mental link; goodnight sweet fuckboy

[sistershoggoth]

[ Nyx Ulric slipping from her grasp is like a sun blinking out, her skyline gone suddenly dark, her world gone suddenly cold. It knifes through her, and after a moment of shocked, numb, silence: she starts the vibrate. An earthquake of anger and pain, electricity crackling off of her as her thoughts explode outward.

To call the noise echoing out of her any kind of language would be a gross exaggeration, it is merely a series of ocean's deep lamentations, reverberating throughout the immensity of her. Up from the magma at her core, through the cavernous, lightless space that is her consciousness beyond the shell of She. ]

( Fucking--W͙͇͕̠͈̅ͭi̺̟̩̼͙̮̞̎ͮ̉ͪ̆ͨ͟ț̰̙͌͡h̢̯̹̃ͮ̈́o̩̼̟͚͍̾̔̃͆u͆̊ͤ̾̏t͕͎̞̳̙̙͔̓ͫ̒ ͔͋̐̿̓̊ͩ͛l̮̝̘̼ͩ́i͕̰̠ͦ̐͢g̘̬̺̜̓h̲͖͇̜͇͓͓̊̒͛t͈͉͈̹̫͖ͤ̔͒̍͊ ̠̤̫̄̈́ͯͣͦw͙̺̯̰̔͆̊͗̐̊̍i̻̽̋t͐̓̀̉̿ͮ͐ḧ̰̲̲̼́̒ͥͪ̋ͯ̈͜o̩ͮut̐ͦ̂ͭ̈͘ ̰̝̪̹̩͔̱̃͛͌͋̈́̀h̴̝ͯ̎ͥͯḛ̪̤̫͚ͅͅa̱̦̩͔̺̪ͪ͊̓͗̊ͅtͬ͛̓͌̇̓͜ Son of a cunt-fucking maggot-- S̲̜͈̜̲u̱f̨̥̥̳͍͖̝͈f̵͇̪̼̝͎e̡͕̫̯r҉͕̪͎̹͎ Don't you dare leave me with this, L͖͍̝̠̝͎̾͛ͤo͉̘̖͚͉̳͋̎̍̂ͅś̝ṥ̤̗̊ͤ͗̑͘ you worthless-- Fuck. C̢̩̝̳̫͖̗̆o̖̰͍̱ͨ̃͡m̴͍̫̤̰͓͓̠̋͂͊ͮ̑̆̚ë͖̟̩͙̻̦̬́̆̽ ̬̯̓̅ͮ̽͑b͖̣̒͌͂ͣ͘ả̶͖̮̂̔̂̓̍̒ͅc̝͍̼̩̻̒k̮̤̪̺̋̓̓̈́-- Don't come back, don't come-- A̴̪̯̭̯͓ͦ̾͋̍̔̾̚b̜͘s͗͋ͤͫ͊̀ơ̙̙͔͚̼̹ͦͨ̓̉r̸ͥ̐͛̿̌ͨb̻̥͇̝̊̀̈ͪͭ ̨̲̥́ͭͣͫt̙ͦͩ̏h͎ͬ̚ẽ̱͉͕̥̮̂ͅ ̇̉͗͗bͥ̅͋ͧ̎̂͟o͙ͤͥ̈ͤͣn̰̮͙͓̥͈̞ͩ̍̓͂͋̓e̶̻̋̀͛s̻͔̭̜̽ͨͅ. Fuck.
Fuck fuck-- )

[ Dripping colors and fury, a base shaken. ]

( Nyx. Ņ̘̩͖̙̪͓̔ͮ͋ͤͣͮy̶͎͑̾́ͪ̾x̦̹̳̱ͮ́̋̿̆̃̀͘. Nyx. )

[ ...It takes its time, but eventually her wounded presence slithers off, a poisonous trail of brack and blood in its wake. ]



[ Somewhere in the physical world, she shows little of her internal distress. Still as stone in her robes staring out into the distance, jaw grit, fists clenched. ]

Comments

[earthborn]

( Annie. )

[Oh my god this is not the time]

( Annie! )

[Shepard is not given, mentally speaking, to throwing her weight around. The whole business strikes her as vaguely creepy, her own strength a strange thing, as welcome as it is unsettling. But if there's one thing she knows, it's shouldering past eldritch horrors, immortal and creeping, oily bastards that they are. She drops her shields and lets the whole of herself push out, fiery and destructive. She is pyroclastic flow, burning or burying all in her path.]

