station72 | [hatch log] everything happens so much

[hatch log] everything happens so much

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: The Station
WHEN: DAY :039
SUMMARY: New faces and old losses - a hatch occurs and a number of older hosts go comatose. Coma'd hosts include all auto-piloted dropped characters to date.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP and suddenly you're a different person. No. That's not right. You're you and there's no suddenly about it. It's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like waking up from a very deep, extended sleep or like surfacing up from the darkness of the ocean and right there in your own head there's something both familiar and strange. You know intuitively that you've been unconscious for more than just a blink of the eye. While it’s impossible to tell exactly how long ago or how exactly you escaped the danger that had been breathing down your neck, you're certain it was more than a moment ago.

But here you are, a small miracle of the multiverse: lying in a small faintly hexagonal chamber, a gentle white light emanating from the surrounding walls. If you were injured during your escape, those injuries have been healed. If you were anxious or frightened or distraught, those feelings have been briefly calmed. There's something strangely peaceful about waking up here. That feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But once the tube's disconnected? Things get loud. A wave of emotion fills that peaceful void - fear, uncertainty, relief, a sense of purpose or loneliness or anxiety. Maybe some of these emotions are yours, but they can't all be. After the initial sensory overload, the mental buzz elongates: stretches out into a murmur like the sound of a party happening behind a closed door.

You can sit up - barely -, and shift out of the pod. There’s a ladder at your feet and a little cubby just before it with anything you brought with you as well as a set of crisp, loose-fitting white clothes; while your injuries are healed, whatever you’re wearing is in the exact state it was before. Maybe it's time for a change? Drop down the ladder to the floor of the Nesting Deck and you’ll find you’re not alone. The closer you are to these stranger, the louder the sound in your head becomes. --Actually they're not quite strangers either, are they? Something is wound about and between you and these people, whoever they are, are as familiar as this place you've never been is.

Welcome to Station 72. The air buzzes with activity. Somewhere deep in the Station, other minds call to yours. They are bright, brilliantly celebratory spots in your subconscious. They are sun-warm gentle, or they are fire and the taste of ash, or they are a vibrant frenetic whirl, or they are a tangled garden, or they are the feeling of flight through dense cirrus clouds. No two links are exactly the same, but you know for certain that you are connected to all of them in at least some small way.

Which is why it's easy to tell when something goes terribly wrong:

OLD HOSTS
THE ENDORPHIN RUSH of making it back to Station 72 (relatively) unharmed, having successfully acquired exactly what you'd set out to get your hands on can't be denied. Even if you're not necessarily the type to celebrate, there's no ignoring the thrumming celebratory sensation from those Hosts who are.

After a few hours of being back in the void, something else stirs in the air: the clear, prickling sensation of new hosts hatching on the Nesting Deck. They're a rush of mental information - as if someone's turned the volume on the radio all the way up -, a cacophony of sensation and emotional feedback for anyone unprepared to shield against it.

The swell of feeling might make it easy to miss what follows immediately after: the dull, gut-deep quiet as The Darkling, Chuuya Nakahara, and Nasu Rei go suddenly comatose.

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for all new hosts. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care do. You can find a more detailed overview of the hatching process HERE. You can find additional setting information about the Station HERE If you have any questions, please hit up either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[There's no distance Seviilia could go to remove her presence from Murphy's mind. Maybe before he'd kept heavier barriers up between himself and his broodmates, but she is the last, and any attempts to truly block her out had been eroded by the need to hold onto that last thread.

He still hesitates in seeking her out. She hasn't reached for him, gone somewhere deep in the station, and maybe the best he could actually offer her while she's like this is some slim amount of privacy. But it goes on, and on (what was time to something dead), and inaction bites and gnaws on him, eventually drives him to do something. Even if all the something was is finding the room, coming to stand somewhere a few steps away.

It's freezing, and he's already shivering, hands shoving down into his pockets. He hates the cold.]

Look.

[He stops, cuts himself off. His voice sounds too loud in the space, even for him, usually uncaring about the sanctity of silence.]

( I don't really get what you need, but... )

[He'd make some kind of loose gesture, but that would involve pulling a hand out of a pocket. So he shrugs one shoulder instead.

The mix coming off her swam with grief, anger, and the hunger which was hers, nothing like he'd ever known before. He doesn't know if she needs - wants - help with any of it, if he even could. But he's here.]

[Seviilia's eyes sit on Murphy like that of a dog who is clearly on the edge of attacking a handler on the outer edges of its personal bubble. His consent would be enough to allow her to take advantage of his naivety -- and perhaps, if she were hungrier, he would not have the chance to make that mistake again.

