[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

1.

[deployed]

[ In the aftermath of the last trail, the makeshift autopsy, it is hard to separate the grief churning within the Nest from his own consciousness. There is a difference between mourning a comrade in arms and the deeper, more personal loss of a friend. Lavellan is not Monroe. Lavellan had skirted along the edge of Bellamy's consciousness, dependable but ultimately a stranger. Bellamy tries very hard not to allow himself to be mired in shared loss. It's more difficult now than it had been with Anakin, who had been ripped from them just as suddenly in a blaze of fire.

There is no need to comfort the Darkling. Clarke has sought refuge with Lexa, and Murphy is a prickling point on the edge of Bellamy's consciousness. He will seek him out next, after the ceremony, after he susses out Shiro's reaction. ]

( This was not your fault. )

[ It's the fault of their hosts for pitting them against that creature. Assigning blame where due might alleviate part of what's coiled like a spring in the depths of Shiro's mind. ]

[shiro2hero]

[Any other time, the voice would be more welcome. Any other day, the presence would be one to lean against. A comrade, a friend. Someone who'd offered up a reassurance in himself. He doesn't know exactly who was part of this -- part of the members of their party, their team, who took part in enacting his nightmares on a friend. His and Bucky's.]

[There were traces of it, in their link.]

[God but he doesn't want to accuse Bellamy of all people. But he has to know. Before he can accept "this was not your fault" he has to know if his broodmate was one of those who cut into Lavellan.]

(Were you ... did you watch it happen?)

[He doesn't quite win the struggle to keep the desperation out of his voice. But it almost works.]

[deployed]

( Yes. )

[ It's more complex than a simple "yes," but Bellamy doesn't elaborate. He'd stepped into the tent. He'd supported the idea of an autopsy. It's what he would have expected if he'd been the one who died in the canyon.

And it confirms what he and Murphy had suspected after Murphy's scans on Concordia. They symbiote was growing, meshing with their brains in a way that made it impossible to cut out. They wouldn't get free of it so easily. It was a closed door, but it doesn't diminish Bellamy's hopes of returning home. ]

[shiro2hero]

(What good did it do.)

[What good did ripping into their companion, their friend, his friend, like he was some experiment do them? Thinking it, thinking about it makes his skin feel like it's going to claw off his bones.]

[These are the people he's let into his head. People he trusted. And ... He doesn't know if it's the leftover traces of his symbiote's power, if it's Bucky's anger, his own? Whatever it is, it makes the words sharper, harsher, than they have a right to be.]

[What did he die for? -- is the real question. What and why. And Bellamy has he answer to neither.]

(Did he -- did he want this?)

[deployed]

[ The question ghosts through Bellamy's mind, separate from the accusatory questions that Shiro levels at him. ]

( He sacrificed himself to save someone. )

[ It's no more or less than what Bellamy has attempted, both here and on Earth. He doesn't fault Lavellan for it, even if he hadn't been trying to protect one of their own. He was protecting someone. Bellamy respects that kind of sacrifice, even if he grieves the loss it's brought to them. ]

( I don't think he'd fault us for trying to find answers about what's been implanted in our heads, Shiro. )

[ The answer is gently given, but unyielding. All Bellamy can suppose is that Shiro's world has no autopsies, never examined a corpse for answers. And this answer was so vital. It had been crucial enough that Murphy had offered himself up to a surgeon to try to cut out the symbiote, even before they were aware of what it was doing to their brains. ]

[shiro2hero]

[His hands scrub over his face. Trying to sort it all through. What his reaction is, what's Bucky's. What's leftover garbage from the symbiote power. What is just pure grief and gut reaction he shouldn't be having. He definitely shouldn't be taking it out on Bellamy.]

[But the feelings are there. They exist. The feelings of you trusted them, of just an experiment to them, flicker and bounce though his head with the slashes of lightning. He knows how Lavellan ... how it happened. And he needs to pull himself together before he does something.]

[Bellamy doesn't deserve it.]

[Does he? demands part of him -- the messy, fractured part he can't tell is really him or Bucky or ...]

(I don't --) [Focus. Focus.] (My friend -- Bucky. We have bad experiences. With this.)

[With things like this. Why couldn't it have waited? Didn't they have scanners? On the station?]

[deployed]

( With autopsies? )

[ Abby Griffin might have done it better, though Clarke was just as adept as her mother when it came to these things. Abby had performed ad hoc surgery in a tent among the wreckage of the Ark, maybe she would have known an easier way to accomplish the kind of extraction Clarke had knuckled through today.

But Clarke's seen enough without catching her mother's face drifting in Bellamy's thoughts. His focus narrows, snags at the discordant cacophony of Shiro's mind. ]

( It's not the same. We didn't let him be killed so we could do this, Shiro. You were there. It happened too fast for any of us to get to him and pull him back. )

[ Which wasn't to say Bellamy and Murphy hadn't tried themselves to dig out the symbiote in a more extreme way. They'd been lucky, and know they knew the truth. At this point, there was no way to excise the thing that had been implanted into their heads. The surgery on Concordia would have killed either of them. Bellamy isn't sure if he feels any relief at their efforts having been thwarted there. ]

[shiro2hero]

[He shakes his head. How... does he elaborate? Just an autopsy wars with experiment. Logic versus anger. He knows they didn't let him die. They didn't push Lavellan out there, they didn't hold him down while he was screaming, or cut into him with static filling his head or --]

[Breathe.]

[Focus.]

(I think... his is worse than mine,) [He begins, finally. Left hand finding a snag in his disguise to worry at. Not the ridges of a coin he'd used, but close enough.] (Things happened to us -- in the past. We both have issues with... people being studied.)

[Another shake of his head, meant to ask for a second. To ask patience while he hauls his focus back. This is a lot harder than it should be. Harder to untangle himself from his friend. It was never this difficult with Pidge, or even Clint or Bellamy himself.]

(We set each other off and... I can't separate.)

[The part about betrayal, about I trusted you all, gets shouldered aside. He's got to believe the logic, here, or else go crazy.]

[deployed]

[ The admission is troubling. Lines blurring like that is very troubling to Bellamy, whose assessment of Shiro sharpens as the consequence of what Shiro is telling him settles in Bellamy's mind. ]

( This isn't what it looks like when people are being studied. ) [ is what Bellamy finally, carefully, answers. ] ( Focus on that. It'll help you both. If he can't see it, you'll have to see it for him. )

[ Mount Weather is a ghostly presence in the back of Bellamy's head. It can't be allowed to be anything more than that. The last time he and Clint had looped, it was because of Bellamy's recollection of Mount Weather. But Bellamy recognizes the last thing that will be helpful in this conversation is the memory of cages and needles and blood.

And Bellamy doesn't want to relive any of that again. His mind recoils away from it, roots itself in the present rather than consider the past. ]