![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
- *hatch log,
- *mission log,
- annie westwind [original],
- asuka langley sohryu [evangelion],
- bellamy blake [the 100],
- clarke griffin [the 100],
- elena gilbert [the vampire diaries],
- elliot alderson [mr robot],
- gildor helyanwe [original],
- lexa [the 100],
- misato katsuragi [evangelion],
- noctis lucis caelum [ffxv],
- pidge gunderson (katie holt) [voltron],
- richard gecko [from dusk till dawn],
- rust cohle [true detective],
- ryohji kaji [evangelion],
- sam wilson [mcu],
- seth gecko [from dusk till dawn]
[mission: hyrypia] i am not there; i do not sleep
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!
((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!))
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!))
no subject
Yes you are, Sam's mind murmurs to Shiro as he holds him close. 'You're supposed to, you can, with me.
Sam can take it. He can take it all, he can hold them both while they fall apart and steady them while they put themselves back together again. He has to, because otherwise everything he's done after losing Riley has been for nothing.
'the people you'd come to trust and respect' echoes in his mind and Sam - there's flashes, of the one of the few things he hides from everyone, that he keeps as just for him because he doesn't think any of them will understand it - Nyx might have, Lavellan might have but they're both gone, they're gone -
Too bright lights and the smell of bleach, the squeak thump of footsteps against tile and there's no sense of time, none, so far underwater and with only the meals to count by, the whoosh of the door when they've decided to try their luck again and this is what it's come to, over a decade of service and this is all they see when they look at him. There's an ache in his ribs and on his face that's gonna be around as long as they keep asking and he keeps laughing in their face when they think he would ever -
- every word out of his mouth fucks them over as he spills the secrets Clint worked so hard to keep to protect his family, as he walks right by Wanda in her straight jacket like he doesn't even give a shit and zeroes right in on Sam -
- you're gonna have to go Mark Fuhrman on my ass to get it out of me -
but he didn't, he didn't, all he had to do was promise to go in as a friend and Sam believed him, they know you they respect you they'll help you why didn't he listen stop looking at me like I'm nothing -
Shiro's breathing is harsh and jagged and there's a lightning strike through both of their minds, the crackle of green that doesn't belong to either of them.
It hurts so much, and Sam knows this. Intoxicated as he is he finds his footing, opening up their connection until there's no space between them and the rest of the Nest falls away.
This shit is a wave, if you ride it out instead of fighting it you'll reach equilibrium before long. ]
( Let it hurt. Let it hurt, sweetheart, it won't be forever. Let it hurt now, I've got you. )
no subject
[All he can feel is Sam. All he can sense is his mind. So of course he feels it. Of course the images pass through into him, too. The thoughts and impressions. All of it tangled up in Sam. He wants to ask. Wants to know. But now he can't get any words out. Mentally or otherwise. The sensations are all consuming. Bleeding into him.]
[While his own brain bleeds out in return. In his own too bright lights and sterile smells. In please you have to listen and don't put me under! while they don't listen. They move in white suits in masks and act as if he's some science project. Something inhuman.]
[monster]
[And they're gone. They're replaced by bright lights in purple. In the constant sound of boots marching in metal corridors. In no light, no change of day or night and only the sound of shouting alien words to mark anyone else alive in this place. In his hands on shaking shoulders, in -- ]
["You can do this."]
[There's nothing but aliens, no other human lives but the cold hand in his. Until that hand slips away and there isn't anything but bright lights and cold metal at his back and it hurts it hurts it hurts his arm is on fire. And he'll never see his friend again -- ]
[Fire that rides on the maelstrom of his loss. Hot and aching like the pain in his arm. Like the loss of a limb. He'll never see Lavellan again, either. He's lost them both. Never see that face, or hear those teasing words except in memory.]
[Memories... framing their faces in stormclouds flickering with that same green lightning. Framing the sad, accepting smile on Allura's face as doors closed. He couldn't save her, either. Couldn't save her, couldn't save Matt, couldn't save Lavellan. Names on a list. Constantly saved and held over his head as reminders of everything he already lost. Everyone his lack of focus, his lack of control, let down.]
[It hurts so much.]
[Sam is here. Sam is real under his hands. He's holding onto him so tightly his real hand aches in the process. His throat makes no sound, but there's a damp place, where his face presses into Sam's shoulder.]
no subject
Instead he holds on, one arm around Shiro's waist and the other cupping the back of his head, grip solid and steady as he keeps his mind open. You're not alone, it murmurs, and Sam knows that the weight of all of this when you have someone to share it with. His wings curl around Shiro, holding him up - a warm weight at his back, a quiet reminder that he's got somewhere to lean on if he needs it.
Names on a list, faces in amber glass, whispers of voices in smoke - so many ways to keep track of the people they let down, the ones they lost, the ones who died because of them. A mausoleum of all their failures, there to be toured whenever they have another to add to it. There's a breath and the faint hint of Sam's broodmate that's nearly always present in the shape of his mind shifts, becomes a little more - the hum of static among the rush of wind and the roar of a lion, the brush of petals in the mist of clouds and the gleam of starlight - it's so easy to remember everything they couldn't do.
