mental link

[erbier]

[ She is sitting on the floor of the Nesting Deck covered in blood. She slows her heart rate, and the wound in her neck slows to a dribble. But she is tired, and her thoughts fluctuate unevenly, ]

( I hope all of you are treated this well, when you lose someone, everyone, beloved. To have your pain thrown back in your faces and mocked, to be abandoned by your brood, to be assaulted in the very hall where you watch over your loved ones... )

[ Her disgust is bone deep. ]

( Do not look to me, when it is your turn. I will have nothing for you. )




may be choosey with who she really answers and to what extent, but post is open at large.

Comments

[wille]

[ Someone very wise once said, knowledge of suffering makes one more capable of kindness, but Misato believes the opposite, has convinced herself rather that it has turned her hardened and callous. All the better for survival.

The sequence of things she sends over makes little sense, are jagged and incomplete, she's still unpracticed, but first comes the tail end of a voicemail message: --ne more thing to trouble you with. I've been growing flowers, it'd make me happy if you could water them for me. It's a goodbye. That feeling in your stomach when the ground beneath you disappears, that eternal moment when the realization hits you that you will fall, there are no ledges to catch, that there's no other way but down with nothing to soften the landing. Then there's the image of a flower, yellow and small, emerging whole and healthy from her clenched fist.

It is paltry, she knows. There are no words of comfort she can give when she soothes herself with harsh cold truths: You are alive, so live. The dead deserve to die. So she denies to herself that this has anything to do with sympathy. ]

[erbier]

[ It's different, than the other ways anyone has approached her, and at first Ilde half-way ignores it, prepared for it not to effect her much. But then there is just... this.

She closes her eyes where she's propped herself up down in the Nesting Deck, and thinks of flowers. ]

[inflori]

( Funny, I don't remember you being so miserable when they took Angel away.

Guess some matter to you more than others. )

[ wehweh ]

[erbier]

( Why would you think she isn't a part of what I feel now. )

[inflori]

( Well, is she? )

[erbier]

[ She doesn't have the strength for his emotional illiteracy. Especially when she's not significantly more knowledgeable or experienced. ]

( Of course she is, Petre. I loved her. I long for her every day, if she were here to confide in... )

[ Well, she isn't. ]

[inflori]

( Then why didn't you say anything? Even that asshole [ A flash if Aoba's presence, ] Didn't do shit. I was alone. )

[ Selfish as always, believing he's the one who matters the most in this context. It's another thing that can be used to manipulate him, though. When the time comes. ]

one-on-one

[erbier]

( I offered, but you told me 'whatever'. )

[ She carefully keeps back any accusation from her tone. ]

( But I understand, Steven has not been any comfort... I may as well have no brood left. He hated Ren, he will feel nothing in regards to my sadness, and will continue to keep me out as he has always done. )

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam'd intended on leaving her alone for a while, giving her space to herself and time to calm down from the fury of her anger and the rawness of her pain before he attempted to reach out to her again.

She beats him to it, her thoughts flowing out to the Nest at large. Still angry, still lashing out, but clearly running on fumes - clearly hurt, in a much more physical way than when he encountered her. He's not sure what happened, but he can't have been the only one among them who reacted to her pain, to the toxicity she let spread through all of their mental links. Clearly none of them went well.

Now his response is quiet, though far from tentative. She knows what his ability is; he doesn't feel as though he has to specify when he'd already told her that it's at her disposal. ]

( Will you let me come to you? )

[erbier]

( I am in the nesting deck. )

[ It's not really a yes nor no, but she's not going to be going anywhere for the time being, so she supposes it doesn't really matter. Either Sam comes and heals her, or she crawls her way back in to her pod and heals there. The burns on her chest from Lexa's unwelcome intervention are still tender, newly knit flesh. She's barely been loose a day or so...]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ He'll take it, and he sends a brief confirmation before he heads there. He sits down next to her without a word, both because he'll need to touch her to heal her and because it just doesn't feel right trying to talk to her standing, when she's like this.

Sam knows right away who's responsible for the bite marks on her neck, and files that away - he's going to have to talk to Damon later, see how he fared.

For the moment he reaches out, taking her hand and letting his symbiote ability go to work, healing her physical injuries. ]

( Do you want to share? ) [ Normally he'd use talk, but it doesn't mean quite the same thing, when communicating over the mental link. ]

[erbier]

[ She had told herself that she wouldn't let Sam take any of her injuries from her. That she would not help add to his arsenal like so many others, but she doesn't have the will power to refuse. The wound begins to recede, but it does nothing for the flowering stains down her dress -- yet another dress, Lexa had burned one a few days ago. It does nothing for the blood drying on her skin, pooled in her collarbones. ]

( It isn't me, you know. ) [ Sequitur to nothing, really, a loose wheeling thread. ] ( I am not the most dangerous of us. )

[ Her head falls back, eyes closing. ]

( It's you. )

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ They appear on him, bite wound on his neck just starting to heal, burns and bruises further along. He feels them as they mark his skin, sharp stings and quiet aches, but he ignores them. They'll be gone soon enough.