But even under the weight of her grief, the unfamiliar pain, the feeling of drowning--

Eventually, her hand comes up and her fingers slowly uncurl. Ice cracks off of them, sheds to the ground in a slow and steady drip. If it went on long enough, icicles would probably begun to form.]

( Do you wish to understand? )

[There's an unspoken warning with her question -- like the understanding he asks after will cause him grief. If nothing else, Murphy earned her trust with his choice to warn her, even if it was because their forced bond would allow nothing else. In the same sense, she cannot bring herself to take everything she needs from him -- even with his offer.

He deserved the chance to understand what he was offering.]

( If not, I will leave you in ignorance, and carry on. )

Edited 2017-05-10 01:27 (UTC)

[Once, Mara had told Murphy that not knowing his broodmates was leaving himself defenceless against them. He'd scoffed, because she was over-paranoid and bossy, and the idea of it hadn't rung with enough truth for him to set aside belligerence. That had been his own arrogance, his certainty that not wanting or needing his brood would mean he could keep them at a distance, that if the only mental issues he'd experienced had happened when he was engaging, then staying away couldn't be a problem.

But that had been before Mara had fallen asleep. Before Remus, Kate and Peter had followed, split Murphy's mind open with pain and dragged him to his knees in something like grief. Loneliness.

He knows some more about his capabilities now. And his weaknesses. The burn of ignorance had struck deep, carved wounds, and it's a lesson he doesn't need to learn twice.

Seviilia's open, offered hand is not welcoming. She's crusted with ice, for one, and Murphy would much rather keep his own hands tucked in the slim warmth trapped in his hoodie pockets. He can hear the warning in her, too, but in truth it wasn't like he needed it. He'd known the danger in her the moment she'd woken up, every interaction since, the whispers of it on the edges of his mind like the feeling of there being a predator nearby, always stalking through the trees, watching, making the hairs prickle up at the back of the neck. He knows he's only seen it in glimpses, out of the corner of the eye. Never full on. He knows he will, if he takes her hand.

He wonders what Mara would've done. If she would've gone so far to know her broodmates. But he also doubts Mara would have come down here in the first place, feeling Seviilia's pain, wanting to do something.

It's almost irritating. It would've been easier to blame her wholly for the decision. The few steps he has to take to cross the room, one hand drawn out into the cold and reaching out to take Seviilia's, grip immediately tight as if, already, an effort to prevent himself pulling away.]

[The chill persists, until it fills to the marrow of Murphy's bones. She gains some strength through that act alone, even as the rush of it bounces back to her. That was the problem with these 'broods' -- the one who was most interested in helping her could never offer more than the others could. Not without hurting herself in turn, anyway.

The chill grips, like claws sinking deep into a wound that's already open. Somewhere, far away, a rumbling voice tugs to demand attention, tugs hard enough to cause whiplash with the force of which their minds will find unable to resist. There's an image that comes with it, a behemoth clad in heavy dreadplate like her own, a glowing crowned helmet that just barely contains a head of whispy white hair. The being's eyes glow blue, like her own. He holds the end of an invisible chain that tugs at her subconscious and demands subservience.

His fist clenches, and the hunger saps everything from the pair of them -- every pleasant sensation and memory is strangled to dust, leaving only a pulsing need to fill the void. Its a hunger that isn't satisfied by food or drink, and even in knowing what is necessary, she paces like an animal, clawing like she has an itch at her arms, her neck, until she can't take it anymore.

There's a flash of a memory that comes with the sensation: a frozen mountain cliff that shines too brightly, bright enough to burn. Their arms tug at binding chains, they are dragged across the ground to a cell, enchanted with holy magic to keep her at bay. Around her, victims are brought to hospital beds one by one -- but she is left, half-mad with her own hunger (the pain is so deep in her stomach, so deep that a living creature would be forced to curl up in a ball and shrivel away). Days and nights pass, they are covered in burns from repeatedly throwing themselves against the bars to try and get free. Their strength isn't enough, the magic they use is like fire, and they use it without mercy.

They are reduced to an animal -- Seviilia doesn't understand what she's done, how to stop angering her captors (and how she hates those priests and paladins, how she yearns to grind them to ash), how to get back to the man in armor so she can return to something familiar, her unforgiving master, something she knows how to do. They snarl demands of her, demands of where she hides her army, of where they will strike next. Any answer she might give to ease her pain dies before it can leave her lips, the far-away force choking compliance from her, demanding what life she has left in order to preserve the secrets they try to pull from her. When lucidity comes, all she can do is laugh -- laugh until the hunger goes numb, bide her time until they make a mistake--

And when they do, she slaughters them with their own weapons, and the more she kills, the more her hunger leaves their shared body, the faster they can see something other than swimming red, the more they become Seviilia. With clarity, comes euphoria -- her kills become more pleasure than any real need. Each cut her blade manages sends a pleasant shock through her limbs, a buzz that holds tight at her neck, the base of her spine.