Sam doesn't tell him it's going to be all right. He doesn't tell him not to think about that, to focus instead on who he has managed to save, to look at the future instead of the past - later, maybe, but right now they both need space to just let it hurt.
They all need space to just let it hurt.
I'm here. It's okay not to be okay, I'm here. ]
no subject
[Every name, every face, a slow recitation. Like they're standing in a vault while the storm rages hard, icy green, outside.]
[It hurts, it hurts - and they can't forget. Because now, without the people around them to remain, they have to remember. They have to go on. Standing in this empty room, this tomb of stars and clouds and wind and roaring and static. Voices, faces. His hands fisted tight into clothing for something solid to hold onto. Because it hurts, it hurts.]
[He was supposed to talk to him. He'd told Bucky he would. Without hesitation or reservation. But then the world felt like it was crashing down, and of course, there was Sam to catch them both.]
[Pulled out of freefall.]
[The storm will ease. The world will settle back on its rightful axis. And, at length, the tightness of his hands in the other's shirt will loosen. But he'll stay, leaning against him.]
[Trying to remember how to breathe.]
no subject
Takes and takes and takes, pulling it into himself, and he lets himself give back. There's a sadness in him buried where no one sees - not because he hides it so much as because he's laid it to rest, a ghost that doesn't haunt him more than a handful of days out of the year. But this is one of them, a pain that'd shattered bones and carved the inside of his chest hollow -
It hurts, it twists its way down to where the pain he carries every day rests, to the crack in his voice and the sting in his eyes when he first admitted I just can't find a reason to keep going -
He has a reason. He has more than one, and he remembers that as he breathes in and out.
His fingertips press against Shiro's scalp, achingly gentle when paired with the tightness of his grip as he holds him close.
As he holds them both up, treading water to keep them from drowning until they can ride out this storm.
I'm here.
Eventually, when Shiro's hold on his shirt loosens, Sam lets his own grip relax, palm warm against Shiro's lower back. ]
( I know. )
no subject
[It echoes. Back and forth between them. Refracted light of suns and moons through clouds and deeper. To where there are so many reasons lingers with the one -- the cause, the purpose, the reason for going on -- that burns through to keep you putting one foot in front of the other, to where more blossom, and one of them is here right now.]
[I'm here, Sam echoes. I'm here now, Shiro's own mind answers.]
[They're winding down now. Caught up in contact and the constant hum of reassurance that is another's pulse and another's touch. He can feel Sam breathe. It makes his own heart start to slow. The slow exhales between them pushing away the sight of green lightning, the memory of a broken body.]
[Temporarily.]
[But it's enough.]
[It's more than enough.]
[It hurts, his heart is screaming. I know, Sam is soothing. While the storm begins to wear itself out, leaving them holding on in the wake of it all. Breathing. But they're here. They're here now.]
(Are you -- will you --)
[He wants to know, even now, half incoherent and grieving, if the hand at his back and the pulse in his ear, if the one responsible for slowing and relaxing both those things in him ... is all right. Will be all right.]
no subject
It's enough to share this pain, to let it curl around both of them and pull out older, deeper pains, to know that this is gonna be one of them when the sharpness of it fades. It's enough to have Shiro here, to know that neither of them have to do this alone.
Shiro isn't his only reason, but he's one of the biggest.
There's a choked noise in his throat, brittle and harsh, as Sam shakes his head. No. No, he's not all right, and he doesn't know when he will be.
But he will be, and that's what matters.
He pulls one arm away, shifting back enough that he can get his hand in between them to rest over Shiro's heart, fingers curled into the fabric of his robe. ]
( I've got you. )
no subject
[And it's enough. It's more than enough. Just having Sam here, having someone alive and real and here and holding onto him and he's holding on back and it's a feedback loop of good, so good.]
[Good enough to where he can't think of going anywhere else.]
[Not any time soon.]
(I got you, too.)
no subject
[ It's easy to forget that he's pretty inebriated, when he can do a decent job functioning despite it and he doesn't really have to put together words - but he is, and his thoughts fuzz and catch as he tries to sort out what he'd meant.
He flattens his hand, feeling Shiro's heart beat under his palm, the steady rise and fall of his chest. ]
( I'll be all right because I've got you. )
no subject
[But he can also feel how Sam struggles. How he's got too much in his head, can't pull words into coherence. So he shifts. Not to pull away. Not to move. Just to crane his head over the top of Sam's. Fitting them together like puzzle pieces.]
(I'm not going anywhere. Promise you.)
no subject
It's almost a mirror image of the way he'd just finished holding Shiro, and that - it fits, just like they do.
Just for right now, he lets himself believe that neither of them are going anywhere. ]
( Me neither. I promise. ) [ Whatever he has to do, he'll make it so that he is someone Shiro will never have to lose.
And he won't lose Shiro, but that's a promise to himself. ]
no subject
[But she hasn't. And Sam needs him right where he is.]
