[mission: hyrypia] i am not there; i do not sleep

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: Station 72; Hyrypia - The Graze
WHEN: DAY :019 - DAY :020
SUMMARY: Somewhere deep in the void between multiverses, a fresh clutch of Hosts hatches; down on the planet Hyrypia, a Host is laid to rest.
WARNINGS: Mentions of character death, funerary services. Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

STATION 72
DAY :019

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP and the universe with you in it is suddenly different. --No. That's not right. You're you, the universe is as it's always been, and there's no suddenly about it. It's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like waking up from a very deep, extended sleep or coming up from the darkness of some wine dark sea. Nothing is different and yet everything is.

Here you are, a small miracle of the multiverse: lying in a small, faintly hexagonal chamber with a gentle white light emanating from the surrounding walls. If you were injured during your escape, those injuries have been healed. If you were anxious or frightened or distraught, those feelings have been calmed. There's something peaceful about waking up here - like you belong. That feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But once the tube's disconnected? Things get loud. A wave of emotion fills that peaceful void - fear, uncertainty, relief, a sense of purpose or loneliness or anxiety. A matching dread. An easy comfort. Maybe some of these emotions are yours, but they can't all be. After the initial sensory overload, the mental buzz elongates: stretches out into a murmur like the sound of a party happening behind a nearby closed door.

You can sit up - barely -, and shift out of the pod. There’s a ladder at your feet and a little cubby just before it with anything you brought with you as well as a set of crisp, loose-fitting white clothes; while your injuries are healed, whatever you’re wearing is in the exact state it was before. Maybe it's time for a change? Drop down the ladder to the floor of the Nesting Deck and you’ll find you’re not alone. There are a handful of you here, somehow intimately familiar to each other.

Welcome to Station 72. Beyond this room it's quiet and still, feeling for all the world like a shell for some vast dark thing.

Eventually, a sensation manifests out of the black. It says:


PREPARE YOURSELF
THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD is sound and sensation: a warm shaft of sunlight through smoky glass - a gauzy curtain twitching in some summer breeze. It says or feels like:

( Come meet with me, won't you? )

Where exactly this meeting is supposed to occur isn't immediately clear, but head in the direction that seems correct and eventually Station 72 gets you where you're meant to be: a circular briefing room with tiered seating, empty now, before a woman with a sheet of graying hair and something focused in her expression. It's been some time since she's spoken with a young host - since she's done one of this briefings. Apparently she's feeling something like her usual self. She smiles and it's very warm.

"Welcome to Station 72. Unfortunately, you won't be here long but we'd like to answer as many of your questions as we're able before you leave this place."

[ooc note: please see here for the catch-all briefing thread]


THE STATION
WITH A LITTLE UNDER 24 HOURS before it's time to make the trip to Hyrypia, this is as good an opportunity as you're going to get to familiarize yourself with Station 72 before you leave it. There's plenty to see, but a distinct lack of people to make conversation with. It's lonely and quiet and there's a sensation of dust gathering even where there is none. Maybe studying the briefing files on your databank is the most proactive distraction, but if not? Well there's plenty of places to get lost...

In the simulated morning, a strange archaic ship has arrived on the Hangar. Its very alien pilots unload two heavy trunks, then dole out a series of kits to the new hosts. One of them - the pale female alien who her calls herself Rhan - cheerfully announces, "Get changes and buckle in. I'm afraid we've some grim business ahead of us today. Funerals, you know. But chin up, my darlings. One uncomfortable day and then we'll leave the matter behind us. --Oh, but do be gentle with the others. I suspect they might be tender for a few days yet."

You leave the Station. If you're lucky, you might one day make it back.

HYRYPIA - THE GRAZE
DAY :020

THE FUNERAL PROCESSION
A SHIP DESCENDS from the iron colored sky early in the morning on Day :020. Before it even pierces the planet's atmosphere, its cargo should be obvious to the other Carbauschians: a new batch of Hosts, freshly hatched and just in time for the grim festivities.

