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]

[ 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.

[shiro2hero]

You're the first person besides Sam and Pidge not to say that like it's a bad thing.

[There's some kind of dry, tired amusement in the statement. As much as the names invoke a lot of fond thoughts -- no way to hide it. He doesn't even try to anymore. But it's honest he's used to hearing that said like it's a flaw.]

[A shake of his head, but he's not saying no.]

Hey, I'll give it a shot. Can't be any worse than putting me in the kitchen.

[shri]

Perhaps only a rare thing.

[ But they have been over that - how she is bitter, and he is earnest, and here they both were. With her sewing in old habits, and him trying things. If this is to be their pattern, she does not mind it at all as she pushes to sit up straight, at last she pushes her veil further back. the fall of her undone hair, thick with the smell of smoke the way she had dried it a life time ago, falling over her shoulder. ]

It is called chain stitches. The first you'll we all learn. [ She leans across to begin to show him. Holding up the thin, metal hook, and the material she holds stiff between her fingers and shows him how she puts the needle through wraps the thread underneath, then pulls it up to make a loop, that she repeats the same stitch, to hook the previous one too. ] Think you have?

[shiro2hero]

A rare, double-sided thing, huh?

[It comes out more lighthearted than it sounded in his head. Before he settles in, watching her work. Attempting to absorb it as she demonstrates. Maybe this is something that would be up Pidge's alley. Or Hunk's. They both work with tech, with machines and engineering. It looks like it needs the same kind of precision.]

I'll give it a try. If you don't mind?

[If she doesn't mind him accidentally pulling it wrong, he means.]

[shri]

By all means.

[ After all, nothing he could do that she could not undo with enough time. No more than something to fill her time whilst she thought. So for now, she holds it up to him, the fabric in one hand, the needle in the other. ]