(I know. I believe you.)
[I trust you, buried in every word. In every touch. Because he knows it's true. And he knows how much hearing it means to the man he loves.]
no subject
If anything, he was only reminded of that tonight. But he doesn't want to look into that right now, doesn't want to acknowledge the memories when he's drunk and grieving, just wants to stand here with Shiro for a little while longer.
Eventually he pulls back. ]
( We should get back out there. Unless you wanna run off, grab Bucky and Katie and disappear into the desert for a bit? )
[ He's teasing, of course - but he'd also do it, if he was asked. ]
no subject
[Sam deserves to be supported in turn.]
[So he'll do that. Now. While he feels his partner swallow and shake and cling on like this is the last safe place. Even when Sam pulls back, he lingers. His hands on his arms.]
(I do. I would, if you needed me to. If she needed me to.)
[There's a 'but' in there, though. Pidge wouldn't run. He already knows she won't. And he can't. He can't walk away from a task.]
[... as much as part of him wants to run screaming into the desert and cut loose until it stops hurting.]
[He can't.]
no subject
( No you wouldn't. )
[ There's no judgement there, and his tone is gentle, even fond, but it's still a little blunt. Shiro didn't need to say that 'but' for Sam to hear it - and he knows Shiro, knows he could never bring himself to pull back from a mission, let alone when Katie was involved.
Sam gets it. He's sacrificed worse for a mission, fighting for something he believes in - it's just the he doesn't believe in this. It bothers him a little, the way so many of them jumped into messing with people's lives without a second thought. The way he got caught up in the mission himself, trying to bring a quick end to it so they all got out of this with minimal damage to themselves and the people of this planet.
It is what it is, and Sam knows who he fell in love with. He knows Shiro wouldn't put anything before Sam that Sam himself wouldn't - even as there's some days he feels how long that list is. But Sam can't change that about himself anymore than he can change it about Shiro, and he doesn't want to.
He can try to change it so the list of things that Shiro puts before himself is a little lower, but that's for another day.
Sam leans in, stealing a kiss before he finally lets go. ]
( You coming back out, or are you gonna hang back a bit? )
no subject
[He can't help it if his hold tightens for a moment there. Grips him harder in mute apology.]
[This means so much to him. This means a world to him. He doesn't know why he has to always put things before this world. Put a whole universe before it. Why he can't, just once selfishly take something.]
[The kiss... he can take.]
[It's not a calm, quick gesture, when he returns it. It's firmer. More urgent. Trying to cram apology and affection and a hundred other things into it.]
(I'll go wherever you want me to go.)
no subject
Maybe. Most likely. No matter how much Shiro means to him - and it's a hell of a lot - he'll always put doing the right thing, protecting people, before both it and himself.
But he won't put this mission before Shiro, or any of the others he cares about. And that's where they're different, where Sam can feel the difference, even as Shiro does his best to apologize for something they both always knew was there.
It's pretty damn obvious Shiro doesn't know what to do here, but there - well, there they're on a little bit more stable ground, considering they already had this conversation. Sam takes the desperation in Shiro's kiss and uses it to back him against the tent pole he'd just punched, pinning him against it as he tangles his fingers in Shiro's hair and kisses him again. ]
( Okay. We're gonna take fifteen minutes, and I'm gonna shield us while we forget about everything but this. Then we'll handle the rest of the night as it comes. )
no subject
[If this were a fight -- if this were anything else -- he'd know what to do. He'd shoulder the responsibility readily enough. Not so now. Not so when someone was literally ripped away from his head, from his heart. When he wants to give this person under his hands so much.]
[Wants to give him everything he has to. And knows he can't. There are parts of him, too many parts, scattered like broken bits of comets, belonging to everyone else. To Pidge, to their cause, to Lance and Keith and Hunk and Allura and Coran and Matt and ...]
[And his back is to the tent pole. And fingers are in his hair. And there's a direction, there's an order, and all of him he has left to this is drowning in it gladly.]
(I love you -- Sam, I -- )
[Everything he has left to himself is nothing but gratitude. Acceptance. Affection bottomless as the stars.]
no subject
It’s easy to fall back on this, for both of them. Shiro doesn’t know what to do right now, and maybe in general, with all of this, Sam doesn’t either - but he knows this. He knows Shiro, and he knows what to do for him.
It doesn’t matter that they can’t give each other everything. Shiro’s not the only one with his pieces scattered, with connections to people and duty and mission. There’s parts of Sam that belong to his teammates back home, to his family here, and it’s - good, no one should be completely wrapped up in one person. None of that’d been what’d tripped Sam up; he doesn’t want to always come first. It’d just been the quiet acceptance that it’s more likely to be never.
And he doesn’t want to think about that right now. He lets it go, lets everything go but Shiro, but pressing him back against the tent pole and kissing him. ]
( I love you, too, Shiro. ) [ His mind pulls at Shiro’s, murmuring let go, let me have it, as he drinks in that acceptance and gratitude.
Fifteen more minutes, and then they’ll go back. ]