station72 | How did expectations get so high?

[He knows. He can feel it, the fact that her stare does not fall on him. It's a dagger set to vulnerable, aching skin - but he does not flinch. His head remains bowed.]

The mission was a success.

[A better focal point; one that could at least warrant her approval.]

Was it?

[Her hand moves across the screen of the databank, the question dry - inert - giving nothing in return. She taps something on the screen, hums small, and pauses--

Like for a moment she might raise her eyes to him. Like for a moment she might narrow her attention from Elsewhere to this place, to the shape of the doorway, to his shadow inside it--

And then she merely taps the screen, sweeps her thumb, and continues with whatever she's working on.]

Was an entire ship not recovered? [This time his posture rises so that it's unmistakable when he glances towards her (she will know, she must) consonants sharp and demanding as he seeks out the barest sliver of her attention.] Did we not work in tangent once Rogers swallowed down his own misguided sense of pride?

[Ahsoka had reached out for him, Angel had found him more than willing to aid in the recovery efforts - even Ren himself had offered to dismiss his own wounds for the sake of suggesting General Hux's worth. For all the mistakes that were made prior to his own moment of compromised rage, surely she could not think the rest was eclipsed entirely by his shadow.]

I was protecting my own - you cannot fault me for that.

Edited 2016-04-26 00:03 (UTC)

[The databank collapses with a snap. She lifts her attention to him then, lines of her expression compressed so hard that they are perfectly flat, absolutely drawn, completely still.]

And yet there is a host dead by a stranger's hand when there was no discernible local threat at the time of arrival. How did that happen, do you imagine? Was it merely coincidence? Or perhaps Adam Parker was simply very unlucky. Certainly there could be no reason that someone would hunt him down and murder him. What a strange place the universe is. Imagine, there are so many worlds but we somehow managed to pick the one where indiscriminate baseless slaughter is common.

Is that what you're suggesting? That we miscalculated?

[The second she turns her attention towards him, Ren's own face drops in supplication; unlike his tense, often strained relationship with Prince, he dares not challenge Cathaway even indirectly. Instead he shifts, near to trembling where he stands for the potent mixture of emotion that wells within his chest, mouth open— closed— and then open again to show the sharp edges of his teeth.] No.

[Parker's name means nothing to him. A faint scrape across vulnerable skin, an artificial familiarity that he can't quite place, though straining for it yields only the affirmation that he was, indeed, part of the Nest itself before being so quickly culled. For a time, Ren's submission is the only note that hangs between them.

And then, quietly:] Did he mean so much to you?

[To outweigh the rest. To mar the brilliance of forged bonds or progress made in their wake.]

He was part of us.

[Not hissed, but breathed out under the top row of her teeth like an ache. It isn't so dramatic as all that, not really. The loss of Adam Parker was like a small cut - a sting that is largely negligible until poked or prodded or irritated in some forgetful way by absentmindedness. But it doesn't change the fact that it is a wound: open and prone to infection, however mild.

As his brood is different for it, so is their connection to the Nest - so then so is the consensus she feeds on. Adam Parker may have been a disease poised to ruin this Station and the hosts in it, but he was still a part of it. Still integral in some way. Still important.]

Are you still determined to cut pieces from us? [She raises her hand to her neck, sets her thumb and first finger there in a parody of the grip he once closed there.]

[It wounds.

He does not dare to look and still it burns, as hot and fierce as the edge of his grandfather's saber when it ran clean across his skin, rending more than flesh alone; beneath his ribs, something twists, panicked. In Snoke's chamber the projection had already been on high— there was no need for him to sink to his knees when his position was lower to the ground by default— but here he more than matches her height, and there's not a second spared for thought when he kneels, prostrate, at the doorway's edge.] No—

[His teeth catch, clicking against one another. He doesn't look towards her gesture; he refuses to, shame flush across his features, anger scalding the corners of his eyes.] Forgive me.

[He is very small like that: a tiny outlier in the universe. Viewed so, it would be easy to mistake him as irrelevant, as ultimately nonthreatening. But she isn't blind to him or deaf to The Prince's uneasiness. She refuses to take him to task across her knee - it would be a wasted effort, that much has already been made infinitely clear by his mulishness under Prince's hand and the strain of Avera 9 -, but there are better ways to force him to bow his head.]

