[open]

[erbier]

CHARACTERS: Ilde
WHERE: Around
WHEN: Day 20 onwards
SUMMARY: 2 boys down, 1 to go.
WARNINGS: I sincerely hope Ilde somehow injures every single person who tries to talk to her. I am here to burn my CR down.

She had woken at the same time, with three other broods. Adara, Shaula, Castor; stars aligned. It had been a cacophony of new minds, of confused, heart broken, frightened things uncertain of just what they had done in answering the call that had brought them here. At first, Ilde had been so certain that the noise of it would drive her mad, she had told Cathaway was much. She had been alone for such a long time, the sounds of people talking and laughing had been too much, rubbed senses raw that had lain dormant for years. Had pushed on her a love and a longing that she had only ever really felt for Dreus, a figure of might and destruction that none of them understood.

Until she found Ren, in the garden she had already decided was her own, and taken his hand to place it down into the soil, for comfort. Instead, she had found the great black cloud that lived in the back of his thoughts. The dark thing that pushed and pulled him, the longing to be free of wrongdoing, to be made a tool, of use, of purpose. Worthy. Special. Their weakness and sorrow had wound together in an instant, brutally tight, thorny. He had hurt her, every moment that she had loved him. She was used to that. She was used to the conflict that tore at him, destiny and power. It was a comforting purpose to her. To love things half-mad with the destruction in their fingertips, she could weather their tirades, their fury, be one soft thing at their side. Planting seeds of comfort, peace, one at a time.

She would be his, if he would be hers. A blood promise, of purpose and belonging. No secrets.

But he is gone now. She feels their bond loosen, letting blood flow again to numb limb, and they begin to burn. She reaches after it, but the mind that has been hers to touch all these months loses all shape, her fingers slip through it. She can do nothing. And then it's gone. Her strings feel cut, a pointless, limp thing now and she sits down where she is without a word. Hurt buzzes in her chest, betrayed.

She could have tolerated any one of the other hosts leaving, none of them really mattered, except for him. She had relearned how to cry when Sam Anders had gone, she doesn't need the lesson repeated. Her cheeks flush with it, tears rolling down her face. Of course he is gone, like all things go. She picks herself up slowly, feeling sick, and angry.

She truly does have a garden of her own, now, and the Station's hallways align themselves for her seamlessly, taking her back to her own private place. The door shuts behind her and is gone. She stays there for the first few days, unseen, but her toxicity is visceral, a stain on the horizon.

Better not to see her.

---

The Nesting Deck
[ Everything she had thought perhaps to love lies silent in their pods now. Little eggs housing empty minds. She no longer brings gifts, and brushes away withered flowers she had left before, angry with herself for the act to begin with. She is filled with regret, for all she gave, for all she had deigned to take. She sits in the different pods, looking in on the silent faces of all the people she shouldn't have wasted her time to love. All she longs for now is to open up their safe little eggs and throttle them all.

She hates the way they linger. ]

The Training Wing
[ She has never cared for the exercise equipment, has always chosen to keep herself active through actual weapons practice. Always quiet and focused, but now her silence has an electricity and the practice dummy is shredded by the time she is done with it.

She'll take it away to sew back up, almost as vicious with her needle and thread as she was when she knifed it to strips in the first place. ]

The Recreation Wing
[ She's picking through the clutter for a book she can and would want to read. She scans the first few pages of each, hoping for one in her language and her mood darkening the longer it takes. ]

The Hangar
[ She comes down to pick through some of the junk that has been brought back from various planets. She likes to use the various metal pieces to craft with, since there is no one around to use them for their intended purpose... She is struck with the thought of it. Their real purpose being here. Just scraps of junk, breaking one at a time. She loses interest in the project, leaning back against one of the protruding arches from the wall that make the hangar such a tall space, a ring of junk around her. She fiddles with a piece of wire, winding it into a meaningless knotted shape. The sharp edge of it is tearing up her fingers, and she watches as it spots on her white dress dispassionately. ]

The Pool
[ She swims slowly in the dark, retreading a memory that he had once given her to help her overcome her fear, it's the closest she ever feels now. ]

Around
[ She keeps reaching into the dark, reaching after nothing, and the sting of what she lacks awakens in her over and over again. The bursts of reaching, desperation, and then of despair are hardly hidden. Each time, the dark anger boiling up grows only more black. Poisonous. ]

Other Wildcards
[ Bring it on. ]

Comments

[deployed]

[ There's danger here. Bellamy isn't ignoring the destructive edge to her anger. Maybe he's underestimating what Ilde's capable of in her grief, but he isn't worried about that damage turning out to be more than he could handle. He's counting on the newly-established trust between them to deflect the worst, and his ability to talk her down from the rest. ]

I wouldn't let you.