He listens to her instead, unsure of where she's going - but he doesn't argue it, either. She's the second one recently to see as something dangerous, and he guesses it's only fitting that the other one was the Darkling.

Though he wonders what makes her think that he's the most dangerous of all of them. ]

( There're a lot of different ways to be dangerous. What do you see as mine? )

[shiro2hero]

(Ilde--)

[Nothing about this feels... right. There was blowback from the Darkling. She'd been involved. Something had gone down between them. But asking her flat out if she's okay is going to be foolish. Stupid.]

[He just feels like he should say something.]

(Is there anything I can do?)

[She hadn't been the one flinging those sensations at him. At Clint and Sam. He's not as connected to her as the Darkling. They'd lost someone. But only one of them lashed out at people important to him.]

[He has to offer. It would be wrong not to.]

[erbier]

[ For all the malice that had been present when she had dragged the Darkling into the water -- it had been mutual. She studies the shape of his broodmate's words to her now. It makes her anger flicker, the resentment that she might need anything from any of them. It would be simpler, under control to need nothing. But it clearly isn't true, although there is also clearly little to be done with her until she has purged out her grief.

Why does it have to take so much time. She is ready to be done with it...

She tries to think of what he could do for her. All that really comes to mind is rounding up Damon for a sound beating, perhaps Lexa too, but the others won't find that plan agreeable. So what's the point, her irritation grumbles in her stomach, a hunger.]

( Do you think you know me well? )

[ An idle breathless inquiry, perhaps she'll just take stock of how much damage she's done, if nothing else. ]

[shiro2hero]

(No, I don't.)

[Maybe honesty isn't always the best policy. But he won't lie to her. There's nothing to gain from it. Not now, and probably not ever. He just doesn't have it in him.]

(But I didn't think it was right, not to offer to help. If I could.)

[And wonder if it's always like this, when people slip away. If the bonds are always strong like this. If people always crack so sharply. Or if Ilde has just suffered more than most have, here.]

(I won't be offended if you say no.)

[erbier]

( A question, not an accusation. )

[ She reassures him tiredly. She used to think herself an honest person, but now that she is exposed to others in a way she never really was before... She's found it suits her purposes to lie, more often than not. ]

( I don't think there is anything to be done, Shiro. I just need to be left alone. I know I will never will be alone again, but I cannot shield myself from what I am feeling, let alone anyone else. So just stay away. It will lessen, with time... No emotion is forever. Nothing is. )

[ She knows a great deal about grief. She had lived her entire life surrounded by death, but those bodies were nameless strangers, and it was easier that way. An attack from outside herself she could bat away. This grief -- the intimate grief of lost loved ones -- is like swallowing needles. But eventually she will get them all down. ]

[shiro2hero]

(I don't think that's too much to ask.)

[Really, it's not. Except while they're here, while they're so interconnected, it's impossible. How many times has he wanted the same thing, for reasons so much less painful than hers? It's hard to even imagine what's going through someone's grieving mind, when no one can leave them alone.]

(I'd offer to take you out in one of the ships, but... then you're not really alone. You're stuck with me.)

[There's a little dry humor in the words. A reflex.]

(For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I can't pretend I know what you're going through, but... I'm sorry.)

[unsea]

[ He does not regret his malice towards her, when he finds her again.

Once more, he seeks her out physically. There's no sense in diving into the chaos of her mind when his own is still raw and tender and splintered - he had scattered among his brood, and been rebuked by some. Refuted by another, who had no place among Gacrux's rank and file. He finds Ilde, tired and worn, sparking still with anger towards her, and physically sore. The sense that he is hiding bruises under his clothes is there, and he doesn't bother hiding this vulnerability from her as he crouches at her side. Nearby, within arm's reach. The way they had in Concordia, when she had found him near her garden and shown him her burned world. Her mad king. Her inner self.

She has his name now, that paltry thing that meant he was still mortal, fallible. Things he despised being - when being eternal, ascended, was so much better. ]

No one has accepted me the way you [ and Ren ] have. I will favor and despise you in equal measure for the rest of my time, because of that.

[ Honesty. Sheer and bleak, because he cannot mask himself any more than she can. ]

[erbier]

[ She meets his gaze without an inch of guilt. Some members of their nest will think that she regrets her actions, that in the heat of the moment she acted unlike herself, but she knows better. As does Aleksander, and perhaps no one else. Lexa certainly liked to mouth off as though she understood, but Ilde can clearly see that the 'commander' comprehends nothing about her, her way of life, beyond the fact that she will not bow to the other woman's logic. All offers of alliance from Lexa were false. She will not make the same mistake again.