Why should we?

Because whatever loss you suffered I will more than make up for it. [How is irrelevant - his will is strong enough to twist the minds of lesser creatures and loyal men alike, to shape the world as he sees fit - few in the nest could claim the same before their newfound abilities took hold. He is balanced. The light, the dark, the Force, a conduit for it here, so far from where its roots permeate life itself. If Snoke saw value in it— if she did once before— surely that holds true even now. It must.

He did not come this far to fall. To fail.

His attention lifts, features steeled and hardened regardless of the redness staining his cheeks, his eyes.] I was careless. Unprepared for the bond we share, but I will not let it happen again.

I will be twice the weapon he was— no one on this station can match my strength. No one carries the capacity to succeed as much as I do.

[At least so long as Anakin Skywalker remains unconscious...]

Let me prove it to you.

Every word from your mouth proves the opposite, Kylo Ren.

[It's not a bark, but she expects it likely to cut anyway and is - for a split second - exhausted by it. She sighs, sagging back against the wall of the chamber pod. What a hard-nosed child he is. Does he imagine himself balanced on a knife's edge, the sole of his shoe ready to slip? Slipping, maybe, even now?

The Prince would be pleased to know she is irritated, but she doesn't ratchet down on the flow of emotion to him. Let him know. She isn't above how insufferable he might be in return.]

Come here. We're tired of shouting across the room at you.

[That his response displeases her (he feels it keenly, as tangible as the grit of torn skin) is unexpected. This— his own utility, his own strength— is the only gift he's ever been asked to bare when worthiness comes into question: a call for action, for willpower or a simple, unflinching commitment to rip their enemies apart at the seams, regardless of what it might cost him. How, after a lifetime spent at Snoke's heels, could he offer her anything more?

—How could he possibly know any better?

His features flicker, a mirror to her own discomfort even as he rises to edge closer. There is no eagerness to his stride. Ren might as well be treading on ice for how cautious he is, waiting for an order to stop - desperate for a command that might at least grant him the mercy of something to obey.

An apex predator, cowed before something so small and slight as she is.]

[Cathaway waits, as patient as she's able in this moment to be, as he slinks across the width of the Nesting Deck. When he's near, she draws her legs up from the floor and into the chamber itself, making room for him there on the lip of the pod. she doesn't pat the space she means him to take, but it's clearly indicated all the same. Sit. Be still.]

Edited 2016-04-28 02:59 (UTC)

[Another disconnect between them. Another moment that has him braced against against an approach that proves to be equally as foreign as the last. Briefly, as she draws herself up to grant him room, he thinks he would prefer the cruelty of punishment. It would be easier to lick physical wounds rather than continue on like this, drawn out and transparent, made fragile by her actions.

And yet still he craves the approval she withholds.

So he sinks down into that open space, chest locked tight with shallow breaths. Says nothing, thinks less. He is, as he was made to be, a weapon: it is not his place to question her approach, only to act on it.

If she wills it, he'll recalibrate. The words he should offer her in supplication well beyond his grasp.]

[Good. He at least can do that much. She takes it as a good sign, just as she takes a few moments to center herself here - to draw herself in and down in time with the hum of the Nesting Deck, the quiet comfortable closeness of the chamber's space especially now that he is there, bracketing in the opening of the pod like a shadow. The wall of the chamber is faintly rounded behind her. Her spine curves to it by necessity. Cathaway takes a moment to feel every vertebrae, then turns her wrist and sets her hand palm up in the narrow space between them.]

Give us your hand.

[And so he does.

Exhales once through his teeth as he lifts his fingers, pressing his gloved palm to her own the way someone might dip their toe into a shallow pool: slow, uncertain of what they'll find when contact finally reaches their senses. In a way it reminds him of the moment Ilde had asked for his hand on their first meeting. He'd withdrawn no more than a few beats later, bristling.

But for Her, he will endure.]