The idea is simple: that they are part of a mourning delegation, only here to briefly oversee Lavellan's funerary rites. Luckily (...) there's plenty of comatose Hosts lying in the tents to trade places with the newcomers.

Better get to know your new friends quickly - there's plenty to be brought up to speed on (such as, uh, the recent death of one of the elder Hosts), and likely enough work to be done that the new spare hands are welcome. Or maybe the state of nothing-like-faux mourning is a good excuse for some alone time on a strange new alien planet. You're all so very, very far from home.


BURIAL RITES
THE FUNERAL has been arranged to the Hosts' precise specifications. Each and every single request they've made has been met, carried out by two soft-spoken, contrite Hyrypian servants who had come to them not long after their return from the hunt. Perhaps because the members of the other envoys are unsure whether it's permitted or welcome to attend, the site of the funerary pyre is hardly full to bursting with onlookers. Or maybe the burning of corpses goes against some obscure tradition. Or maybe some of the minor envoys simply don't care much and think the Carbasuchians are best left to their grief alone. Still, while it's hardly the entire encampment in attendance a notable selection of diplomats and their respective entourages and several of their Hyrypian hosts have turned out for the ceremony. It seems the Descendants in particular have turned out in some force, including the very hunter saved by Lavellan's quick thinking.

When the time comes for the rites to proceed, it's left to the Hosts to light the fire and say their farewells to their fallen comrade - the first and hopefully last to be lost in this strange land.


A SOMBER CELEBRATION
ASH SCENT HANGS HEAVY STILL over the encampment. Or maybe that's simply the perception - after all, the breeze still blows in from over the Great Flat. Surely it's just a memory of the smell which lingers, as circumstantial as the mournful note the wind sighs as it cuts across the Graze and into the tangled Finger Maze.

However, matters of the universe don't pause for the tragedy of the loss of an envoy - and there is so much riding on this Pilgrimage. To their credit, the Hyrypians have done all they can to provide for the Carbauschians in their time of grief (including a visit from the Matron Bassita herself, pale and full of sympathy and apologies), and as evening falls what clearly was meant to be a carousing party to celebrate a successful hunt and completion of the Pilgrimage's first stage has been considerably tempered.

The drinks still flow; the food is still plentiful, rich and lavishly spiced - but the music being played is soft and careful and of the hundreds of small technomanced insect lights the drift over the encampment tonight, a considerably portion of them are dedicated to lingering around the charred skeleton of the funeral pyre as a sober acknowledgement of what has come to pass.

Give it a few hours and maybe the mood will lighten slightly. On the other hand, there's nothing like an uncomfortably close tragedy to bring people together - and as Rhan suggests, maybe now's exactly the right time to ask a few pointed questions. Or to get hammered with new friends. Or to take a nice long walk while everyone else is consumed by the muted festivities.

---

((OOC Notes: This log covers the hatch, the arrival of new Hosts on Hyrypia, the funeral of Lavellan and the supremely awkward dinner party meant to wrap the first stage of the Pilgrimage. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care to. You can find a more detailed overview of the host hatching process HERE and additional setting information about the Station HERE. Please be sure to review the MISSION: HYRYPIA ooc information if you're brand new to the game. If you have any questions, please hit up either the mission's question thread, the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • GAME CALENDAR • MISSION: HYRYPIA • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

elliot alderson.

[raw]

open: station72 - waking. (DAY 019)

Elliot is loud.

( Hello, friend. )

Being detached is like a wound; he's never felt such a pure sense of belonging before, so complete that he couldn't even be grateful for that completion because he wasn't capable of imagining anything else — and then it was all ripped away. The possibility of it just out of reach. Loneliness has always been an acute problem in Elliot's life, but it's somehow sharper now that he really knows what he's missing. So that's the agony he's bleeding into his surrounds during the initial dress-and-walk-and-adjust stage of waking up aboard Station 72, and the overwhelming sadness of it drowns out everything else about him. Fantastic first impression.