( ANNIE FUCKING WESTWIND, GET AHOLD OF YOURSELF, DAMMIT. )

[sistershoggoth]

[ A rumbling, the weight of heavy bones in movement, but rather than flinch or die down, the mind of Annie-fucking-Westwind opens up, a maw all too ready to consume firelight. That's what she was missing, wasn't it?

Nyx had put his fire in her veins when they'd let themselves get much much too close, their minds dripping into one another like cracked eggs. She wants heat, she wants determination, that spark and will and thrill to push on. It's not some man she's lost, it's a fuel. And she's hungry. ]

( Make me. )

[ A smug threat that doesn't sound like her voice at all. ]

[earthborn]

[It's not light that answers. Or at least not merely firelight, not the mere radiative force, star-flame and gamma ray, wind enough to push a sail beyond the limits of Sol's warmth, but never her reach. Magma is an elemental force, not fire, not stone, neither is it some mixture of the two, but a thing of deep places and intolerable pressure. Of a darkness so profound that it glows, a will that can confound the Reapers.

Shepard herself stands up, even as her mind humps up and boils like a volcano awakened and goes in search of Annie in her own self. And when she finds her, however long it takes, she neither pauses to consider nor hesitates. She lifts her right off the ground-- right hook, firm and dire. If you know how, knocking someone out with a punch is not all that hard.]



[The Earth does not submit.]

[sistershoggoth]

[ Her head snaps to the side with a choked off breath, staggering and slumping. The body is down but her mind looms up with wet, burbling laughter.

To call it 'her' mind is, again, a gross misunderstanding of what is Annie and what is other. She is a partitioned whole, and galaxies from where her little meatsuit lies slumped, there is a living breathing world, an ecosystem of many facets which continues to breathe and to turn.

Muscled tentacled monstrosities with no physical reach to Jane Shepherd, but a twining, slimy presence that continues to ooze out over the mental link. They used to stalk the Academy when Annie would sleep, when that portal in her chest still opened. Now all the physicality they have is the increase of green slime leaking from her. It wets the front of her robes, soaking through her bandages. Like its being pushed out of her from the other side. ]

( Who needs enemies? With friends, like these. )

[ The voice is still not Annie's. Her mind, not her voice. It is many voices twined into one approximation of speech, but truly is just morbid, manic laughter. ]

[redheadcarrier]

( Annie? What the Hell? )

[ This is weird and different and not what she expected from someone she has reluctantly considered a friend. She vaguely remembers Nyx, but... this is different and strange and it reminds her far too much of the time when an alien presence dipped itself into her head and tore out whatever it wanted. ]

[sistershoggoth]

[ The knotted tendrils of Annie's emotions squirm, flexing tight and releasing again. It creates a thunderous heartbeat that vibrates everything with each thunder crack. ]

( -- I -- liked that one. )

[ The concept of 'I' lacks singularity, a prism of multitudes. ]

( It poured its war through me, tore through magma and starlight, exultant in despair-- )

[ The words are a gleaming liquid of many colors, an expression of the mark that Nyx Ulric had left upon her mind. ]

[redheadcarrier]

[ Asuka wants to clap her hands over ears and shut out the noise. She wants to force everything out. ]

( You're not making any sense! What does all of that even mean? )

[sistershoggoth]

