station72 | [ OPEN ] Hot Springs Episode!

[ OPEN ] Hot Springs Episode!

CHARACTERS: EVERYONE
WHERE: The Second Flight
WHEN: DAY :022
SUMMARY: The Sauna!
WARNINGS: Nekkid times.

[ A few hours after the murder, she hasn't blown the ship up, and here they are. Another knock knock on everyone's brain: ]

( For those of you that are interested - I have secured us a place at the Sauna. Free for us to be use without interruption from outsiders.

You are to be clean before you come in. )

[ Maybe you're here because she bullied you, maybe you want to soak - maybe you're the poor bastard that is standing guard at the door. Either way, welcome to the Suana, have fun. Or don't. ]

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[ The least she could do is cover her most private parts with any of the folded towels lying about, or cover her conspicuous scar with her hands, or angle herself such so as not to impose her nakedness upon another person, or at least feign a smidgen of discomfort for sympathy's sake. Of course, she does none of this. Instead she stands in her skin with as much confidence as a fully-armored woman, one hand on her hip, wearing only an amused smile at Clarke's expense. Mind, there's little in the way of meanness in the way she speaks next, only light teasing, her mind as relaxed as the tone of her voice. It isn't that she has forgotten their previous altercation as much as it doesn't matter anymore. Her moods shift like the weather. ]

Now's the time to ask the intimate questions. Ever heard that saying?

[ She impresses the meaning upon the girl's mind: hadaka no tsukiai. A relationship stripped of pretense, what happens when two people face each other having left all worldly trappings in the locker. Point made, she eventually starts walking toward one of the smaller isolated pools nearby, testing the water with her feet before stepping in slowly. ]

C'mon. It's not fair if I'm naked and you're not.

( if she'd been made to feel moderately uncomfortable with the idea of being naked and vulnerable around the general swarm of the nest, it's somehow worse with misato standing directly in front of her, cavalier in her nudity and striking up a conversation with a tone in stark contrast compared to the note they'd ended on last time. it throws suspicion into the mix alongside a baseline anxiety, and a modest streak she'd maybe never been aware of. clarke meets misato's gaze for all of one second, just to level her with a perfectly flat, unimpressed look — all of her stodgy opinions that intimate questions could be asked perfectly easily while they were all fully dressed — before fixing her gaze somewhere over the other woman's right ear.

it's perfectly fair that she's naked, but with the air of one accepting a challenge, clarke dutifully begins to unravel the laces of her vest. )

Do you have intimate questions you wanted to ask me?

( no pls don't. )

[ Misato slips into the water with a familiar sigh, draping her arms over the rim with the ease of owning the entire pool, no the entire grotto and the ship with it. It isn't entirely sincere. Kaji isn't the only one with the masks. But where his is practiced, perfected, hers is cruder, yet more insistent, like the smile she maintains when she watches Clarke. ]

If you're offering. It would only be fair.

[ She hasn't forgotten, see? But there's a trick to using the present to rewrite the past. ]

Come join me first.

( the thing about talking with misato, from her limited exposure, is it invariably ends up feeling like a challenge; bait to snap at, a bar to rise to. stepping into this world had felt like stepping into enemy territory regardless, but the other woman shirks off her clothes and steps into the water with little forethought and it's more like sitting down at a war council — feeling the tug and pull to follow foreign traditions for fear of being eaten alive, even as clarke diverts her eyes and fixates on a bit of rock several feet above misato's head.

confliction is written on her face in lines: a furrowed brow, tightly pressed lips. she's heavily debating turning right around and taking her very own bath, privately, in the bathrooms attached to their berthings. but that idea reeks of cowardice and retreat, and before making an active decision, clarke finds her toes against her heels, shucking off her boots and bending to roll up both pant legs.

compromise is dangling her feet into the pool a few feet away from misato and trying not to openly weep for how good the water feels on aches and pains she hadn't even realized she was holding. some of the intended stone-faced defensiveness is absent when she speaks. ) What do you want to know?

