[closed]

[erbier]

CHARACTERS: Ilde & Murphy
WHERE: Station 72
WHEN: Day :036
SUMMARY: Hey-o.
WARNINGS: N/A, will update as necessary.

[ She had only left the Station for a few days, and already in her absence another clutch of eggs had hatched. She had greeted them on the platform. Like each clutch, they were strange and disparate, wide-eyed, sullen with the magnitude of their choices. She was used to presenting herself to them -- It does not feel so long ago that she was introducing herself to John on the Bearings' rooftop.

She feels him as he nears the Station; a low familiar murmuring she does not immediately place. 'A change in the wind', as sayings went. Even in the burned world they had such superstitions, such omens. By the time he is nearing their hangar, she is more certain of who has returned.

A surprise. No one else has deemed it necessary to return, too busy with their silly side quest. But then, did she particularly wish to speak with any of them? Would she have even bothered to leave her garden.

She does so, for John. Her haphazard curls slung low at her neck by a strip of tough fabric, dirt on her hands and knees and up her shins. She's only just noticing this as she follows his trail through the halls after him, brushing off her hands absentmindedly. ]

John. Is everything alright?

[ She can't really think of any other reason he'd have come back here, on his own. ]

Comments

[erbier]

[ She can feel his mistrust, or perhaps she can't, merely expects it from the way everyone has reacted to her closeness with Ren. Even Mara had been baffled by their relationship, wondering at how Ilde could claim to love such a troubled soul without wanting to lay down her every dignity for him. No one wants to hear how he had take away her waterfright, leaving her instead with a calm memory of starlight glittering on water. No one wants to hear about about all the comfort taken, resting quietly in each other's company. Insignificant specks of time to all those who were not a part of it.

Her sorrow is a soft blanket of snow across her mind, hiding the tracks of where Ren had been. ]

What I mean to say is, my symbiote came in to its own as it felt it was needed. [ Another of her little dismissals, washing over something to focus elsewhere. ] Is that what has brought you home?

[wrackful]

This isn't home.

[It's the feeling of her sorrow that draws it out of him, not a hard objection or an argument against whatever she believes. Just a truth, quiet with an ache he usually manages to keep tucked away, pretend isn't there. Home was somewhere else. Someone else, loved, left behind.

Focussing elsewhere is a good plan, even if it's another place he hadn't really wanted to focus. He shrugs.]

But yeah, I guess almost being crushed inside a robot set it off. [And it is a guess, albeit a very strong one.] It's not like yours. I can't tell what it is.

[Fear for Ilde. Poison for Bellamy. Healing for Sam. Clear, easy to understand. If there was any kind of name for what had happened in Murphy's head, he didn't know it. He lifts a hand, rubbing a line in the middle of his forehead.]

And it seriously sucked when it stopped.

[erbier]

[ It's her home, and she has accepted that particular facet of things since awakening. The burned world was on the cusp of non-existence. Coming here hadn't been to save that place, it had been only to save her own life. In the heat of the moment, she had discovered she was not yet ready to die, although that was the Godking's religion. There may be nothing but ashes left now, if that, of the world she once knew. What else would Dreus have done when the enemy invaded his domain? ]

We are imperfect hosts. [ She's learned this, through her own trials. ] You have seen how my own symbiote leaves me, when I am done with it. But it lessens with time.

[ Although if he cannot truly understand what it is his symbiote does... how was he to practice it. Hmm. She'll have to think on that. ]

Be patient with yourself.

[ Her smile is faint, she knows he doesn't really need or want her advice, but there it is all the same. ]

[wrackful]

[That gets a bitter smile, sharp at the corner of his mouth.]

I don't know about where you're from, but I'm not used to having time for that.

[Patience, whether for himself or for anything else. Maybe some things would've gone better, if he had. Or maybe he just wasn't made for it: bored easily, frustrated, embittered by pain. How many times would he have to go through what he'd experienced after the match before it lessened like Ilde said? Hidden in an empty side room of the arena's guts, Bellamy hovering uncertain and concerned nearby, waiting, hoping the world would fill with meaning again. Was what he'd gotten for it even worth it, the mess of confusion and inexplicable certainty in the robots. And this, now, the result: having to come back to the station, back to the pods, just to feel okay again.]

Maybe they shouldn't have taken us, if we're so imperfect we're going to be screwed up by it all the time.

[erbier]

Then there would be no one.

[ And the Station would be left behind to mourn and die in silence. Perhaps she should say more. Maybe that he knows enough about where she is from to know full well she understands his objection. Or perhaps that there was no choice at all for them, that the Nest wished to live, and so had they as hosts. It all feels empty and unnecessary, however, in the face of the expensive emptiness that would be the death of their Hive. ]

[wrackful]

[There's a low, tight ache of sadness for that. It's his and yet not, an uncomfortable dissonance between a part of him that wouldn't want that, and the rest, which wants to be free. To go home.

But that isn't the point.]

There'll still be no one if we keep dropping comatose. [Not that he thinks he's on that path. But it has to be linked, their imperfections, glitches in the connection between them and the aliens in their heads. Fleeting snatches of concepts filter in his mind, evolution, adaptation, biology. But he'd never been much of a reader, and he's tired. He gives up on trying to follow the thoughts through, find the idea lurking in them.] Look, I know you don't know. I'm just saying, all the imperfect talk starts to sound like grade A bullshit when no one's doing anything to try patching the gaps, so us being here ends up pointless anyway.

[Pragmatism bordering on pessimism was his usual. He'd grown up on a space station that had lasted 97 years in space with no new equipment or parts to keep it floating. He knew make do, intimately. But he also knew improvement, progress, carving new ways when the old just weren't good enough anymore.]

[erbier]

[ She stops in the archway into the Nesting Deck, turning to look at him directly. ]

Perhaps.

[ But she is not willing to indulge that pessimism. The more she learns, the more she can contribute. Perhaps these little seeds merely needed to be nurtured to prevent them falling ill. And oh is that a task that she is made for. ]

[wrackful]

Right. [He smiles, just a tight pull of his mouth in the corner.] Shut up Murphy, I get it.

[Because perhaps isn't anything. Just a response to make a response. He doesn't need the mental link to tell him that. Still:]

Thanks.

[Genuine, as he moves past her into the deck. For walking with him, listening to him even if they'd eventually wound up at perhaps.]

[erbier]

[ She gives him a faint little smile in return. ]

Rest well, John.

[ He may be right, she'd prefer it if he wasn't. ]