She is covered in red, and if she were living, her heart would pound and her lungs would fill with adrenaline. But instead, everything goes quiet -- the whispering in the back of her head stops, the pain in her nerves dulls, and her existence almost feels normal.

Seviilia lets go of Murphy's hand. The rime on her armor has hardened to a shell of ice, and the pain sits at the front of her forehead -- some of it has fled, leaving her capable of supporting her own weight, but not enough to stop her limbs from aching.]

Edited 2017-05-13 19:28 (UTC)

[Here was the thing Mara hadn't realised, and Murphy's true weakness in the network of the Nest: the part of him that understands. It happens whenever, with whoever, a regular chat with another host. The pieces of him that feel a sensation, a memory, an emotion from another and draw up the same in him. Most of the time it's small, fragments, easily swept back under control. But there have been times - Bellamy, Ilde, Mara - where it's reached deeper, stronger, impossible to shake off.

In the onslaught of what Seviilia shows him, his mind convulses. Absorbed inward, deep, her pain and anger and hunger all his, echoing backwards into himself. Her burns joined by the ghosts of deep bloody wounds, the slow carvings of blades through skin, knifepoints set to pry up fingernails, paladins now companions with grounder warriors, faces streaked black with warpaint, the priests joined by the flamekeeper. Surrender. Hatred. Murphy knows it all, sinks through it, only the hunger an constant, alien pulse.

Even the wrath. The pleasure, the satisfaction. The only blood on his hands is his own, but they clamp tight over Connor's mouth, hold the rag firmly in place against his weak struggles. The confusion in his eyes, the realisation and fear. How good it had felt to watch the light slowly leaving them.

Seviilia lets go of his hand, but none of it really dissipates. He's shivering, deep, body aching cold, and his stomach curdles, roils with everything she'd done. With what he'd done. He doesn't move, stays stood in front of her, unsteady. His mind struggles, two pasts and the present, disoriented, trying to pull itself back to centre.]

( He can't reach you here. )

[A thought unfinished, a question that hasn't found its direction yet, spilled out in lingering confusion. He can't reach, so why was she still chained?]

( The Lich King's curse is what keeps me animate, John. It is inescapable, until what is left of this life is forfeit. )

[Her fingers flex and clench, wriggling away from the feeling of her fingernails being pried backwards. A familiar sensation, one that makes her skin itch. But, resolute as ever, she holds and focuses on Murphy's failed attempts to center himself, using it to stay in her own mind. To keep her from collapsing into that feral animal that could not help craving his blood.]

( My kind will always be bound to him, in some fashion. It is the nature of the curse, part of our biology. He may not be here to hold the leash, but...just as you must eat to survive, so must I. )

[Starvation would not kill her, but it would drive her insane just the same as it would any other creature. And reliving it, being reminded of the weight, it pulls at her. The sound of Murphy's heart pounds in her ears, echoes through her skull.

She stares at him -- hungry, still.]

Edited 2017-05-14 06:41 (UTC)

[Murphy had held a gun under his chin, once. Pressed the barrel there hard, finger on the trigger. The memory rises at the prospect of starvation, because that's what he'd been facing, what had driven him to consider it. He'd already lost half his mind being trapped alone for three months; he hadn't wanted to lose the rest, dying slowly. He couldn't wish the same on her, even as his mind scrabbles, still trying to pull pieces where they should be, his self in this room, not in the bunker, not on that mountain.]

( You weren't always like this. )

[Her kind, she says, but the dead don't grow. She had to have been alive, once. Had she still served this king, then? Or had she been someone else, someone who would've hated this existence?]

( There has to be something. )

[They're stuck together. Chained together, making her curse his. Her slaughter still presses vivid in his mind, his own darkness winding thin through it, and he wants to stop it coming again. It isn't revulsion, or nobility. Crystallising slowly, quieter, bitter. Exhaustion. He's just tired of death.]

( You still don't understand. )

[Her natural anger pools, swimming amidst her hungry, thrashing against what little restraint she has. The suggestion that she'd ever been anything but an undead construct has her grabbing for his throat, like a triggered defense mechanism that seems to surprise some part of her.

The squeeze is brief, but it is enough to bring her back to her senses and drop him almost as soon as she has grabbed him. Instantly, she puts some distance between them, tugs on one of her ears until she has wrestled control of the pit in her stomach.

