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mental link; goodnight sweet fuckboy

[ 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. ]

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( 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. )

[ 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. ]

[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.]

[ 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. ]

( 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. ]

[ 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?)

[ 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? ]

[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.]

[ 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. ]

[ 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. ]

[ 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. ]

[ 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? ]

[ 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? )

[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.

[ 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. ]

[ 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. ]

[ 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! )

[ An inhaled breath, a hesitation. No, that's not what she wants. She doesn't want to do this to another little girl-- How many others has she done this to. How many nightmares and horrors has she set loose on those helpless enough to be near her. Great reptilian eyes blink, inner eyelids sticking. An exhaled breath.

An entire universe sitting still on the far side of a fragile barrier. ]

( Are you betrayed? )

[ Disappointed in her, disgusted by her? ]

[He doesn't retract from her, just like he doesn't move into her arms. His body feels simultaneously too tired and too unwilling to fight against it, despite his sorry show of annoyance just seconds before.

Her emotions are many, but he takes them in all the same. Lets her envelop him in them, the same way she drapes across him physically. Intermingled with his sorrow, his want to cry, and it becomes difficult to tell where the sinking feeling of loss ends and where it begins.]

What now...?

[A chin on her shoulder, because he can. He doesn't expect her to even answer.]

[ Her desire to not answer that question is so immense. She thinks about everything she'd love to do rather than deal with what comes next-- Drink, fuck, scream, fight, scream, fuck, drink-- It's all the same. Instead she just hangs there limp against his chest, breathing slowly, trying ignore her body and her mind and her self.

It'd be easier, with any of those distractions. ]

Dust off, keep going.

[ She mutters, voice low, empty of inflection. ]

What else. Same shit, different day.

[Dust off and keep going? Was that it? To just... move along with a hole in your chest, because there was nothing else to be done about it?

The throne room flickers in his vision again. Walk tall. Loss was going to be a prevalent, monstrous thing, but don't let it devour you, don't mourn for what you once had. Look towards the future; isn't that what he would've told his friends, back then? Isn't the idea the same?

But it feels worse, it feels raw. Blame the thing in his head, blame the fact that Nyx was the only one from home, but a moment passes and he can't stop it. He wraps his arms around her, holding tight, hoping that she won't slip away, and the tears begin to flow.]

Damn it...

[He presses his forehead against her shoulder now, unable to stop it. His shoulders shake.]

[ She inhales like he's hit her, tension sliding into her spine like all she wants to do is tear away from him. Forget about all of this and never look back. But she can't do that. He's not Therese. He can't run away from her to the other side of the world and be someone different, someone new. Just like she can't stand back and let him. Can't run away herself. She's stuck with him. Stuck with his crying and his starlight and the cool wash of water on her fevered brow.

There's something thick and inconsolable in her throat, and she closes her eyes tight, body tensing to withstand this total brutalization.

Spots bursting behind her eyelids, she yanks on the light of him. Pulls him in to her, or pushes herself into him. It doesn't matter. What matters is the suffering: everything they've lost, everything they can still lose after all that's gone, and Nyx. It's almost like what she and Nyx had done in the showers, dipping too deep, and maybe that's why she wants it. To fill up the empty space, or to give her prince a gift, let him feel where she still has some of Nyx's fire in her.

She doesn't know.

She just wants to be closer, even if it means bringing all of Noctis' raw wound in to her. ]

[Everything that he is is pulled into darkness again. The fabric of himself unravels and tangles inside of her, and Noctis loses sensation of his physical body. He becomes oversensitive of his physical body. He can't tell any longer. Maybe both.

He's too lost in grief to even care, he's too enclosed in Annie and whatever it is she keeps in her core, reflected in his own. Sorrow and death and all manner of things that weren't ever meant to live for very long, and Nyx, a flicker of his strength and light just in his periphery. Nyx, the memory and essence of him, and Noctis latches onto that. Lets the sorrow pierce through anything that remains of his own light, letting everything dissipate for this one final taste of familiarity. Of his broodmate, now lost to him.

Poor little king. Annie could tear apart every piece of his spirit and mind right now, and he'd not care. The strength of the Lucian King wanes in him, and it's easy to let the darkness blanket him fully, easy to just fall into that deep pool of grief and float and lay there.

Until it isn't.

Maybe it's his body that revolts first, casting out a safety net to pull his mind back in. But fingers clench against her back, and he hisses out a curse, trying to detach. A small fracture of himself crying foul against how easily he gives in to Annie filling every crevice of him.]

Annie... stop...

[ She tenses up stiffly against him, the sense of movement abating but the fullness remains. She's not sure she can stop so easily, and now she's holding very still, trying to make sure she doesn't do something irreparable. ]

( Noct. )

[ A despairing call. That she doesn't want to let him go, and that she needs his help if she's going to. ]

( Noctis. )

[ Maybe that she's sorry and shouldn't have done it. But she's not sorry, her desire for him is hot in the back of her mind, trying to push her back into motion. He'll forget all about his protests in a minute--

She pushes herself backward, landing on her ass at the far end of his legs. Breaking loose with a rip.

She shudders.]

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit shit--

[ Her eyes pinch shut again, so tight that she sees those spots again, and just trembles. ]

[ Betrayed? Betrayed by what? By whom? She doesn't know what Annie is talking about and she doesn't know what that alien, strange presence lurking beneath the sirface is. It frightens her. ]

( Betrayed by what? I don't understand! )

[ There's confusion and hurt and worry spinning through her head. ]

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