As for this one... ]

I think I must be rid of you, one day.

[ An aspiration, not a threat. It is an acknowledgement of what he says, that they will never quite be able to just favor one another. They both wanted too much; nothing much, just everything. Their wants would clash, not just now, in the future. They would deal with it.

She reaches for him slowly, shuffling to his side, tired. All of her bruises have been taken from her by Sam Wilson and she resents him for it, she is left encrusted in blood, aching with no ache. She'd been too drowsy with blood loss to fight Sam over the act, however. ]

The parasite bit me. The commander burned me.

[ Condescension and disgust for Damon. Hate for Lexa. She shares her new enemies with him absentmindedly, done taking from him. She's had her fill, obtained her token of greed, now she will reserve it somewhere quiet for the right moments. ]

[unsea]

Stick around, [ he says, ] you might outlast me, yet.

[ The words are said kindly, but there is an edge to them. A refusal to perish under the weight of the symbiote or the looming threat of death itself.

She moves towards him, and he reaches his hands to touch where she should sport wounds. The dried blood on her throat is a memory of a savage bite, the ache he feels at the peripherals of his mind is difficult to place - hers? his? - an immaterial thing, at best. He passes his fingertips over the space where her future scars and stories were stolen from her, by someone who thought it a sweet kindness for a girl who just needed to be shown such a thing. ]

They believe you can be shown the error of your ways. Rehabilitated, if only you demure to your betters - [ there is sarcasm, thick and heedless, in his voice.

Lexa, he waxes and wanes over. Damon, he finds, is a new presence. One of the nebulous newborns, he assumes. The thought of teeth sinking into Ilde's throat brings to mind what he shares with Seviilia, to sate her hunger in exchange for her services. There is a willingness, between he and the huntress, though. Ilde's experience, which he feels in hindsight, was anything but. And that, in the end, is what sets a spark of fury within him once more. ]

He savaged you.

[ Oh, and there is something disgusted in his voice as well. ]

[erbier]

They are none of them my betters.

[ It is a piece of her anger. She feels put upon by their ignorance, by how little they realize all that she does for them in the shadows, while they pressure her to confess and to conform. Some of that pressure is in her own mind, whether she realizes that or not has no real impact on her anger; one shard of glass entwined in witch knot of thorny spines and poison stems.

If they would not oppress her with their plaintive moralizing, she could be even more effective to their cause... As it is, she has sworn to herself to do nothing more of use until someone recognizes her contributions. Ren never had. She had longed for even the smallest of pleasures for all that she had accomplished at his side. Of course not. Of course not. Another shard of glass, bloody-tipped. ]

Damon Salvatore least of all. He came to me here, unbidden, with all his visions of monstrous years. I could not tell if he wished to threaten or entice me, and accomplished neither. He left here with my knife through his hand.

[ She lifts her own hand to rub her throat, that bruise gone too: where he had wrapped his hand around her neck. She did not wish to be touched she did not wish to be-- She tilts her neck open to the ghost of Aleksander's fingertip. He is what is left. She almost wishes he too was gone, the way she wishes that her friends and broodmates would not lie in indeterminable sleep. She wishes it was clean, simple. Rope cut. Nothing about the Station is simple, it breathes around her, remembering all of them like ghosts in its veins.

But here he is, after choosing not to drown.

She turns towards him, her eyes stark in her pale, tired face. ]

What now?

[ Where do they go from here. ]

[unsea]

[ Ilde has become a unique thing of her own right; poisonous and dark, addictive enough to wish to keep her and dangerous enough to know he should cut her lose and turn away. One of them will go before the other, if they do not manage to kill one another - despite the symbiote's vested interest in preserving the safety of all hosts. Even those who would savage another, the way this - Damon Salvatore - had laid an ill hand upon Ilde.

He takes his hand from her skin, the moment she opens her throat to him. She is clean and pure, the way her former liege had always liked her to be - preserved now, by a single act of kindness. Knowing her world, in the way she had shared it with him, he chases the thought that she should be allowed her dirt and her scars now, as each would be a symbol of her new life. He wears his own, after all. Though he has cultivated them to suit his image (and his vanity -- ), and in his mind is a thought for the wound-thief. ]

You needn't disguise your savagery from me, Ilde.

[ His hands in his lap, his shoulder balanced cautiously against hers. ]

If you wish to set me upon those who wounded and stole from you, it only matters that you ask plainly.

[ But, it's already there - in his mind, the decision to confront Damon. The decision to meet with Sam, once more. ]

[decommission]

[ He's hovering, not in observation - he's the annoying sense of a word on the tip of your tongue, just out of reach. It's the words he can't find, and hasn't been able to find since Ren's disappearance.

Even if it's not his intention, he'll continue to prickle at her this way until she blocks him. ]

[erbier]

( You needn't trouble yourself. I know you hated him. )