[ A cruel, smothering affection churns in the pit of her. What if she just knocked that reluctance away and filled up the space between Asuka's wretched eyes? Took her in and overwhelmed her with such belonging, as Nyx had belonged with her. A denizen of her body and her mind, more than man or mate. ]

( We chose to pass fire through open doors, and too quickly the gift extinguished. )

[ Her words fit together in some kind of rhythm, but as Asuka says... it's hardly in any kind of sense. ]

[redheadcarrier]

[ Asuka doesn't want this. She doesn't want any of this. Not the all-encompassing feeling of sickening, horrible, cruel love, not that way it seems to loom over her. She pushes back, throwing up walls and trying to metaphorically backpedal. ]

( Annie, get a grip already! You're freaking me out! )

[perroquet]

[ He waits for the noise to quiet, giving her space to grieve and express her loss however she wishes to. It's disrupting, disturbing even, and while it's not right of her to inflict that on the rest of them, it isn't her fault either. She didn't ask for be so connected, none of them did.

There is more noise as others check in, trying to comfort or reason with her, but Gildor observes Annie's mental state from a safe distance. It isn't until nightfall he approaches her, coming back from a casual stroll around the wide perimeter of the camp. Most are making their way to the dining tents, but he's not expecting to find her there. No, if she has an appetite at all, he imagines it would be for something unrelated to food.

He steps up to stand beside the place she is standing, drawing up his cane, not yet turning in her direction. The dark mass of his consciousness hovers just outside of the writhing mass of hers. ]

(Would you like to go and break something?)

[sistershoggoth]

[ She tired and she's been punched in the face so far today. She looks up at Gildor with baleful eyes. ]

( I definitely want to go break something. )

[ An easy agreement. ]

[perroquet]

Shall we walk?

[ He offers a hand, though the way he holds it to her arm suggests he'd rather she appear to be in the lead. He has a cover to maintain, and much like he was on his own world, he's careful to not let on how much he can really feel around him. ]

( Head towards the training grounds, where they were practicing with spears earlier. I've a surprise for you by the tall rocks. )

[sistershoggoth]

[ She sure as shit thinks he doesn't need her to guide him, but what kind of relentless bitch do you have to be to shake off a blind dude? So she lets him slide in at the crook of her elbow, following his directions. ]

( Didn't realize we had hit the surprise party stage of our relationship. )

[ Trying to be funny, but mostly dry, tired. ]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ It's a shock to the system, when the steady hum of a symbiote connection drops off. It's even worse when it's a broodmate or someone you know well - distantly Sam's angry that feeling Parker slip away knocks him off kilter almost as much as losing Nyx, when he didn't give nearly as much of a damn about his broodmate as he did his soldier bro - but he knows he's not gonna have it the worst.

He thinks immediately of Annie, but her mind is churning out into the Nest before he decides whether to contact her or not. And then it's less that he's trying to contact her and more that he reaches for her, mind opening up to hers.

It's not planned, really, it's more just - what she's bleeding off isn't familiar, but it isn't completely foreign, either. It's the feel of the Void staring back at him from Zhukov's mind, the echo of the Prothean warning in Shepard's, both of which still loom somewhere deep in his. He'd tried to shield the Nest from those back then, but he's a hell of a lot better at it now.

Before he can even think about it, their connection is blown wide open, and as it grows, the voices of the rest of the Nest dim.

He doesn't actually ask it, but the thought is clear in his mind anyway - Annie? ]

[sistershoggoth]

[ The thing that is Annie's lurking consciousness lurches to a halt at the obvious bait laid out before it. A mind laid bare for this discomfort to wind itself into, bury all of its might into, and crunch and crush and flex in its soft, warm confines. Mouth watering in its temptation, and within moments restraint has been thrown off and all that is Annie rushes up to meet him, to take what is offered with a starving abandon.

She had crawled, starving, to Nyx as well. Up into his arms and straight into his mouth, bled in to him and taken back his fury in turn. Because she was a stupid, reckless wretch who hadn't thought twice about opening all the doors during some casual shower room fuck.

Her recklessness is potent, spilling in to Sam with howling sorrow and burning need.

He won't replace what she's lost, but he'll distract her for a minute or two-- And she'll regret it later, when she realizes what he's spilled back in to her in kind, sloshed foaming back in to her open mouth with the force of her quaking. ]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam can take it. All of it, give it back as good as he gets - and if he can't, well. When faced with a challenge, caught up in the moment, he's rarely worried about what he can't do.

He's not looking to replace the loss of a broodmate, of that kind of connection - but he's here anyway. He knows loss, and he can be here.

For all that his mind is laid bare, there's a calmness and a certainty born from knowing who he is and the journey he'd taken to get here. It's jeweled tones in the colors of the sunrise, vibrant and alive, and even though there's a dark undercurrent of something hollow and aching, the faint echo of something that'd once been chaos - it's dull and distant, never forgotten, but faded.

When she - it? - they rush in, his mind flexes, bends, adjust as it's overtaken. There's room enough for both of them in this shared mind space, probably. Sam pulls her in, lets her dig into the parts of his mind that are on display, wraps himself around her in return.

And he's - he is steadiness, he's determination and loyalty and the one always at your side. He's adrenaline and the beat of wings and the quick pumping of blood, rushing and heady in the back of your ears and thick over your tongue. He is love and warmth and heat and anger, burned in every inch of him.

All of it's there for her to take as she winds into his mind - and he winds back, just a little, grabbing whatever he can and holding on. ]

[sistershoggoth]

[ There's a frustrated huff of emotion at the way he stands up to her intensity with so much goddamn mother fucking dignity. The pressure of her rears back for a moment, insensible with offense, but it also gives her a moment to take perspective of what it is she's flood her way in to.

He's not her kind of man, his color palette does nothing for her, and actively clashes with her own. She starts to burble with laughter, high notes of it in neon colors that sluice through his deep, velvet landscape. That's something more interesting to her brain, the texture, and she lets herself press back in close, enjoying the luxurious sensation, winding herself up in it.

They don't mesh, but neither is it impossible to find some comfort in it: she's a figure of pale light, draped in velvet sheets, grinning slyly with indecent red lips.

She likes that, and doesn't for one second try to pretend that what she's doing in the privacy of his sphere isn't entirely sexual. Fingers kneading into the meat of his ache and his sorrow, covering herself in warmth and loyalty, letting it bear down on her.

Her expressions of enjoyment are colorful little emojis that glitter and pop like bubbles as they slip salaciously from her open thoughts. Her imagination takes over where her emotions had been in discord, and her imagination is all skin and bone, heat and movement and laughter.

The wild spread of her is contained here within him, but it requires amusement if it's going to remain. She challenges him flirtatiously, ]

( Too much for you, killer. )

[somnifacient]

[Sometime in the day, hidden within the shelter of their tent, Noctis keeps to his area, everything about him turned inward. He’s been silent for nearly the whole day, clutching at his knees, head down and expression obscured by the way his hair falls into his face. Annie’s emotions wash over him without any resistance; he’s little more than a stone at the bottom of a furious river, and he makes no effort to be anything else.

Eventually, however, he stands. Makes his way where to Annie is, then slumps back down to his knees. Noctis unknowingly still has a pillow clutched under one arm, clinging to it like some kind of anchor, and it looks like a malformed thing at this point. When he looks up at her, his face looks like it’s about to crack into sorrow proper — tears just beyond whatever flimsy bulwark he’s managed to keep alive, on the verge of crumbling into nothing.]

I… if he doesn’t wake up, I won’t see him again.

[It sounds redundant and nonsensical, but his meaning is this: Nyx is already dead in Eos. Lost to him. The two of them, they clung to the hope that they might one day return, and now— now, he can’t say goodbye properly. He might as well be dead again, asleep as he is.]