( Did you miss me? I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to talk until now. I was busy being one with the universe. )

-- C'mon, kiddo.

Mr Robot doesn't give a shit about one-ness, but he does seem tired, keeps a warm palm between Elliot's shoulderblades to steady him. There's three of them, now, which is going to take getting used to, but isn't everything? Space. Apocalypse. Nest. Enemy. As much as the effects of Elliot's anarchism had echoed around his world, this new life seems incomprehensibly scaled. So a third room-mate in this head of theirs, even one who is just as incomprehensibly many, seems somehow less absurd. And Mr Robot's presence is weirdly comforting, now that all the pieces of his manoeuvring have been left behind.

-- Don't think I'm not still pissed about—

-- I know, I know. You're morally opposed to explosions. Can the bleeding heart, we've got more important shit to deal with right now.

( He doesn't get it. Even if we've had to leave it behind, it's the fact that he lied to me. About the plan. About Tyrell. I still can't trust him. I don't even know if I can trust you. )

'You' is aimed at a friend Elliot speaks to the way some people pray to god, unaware that now? This all gets broadcast on an open channel, as it were. Mr Robot knows better than to chat so loudly, so for all intents and purposes Elliot is alone, hands tucked into the sleeves of the dark hoodie he still hasn't changed out of, and presumably addressing — well, he's not the only live body newly awakened, walking these empty rooms, after all.

closed: brood avior. (DAY 019)

The sensation of something being missing is prominent, and despite the fact that it's not that different to the kind of dysmorphic, out of place feelings he's carried his whole life, Elliot can't stop mentally prodding them like a gap in his teeth.

But there's one other person who draws him closer, who makes him remember that sense of absolute connection from the moments before he unplugged. Maybe if Elliot knew what that meant, how much they now were capable of sharing — how much the other man could know about him without so much as typing a single password — he wouldn't approach. Even as it is, he sidles up all tense: meeting new people is the fucking worst.

"Hey," he says out loud, with his mouth words. Making eye contact. Keeping his face neutral. Hoping his palms aren't too sweaty in case they have to shake hands. Acing it, basically. "I'm Elliot."

open: hyrypia - mourning/celebration. (DAY 020)

So Elliot always hated the first day of school, and the first day at a new job, and he kind of hates this, his first time on a new planet, surrounded by strangers (who maybe don't feel entirely like strangers.) Perhaps it would be easier if it wasn't for the occasion — Elliot had heeded Rhan's words, and he keeps out of the way. For all the funerals he's been to, he still doesn't know how to look grief head-on. And it's awkward, to feel nothing—

No. It's awkward, to feel the intrusive flashes of other people's sadness for a person he'd never even met.

"I'm sorry," he says, a lot, sincere despite how stilted it is, how generic. "I'm sorry for your loss."

It isn't any better once the burning is done and it's supposed to a party. Elliot hates parties.

As he wallflowers in his strange costume, Mr Robot watches the crowd with disdain, breathing an acrid cloud of smoke. (Elliot is not smoking, treasuring the pack he'd awoken with in case it's his last. There is no cigarette. There is no sharp-jawed man leaning beside him, wearing an old jacket and a baseball cap, making the occasional wry aside about funerary culture and alien capitalism, which Elliot dutifully ignores.) The food is strange. Not necessarily bad, but Elliot lives on bland carbohydrates, fried food, and candy. The rich spices and succulent, greasy texture make him feel a little nauseous — or maybe that's the anxiety.

Later: "Uh. Is there anything I can do?" he asks a stranger, more because he's bored and wants a task than because he cares about being helpful, useful.

(( check out my permissions, which also include my formatting key. swapping to action brackets is fine. if you have questions or want to plot something just hmu at fsociety ))

smears muddy hands all over brood prompt

[stilettoes]

Peter feels that repeated prod at the empty spaces that are sitting at the center of who he is now. He's got a hand in his shirt, idly plucking buttons, trying to feel the concave spaces where something else should be (some things). But the poking, pressing, it's almost automatic to do his own feeling around in the dark like fingers smoothing over empty spaces that are cold and waiting.