Her mind pulls, reaches for something that isn't there. A memory to show him, something to say, anything that might get her point across. But it always comes back to the same thing -- the death of an elven woman, hair red like fire, eyes soft with arcane rather than frigid with coldfire. Nothing before --

There is a blank space, where she clearly seems to be repressing the following memory of that woman's death for her broodmate's sake. She can sense how exhausted he is, the bitterness forming in his chest. If she is to continue functioning at capacity, she must spare him as much of her pain as possible.]

( Whatever I came from, there is nothing of her left. )

[She moves so fast he wouldn't have had time to dodge, or fight back, even if he was more lucid. It's only a moment, her hand squeezing at his throat, his feet lifted from the floor, but his mind is still split and the past floods through. The red belt-made-noose cinched around his neck, the mob of his peers around him, the sick desperation as he looks at Bellamy, shakes his head, begs and pleads past the gag in his mouth. The jolt and drop as Bellamy kicks the crate out from under his feet.

The jolt comes again as Seviilia drops him. It's enough, finally, to break clarity into his mind. Hunching forward, one hand lifted to his throat, he watches her move with both caution and some small amount of hate. He'd offered to help, he'd taken her hand, but he hadn't signed up to be hurt.]

( How do you know? ) [Sharper than before. Crueller, lashing out a reaction he's rarely able to curb.] ( You can't even remember her, can you? )

[Her muscles tighten, a reflexive reaction of anger, and there's a brief moment in their shared mindspace where she snaps and lunges at him -- but her physical self stays still, through great discipline and a desire not to harm herself further.

She can tell now, what are her memories and what are his. The Lich King, the burns, the slaughter, the thirst for vengeance -- her's. The red belt, the hanging, Bellamy's face -- those don't belong to her. Hatred swims between them. Weren't they comrades? Was this where Murphy's anger came from?

She tries to pull them back, to analyze, to understand -- but they don't belong to her. Just like every other memory that doesn't belong to her, it slips through the sieve of her borrowed mind.

You can't even remember her, can you? At least he has the sense to separate them. Seviilia, and the woman who doesn't exist.]

( You should go. )

[He doesn't need her confirmation -- there was nothing to remember.]

Edited 2017-05-14 23:57 (UTC)

[He flinches. There's no hiding that. Too used to being attacked, beaten, not to have that instinct to try and evade. But she hadn't really come for him.

Another time, he would've taken it as more evidence of being in the right. She'd gone for his throat, she'd wanted to lunge at him again. But there wasn't any right in it. She was angry. Still hurting and hungry, the things he'd come down here to try and help. There's a flux of regret, and he nods, gaze dropping. Self-hate is a small, sharp blade tucked under the ribs.]

( Yeah. )

[He should go. He isn't going to argue that. But he'd come here because he was concerned, and he still is.]

( What are you going to do? )

( Someone else will come. The Nest will not allow it to kill me. Or you. )

[Or they won't, and she will comatose, as she had when she had gone too far with The Darkling. That part, she doesn't voice -- but it was the inevitable cycle. Maybe he would come to realize it one day.

It isn't a perfect solution, but there were no other alternatives present. Maybe she could at least offer some sense of understanding.]

( I am sorry, John. I know it is tiresome. )

[His mouth tugs, mirthless, bitter. She says sorry, but he wonders if that should be his line. He can't help. They're all that's left of their brood, a part of him that feels strangled already by the prospect of her dropping away like the others have, but her ice bites into his bones and he can't do anything to alleviate her hunger.

But then, the fault didn't really lie with either of them.]

( Hey, not like you can help it, right? None of us can. )

[No choice in being what she was, and no choice in being tied to him. It's straying into ground of old complaints, the ones Seviilia didn't like to hear, but she won't have to any further than this. He's already moving to leave.]

( We are one another's greatest weakness. Yes. )

[She watches him go, and the distance feels oddly painful in its own way -- but its better. She knows it, he must know it also. Whatever weakness it was now would evolve into a strength, once they conditioned themselves to cope.

It doesn't stop it now -- some of his bitterness mixes with her own. Seviilia could hardly remember the last time she felt physical pain from being torn away from another, a different sort of pain than the hollow screaming of the curse in her blood.

She recalls his memory -- the one with Bellamy. A fire burns away the bitterness, and replaces it with hardened steel.]

( But if anyone attempts to come for you as they did before, I will rend them clean. )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[hatch log] everything happens so much

a

no subject

no subject

cw: torture

also cw: torture

no subject

cw: attempted suicide

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject