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mental link | day: 006

[ Her options are at this point, are brood up how much she wants to kill Damon and Elena, or get on with work. She didn't do so well at brooding, though her mind is still so new, so sharp and edged and not kept inside of herself. But in this case, a fire trying to find new kindling to keep itself going. Her own impatience and frustration are evident. But when isn't she anyway - ]

( I was informed when I arrived that we need to be ... ascertaining particular pieces of information.

Have we begun such? If not, should we not begin planning to reconnoitre? )

[ She has already plans, but even so, if it's already been done - well, she's happy to be told if it means she doesn't have to go chasing her own tail. ]

( And does anyone know how to use these - light books - that has the time to show me? It keeps flashing at me and I cannot make it stop. I think it wants something. )

[ The data pad, she means the data pad, she's grouchy at it for not! giving her! the things! she wants! Being a grandma in space is a trial. ]

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( They believe I'm nobility so far. It's only been a few days, not enough to learn more than a little gossip, but if we keep getting in close to them there's bound to be more. Some of us are trying to get in with the elite, some with the servants and guards, some with aides and other locals. )

( How goes that so far? )

( So far so good. I wouldn't say I'm friends with any of them yet, but we're on friendly terms. I'm hearing all about the ground that the Meradan's navy took recently, the cost of Emperor Hyanna's castle, Saridian Black's real identity. )

[ There's a thoughtful hum, a brief pause before he continues. ]

( I've been reading love poetry and romance novels, listening in on people's conversations to figure out what these cultures see as charming. Watching how the elite interact with each other, how they are with their guards, how they are with other envoys. I'm no spy, and it's harder to read people here, but I'll keep you updated. )

( A good method. Are you familiar with nobility at all? )

[ You kids today and your democracy and your destroying of class systems. What she knows of America - is rather dismal. The sense to her words that she's expecting him at least a little to being a gun toting, horse riding, cowboy battling in the west over - train lines and cattle, or something such? Lots of yeha! and shooting guns in the air. ]

[ There's the faintest hint of amusement at the sense he gets of her expectations, though he isn't offended at all. ]

( I know more than I really want to of how the rich and powerful work, and I'm... kind of friends with a king, but other than that, no. Just enough to know that customs are different every where. )

( Kind of - ? )

[ A pause - and then a sour little thought. ]

(Tell me it isn't what is left of the Hanoverians. )

[ History isn't Sam's best subject, but he doesn't have to know much about it to pick up on the fact that she really didn't like them. There's a soft, vaguely amused huff. ]

( Nah, he's the king of Wakanda; it's a country in Africa. And we're - he tried to kill me and some friends because of a misunderstanding, but then when shit got sorted out he helped us out of a really rough spot. That's where I was before we came here. )

[ And now that he's talking about it this is kind of a pattern for him. If two times counts as a pattern. ]

[ And that cheers her greatly, all things considered, right up until he gets to the second bit. If Sam was a noble, she might assume that was a dig - but as yet... ]

( That's no easy thing for a prince to do. )

( I know. He's- )

[ Sam misses him, suddenly, sharply, and there's an echo of it to his side of the connection. Sam'd barely known him, and T'Challa'd been trying to kill him for half of it, but with the dust settled Sam understands the kind of thing you'd do after losing a father. In the end, T'Challa'd made the same choice Sam did. ]

( He gave us a place to go when we didn't have anywhere else. I took the deal to come here for him and the rest of my team, for his people. To protect them from the Enemy. )

[ They didn't deserve the destruction the Enemy was bringing on them when it attacked - none of them did, but what was left of his team had been through enough. He misses them all. ]

( As he should. Ruling seems to be many acts, but it is ever the same. Knowing that your goal, your only goal, is to provide safety for those that come to you, and ask for your help. It is the first, last and only duty you have. )

[ She can feel how he misses him - and it sets off her own. She has so much to miss, so much she holds dear even if it is no longer left to her care. That choking rising sensation. More than that, prickles hot in memory:

She had failed them. ]

( I am glad you knew such an act. I am glad you returned it in kind. )

[ For all of that, it bleeds through, just how lonely such a place it could be. Because that position came with as much power as restriction. ]

[ She had failed them.

Sam may not be royalty, may not be any kind of real leader, but it's a feeling that resonates deep in him, in all the people he failed to protect, in the role model he failed to be.

He can't help it - he reaches out, like feathered wings curled around them both. Everything he's done for most of his life, since he first became a pararescueman and everything else after, it's always been about trying to provide safety for those who needed it. ]

( If more people in charge felt the way you do, maybe the rest of us wouldn't get fucked over and forgotten so often. )

[ It's one second - maybe because it is a relief, maybe because she is so unfamiliar with the motion that she can't work out just what it is, he's doing.