Peter looks up just before he says a word, like there's a tenuous little thread that makes him particularly aware of the both of them here. "Hey." He likes it even less than the... oneness of this entire place, but something inside of him curls warmly despite it anyways, like a whisper of intimacy that's different from the traditional sense of the word. Peter's own mouth breaks open into a smile on pure instinct.

"Elliot," he says, trying the name on his tongue. He meets his eyes with a level gaze, bright and curious, congeniality wearing sharp teeth as he speaks, stepping into space with a smooth step as is his nature. Meeting new people is the best. "What a handsome name. Now I'm not sure what I was expecting... but it's a pleasure. I'm Hadrian."

i think it's just for you~

[raw]

Do they shake hands? The guy has a business-shark look about him that Elliot knows well, last saw unhinged on the other side of a gun. The smile, the movement, it's all easy and it makes Elliot feel clumsy, the inner corners of his eyebrows creasing just slightly, the shadows at the corner of his mouth deepening.

"Hey," he says again, and Peter can probably feel the way he kicks himself over it after. Adds: "This is weird."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[wille]

It's fatigue, she finally recognizes. How each limb seems to acquire additional heft and her senses become muted, a layer between her and the world. It's the human body's built-in mechanism for protecting itself. How quaint. She doesn't need it anyhow, and it's telling from how the noise of her mind (the shriek of cicadas, faint overhead announcements echoing in a linoleum hallway) rise and fall as if through a swinging door, that she continues to struggle against the lethargy.

Now, Elliot's arrival and the following question -- anything he can do -- is the lifeline she can grasp and latch on to. She doesn't grip him physically, only mentally, by the weight of her attention on him. He is loud. That's telling too.

"You can tell me what it's like being new."

[raw]

Elliot was both hoping for and dreading physical effort; that her request is for talking brings no relief. His hands flex, fidgeting with air. Tries to center himself even though they're a collision of storms in the empty air between them, cut summer grass and stale cigarettes, anticipatory silent cities and chaoticly overflowing ones, escalators and ferris wheels, machinery sounds. It's hard to draw back what's his when he isn't totally sure.

"Uh," he blinks, owl-like, probably seeming slow (or maybe not, considering all Misato's experience with Shinji's pauses.) "Not great. Kind of like a family reunion with all these cousins you've never met before." An experience Elliot has, what, read about in books? It's how he feels, though: that he has a connection to these people, but also that they are a familiar networked whole, participating in something he can currently only be an outside witness to.

[sistershoggoth]

"Jesus christ," is what she says in response to the condolences. "Don't be fuckin' sorry."

In those few words she's exposed a lot about her personality, her penchant for swearing, her lack of desire to be in mourning, and her outright disdain for the process. An irritating pushy woman lounging with her feet up. She slouches her way upright to examine him, to think about the subsequent requests for usefulness. She'd like to know too, what she could be doing that would actually get them out of here faster, but,

"This mission is a bitch, ok. It's a lot of waiting for these stupid aliens to get on with their own shit and watching them for a place to stick the knife in."

She falls back into the pile of pillows she's laid out on, staring up at the drape of the tent.

"What are you good for, anyway?"

She means what are you good at, but she's a bitch.

[raw]

Elliot is relieved to be out of the disguise, and further relieved when instructions aren't forthcoming that send him back outside the tent. He's still pretty tense about pretending to be an alien - he hasn't even mastered humanity yet and he was born into that one. After a moment of standing, he sits, no pillow, one knee drawn up and the other crossed under it.

"Not much," he admits, with no humor in his face to offset that. Just half of a shrug. "Back home, computers." Here? Not so much. The foldable data pads interest him, but he hasn't been here long enough to really tamper with them yet, and despite mentions of technology in the briefing all these rituals and camping and nature seem pretty distant from the urban lifestyle he's used to.