[She closes her fingers around the shape of it - hardly touching, her fingers delicate. With it comes the hum of her mind: pointed but gentle, the hum of a vibroblade turned gently toward skin but not yet set there. Not yet cutting. Or maybe: a note through a tuning fork, or a note passing through the wire of some fragile bird's cage. Her touch is as brittle as it is dangerous, as physical as it is something else deeper and larger.]

Do you feel how easily you could break these fingers? [A moment's regard is given to the shapes of their hands together, then she lifts her attention and looks at him seriously.] And yet what would that strength accomplish? You would merely be hurting a piece of yourself. There's no strength in being the sharpest blade if you can't wield it without cutting yourself; you are only as sure as the weakest of your brood, the weakest of the hosts around you. Your power is theirs, as theirs is yours. Their failures are yours, just as yours would be theirs.

[It's a bottom line Kylo Ren understands well: the First Order was only ever as strong as the weakest that served within its ranks - part of the reason why Captain Phasma was so quick to cull her own, should the fledgling troopers not take to their charge with deft precision.

But the way Cathaway views it is different. Warped, even. Powerful as she is he does not question her logic, only it's— like looking at the familiar through a filtered lens. He has to strain to see it. And it comes with a rush of memories: how he'd taken Ahsoka to his side, the quiet peacefulness of still water where Ilde had reached for his hand and found his aid, or Angel's trust proven anything but misplaced.

Has he not done this? Has he not given more of himself than he'd ever previously dared?

For a moment he nearly recoils, features twisted as if struck, aching low, low within his chest when he asks, voice nothing more than a harsh whisper:] Then why am I being punished for guarding them?

This is not punishment. [He would know it if it were; there would be no question as to why. No, through the flood of his mind she knows he is genuine, that he is as true as he knows to be. He and Ilde have been struck from a similar stone, haven't they? Cast by similar hands.] This is a word of caution for what's to come. Know that none of the nest are your enemy or your competition.

[Her fingers close very gently around his hand. The touch is soft, though her thumb against the line of his knuckles is firm. When she speaks again, it's in a tone that's very close - low and easy, soft as her grip on his gloved hand.] If you could work with them, that would please us.

[He is strong. She can taste it like something metal in her mouth; but the Prince is correct. If he cannot be redirected, he will be dangerous.]

[That, at least, dulls the panicked ache between his ribs. Stills the fear tangled tight around his heart. She is not Snoke— that much he knows— but there was such a security in the Supreme Leader's constant attention, the assurance that Ren was, above all else, valued. Necessary. Here, he knows through her how thin the ice he stands on might be.

Her fingers twist, fall over his own, and in the span of those minimal seconds he realizes then that it was distance that had weakened him. Too used to the life he'd once left, too unfamiliar with the path laid before him - she was too far from his side and he hers, and there is no means to retake the perpetuality he once had. So he basks in it now. Inhales slowly. Eyes half-lidded as their attention drift downwards, settling on the frail line of her knuckles. A beat, two, and then decisively he turns her hand by flexing his own, bringing it close enough so that he might press the angles of his profile to it.

A sign of sworn fealty, breath pooling across her skin.

Let her feel it, then. Let her know how committed he truly is, no matter what the others might say.] As you wish.

[And then he withdraws, not wanting to cross any lines that might exist.]

[It is heat and trembling, an aching warmth like a air across a spark across her knuckles. His breathing is as a pulse, thudding thick in his throat or in hers and for a moment every piece of her hums in time to it, to the metronome beat of him. He is cold dark water with a fire burning in a jar submerged; the urge to thrust her arm down through the cold tastes like something metal on her teeth. Her fingers close on the jar's lid; lift it from the water or open it to drown?

He lifts the lines of his face or he lowers her hand. Either way, that little shred of distance makes her mind shiver even as her hand is steady, as the angle of her narrow shoulder and the directness of her gaze on him are sure.]

If you're close to them, you're close to us. They are part of us. [The air here is close in the nearness of the compartment. She makes no move to draw her hand from his.] You are part of us.

[It's difficult to view that as true. Even knowing the flow of the Force and its connection to all life, he feels more camaraderie with some than others, hates more keenly the souls that antagonized and neglected him, and no amount of promising that they are all one beneath the fanning expanse of a higher power can erase the habit.

