he's thinking about Sev with his shields not up to their full strength, it slips out to her anyway, the idea remarkably clear for the fact that he hasn't even put it into mental words. And he can't take it back, so he doesn't even bother to try, just lets it be. She'll make whatever she's gonna make of it, and he needs to turn his attention to Shepard.

He offers his hand out to her instead of grabbing for her, letting her take the lead here. ]

Edited 2017-02-01 05:28 (UTC)

[Mixing pleasure with pain; Shepard knows a thing or two about that. She knows more than she'd like to know, and with the weird, filthy mixture roiling up through Seviilia and across, she's learning more all the time. Drop the tablet into your drink, watch it dissolve, greater and lesser densities swirling in the ambient currents, that's what it felt like. Seviliia's sensation was polluting Shepard's perspective, and while the experience wasn't exactly bad, what it was was... weird. And, if not familiar, then it echoed older sensations.

Mixing, as it were, youth with beauty.

Shepard got far enough along to realize she was beginning to conflate wet streets and drug trips with green scales and the smell of blood, and shoved off the reverie with a violent, humiliated half-twist. God.

You leave the fucking Galaxy, ostensibly to fight, and end up spending your entire first couple of weeks in some kind of extended mental breakdown. Could there be anything shittier than this? Motion draws attention-- Ah.

Here, Sam. Have a hand, with blood running down, red from elbow to wrist. Good luck.]

[It takes a minute or two to come down from the high of bloodletting and, in spite of her clear lack of mental control herself, she's practiced at appearing the exact opposite outwardly. Her only tell is the slight lay of her ears backward, like a dog who spotted something they didn't approve of -- otherwise, her expression is as cold as the ice that tended to grow on her armor, eyes focused on some far off point as she goes about compartmentalizing the memories she'd accidentally dug out of herself, out of Shepard, and out of Sam.

If her heart still beat, it would have been racing. Its not so easy, to put thoughts away while others are hearing them, seeing them, experiencing them. Shepard's memories are polluted by a presence and sensation she doesn't wholly recognize.

Seviilia wets her lip in silence, pickled in the bliss she's won for herself as she allows her eyes to fall to Sam's symbiote process. She hadn't missed that thought that passed between them, but in order to access whether or not it would work, she would need to see it in action -- and then there was the matter of all of the side-effects.

It was clear that nobody was hot on the idea of being ripped into, and she supposes she couldn't blame them.]

[ This is something else he's going to need to work on, he realizes quickly. He's gotten to the point where he can shield damn near anything out and in - long as it isn't one of his broodmates - but apparently that goes to shit when he's also got to keep the connection open enough for his symbiote ability. This is a lot more connected than he's gotten to anyone he doesn't know, and that makes him more uncomfortable than any physical injuring going on.

No better time than the present, and he struggles to find the balance as he takes Shepard's hand. Shielding himself feels just like fighting his symbiote ability, and he can't quite manage to completely separate them out before he gives in to the way it tugs at him, to the way he can practically feel it cataloging Shepard's injuries and trying to pull from him to heal them.

There's a trickle of warmth as it activates, and the gouge on Shepard's wrist closes up at the same time as one opens on his own wrist, although his is a little more healed - as though it had been inflicted hours ago instead of seconds. ]

[Shepard watches the wound seal itself-- and open on Sam's arm, with a clinical detachment. She's not yet accomplished at shielding, even in ordinary circumstances, but something about this, the connection between them, makes it a two-way street. She could shut this down, if she wanted, if she really put forth effort. It's a connection, pulling the physical injury from one party to another, like transferring power-load from one battery to the next in an array. It's a circuit; cut one connection, and they all go down.

The wound degrades, too. It's beyond explanation; or was it the way the Asari always said it? Mind over matter. Man, fuck the Asari.

All this to distract her from the sensation of leather and steel at her back. From the memory of medical cuffs and the strangely muffled, disembodies voices of--]

That's a little freaky. [This said to break the tension, as sarcastic as it is, it's only a joke.] I swiped a pack of medigel on my way here, if you want it. Unless passing that thing [The wound] back and forth is part of your practice.

[Even Seviilia, who had bore witness to incredible feats of magic, had to admit that wound transfer was strange to watch. Blood magic was not exactly a common practice back on Azeroth, though it was the work of a blood mage that had allowed her to be pieced back together post-resurrection. Subconsciously, she rubs the tattoos on her fingers against each other.

Eventually, she turns all the way around and allows herself to get a closer look -- slowly, more due to the fact that she doesn't trust her sense near an open wound.]

Curious.

[ There's a soft huff at Shepard's sarcasm, somewhere between a chuckle and a snort. ]

You're telling me. [ But he shakes his head at the offer of medigel - whatever that is. ] Nah. I'm guess that's the good stuff, so it's probably better to save it for someone who isn't gonna heal this pretty quick.

[ He holds his arm steady, letting Sev take as close of a look as she wants - though he watches her a little, just in case. ]

There's still a lot I don't know about it; that's why I need to do this.

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sometime after day 5

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and here we go again

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