mental link | day: 006

[shri]

[ 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. ]

Comments

[shri]

[ And there she is to be found. Not on the bed, but on the floor - more usual to her, even if sleeping alone isn't something that she's had for years. But that end, she's done her best to arrange things the way she liked. Set there in cushions, laying on her side as she - of all things - sewed. Working on the veil that she had arrived in, another one that is over her head, if for the moment, pushed back to hook against the gold jewellery that adorns her. Picked something vividly blue, with edges all done in red. Pulling the thread through, head down over her work, in long curls around of her wrist to embroider the material in wide lotus patterns.

But, comfortable like that. ]

[shiro2hero]

[He still knocks before coming in. Yes, she'd invited him. But it still feels wrong to just go barging in where someone else lives. At least, without announcing himself anyway.]

[... and especially since he isn't dressed in black as he'd told her. Someone swapped out his regular disguise for a brighter, flashier thing entirely pastel pink.]

It's me -- Shiro.

[But his mood greatly lifts when he catches sight of what she's doing, surprise and admiration in his tone and thoughts.]

That's beautiful...

[shri]

[ - She catches sight of him, her eyebrow lifts, briefly. But mercifully, she says nothing. Not even bats an eyelid as she settles back to her sewing. Finishing of a stitch. A tilt of her head in thanks. ]

You are kind.

[ She gestures, for him to join her - ] Please.

[shiro2hero]

[He makes a face at that eyebrow raise. Just. One face. To say yes, I am aware. But since she doesn't speak up about it, neither does he. Just steps all the way in.]

Just honest.

[And then, sitting near her, carefully...] You've done this before. Sewing like this, I mean.

[shri]

[ That eyebrow stays lift, as she keeps working, another hooked stitch, to pull the gold embroidery thread through. Yes, done this before. Enough that she hardly needs to look other than to be sure of her placement. ]

Naturally. Is there a reason I should not have?

[shiro2hero]

[He shakes his head, watching her hands, the way the thread moves. It's actually... really beautiful. No joke.]

No, not that. I haven't actually seen someone do this before.

Most I've ever seen was repairing a hole or stitching an injury.

[shri]

[ The pattern of the edge takes time to form, to swirl up and in the delicate pattern. Begins to fill in the petal shapes, to block their colour in. ]

A shame. Does your sister take care of it? Perhaps your wife? Decadent perhaps, but it is just clothing after all.

[ He seems old enough to have one or the other. A wife or a sister must see to it? A mild enough question, as she leans forward to bite at the end of the thread, snapping it by the sharpness of her teeth. The gold at her ears swaying with the movement, the flat red stones bright, in the half flash of light. ]

[shiro2hero]

[It's hard to look away while she works. It's like watching a real flower bloom, except in fabric form. Like a time lapse video.]

[He's so wrapped up in what she's doing, he almost doesn't hear the questions.]

Does--

[Oh.]

[His face goes red. Despite the fact he's trying to keep everything carefully under wraps for her and others' sake, embarrassment floods against his mental shielding. His what.]

No. No, it -- Pidge is like my sister, and she's into tech. We don't really do it like that, where I'm from.

[shri]

[ Oh, if does he have a sweetheart perhaps? How sweetly red he goes. A thought that she keeps back, even if the tinged smile plays on her face. Leaning forward on her elbow, to dig through threads, picking out another one. Blue, vibrant as the golds and the reds. ]

No? Why not? But perhaps she would like this too then. It is quite technical.

[shiro2hero]

[Even if he didn't have an aforementioned romantic interest, he would have gotten flustered. That's just. Him. But it's abruptly hard not to think about said romantic interest. Thank everything for mental shielding.]

When you put it that way -- maybe. I'll introduce you two sometime. See if she takes to it.

[He does let something through, then. Pidge's image -- this is her, this is my family here.]

[shri]

[ She listens, takes in the wave of emotion. He had shown her the mental image of the girl before. Again, here, now, and his boundless affection for her. ]

It is a good skill to have. I took it not so well to begin with, rather more concerned with my swords as a girl - but as I grew older, I found peace to simply making something with no other consequence.

[ The end of the thread is brought up between her fingers, spinning it thin again, wetting the end of it by her lips. ]

[shiro2hero]

Now you sound more like her.