He wants her presence, not the brush of her figurative fingertips through contact with the rest of the brood. Where she is ageless, the others are raw, young— painful to tolerate in comparison at times. He knows he is part of her; like something feral and starved, he's also greedy. For a moment, his grip cinches tighter - and then sinks. Settles. Breathe.

And for once the light doesn't feel so tainted when he exercises the barest modicum of control. Enough to settle apprehension that would otherwise well up like blood from a wound, marring what little approval he's won. Just enough. Snoke had been an advocate of harnessing his chaos, but balance— balance was Ren's mark of pride. Outbursts were tolerated, not encouraged. Is there truly that much difference between his stoicism on the command deck compared to the quiet coiled neatly within him now? Unlikely, he thinks.]

It isn't the same. [He glances up, then. Eyes squinting slightly at the suggestion.] You know that, don't you.

Of course. [The answer is immediate; there's no flinch or lines drawn taut under the brief tightening of his fingers around the small lines of her fingers. The moment comes, the moment passes. She is still.] But given time it may become similar.

[May. Will. There is an inevitability to this; there is no such thing as pre-determination, but there are moments that stray close to it. If this is one, then his place in the Nest is another. Like the Station, a way point between universes, there is a version of events charted by his nearness to her both in this sense - her hand in his - and the one where he is her. Hers.

What scale does that tip? There always is one.

Regardless, for a moment she senses it leveling - a brief moment where the keel is perfectly even and that brings with it a surge of pleasure and of pride. Good. She draws in a thick breath. The angle of her elbow closes by degrees; she draws her hand from his.]

Perhaps. [It feels like a loss, where she withdraws and leaves him sitting there aching from the set of his own teeth. He blinks once, eyeline dropping— breathes through his nose and then sets his sights on the rest of the deck as if scanning the potential options that rest before them both. That Avera 9 is over does not mean he can rest.

But she might, at least.]

I should let you return to your work.

If you like.

[That much is said flippantly, gently, though for a moment there is no sensation of withdrawl beyond the motion of her hand and the angle of her wrist. She is attentive to this place, the many lines of her focus direction briefly here. She looks at him, frank and square, and makes no secret of her study.]

[He does not.

Because the moment he leaves her side the noise of a thousand other fledgling hosts will find him rather than the drawn focus maintained when he meets her stare. A cohesion that can't be matched by another living soul aboard the station, a yearning for the ocean of understanding lurking patiently behind her eyes. He is a sea in a storm— but for all her strength, she is constant. Even.

Most importantly, she is without pain.

Visibly he measures his options: whether she means to provide him the opportunity to stay as a test or if she genuinely does not mind the idea of an asset at rest. Given the calm of her hand resting across his ankle when they'd last met, eventually he decides it's the latter, rather than the former.]

I don't.

[Her attention doesn't waver. The link between them is drawn thin, but not distant - instead it's been sharpened like a precision tool, a needle poised to prick. She doesn't blink, doesn't bat an eyelash. She is the illusion of easy lines, of gentleness, but there is a prickling sensation in the air and under the skin. Her expression is very still, very quiet.]

What would you rather do?

Edited 2016-05-05 05:45 (UTC)

[There's too much freedom in the question itself: his eyes snap up after a beat, clearly thrown by the expectation of making a decision for the both of them. For ten years his time was his own, or at the mercy of Snoke - nothing else. Companionship was a liability, a weakness to be kept at odds, and he spent little time with Phasma or Hux to ensure there was no compromise. That he would not lose the fear and respect he'd worked so hard to claim.

Were she anyone else, he'd dismiss the question entirely or demand they hone their own skills.

For her, he can do neither.

It takes too long for Ren to speak, and when he finally does, his voice is small. Fragile.]

I don't know.

[She regards him - an isolated spark in a field of darkness - and then sighs. It's an uninspiring answer, but she will do what she can with it.]

In that case, indulge us. [Cathaway brings her knees around and makes a motion with the line of her chin that is deceptively human - a gesture for him to get out of her way so she might leave the nesting chamber she's currently trapped in by the shape of him there.] We have work to do in the hangar and you may help us with it.

[There. Give the boy something to do that doesn't weigh so heavily on the parts of him laced with stress fractures.]

How did expectations get so high?

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