station72 | 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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[ 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.

sometime after day 5

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