[He shakes his head -- most of Pidge's, of Katie's, story is hers to give out when she wants or needs to. But he still remembers the girl in the long hair. Versus the Paladin in green he knows so well these days. It's different, but also the same.]

You do a great job of it. I can tell you've worked hard to learn this kind of thing.

[shri]

[ She nods, taking the thread and the needle, a practised motion as she hooks to the eye of the needle, dragging it through in a loop before she goes about tying off the end. Another motion she leans forward to snap it again with her teeth. ]

I started young, soon after I was married. Thirteen year old girls are all thumb, it was nothing to note then.

[ She laughs - thinking nothing of being married so young, just how it was done. Besides, she had a good husband. One who she had come to love very much. Keeps talking and explaining as she lowers her eyes back to her work and on the inside of the gold outline, she takes up her stitch to start filling out the Lotus blossom. ]

But it is expected of a woman into my position, to learn how to sew, cook, clean. Even if you are a queen, though it's a little more than ceremony when there is a whole palace to see to it. But it wasn't good enough for me to just be passable at it.

[shiro2hero]

Thirteen...?

[He can't help the shock in his voice. Sure, he knows people come from vastly different worlds than his own. Knows it was a thing, even in his world. But it's different, knowing a fact, and hearing it directly out of someone's mouth -- as if it were as normal as space travel is for him.]

That's... that's so young. [Younger than Pidge.] Did everyone do it that way, in your world?

[Because he's got to ask. Curiosity has always been strong in him.]

History books make it sound like queens never had to look after anything. Shows how much they knew, huh?

cw: discussions of child marriage

[shri]

[ And she mistakes - or rather deliberately avoids - what his horror is more likely about. Forcing through something that she has no want or wish to discuss with someone like this. ]

Young indeed, when with that marriage you become a Queen. In that way, it was best. I could learn safely around those that new what was expected of the role. Excepted of who I was now.

[ Hopes that eases the shock, some, if it did not compound it. The idea of being married, and becoming a ruler when you had been not much of anyone, before. ]

Some rulers do nothing much at all. [ And there's a not so well kept back spike of the image of one ruler in particular, Queen Victoria, the decorated housewife. Like she knew anything of ruling or housework. ] But yes, they do get married so young in my home. At least Brahmin girls do. It is preferred for them to be young, the reason the same. They need to be trained to a new family.

[shiro2hero]

[There's... so much he wants to say to this. That kids shouldn't be in that position. Kids shouldn't be expected to be in that position. But what good would it do? It's her world. He's not looking to pick a fight. Even as much as it bothers him to hear it.]

I... I have a had time accepting that. [He shakes his head, holding up his hand -- there's more he wants to say, to elaborate.] Where I'm from, everything's so different.

Kids that age aren't expected to be anything other than kids. I'm... I guess I'm an adult. [Sort of.] But thirteen... kids can't even drive, that young.

[And then there's Pidge... but she'd made her choice. She'd gone after her family. Chosen to fight. That's the difference, isn't it? Choice.]

Culture shock on my end. [That is to say, I don't want to fight about this, my head just can't wrap around it. And hope that sentiment comes through in words and the link between them.] We're from really different worlds.

[shri]

[ Rather than be offended, she laughs. Politely, enough, but laughter all the same. Kids can't drive. She doesn't know a single country where childhood means something like that, even for the wealthy. ]

How so - even in the British navy, a boys officer training begins when he is seven years old or there about. But I have seen younger below decks.

[ It's true everywhere she knows, there is not a slum nor high born room where children are scarcely given the time to be such. What was it in particular. ]

I do not say it is right. I agree, children should be children. It broke my heart when I first had to take my son to war with me. But that is true of most who see such things, yes?

[ She continues in her rows of stitches, blocking out the inside of the flower in blue, and rather than dig or poke, or recoil in an offense that he found her truths hard to swallow, she just carries on. Simply content in the work and the learning she takes from him. Hard, soldier like, but still the same, protective. Oh, Galahad, must she see shades of him everywhere? Was that just her worry talking? ]

[shiro2hero]

We're... really from different places, I think.