[redheadcarrier]

"You're sorry?" Asuka returns the murmured commonet with one of her own, turning a flashing gaze on him through the layers of her veils. She can't be loud. Shouldn't make a scene. But that expression feels so empty and hollow to her, especially now that she feels alone again. Lavellan is dead. Adra is asleep and gone. She's the only one left in her brood. There's the rest of the Nest, buzzing around the edges of her thoughts, but she feels hollow and empty and more alone than ever. She's cranky. Lashing out.

"You didn't even know him."

She wants to feel the guilt roll off of him. It might make her feel a little better.

[raw]

It's not exactly difficult; Elliot's guilt is thorns pointed inwards, little paper-cuts of feeling like he should be better at this. Then a yawning gulf of fuck other people that only exacerbates feeling bad, because he's supposed to care. It's probably more negative emotion than the actual damn funeral managed to pull out of him, and he's grateful suddenly for the costume.

"I didn't," he admits, flat. "I just got here. It's the polite thing to say."

cw suicide. smh it's the first tag

[ryohji]

Kill yourself, he nearly says. Strange in his mouth but satisfying. Kill yourself before it's too late. Failing that, failing the courage, do nothing. Don't talk to anyone, don't pay mind to the chatter in your head, strangers of whom the symbiote will have you believe otherwise. Don't engage with the parasite in your brain. Preserve yourself before you forget how. This is exactly what Kaji wished someone had told him, only a few weeks ago. It could almost be worth saying aloud but for the risk of blowing their cover. The new host remains ignorant and vulnerable; Kaji shuts that box closed.

Goodnaturedly, as though the thought never crossed his mind, he turns sidelong to the man and whistles out a thoughtful hum. As if he had to give it a second thought.

"As a matter of fact, there is." Besides standing when called for, sitting when called for, crying when called for, and laughing when called for. Already Elliot passes inspection with flying colors. "You could relax a little. Asking questions like that, it makes you look new. A drink might help."

[raw]

"I am new," Elliot points out. It's not like he can disguise that; it doesn't seem like there's so many of them that another host, even one who donned the alien outfit and followed along with the steps of the dance everyone choreographed before he got here, can just act like he's been here the whole time. And there's a grace period, with newness. Where it's okay to ask questions, to fuck up.

-- Why are you trying to fit in? Mr Robot seethes, summoned by the possibility of alcohol. Elliot doesn't have an answer, ignores him, focusing with unnerving intensity on Kaji.

"Maybe. If you've got something on you." It's not like there's a bar. If the guy brought his own, maybe that says something particular about him.

hyrypia - Day 020 // hey bby switching to action brackets cuz i'm difficult

[100mitsubishis]

[Kavinsky appears during the time of wallflowering, as he tends to, because he has the slinking nature of a beast in a forest that only skirts the edges of any given meadow.

He switches his tactics every other time new kids arrive. Sometimes, he'll leave them utterly alone, allowing them to follow the magnetic tug to the one person that can supply them with what they really need. Then, like in this instance, he'll seek them out with a form of uncommon single-mindedness.

This whole mission, he's been unsatisfied. Trapped in costume, made to assume a role that doesn't suit his play style. No explosions or spreading out his unique array of toxins. He misses the last time they were unleashed from the station, when he could bar hop at his leisure. This time, they're all stuck together. His feet hurt. The air's so dry, even before the corpse starts smoking. What he's longed for is some distraction that will stick.

Here it is.

He catches one of the man's stray thoughts and clutches it tight.]

If you ask nice, I can get you another pack.

[Kavinsky's voice could be considered soft if one could also consider bubbling tar soft. His tone implies there are a lot of things he could 'get' a person. If they ask nice.]