[ There's something about water that threatens to dissolve objects, scenes, human. The element seeps through one's skin, becomes a part of one, to cite that familiar factoid about bodies containing so much water, a strange thought that pulls at the corner of her lips. To think they fuss about contamination of the body and of the mind, but these everyday things go on unnoticed. She lets herself sink when she feels the ripples from Clarke's feet hit against her shoulders, deep enough that the water laps at her chin, arms stretched long on either sides of her body. Eyes closed.

There's also something to be said about the perception of one's standing vis a vis another, that now she doesn't require hostility to feel strong. Knowledge is strength. She opens her eyes to watch the girl when she speaks. ]

Clarke. When you asked me those questions, what did you want to hear?

( that's a loaded question. for a moment clarke seems to forget their faces are no longer obscured by dark cloth and the corners of her mouth tighten. furrows cut into her forehead, gaze latched upon her own knees; a very obvious wince. what had she wanted to hear? essentially exactly what misato had told her. do you trust him — yes, as if that statement would chase away any of her lingering suspicions of the broodmate who'd successfully distanced himself the most from her. clarke had wanted to be told, to some effect, that he was a better person than the few and far between glimpses into his brain had given her reason to suspect. and misato had said yes.

but she'd wanted to believe it. and didn't. )

I don't know. ( a lie and a truth at the same time. her questions hadn't really done any good if they'd just caused more confusion in the long run, had they?

there's a pause here, where it feels appropriate to offer up an apology. something along the lines of i'm sorry i came at you so hard, i was wound up and now i just don't care anymore. but the words don't come. clarke is left casting around for something vaguely similar to communicate without opening doors she doesn't want to air the contents behind. expressive, but guarded. ) I don't know how you deal with having a part of yourself you don't understand.

[ To get what you want is to get what you once wanted? Else, every cynic is only waiting to be proven wrong, each sharpened remark just a plea for someone to return one's innocence. A plea for something to believe in.

Misato does wait for the apology, but smiles to herself when it doesn't come. Of course not. She knows she herself wouldn't apologize for offending, for well-deserved and reciprocated hostility. She stretches her arms up, out of the water, then drops them back with a splash and a chuckle. Maybe the parallel of a cynic doesn't work then, when the girl still holds such idealism. That people can know people. That each can know themselves. ]

What's changed? There's always been a part of yourself you didn't understand. Kaji would say-- [ And here she attempts to mimic him, the sagacity of his voice, the weight of it. ] "That's what makes life interesting."

( i thought, clarke almost begins to say. her mouth even opens, tongue curling to form the rather childish philosophy: i thought i understood all parts of myself. maybe not of her broodmates, but at least all the inner complexities that made up her own being. life on earth, however brief it had been, had been an eye-opening experience into the depths of human extremism, and in less than six months clarke had learned she was more than capable of burning three hundred people alive. she's made as much peace as one can with becoming a symbol of death and a genocidal war chief, and laid it all on the aged justification of for my people because it had become those people and her willingness to protect them that defined her.

she's shaken hands with the darkest parts of herself, and now there are more hands.

the snort that works its way out clarke's nose is decidedly lacking in humor, but it's not outright derisive. misato's impersonation is neither spot on, or too far off the mark. but for all the wisdom, it lacks the comfort. ) I wish it felt like that. ( interesting. because for clarke, it's confusion; being stranded in the middle of the ocean with four islands in sight but unsure of which to swim toward.

but that's a difficult, vulnerable thought to put to words. instead, she kicks her feet in the warm, inviting water. )

[ The first thought that occurs to her: wisdom and comfort are unlikely bedfellows. And then: if it were feelings the girl is so worried about then she really has little to complain about. ]

If I were you, I'd count myself lucky. [ Because she assumes Kaji to be as meticulous roommate in the flesh as in the mind, surely. And Rust responsible even if irascible, seething. Mat is easily leashed. She knits her eyebrows in consternation as she questions her own judgment, telling herself that all this is just a case of the grass being greener on the other side. Maybe so. But Clarke's head isn't left with warmongers, including herself, and one acid head.