[Or times. However that works here. Maybe it's times. From what she's said so far, that's what it sounds like to him. He doubts he'd have been let anywhere near a ship when he was seven. Let alone younger.] You have to be eighteen at least, for the army.

[Or last he checked. That wasn't really his area of expertise. Whoops.]

[But then there's something more important to ask about.]

Your son? You've got kids? [Possibly a stupid question, but still. Curiosity is curiosity. And the more they know about the people here, the people they're linked to and working with, the better.]

[shri]

[ Eighteen is - well, more than anything it's late. It's late to get the skills needed to survive combat, at least to her mind. But then, she is the product of training from childhood, just the same. ]

Two boys - and a particularly stubborn daughter.

[ Their faces, brief, of a boy no more than a few months old, then quite another one, ten years old and determined - and a young woman, whose face could not be harsher when she frowned, nor sweeter, when she smiled. But it is stained so wholly by a mother's affection. Boundlessly warm. Fire still, but the kind that sits in a home, giving light and supplication. ]

[shiro2hero]

[He really, really can't help the smile, there. At the offered memory of the kids' faces. The kids, and the young woman. At the affection. It's nice -- it's so incredibly normal in the face of all this weirdness, he can't help but let it show.]

They're lucky to have you.

[And he means it. There's no false flattery here. Just a simple, honest sentiment. Possibly because there's also admiration for her already. Easily given.]

[shri]

[ She flicks her fingers at him, kindheartedly, laughing richly as she leans back. Shaking her head at his fondness. ]

You say that only because I am not yours. Anand would squall something horrid when I would not let him have sweets only for dinner. I was informed I was the most unfair mother he could ever have.

[ The trials of managing children. Broke her heart, in so much as she had take Anand from his birth mother, for the sake of Jhansi. Though she had never loved him any less, and never expect him to fill the place of her first son. Simply to take him as himself. But like this, recounting the issues of raising princes, it's easy, without that heaviness. ]

[shiro2hero]

Hey, you should hear the guys when I tell them they've got morning training drills. It's almost as bad.

[Almost. They're not actually children. But they're family all the same. As much as Pidge is. And, as long as they're sharing, there's no harm in offering up the missing three faces. Yellow, Red and Blue.]

[It does hurt, thinking about them. How they're not here. It feels incomplete, like pieces that won't ever fall back into place.]

... you all right? Being so far from them.

[shri]

[ To that - she laughs. Because what else she can do, her fingers flicking away the thought. Are you alright? Her aches slow and bitter in her lungs. A pain, so all the way through, it is like she was cut, that day, that laying there, pained and breathing in a moment where there was simply nothing else. A different kind of battle. To have her son, or to die. That in the moment she held him, there would be nothing else but knowing her arms would always be empty without him. ]

The first thing a mother learns when she loves her children, from the day you bring them into the world, half of you will always be missing. It is an old ache. I am well adjusted.

[ She shakes her head, looking at her work. ] I know I raised them to be strong, in the face of everything. I must take solace in that.

[ What she cannot, will not talk about, is just how long two of them have been dead, all that is left to her, now, is Devi. She will not waver, she is braver than anyone should ever have to be. ]

[shiro2hero]

[He doesn't know what to say there. He's no one's parent. Even if what the five of them have carved out for themselves in the Castle is as close to a family as they'll get. Being here without them still stings some days. Days when he either holds a little tighter to Sam's hand, or hangs in Pidge's shadow a little more intently than usual.]

I'm sorry.

[It doesn't feel like it's enough, but, it's all he can think of. He reaches out, and almost sets a hand on her shoulder. Almost. It falls back at the last moment, because that feels like overstepping something.]

I... don't know how that feels. But if you need to let loose a little... I'll listen.

[shri]

[ To that she says nothing. Talking at length of such matters isn't something she will ever do. How could she, especially now? When it was mixed with such horror, such pain, such misery? He would feel it - feel it all. That part of her that is still a woman staring into a pyre, asking if it would finally end this feeling if she simply stepped into the flames like Sita. ]

You are a good man. [ It's said not dismissive, but decisively. She appreciates the offer, but it is nothing she will ever be inclined to follow through on. Not with him - not with anyone. ] Come, would you like to see how I do this? This is twice you show me how to do something like this. I must give you something in return.