Then, she's all claws. A vicious snarl and rip and tear. She will not accept it, not from him, not from anyone. Exposed as a nerve, a wire, pulling and ripping and yanking. An animal backed into a cage that drives out as hard as she can until she has the space she wants. ]

( I want, nor need, your consolations. )

[ For a moment, there's something almost like empathy, understanding, between them. Then she lashes out, and he withdraws immediately.

It's hardly the first time someone's clawed at him for showing compassion - for offering what she calls consolation. The word settles uneasily over him. Too much like pity, maybe, one of the few feelings he's never been able to stand.

But he's not sure enough of his ability to explain the difference - if there really is a difference to her - to push it. ]

( This the part where you say no one understands you and you don't want them to anyway? )

( This is the part where you forget who you play ally to, but I certainly do not. )

[ The flick, pressure, the draw back of teeth from snarl that is clear - not while he calls them friend. He will not embrace her and them and think it can all be so easy. ]

[ No, nothing in life is ever that easy. That's one thing they can both agree on. ]

( Our wars don't extend across worlds, Rani, except in our own minds and the views we bring in. At least half the Nest ain't human, and some of the ones who are have been made to be more deadly and do more damage than Elena ever has. )

[ Sam knows what Asuka'd told him about a woman who's lost so much, that it's personal for her - and maybe it is, but what the hell isn't personal? He can still hear Pierce talking about a better world by wiping out anyone who's a danger, and Ross treating Wanda and Bucky and Thor and Banner like weapons instead of people.

He knows the kind of poison that spreads when you consider someone a monster because of what they are, how quickly it turns into othering. And he doesn't know what extent it already has. If she lashes out at him for who his friends are, will she look at Shiro and Bucky and see only what they've been made to do and what they're fighting not to be, will she look at Kavinsky and see only the monster that everyone back in his world seemed content to take him for?

Or hell, any of the other members of the Nest who are undead or otherwise not human, but admittedly, Sam is most protective of those closest to him. ]

( I'm not saying that I think the abilities and the power people have don't matter, just that it matters a hell of a lot of less than what they do with it. )

( My people were eaten like cattle and you dare to lecture me on what they might do? This isn't a question of might. I know. )

[ Snarled straight back, that opened mouth, fanged thing. The curl and hold in. She has been good, she has done to her word, and then he dares, her dares.

She's livid. Asuka's words that had sparked her rage initially - just revenge, just causing a fuss. A fuss, like she was just confused. Just hadn't quite heard the words right and misunderstood. Her thoughts are canon fire, her voice is screams, and she does not belong to this hive, no matter how it had taken her, joined her by it felt her own soul to that which makes what the thousand voices inside that she will always belong to, first and before all: scream and scream and scream. ]

( I have given you my word, I have stayed my hand. Keep your delusions, I will not dishonor myself, my people or my duty like that. )

( I didn't know the symbiote gave you the ability to see into the future. Hey, maybe when you're done using it to justify your hatred of anyone who has the slightest resmblence to the people that wronged you, you can tell me why all you stubborn ass royal types identify with cats so damn much. )

[ This isn't a lecture; it's a call out. Something Sam's gonna keep doing, even if poking the tiger might not be the best idea, because - well, because he's done, honestly, he's never been able to stand bigotry of any kind. Never been able to sit there while someone punishes people for things they didn't do, or treats them like shit because of something they can't change. ]

( Your world isn't our world. There are more people in the Nest who have just as many things in common with what you were fighting there, how many of us are you going to turn on? )

[ Despite his initial flippancy, there's something dark and heavy underneath the question. A protectiveness carved into every inch of him, a need to know how much of a threat she is to his people. He keeps names and faces hidden, unwilling to throw them in her path, but he wonders - will he have to protect Bucky from her if she finds out about the Winter Soldier, will he have to warn Shiro not to mention his rage switch to her?

How many of them who have triggers that push them out of control is she gonna pull this on? ]

[ Her mind goes to silence, her mind goes to the roar and flicker of flames. A fire that burns and burns out of space and time, beyond a burn that it has anything left to devour.

- Then in as much time as it takes from her to go from her own position to where he is. The long knife - the blade of her husband, the pommel of Sir Bors, and on it the purpose she had sworn herself to. Laid herself down into the earth that when she finds him. She takes it out, flat, held but not at him.