She is quiet for a long moment, gaze on the rippling surface, watching the uncanny smoothness of her skin under the water. ]

It's like an ache. It's always there, but sometimes if you try hard enough, if you focus on a single point in the future, a goal, you can make yourself forget it's there.

( clarke is readily wary of misato, has been since their last encounter. pair those unwelcome digs with the thinly veiled warning of the other woman's capacity for duplicity from asuka, it's easy to paint the two of them in black and white — stark contrasting personalities that would never agree on anything, let alone have a somewhat civil conversation. that preconception leaves clarke feeling rather surprised when the words of wisdom on misato's lips so closely match the personal mantra she's come to so readily employ.

sweep the right to mourn for the dead under the rug, bury desires to wallow in self-pity, foist the responsibility for others on her shoulders — bear it so they don't have to. focus on getting through the next day, the next week, and who even knew about the next year. and all the old hurts scar over just in time for new ones. )

Survive this first, existential crisis later?

( it would be funny, sounds funny on her lips, if only the truth of it wasn't so sad. )

[ Misato has thought this through many times over, has looked deep into herself to figure out the workings of her mind and find the reasons for her thoughts and actions. See, she finds that it was never Clarke that she disdains, and not the traits and attributes that form Clarke -- that is, all these things that form something that could be mistaken for herself. It isn't as simple as a case of projected self-hatred, no, her anger comes from the frustration of trying to draw patterns that aren't there. The girl is her own person, the similarities stop there. ]

I've used up my lifetime existential crisis quota already.

[ Her smile should be wry, the curl of her lips should betray the hurt inherent in her words. But instead she wears only a confident smirk. This is a victorious gesture, and not one to inspire pity. ]

What now? Your turn to ask an intimate question or can I go again?

( that's a weird life goal to be proud of misato but okay.

by the numbers, clarke ought to be approaching her own allocated breakdowns, but she's young. full of intense emotions and with time on her side, depending on how this mission and her very existence within the confines of the nest went. although her most notable escape from life and society had led her on a three-month excursion in the woods by herself, which would be hard to top, and near impossible on a mostly arid landscape.

initially, in response to that invitation to pry into misato's psyche as expertly as the older woman had done, clarke is borderline ambivalent. she drops her gaze, focusing on the delicate ripples that span across the water with every shift. she's half a mind to invite another round of interrogation, an open book with undisclosed sore spots and the confidence that they're adequately concealed.

but her thoughts drift back to asuka, who she will always feel more sympathy for than misato, no matter their similarities. and her face hardens. )

Where do you get off using children to fight your battles?

[ If she has learned anything, it's that sudden silence in the middle of conversation heralds an ambush. She hasn't been wrong yet, though the chosen topic takes her by surprise. She huffs, displeased but unhurt. ]

You — [ Read: we. ] — should stop picking fights.

[ She shakes her head, at Clarke, at herself. These wounds quickly grow old, scab over and scar. She crosses her arms over her chest and leans back against the side of the pool. There are two sets of words she must choose between: that of an admission of guilt for harm caused, which would mollify but which would be untrue. Then there's the callousness, her merciless stance toward her past mistakes. What's done is done. She takes every responsibility for her actions and punishes herself accordingly, but gives nobody else the right to hear her apologies. She is her own judge and executioner. The choice is clear. ]

Sending a few children to war was worth saving three billion lives. But I was wrong from the start. Nobody's saved.

( misato's level headed and even handed — cold — response does... remarkably little to curb the edges of clarke's vehemence. it's murky waters, feeling affronted for all of asuka's second hand suffering without projecting her own bitter disapproval of how the adults in her life had seen fit to gamble with their lives when sending one hundred teenagers down to earth. that's an old hurt, one clarke hadn't fully acknowledged she still held on to. but old wounds scab, scar over, and reopen at the faintest hint of an edge.

clarke's voice is quiet; tight and controlled, the sort of low menace of someone trying exceptionally hard to reel in their anger. )

So all that suffering was for nothing and you don't even regret using them?

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[ OPEN ] Hot Springs Episode!

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