[sistershoggoth]

[ She turns her head to stare at him. She looks surprised, like maybe she had forgotten he was there, or maybe like she wishes he wasn't. That she didn't have to answer to the fact that her own fracture can only cause him pain. She's good at that, at spreading out her hurt in flailing, uncontrollable motions. They waited for it, the tentacled monstrosities that represent her other nature, they wait for these moments to grab hold of her and twist her into insensible pieces. ]

I swear to god, Noctis, if you start crying I will make you eat dirt.

[ Her mouth is dry as she threatens him, and she knows it's a pointless thing to say. She just can't actually bear his sorrow. When it comes to the surface it makes her heart beat too quickly, like watching a crack spread in the ice she's standing in the center of. He'll take her with him. And all she'll be is a weight, unless she can somehow deter him from that path.

She turns all the way towards him abruptly, sticking her face right in to his, grabbing his cheeks. Her eyes are wide with shock and disorientation. ]

C'mon, baby, don't make me watch you cry.

[ Is it even him she's talking to, or had she said that once to Therese? Cruelly unable to let those supporting her give even a little bit of slack themselves. Was that how she broke them, slowly, by simply rejecting their needs? ]

[somnifacient]

[He’s barely present enough to register her words until she grabs hold of his cheeks. Fingers pinching at skin, he feels the sting at both sides while he lifts his eyes to look at her directly.

He isn’t crying. It’s there, right on the edge, but he isn’t crying. Not yet. It’d be so easy, but he’s holding on tight, refusing to cross that threshold for now.

Noctis isn’t sure what he expected. Reassurance? Commiseration? A blatant dismissal, like what he was experiencing right now? He wonders if any of it would have settled better than the other, but it doesn’t matter now; a hand comes up, swiping away at her wrists. A frown twists into annoyance.]

Is that what you’re really going to do-

[He leans back, shakes his head and rubs at his eyes.]

Just… forget it.

[sistershoggoth]

[ She stares, unblinking. Her mind is a sea of froth and colors and trying to navigate him right in front of her is difficult. Trying to manage the taste of his emotions in her mouth, turned bitter with her own helplessness. She can't bring Nyx back for him. She can't save his world, or even Noctis himself.

In the end, all things will return to this: empty shells, abandoned husks on the shores of her consciousness.

She can't comfort him. She can't comfort herself.

She oozes into his lap without saying anything, wrapping her arms around him like so many unwelcome tentacles. ]

[wrackful]

[Murphy had believed he had better control, these days. That his walls were a little more steady, that his mind wasn't so easily plucked and tugged by the waves and ripples of everyone else's. Whether that's because nothing had been strong enough, or coming off anyone he cared about enough isn't a question he has the time to consider.

The sound of Annie rumbles and shakes through him, howling, and all the grief he's been holding since Clarke arrived rises, resonating. Cold fury and pain, crackling and churning like a heavy storm, spilling outwards from him to meet her before he can take a breath, make any attempt to pull himself back.]

[sistershoggoth]

( Spilled like a stick pig, didn't he just-- )

[ Amusement and manic laughter swirls around him, creating a whirlpool of negativity out of his mess of a mind. ]

( Didn't take much at all. )

[wrackful]

( Screw you. )

[Furious, like bared teeth, split knuckles and a mouthful of blood. All the pain of a fight when none had been given. But he tries, now, wrenching back. Recognises the sense of her, empty and heavy, vast, invasive, and how he'd always managed well enough against the shadow of that in her in the past. But his walls are gone and she's pulling him in. It's like digging in heels on sand, slipping in inevitable increments.]

[sistershoggoth]

[ The laughter rises in pitch and intensity. Ha! ]

( You don't have it in you, sweetie. )

[ Not that she would to start with, but it never hurts to insult someone's manhood, does it? ]