Rather she throws it at his feet. Done this once, done this before. She had been young, a fool, and so full of hope in others. That she laid herself down at their mercy and expected it to always be honored. That she could believe in any of them. I took this in the defense of my people, but I have no way to do so anymore, I return it now. She had laid herself upon it. Laid herself to the only thing that it all means to her.

The only thing she keeps fighting for, anymore.

And after it, she puts herself down to her knees, down beside it as she looks straight at Sam, with nothing else between him and her. Damon was everything she knew best in fighting, and Elena no more than a lost, foolish child. But Sam was what set himself so directly in opposition to her, and to that, she lays it open. She doesn't have anything else to keep anymore, her mind as wide as open as a battlefield. Strewn with as many bodies here and now. Go on then, is the flat challenge. I am waiting. I have been waiting for years and years for this battle to be over. ]

If you're going to kill me for what I am, you will do it with the blade that I swore my honour upon.

Edited 2017-08-20 05:54 (UTC)

[ All right, this - this is not what he expected. In retrospect, he probably should have expected something like this, given the intensity of how their last fight ended, but he's -

He's used to Bucky. He's used to fighting with someone who runs when it gets to be too much, to having to wait a day or two for him to cool off before reaching back out. ]

This coming from the woman who's so damn determined to lash out at me for the friends I've got? I mean, it's a novel experience from the prejudice I got back home, but I'm not gonna stop calling this shit out.

[ But he doesn't want this. He never wanted to set himself into opposition with her, he respects her, except - except where her prejudice blinds her. Except where he doesn't know how far it spreads, how many more of his friends she'll turn it on when they already struggle with hating themselves. Even then, he doesn't want her dead.

She's opened her mind up wide, and there's no place that Sam knows better than the battlefield. He jumps on it, opening his own connection to her wider and wider until he can't feel the ends of it anymore. Until their connections to the rest of the Nest have narrowed and grown distant, hushed for the moment.

Until damn near all of Sam's mind is laid bare. It isn't quiet - it's vibrant and alive, the warmth of the sun, the mist of clouds, the feel of slow, even breathing and the sound of a steady heart beat. It's a calmness and a certainty born from knowing who he is and the journey he'd taken to get here, the spray of gunfire and the rush of wings. It's jeweled tones in the colors of the sunrise, and even though there's a dark undercurrent of something hollow and aching, the faint echo of something that'd once been chaos - that's dull and distant, never forgotten, but faded.

If she wants to hate him for who he is, she can; it's all right there within easy reach. But he hadn't counted on her interest to know anything about him - he's looking to understand her, to know what drives her to hate.

Show me, he asks without words. Show him the battle she's challenging him to be the end of. ]

[ it is not enough for her to simply be wrapped up and taken to a soft place and not take back. It is not for her to lay back to another's action, even if they are given in kindness. She had been told once, that elephants only lie down when they're dead. Like the only way to know stillness is to abandon herself completely.

She cannot take his soft wings, his wrap of steady breath and warm embrace. Not for what he asks. Does he not understand, this is her? This is all of her. She does not exist before and after. She exists here:

The walls of Jhansi stretch high and stone. Blotted with dark weather stains, a white cut of man's need against a flat desert landscape. Bare sand and trees that jut up like teeth of the earth. Somewhere far, is the sound of bells, the chant of hymns. Cooking - at seven months pregnant, her belly is just starting to get in her way - but her duties as wife meant that to the kitchens she would go. Not her place so much, her husband was sure to never press his wife who wore weapons better than jewels to such tasks. But unacceptable, she thinks, to fail in any duty. To neglect anything that comes to her. The soft call of a woman's voice to her side, as the young woman - Kashi, the memory supplies. Wearing her knife at hip, and comes to catch her Rani's hand. His gift, remember, he will want to see you wearing it. Kashi threads the ring onto her littlest finger, the flat stones heavy, where they set to the gold hold.

he would want -

Lakshmi reached forward to Sam. A present action that bellies the memories, her hands that doesn't know how to be still. He cannot know hate if he does not know love. He cannot understand this pain if he does not understand the love it took away from her. She pushes up, a combatants toll. He will see, he will see enough, he will see the moment it was gone. She shoves him back down and hard as her forehead cracks forward against into his. Hard enough to make them both bleed. Panting hard, her eyes open, she bleeds her misery, her violence, the pain that cannot be let go of because she is alone from them all, she is the only one left. She exists here:

One step into the kitchens, and the flames hit her face with a roaring wave of heat. The child in her belly is gone, her husband is gone. Kashi is beside her still. Kashi whose hands only ever knew the sweetness of flowers, is blood stained, and Lakshmi - sword in hand, blood slick up her hands, her neck, splattered against her face pushes against the wave of - soldiers who are not soldiers that come pouring out of this place that is her home, that is her, that is where she will always exist.