[ Though he won't push her to the garden. But he can't let her stay here, standing over their slumbering nestmates and staring at what's out of reach. ]

It's a big station. You don't have to go there.

[ But as big as the station is, there aren't a lot of options that provide the kind of distraction he thinks Ilde needs.

Even thinking he knows what she needs right now is a presumption. Bellamy is aware of that. Recognizing her anger gives him a starting point, but it's not enough to come up with a real solution. ]

[erbier]

Oh?

[ Rage is what breathes beneath her tone of voice, stifled beneath the surface but breaking through her in cracks. A crumbling porcelain doll, molten at the seams. ]

Such a grand Station, and yet everywhere I turn there we are. [ The hosts, the hive. There is nowhere to go. ] Resentful that they have nothing of comfort to me, and flinging themselves upon my hurt to claim that they tried, to soothe their own self righteousness. Then they can rest assured I do this to myself for my own pleasure, that they have the true measure of me.

[ Her eyes turn on him feverishly, daring him, just absolutely daring him to make the same mistakes that the others have. ]

What will you do. Nettle me until my patience breaks? Moralize to me about the nature of love and closeness?

[ She reaches out and snatches the front of his shirt, but doesn't pull. The claw of her hand is the gesture, the knot of it. ]

What. [ Grit teeth, demanding. ] Why are you here.

[deployed]

[ Privacy became a thing of the past the moment they all woke in their pods. It's hard to find any kind of isolation when everyone is so intimately linked. They've all been laid uncomfortably bare, and it means they all have a front row seat to Ilde's grief in the same way they'd all felt Ren's rage over the loss of Anakin. Even carefully built walls only kept out so much. He can understand how that was just an added insult on top of her loss. No one here could grieve privately.

Bellamy has no answer to her question. Commiseration can only be so useful. He takes a step forward even though Ilde hasn't pulled but doesn't lift his hand to remove her grip on his shirt. ]

Because I want to help.

[ As simple as that. ]

Tell me how.

[ In this, Ilde reminds him painfully of Octavia. But this is easier, in a way. Ilde isn't his sister. Their bond doesn't run nearly as deep, and her loss isn't as difficult to speak of as Octavia's loss of Lincoln was. But the same need is driving him here: he'd let Ilde beat him into the ground if it helped. That's in Bellamy's nature. ]

[erbier]

[ What consolation is there? When she is given the violence they think she is demanding, she affronted. When she is given soft, unassuming offers of a shoulder, or an ear, she becomes overwrought. A reckless, thoughtless, screaming madwoman either way.

She doesn't need. She shouldn't need. She doesn't deserve this hurt, to be hurt for it, to stagnate while other broods grow, because all of her other selves could not stand before the light... Furious tears prickle at her eyes. Her fate as a host without a brood is just one of many thoughts, one of many feelings. If she were asked to try to condense down the various arguments she has had with the others into one, she couldn't do it. The points of view are variable, her grievances fluctuating. Like she might burst at the seams after all, her sense of self at risk in the storm, swept away.

She wants everything, and nothing, in the same broad gestures.

She lets go of the cloth twisted in her fingers, fingertips raised to pull on a springy lock of curls. She tries to reimagine when that had made her complacent, toying with his hair and listening to him breathe. It feels paltry. His sacrificing nature feels small and disappointing, but neither can she simply tell him not to be sweet. It's his best virtue, the way it had once been hers when she too had faced an insensible whirlwind of rage. She stings with regret, but also fondness. She's only making circles now, perpetuating her own story when she had told herself she would be fairer-handed than Dreus was, as she climbed to the center of this Hive and its secrets.

In a rushed inhale she kisses him, desperate to see the act done before she can change her mind and expel him from her presence, nothing but screaming and curses at his back. Fingertips thread upwards into his hair, and she looks into his face. ]

Don't let me be cruel to you. I don't deserve it.