[raw]

[ Elliot snaps his gaze around, eyes wide. Startled rabbit. Jaw shifts: deciding whether to run or relax. Ends up neither, somewhere in between. ]

( I forgot they could do that here. Just pick up what I'm thinking about. The concept of karma is too agnostic for me, but you have to admit. There's something ironic about having my privacy violated, even if I can't really bring myself to laugh right now. )

[ He's not actually talking to Kavinsky, the narration flat, rapid, a little distracted. ]

What kind of nice.

[ Wary. He hadn't had to worry too much about this in prison: Leon had acted as his fixer without demanding anything uncomfortable in return, and his commissary had been ample. But that doesn't mean he doesn't know how to read the shades of meaning in a comment like that. ]

[shiro2hero]

"It's not your fault."

It comes out automatically. The response quiet, measured. Because it isn't. And saying so is easier than trying to elaborate. Or placate. Shiro's real feelings are shuttered away. Buried under mental shields and walls made of stars, starlight strewn with clouds.

These new people don't deserve the hurt he's carrying around. The guilt like a living, clawing, choking thing buried under the surface.

He glances at the newcomer, and his words turn more sympathetic.

"Sorry too. That this is how you guys get here."

[raw]

Elliot lets out a soft puff of breath at the back of his throat, a glottal little sound of acknowledgement there. His hands feel empty. Shiro can shutter away his own emotions, but he can't stop the muffled bass thud of Elliot's in the background corner of his mind, all awkwardness and his own kind of guilt.

"Not as though, it could ever be a good time," he says flatly, head tipping slightly left. "I mean, what was your arrival like."

[adamance]

"Observe your surroundings. You're new. And then tell me what it is you see." In that way, this newcomer is an objective outsider, unfamiliar with the ways of the Nest and the people surrounding it. Lexa has kept an eye on most of the new Hosts, but that doesn't mean that she knows them. She doesn't pry curiously into their minds for answers, but there's a chance that will come to her in time. It just hasn't yet.

For her part, Lexa doesn't seem sad or distressed—merely unsettled. Her own mortality is a tricky thing to be confronted with time and time again, but that lies beneath the surface, hard to reach. What's on the surface is someone who is composed because she doesn't know how else to be. She doesn't bother to feign remorse for the proceedings, for the loss of one of their own. She doesn't even know if she can. The sentiments from everyone else wash over her just the same. That swell of emotions will always be there for as long as she lives, as this is her life now.

[raw]

There's a commonality in that. Elliot can't grieve for a stranger, but neither can he simply accept the background murmur of other's grief, his skin gone prickly every time someone slipped enough during the ceremony. It feels like having an exposed nerve in a crowd of people, unable to avoid the pain of even the slightest and most accidental touches, and it's worse because he can't join in. So he appreciates Lexa's stoic bluntness, regardless of whether it's because she feels nothing or because she has her emotions locked away from him.

"It's weird, for me. To be somewhere so technologically forward," he gestures to encompass the bubble, the Elin, the space ships, but he also means the Station itself, vastly advanced compared to his little corner of time and space, even if he knows that the Hosts are separate from the aliens here. "But at the same time — we're camping. We had a bonfire ritual. It's primitive." He doesn't mean that negatively — honestly, he kind of likes it, as sustainable advancement, even if the land seems agorphobicly vast without the New York skyscrapers overhead.

Anyway, he's actually looking around now, rather than at her, taking the campsite's measure.

[somnifacient]

"Something you can do?" Noctis echoes, as if his mind is trying to parse exactly what the question meant. He looks at the new host, briefly, and decides that he's overthinking it. A simple question, a straightforward thing. It sounds like something he'd ask, lost in the crowd mourning someone he didn't even know.

"Run out of things to gawk and ogle at?" There's nothing patronizing about that, nothing sharp. He's too worn to entertain sarcasm, and such intonations never did align with his personality. Noctis fiddles with the sleeve of his robes absent-mindedly. They're all black, the other might note, which seems rather fitting for the occasion, if unintentional.

[raw]

"Can't do too much of that if I wanna look like I fit in," points out Elliot, a touch of wryness to it. He can't deny how wide-eyed he was when the craft first dropped them off: his first real alien planet. It barely seems real.