Their red coats hide the blood. English, her mind chimes. English, and deceivers. Their soldiers who are not soldiers. Their soldiers who step towards her and she watches their red coats rip apart in a single act of transformation. Splitting apart their own skin of something so human to something so monsterous. 'Come here, pretty bitch, we've never tasted queen before.'

Kashi was only human. Kashi only knew flowers, wore her knives like toys not weapons because she could not stand the truth of them, no matter how skilled she was. Kashi was ripped apart in seconds. A childs doll, her pretty head smashed like fine glass when the Lycan hit her against the once great cooking pot. Hindi women of the desert don't wear the clothing that covers in the fetid summer air, and the Lycans teeth find no resistance as it feasts on a warm belly. Like a child suckling to a mother's breast, it laps across the wound it makes. The vampire that falls on the fresh corpse. Shoving for another bite.

She screams and screams and screams, something beyond battle cries and misery. She turns, a soldier's arm is ripped from its socket, she turns, and a priest is snapped in half. She turns, and the monsters pour forth, she turns and there is nothing but monsters. She cuts one down, and she is already too late. She cuts one down, and it wounds her in turn. She bleeds and she cannot bleed enough. She bleeds into the stones that is her home, and it will not be enough to wash this away. She kills and kills and kills and there is still always more. Her war will never be done until she has killed every last one.

The fires engulf the kitchens. There is nothing left but a blackened charred room and the smell of cooked flesh.

he would want- the ring slips off her finger.

She never went back for it. Nor does she let go of Sam, grinding against their now shared wound. ]

Never. Never think I will forget who made me. You think me prejudice but I assure you, I am much worse.

[ He takes everything she shows him. As she bleeds out her memories, a massacre of horror, he takes it all, pulling her in. She surges up into him, cracking her head against his so the physical pain is an echo of the agony in her mind, and it’s not the first time he’s been mentally so wrapped up in someone else in the midst of physical violence.

It sparks flickers of battles in his own mind - metal arms, a red star or a glowing hand, a cold, purposeful stride or a berserker charge, the shriek of rending metal and the tight band of arms around a waist, holding back, gunshots and blood and jolts of electricity. They’re nothing more with flashes, as he tries to keep them at bay, but with the two of them sharing mind space this closely, nothing stays hidden. There are no names, no faces, but it’s not as though there’s many people here with metal arms, and he can hardly contain his feelings.

The weapons that they were turned into, the monsters they see themselves as. The men that Sam would kill for, would die for - would live for, he promised, a promise so much harder than taking a life or giving your own. Which maybe says something about Sam and the life he's lived, that he could kill or die without batting an eye but living for someone takes so much more, but he is who he is.

And she is who she is.

She calls herself worse than prejudiced, but disagreement hangs heavy. ]

No. You're not.

[ There's very little worse than prejudice - and maybe that's a failing of Sam's, too. Not that he refuses to understand or accept prejudice, hell no, but that he can understand almost anything else when given the opportunity. He understands her, the images burned into his mind, and he knows exactly how seeing nothing but death and violence and war, having everything you love - everything you are - ripped away from you by monsters can leave you empty and angry and with nothing else than a purpose.

With nothing but the drive to wipe them all out, to stop them from doing to others what was done to you, and fuck does he understand feeling like you might as well lay down and cease to exist if you no longer have that purpose.

There is a moment, a curling tendril of fear that makes him want to grab her and never let go - how can he tell her that her war is over, that it didn’t follow her here, when it’s all she has? What will she do when she’s forced to confront that through life in the Nest, will a new purpose be enough or will she throw herself down like she did today?

Sam won't leave her. He won't. Maybe she won't like what he's got to say or what he wants to offer, but he knows being unable to leave the war behind, and not knowing what to do with yourself when you do. He knows the desperate, hollow feeling of there is no point, I am nothing else, and she’s -

She’s not his to lose, but she is. Whether she likes it or not, she’s a part of the Nest. They’re a part of each other, and he’s not willing to lose that part. ]

It's not fair, Rani, I know, but- [ But nothing in life is ever fair, and she knows that as well as he does. ] I need to know how far it goes. If it’s just vampires, because there’s a hell of a lot of people in the Nest who’ve got control issues that don’t drink blood.

[ He says the Nest because he means it, because they are his people and there's too many of them who hear the word monster and think "yes, that's me," but as much in each other's heads as they are, the impression that he’s thinking of specific people is there.

