[hatch log] everything happens so much

[onemind]

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 )

Comments

[erbier]

[ She considers him in silence for a long moment, that now he understood. She had loved Kylo Ren and Aleksander Morozova, and they had both promised not to leave her. Had cited their strength and longevity as proof of their devotion to the waking world. And now they're gone, leaving a void in their wake, a hole in the world a little more complicated than merely brood. She contemplates her promise to let all others suffer, as she had been left to suffer, but... she won't be so cruel to him.

She comes to him, fingers in his hair, her forehead touching his, as if to crowd out his sorrows. Perhaps she could, she has practiced such things... breaking in, nudging thoughts where she would prefer them to go. Would he even know, if she was subtle enough? ]

What causes us to rise and fall is not our power nor our determination. [ She is no longer so certain she believes the precise words Cathaway has always used to describe why they sleep, but that does not change the fact that they do. ] I cannot tell you anything more comforting. But... I can tell you about him.

[ They had been of mind. Too alike. Shared too much, touched too much, not quite realizing the severity of what they did until they were at each other's throats-- ]

He would love your suffering, just as much as he would hate it. You were his, he would demand you recognize his going, and yet--

[ He had always been a lonely shadow of a man. He could just as easily have seen himself passing from their lives as little more. ]

Well, as his own, how could he stand to see you crippled.

[ They were his kind, his blades, he would only want triumph for them. She feels that so keenly, in a way she had not felt when Ren had gone. Bittersweet, to realize she has perhaps lost a much better friend in the Darkling than in the Jedi killer. ]

[deployed]

[ Bellamy recognizes this attempt to placate his grief. He remembers it from the Ark and the aftermath of watching his mother be sucked away into space through an airlock. People had gathered, and shared stories as if that would drain the sting of loss. It isn't entirely possible for any words to soothe away this loss. It feels as is something essential has been ripped away from him. He doesn't know what could possibly fill the hole left in the wake of it.

He breathes out slowly. His nose bumps Ilde's. He thinks of being this close to the Darkling, putting his lips to the corner of his mouth. The name he'd given whispers between them; Ilde knows. The Darkling had loved her too, or as close to it as he allowed himself to get. ]

If he can't stand it, he shouldn't have caused it.

[ Bitterness seeps in slowly, unavoidably. Bellamy is a flawed, emotional creature and it has always been easier when grief turns to anger. But he can't lash out here. He's firmly hemmed in by the Station and the futility of their situation. The Darkling is tucked away safely. There is nothing left for Bellamy to do.

He puts his hands on Ilde's hips, bracing himself as if he were unsteady on his feet. ]

He showed me more of himself than I think he meant to.

[ Maybe he'd been deliberate with Ilde. But Bellamy knew he'd dragged the Darkling down with him, drowned him in the haze of fever and illness and homesickness and pulled out humanity the Darkling may not have shown to him otherwise. He doesn't regret it. ]

[erbier]

[ Who else had dragged the Darkling down into suffocating depths? She had hated him so much in that moment, angry for how much he reminded her of Ren, how he failed to soothe her, failed to save the brother they shared in him. So she had dragged him under the water, screamed and railed and promised to release this long-suffering shadow from his loneliness with leaden lungs. She had dragged the name out of him as tribute. A bloody, worn tribute to shrieking animal.

Hate and love are hot on her mind.

They had never much spoken about Bellamy, but looking at this boy -- a boy compared to the eternity of the Darkling -- she remembers the grisha's possessiveness. A drive, a flaw, that she had shared with Aleksander, both a tie to bind as much as a wedge between them. They both wanted so much, collecting precious allies and refusing to untangle from them. Teeth bared at one another in grim smiles of challenge.

She smiles at Bellamy, at the taste of his selfishness, syrupy and sickly. Her fingers pull through Bellamy's curls in slow toying motions. She knows. ]

He did hate to be vulnerable.

[ She knows this about him too well, she and the Darkling had shared too much. He barely feels gone as she looks on at Bellamy now. ]

But we have all been children, at some time another. Those memories... never quite... die.

[ How many times now has she heard the voice of Aurora Blake, the stories she told. The tenderness and hurt of it all. ]

[deployed]

[ When he'd drowned the Darkling, Bellamy had felt it. The exact memory of pain is never easy to recall, but he remembers the way that altercation had exploded through their brood. He never asked if Ilde realized the stir she'd caused. It might have very well been her intention then. Destruction and anger had colored her mind entirely. Bellamy understands it, even if he understands the danger it had posed to them all. Right now, he wishes for that kind of fury. The despair of seeing the Darkling sealed in a pod without any guarantee he'd emerge from it is hard to bear. It drags at him, dampening everything. ]

I wish they would.

[ Memories are hard. Bellamy understands how precious they are, and he'd be grateful for them later. But right now he's tired of thinking of everything he's lost. He bends into Ilde, permissive, hands tightening on her hips. ]

I want to be angry at him. [ He admits, then amends: ] I'll be angry with him soon. Maybe.

[ How far has he come from the man he'd been when Clarke had left? Was he capable of handling this loss in a better way? The whole Nest was a check on his sense of destruction. He hadn't found a way to spit it in its face the way Ilde had. ]

I can't imagine him as a child. But he...

[ He'd made himself vulnerable for Bellamy, or likely because of Bellamy. That should count for something, but the idea of it makes all of this more difficult to bear. They'd changed each other, and he'd broken all his promises. It was beyond his control, but it still leaves Bellamy behind, bereft. ]

[erbier]

[ A whisper, close, ]

Weren't you always angry with him?

[ That deep-aged thing that dared to distance himself from humanity, a traitor to all who rotted day in and day out, a controlling tyrant with serpents in his mind. He had tasted of magic and darkness and he had made her feel like a goddess when he amplified her power-- She had mistrusted him, feared him, hated him, loved him. She had toyed with his memories of his humanity for all those reasons.

She nudges a kiss at the corner of Bellamy's mouth; moved with emotions:

Loss, vulnerability, disgust, longing. ]