"I just need something to do," he admits. "To keep occupied. Everyone is all wrapped up in this stuff, and I don't feel like I know enough to try and ... do something to proceed with the mission alone, you know." He laces his fingers together in front of him, looking at them instead of Noctis. "Otherwise I'll just talk a nap."

Sleeping: the best escapism.

day 20 heck yeah

[skaikru]

It could be the lingering scent of burning flesh in the air, mixed with everything else — wood smoke and the constant, dry scent that the open desert stretch of Hyrypia seemed to have — but still searing in her nostrils. That'd been what first turned Clarke's stomach about the funeral procession; then the bitter memory of the last time she'd attended a funeral pyre, and the more recent recollection of tacky blood and human bone dust slicking her fingers. Vicarious grief gives way to a forced sort of numbness; calm, as the flames lick higher into the sky and Lavellan's body burns. Quiet, as the remaining members of the nest and the newcomers mingle, drink, and reflect. She wallflowers as best she can, too wrapped up in her own thoughts. Attempts to justify their sordid medical examination last night folding over and over themselves, neatly wrapped up behind her mental walls, but threatening to burst through the cracks.

She hasn't anything to say, no speech to express loss or announcement to rally the morose troops. Clarke doesn't talk to anyone much at all during the evening, but later when a stranger asks her a question, the answer slips from her throat like she's wanted to scream it at everyone for the past two days.

"Don't die."

Maybe not be the sort of answer he expected, definitely not a helpful one, lacking direction and any direct path to succeed in that task — but it is certainly one she means.

[raw]

Elliot's mouth twitches wanly up, both corners, just for a moment, but his eyes are sad. "No guarantees," he tells her, this total stranger. (If anyone from the Nest is really a stranger anymore.)

"Not that I want to," he lies, or at least, fibs. "But I wouldn't want to never die, either. Fearing the end is how your brain motivates itself."

>> at the party

[otrazhenie]

It's hard not to pick up on that anxiety when it stands out so starkly among the grief from the rest of the Nest. Grief is something Elena has intimate experience with, and something she's actively trying to avoid feeling that day, so she gravitates toward that unusual emotion and the new Nestmate it seems to be emanating from.

Moving to stand beside him, the two of them out of the way with a decent view of the crowd, she's quiet for a moment as she sips a rather full glass of grassy alcohol. When she does speak, it's quiet and hesitant, but very clearly directed at him in concern. "Are you okay?"

[raw]

Shit. Shit. He hates being so noticeably out of place that some stranger comes and asks him that, even with all the costuming. Sets his heart racing, which probably just makes the radiating anxiety louder. It hasn't really occurred to him that this is a side effect of the mental link, still unused to that: he just has anxiety's twisted certainty that he is standing beneath a bright spotlight, surrounded by judging eyes.

"I'm fine." Flat, forced out. Clammed up. Maybe he should be drinking.

day 20, wildcard-ish

[calhar]

( You're giving me a bloody headache. )

The comment is abrupt, cutting in at the tail-end of one of Elliot's more lengthy narrations. Some vague kind of accent, off-brand English, laced through with half-hearted and tired irritation. What he's saying doesn't stick; Mat can hear him, but that doesn't mean he's seriously listening.

There's probably a way to block out the voices you don't want. He hasn't figured it out yet, and it's some kind of miracle that he's managed to track the threads of this one back to the proper source while they're on opposite ends of the so-called party, out of sight.

[raw]

( —that ultimately, even here, people are— )

Elliot doesn't expect the interruption, and is suddenly paralytically ashamed; there's no need to go so chest-clenchingly still, but it's spooked deer instinct, like when you're whispering on a school trip after dark and the teacher shushes you from barely five feet away. He recovers fast, pulling in a slow breath. Stops narrating his every existential thought to his Friend.

( You can hear that. )

Not really a question; it's too sheepish.