Sam's not afraid for Damon or Elena. She promised not to harm them and he believes her - he's afraid for the others, who see Elena in themselves. Afraid that Lakshmi might see it, too. ]

[ She balks, a horse at the bit, shoving away from him - the hurt, rage, bitterness, things that she takes like embers in both hands. Shoving him down and back, because it is true - what else is she? An animal backed into a corner. The tiger backed into the corner. I could see it in its eyes, Rani, that day, I know we were both the same. Jhalkari's face so like her eyes reflecting back into her own a truth. The turn is an easy one that she takes to pin with because he thinks, and she acts, and she wants something, anything to this slippering feeling of being in the hive that puts her on every edge to hold onto. Shoving up and into him, snatching his wrists and pushing them into the ground - breathing hard. Her jaw grit, working something between her teeth - finally, he asked a question that she can respect, sink her teeth into - that understands just what she even cares about. That she can respect being cared about.

What were Damon and Elena to her, really? Nothing. A chit of a girl and her overprotective lover. They were as foolish as they were wretched. How many would she kill to stop this, stop it all? An empire's worth. What good was this world? ]

You put down a rabid dog, no matter how children beg me to spare their once beloved pets. [ Her breath is harsh, the curl of his blood over her nose, around in a sweeping river. She is no better, she knows, than a killer. Whatever she was, had been, could have become. It's gone. By what she must be. In the rain of fire and debris, she will no longer pretend otherwise.

She is beyond apologizing for it. She never will again. ] But if you ask what I wage my war with? I know exactly the creature that is to blame.

[ She pulls up enough to meet his eyes, flicking between them. Looking for something, something she can latch onto - his words before, that he would do what must be done. ]

[ She pins him and his body moves automatically, one leg between hers and the other over, setting himself up for some leverage if he needs to twist his way out from under her - but he doesn't, because he can feel the way his question resonates with her, and if this means he's finally going to get an answer to what he really cares about -

She is no better than a killer and though she doesn't want his understanding, she has it. She is what the war has made her, she is what she'd had to become - and so was he, once. So is he still, in some ways. She is what she is and she has nothing else left inside her but the flicker of a flame stoked by every day she fought.

He wants to change her mind, not for himself or anyone else, but for her. So she can see another path but to keep going until the fire finally snuffs itself out.

But he has his answer, and she's looking for one in return.

There are whispers in his mind, the words clear despite the voices being blurred and distorted - 'I will fuck it up, you can't let that happen,' 'Next time is the last time, do whatever it takes,' 'If that's what it takes to stop me, I don't want you to hold back,' - and he holds her gaze, steady and determined.

He doesn't reply out loud, just gives her who he is, the feeling inside him that can be summed up easily by the words etched in his bones: these things we do, that others may live.

He is who he is, too, and he will always do what must be done. He will always fight to protect those who can't, always come after those who are lost, will always sacrifice so others don't have to. ]

[ She presses heavy to the hold, fingers around his wrist and her weight into the knee between his leg as his works up between hers - if not for topic, how intimate this would be. If not for the topic, how lacking a word like intimate could be for this: this bound up in each other's miseries.

Because she can not help but bite at the bit, when he gives her such things - no, no she will have no comfort, not just because it had been denied her - but because so many still had none. So many suffered, and her people, her people - ]

I told you. Keep it.

[ It has no heat anymore, only a thick, full misery in her words as she pushes up off of him. ] I will have solace when my work is done.

[ Exhausted, wary, she undoes herself from him. A wound that needs to be licked, curled away from. Shaking, ragged, burned out to the wick that desperately holds to its own heat, she reaches for her blade once more. ]

[ It's more than intimacy. It's occupying the same mental space, it's for a moment bleeding so much into someone else that your breath might as well be their own, it's a tangled mess where similarities only serve to heighten the differences.

She has a piece of him now, and her mind has twisted into his even after they no longer share the space he temporarily created for them. It lingers, their connection stronger than it'd been before, even as they pull aware from each other. ]

It's who I am.

[ He's not sure he knows how to keep it any more, if he ever did. Doesn't know how to do anything but leave it up there for her to take, if it ever comes to it -

If she ever believes herself worthy of anything like comfort, when the people she failed will never get it. It's familiar, achingly familiar, from himself and Shiro and Bucky, but from that, too, he knows not to push it where it can't be accepted.

Not now, anyway, though he won't take it back either.

He untangles his legs from hers as he pushes himself upwards. He can feel Shiro raging in the back of his mind, worried and angry and seconds away from losing control, and his mind is already split as he watches her, making no move to stop her. ]

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mental link | day: 006

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cw just to be safe: discussion of thoughts of wanting to die

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