[deployed]

[ Ilde's mind is a firestorm. Too much of her thoughts pass in a tangle without Bellamy being able to parse completely before Ilde crowds in close and arches up to kiss him. He'd expected something else. A closed fist, maybe. But her hand in his hair isn't to pull, and when her lips meet his Bellamy exhales quietly into it as he puts a hand to the small of her back. ]

Maybe I do.

[ It's...complicated, to say the least. Bellamy's searched for ways to atone for his sins for months on Earth, and haphazardly since he'd settled into the Nest. Ilde is far removed from Bellamy's sins. Soothing her won't alleviate any of the guilt Bellamy's carrying, even if he hopes it might.

But more simply, he wants to give her some kind of comfort. A kiss seems insubstantial against the loss of a broodmate, especially one so treasured. He lifts his hand to her face, palm cupping her cheek cautiously as he meets her eyes. ]

I know it hurts. You don't deserve to carry that too.

[erbier]

[ She has all but bitten everyone else who has tried to lay a hand on her, but then she had made very specific concessions for him; for this one with his doleful eyes. This one who she knows so little of, and desires to know so little of. She likes his fairy tales and his pretty face, in this Station where all relationships are inherently complicated, this one was meant to be simple. An escape, watching a boy daydream in peace in her lap, the garden quiet. That's all she'd wanted. ]

What do you think of me, Bellamy.

[ What was she in his story. A Furiae after all? She had fancied how powerful and relentless she might be, and even now it tempts her, to simply let go of her reluctance, and simply let it hurt. Then she would not need Bellamy or Ren or any of the others, she would be alone. Scrabbling, tearing, until the Nest grew tired of her thrashing and put her to sleep... ]

[deployed]

[ His hand doesn't move from her back. The question is oddly difficult to answer. Images rise like silt in his mind as her demand stirs mythical comparisons in him. He'd thought of Furies first, but that idea had given way to other thoughts over time. Handmaidens and nymphs, sometimes. Persephone once. It's a jumble, and it's all ill-fitting and too conditional to be concise. Bellamy touches her face gently, unsure of whether or not that would be the tipping point for her tolerance. ]

That you're like me, sometimes.

[ Her grief felt familiar to him. He understood it. It's more real to him than any mythology he'd offered up to her before. ]

[erbier]

[ She listening, observing. Letting him fill her with pictures, like she has so many times before, curling injured and catlike beneath the shade of his imagination. When she stops feeling her own emotions it is easier... Was that why it was so easy to slip into his reveries: because she was like him? ]

Am I?

[ He reminds her of herself, with his hand on her cheek. Looking for a human heart in the depths of a firestorm, bearing a weight that wasn't his own in the optimism that he might be able to let her breathe, for even a moment. The strangling hurt of guilt and regret is comforting to her, because she is a twisted confused thing and no relationship of hers has ever been without it. Even with Angel, it had murmured underneath, a series of chains and collars that sometimes they longed for. The reassurance, and hating themselves for that. ]

Will this be you, one day? Frayed to pieces? Or will you withstand it better.

[ She tilts her cheek into his hand, staring in to him. ]

What will I do to help?

[ It helps her to keep away from her own emotions, to turn this in another direction. To reverse their roles in hypothetical. ]

[deployed]

[ Would it be him? Bellamy suspected it would, if he lost someone as dear to him as Ilde had. He'd dealt with the departure of important people to him poorly. Maybe he wouldn't lash out the same way Ilde had, but to think of himself as handling it all better feels like a stretch. ]

Tell me a story, [ he says, only half-serious. ] In your garden.

[ The proposal is wishful thinking, in a way. He thinks of Clarke retreating into the woods and feeling the gnawing intrusion of abandonment supplant the wreckage of his guilt. Maybe this is something he'd wanted from her: companionship in some quiet place. ]

I don't care if it's one of mine.

[ All the stories he's given her, he wouldn't mind hearing back again. Ilde's interpretation would be as good as remembering the way his mother had recounted mythology when they'd been tucked away on their bunk in the Ark. ]

[erbier]

I have stories.

[ She says it, almost childlike in her desire to also know tales, to also come from some world of culture. She felt that keenly at times, when she spoke with those from an unspoiled earth. They had such memories and beliefs, luxuries she couldn't even imagine, even when their lives were hard. ]

But they are not as pretty.

