( OPEN | DAY 19 ) the brainiacs club

[skaikru]

CHARACTERS: clarke, sam, damon, elena, murphy + everyone who wants to meet the symbiote face to (brain) face
WHERE: Hyrypia - The Graze, an impromptu coroners tent
WHEN: DAY :019
SUMMARY: Before his cremation, Lavellan still offers a few answers to some burning questions.
WARNINGS: Mentions of character death, medically accurate gore, an autopsy, a lot of talk about brains, the symbiote is terrifying, and probably puke.

( for clarke, it seems like the next logical step. first, a rough introduction to the symbiote. second, glimpses of a brain scan from the depths of john murphy's mind. third, seeing it with her own eyes.

so naturally, it doesn't take much convincing.

they have a body. when asked, they're provided with a set of odd tools and a wealth of apologies for their loss by the hyrypian natives. and before they go about building a funeral pyre, they set themselves up in a well-lit tent and carefully remove the corpse coverings. clarke's never done this before, sam's never done this before, and as intently as they hover, damon and elena offer little advice, mostly morbidly driven moral support. murphy has a wide variety of medical supplies at his side, and doesn’t say much. but it's not hard to figure out. under sharp instruments, skin cuts like butter, and dead bodies barely bleed. it's easy to get through the skin and hair, to peel it back and reveal the white bone of lavellan's skull. it's harder to look at the dead man's face, peaceful as if in a deep sleep, while fumbling for an archaic trephine and swallowing down bile.

first, they punch holes. cautious, careful to draw back when the tool burrows too deeply. if they want to examine his brain for answers to all the questions digging (quite literally) in the back of their minds, they can't damage the delicate tissue. as bone dust flies and catches on her hands, clarke quietly wishes for sterile latex gloves — anything to buffer the sensations, to make this feel less real.

then comes the drill, held at an angle to cut relatively straight lines between the burr holes. lavellan's head wiggles under the vibrations of sawing through bone, the same tremors that run up the length of clarke's arms as she cuts, and her throat is uncomfortably tight when she asks elena to hold him still. it takes some time, but piece by piece the hard bone is chipped away, each sliver of skull carefully set aside in a bowl until they're faced with a grey layer of dura. the tissue is cut and snipped, pulled to expose the veins and the intricate tubing of lobes — the brain, the epicenter of all life, now red, and wet, and still.

it's not over. the brain is soft, threatens to break under her fingers as she claws into his skull; pushing and pulling until she can cut at the spinal cord tethering mind to body. and with a trickle of cerebral fluid, the brain is born into her hands, a squishy and floppy mess. the answer to so many questions, and disgustingly delicate.

for a moment, they all just look at it. choke on actions, implications, guilt. then: )

There, ( clarke announces, turning the brain over in her hands. on the underside, just above the base of where the brain stem had been cut, a soft bundle of white. it looks almost like particularly dead nerve endings, a tight grouping of listless threads, but that's not right. clarke uses her pinky finger to shift the elastic folds of the brain, tugging to try to see where the branches of the symbiote dig deeper into grey matter, and brush the hard black flecks embedded into the alien organic tissue. there, that's what it looked like in the flesh.

her stomach churns. nausea or nerves, the uncomfortable idea that that is inside all of us at the forefront of her mind — her distress is tangible in the air, but it's anyone's guess so far as contributing factors. she extends both cupped hands, offering a better look to those around her. )

( ooc | dogpile all in one thread, write your own starters post tent, someone eventually get clarke a jar to put the brain in or something please for the love of god…! basically, do whatever and have fun with it. )

Comments

[aluminumandash]

I | open to all you fools

[ It's underway already when Rust slips in, adding to the atmosphere of guilt and dawning horror the feeling of everything too loud, too sharp. His skin too tight. And a headache besides. The whole time he scarcely moves, eyes locked on the corpse laid out in front of them.

He's no stranger to autopsies, but that's not what he's thinking as Clarke's fingers dig into the inert lump that was Lavellan's brain. He's trying to separate the man from the alien stitching his head together, trying to picture the symbiote's death throes. The loss that had hollowed him out now seems—not remote. Physical. Hangover, withdrawal. Amputation, excision.

The body is not one member but many.

Staring at Clarke's hands he speaks, voice bereft of inflection. Hypnotic, almost. ] We could've stopped it. If we'd all of us said no, they wouldn't be able to do this.


II | open to the fool named clarke

[ He feels guilty every time he sees her—about the most that can be said for him—but until now he's never doubted his ability to bear it. Clarke's hands, spotted with blood. Bone ground to dust. Whatever's taken hold of her, a visceral revulsion that feels like the brink of something treacherous.

He touches a hand to her back, light and fleeting. Afraid of it feeling wrong, afraid of it feeling right. ] ( You did good. ) [ Bound up in the words: respect turned to bitter regret, the acute sense of something irrevocably lost, a choked sensation he might've cribbed from her.

Rust finds a jar next to the tray of unused Hyrypian implements. Sets it down, holds it steady for her. ]

heck yeah!

[skaikru]

( it's difficult to avoid folding in on herself; to shutting down and shutting out, blocking out the current world floating around her peripheral vision in favor of delving into her own mind. swimming and dancing with the various implications this, their haphazard post-mortem procedure has left to fester in the back of their minds. quite literally. she's still on her knees by lavellan's open skull, still cradling his detached brain and staring at the milky white fibers like they'd offer some answers to the muted, unspoken questions.

how do we remove it? how can we go home with this thing still growing in our skulls? how do we fight against something that's a part of us? it's an unending loop of how's with no explanations to follow up. and when rust touches her shoulder and brushes against her mind, it serves as a reminder that she's not alone. this isn't the time or place to fall apart in the face of compounding despair.

he offers up a jar, and with little preamble or acknowledgment of stilted praise, clarke tips her hands to gently slide the brain into the glass container. even with her palms empty and slicked with — a lot — the weight of human life still rests heavy in her fingers. it's metaphorical, or just the creeping sensation of some version of guilt. )

Thanks. ( quiet and subdued. thanks for the jar, because did she really do any good here? she sniffs, and when that doesn't do enough to clear the sudden congestion in her sinuses, clarke finds a relatively clean part of her wrist to swipe under her nose. )

[deployed]

Said no to what?

[ Lavellan's brain confirms what Murphy's explorations on Concordia suggested. The symbiote is growing. It was impossible to remove by now, as far as they can tell. But the idea of stopping it before it began— ]

What came for us would have killed everything if we didn't take the out we were being given.

[ Octavia whispers Bellamy's mind in an undercurrent; his priorities are always clear. He knows what would have been risked if he said no. The beast that came for him wasn't the kind of beast that could have been put down with either sword or bullet. It was too much to sacrifice, even knowing what he knows now about what he'd accepted. ]