It's nauseating and crystalline, his dedicated bright and ashen. She snaps the mental link closed with a pop that stabs through her as viscerally as it must him and fights not to be staggered by the breathless hollowness left behind. Instead she forces her back straight, forces this body's limbs to function. Cathaway crosses the bare chamber of the bridge, the Station singing like a low full note in her mind's ear, and closes distance with him. It isn't rapid. There's something brittle and wounded in her stride, worn not by the connection between them but the necessary loss of intimacy when she'd narrowed it.

He's much taller than her, but buckled as he is they're almost eye to eye when she comes to stand before him.

"Let us see your face." She doesn't hesitate or ask permission before she reaches for him: touches her thumb to his chin and forces his face over by a scant degree so she can make a thorough examination of the ragged scar that running there.

"We did what was necessary to save your life. If you respect that, if you value it, then you will do what's necessary to save ours." She grips his chin tighter then, forces his face further over still. It's dangerous to be so close to him, she thinks, but physical proximity has nothing on the nearness of his mind. That's already a threat. "If you would do that, you will recognize that we have use for you, as we have use for your brood and all the others you hatched with. Do you understand us?"