[ They were pretty, in a way. The tales of burned world had a dangerous beauty to them. Anything too good to be true often was, and so the many tales in which death lurked often held beautiful visions of the desirous, and the consequences of pursuing them... ]

[deployed]

I don't care.

[ Not all the stories Bellamy had were pretty. Myths dressed up horrors and tacked on a happy ending. Bellamy isn't sure now if that was his mother's handiwork or some historian from before the bombs dropped. His thumb strokes along the curve of her cheek as he forces the flickers of memory aside. (The Ark, his mother's face, the comfortable closeness of their quarters hover like ghosts behind a screen.) He had stories. They were all soaked in blood, one way or another. ]

I'll listen whatever you want to tell me.

[ It's an offer made in the same way as the way he'd put himself forward as a target for her fists. He'd take what she had to give. He'd understand as best he could why she was giving it. ]

[erbier]

[ A sigh, soft against his cheek. Who can that remind her of, but herself. Weathering, devoted.]

I will recover.

[ A reassurance, she may have been torn at the seams now, but she would not let the likes of Kylo Ren fell her, not for long. ]

[deployed]

I know.

[ Ilde is strong. That's never been in doubt. And there's never been another option but to persevere in the face of loss, as far as Bellamy's concerned. Life can't stop. Pausing to languish in grief has always been an impossible luxury. Even living sequestered in the Station hasn't changed that view. ]

What can I do for you now?

[ The violence has seeped out of her. Bellamy will hold onto her in the aftermath if that's what she wants. He can fold her into his body and hold the weight of her pain for a little while, if she'd let him. ]

[erbier]

[ She burrows in to him wordlessly, tucking her face into his shoulder, after a moment her muffled request comes up, ]

I want to sleep.

[ She was surely half-mad from avoiding it, even before Ren fell away. She knows an old word for this, it translates to the sleeplessness, but it implies the madness and paranoia that would come over members of caravans. One of the most infamous was the tale of a woman who had slaughtered her entire caravan while they slept, to spare them from ever suffering another day in Dreus's burning world... They whispered of it like a disease that one could catch, rather than the natural effects of stress on the body and the mind. She hadn't really considered it would happen to her, but now with all the rage let out of her, so much tainted blood... she just wants to rest her head. ]

[deployed]

[ Ilde reminds him so painfully of Octavia in this moment. He puts his arms around her without prompting. Her mind is full of horrific whispers; Bellamy doesn't pry, but he's seen the ghosts of her past scorch her thoughts before. ]

Come with me. We can lay down in my room.

[ Maybe she'd find it easier to sleep there. And Bellamy had so few things in his room to worry about breaking. It might take her mind off the fear of what her temper could do if her control slipped.

Bellamy doesn't consider himself a breakable item, predictably. ]

[erbier]

[ From the start, she's never spent much time in the little honeycomb of human habitats, she'd always slept in the garden, but she doesn't argue with him now. She had confessed already to not wanting to breathe her own miserable toxicity onto her plants. They were delicate to such things, she is certain of it. Then again, she knows the other hosts are as well. Knows Bellamy is, but she goes with him all the same. She thinks of nothing in particular as she leads her out of the nesting deck, away from the deafening silence of what she has lost.

For a long time, she feels as if she is going nowhere at all, but then they are far enough away from the pods, dipping into the little bubble of influence that is his. She thinks he could have so much more, if only he knew how to ask the Station for it-- That thought pinches at her, stirring up greedy thoughts of power and control. She lets them drift off, sinking down without any invitation into his bed. Her blonde curls spill out around messily, draping over her cheek, stuck to dry lips. Her eyes close, head hurting. ]

[deployed]

[ Her mind is quieter. Bellamy can sense that as he watches Ilde curl up on his bed. He sits down beside her, thinking of Octavia with a pang of homesickness. Before he lays down beside her, he takes care to smooth her hair back out of her face and draw a blanket up around them both.

There's nothing else for him to say. This action and momentary comfort is all he has for her. Carefully, he insinuates himself in alongside her thoughts as he eases down beside her and weaves up a story as a barrier against the thudding pain in her head. Bellamy gives her the kind of reunions that are drawn among constellations in the sky. Mythology is always tragic, but at the very least those who suffer are drawn together and immortalized in the end. It's a cold comfort, supplanted by his arm around her waist.

It's alright, radiates from his mind. It doesn't take long for him to drift off too, lulled by her proximity and momentary peace. ]