[HATCH LOG] IS ANYONE THERE?

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: Station 72
WHEN: Day :150
SUMMARY: Today is the day you wake up.
WARNINGS: None; will edit if necessary.

A MOMENT AGO it seemed like you willingly took the hand of someone beckoning to safety.


NOW YOU WAKE UP in one of many chambers of Station 72’s nesting deck. If you had wounds, they’re (mostly) gone; if you had doubts they are - for the split second between dreaming and waking - gently reassured. This is correct. This is right. You’re safe here. The only question is what here is exactly.

The compartment you find yourself in is small, though gently padded for comfort with enough elbow and head -room to not be wholly claustrophobic. Still, it’s difficult to re-orient yourself; the best way to get to the chamber’s built in ladder and down to the smooth, polished white floor of the nesting is to simply roll over onto your belly and go out feet first.

First thing’s first though: get rid of that tube running from the rear wall of the chamber to the base of your skull. The moment you’ve done that, there’s the sensation like a rubber band popping - a string in your hand being jerked. The headache that punches in falls like the heavy end of a hammer - not serious, but surprisingly abrupt - as a of combination confusion, resolve, anxiety, certainty, delight, and fear and expectation finds you. In fades after a moment, churning to a low dull pressure and a faint hum. It’s feels like standing outside the door of a small party, sounds muffled and incomprehensible. Some pieces rise and swell above the others then fall again. Strain your ears and realize you’re hearing nothing at all.

On the plus side, you’re not hooked into the compartment anymore. Slide out and onto the ladder, though not too fast or you’ll miss the small cubicle built into the wall near the mouth of the chamber. In the cubicle are all the things you brought with you, every small piece you own of the home you left behind. There’s a neatly folded pair of something like white pajamas there as well. They’re definitely in your size, though you have the option not to wear them since you’re still in the clothes you left home in. Granted, for some of you that might not exactly be a blessing. Your clothes haven’t exactly been laundered or repaired, so best hope you didn’t bleed or sweat on them too much during your escape.

Sliding free from the chamber pod and stepping out onto the ladder, you’ll find yourself in an open space. The room is broad and pale and clean, its sloping walls featuring dozens and dozens of holes like the one you just wiggled out of. There are more ladders and a few other people climbing down, or stareing, or already down on the nesting deck’s floor but the sixteen - seventeen, including yourself - people present would hardly fill even a sixth of the room’s available accommodations.

The noise is louder when you near any of the others. It’s as if you've entered the party yourself. Identifiable now is the low wash of feelings, a hum of emotions that only serves to make the slight headache worsen. They feel genuine. They feel like they could belong to you. Still, that pressure in your head doesn't worry you --Shouldn't it worry you? Does worrying - about the headache, about the world and people you left behind, or the strange place you’re in now, the odd collection of people you’re with and the fact that you feel strangely drawn to five or six of them - make the headache better? Or worse?

If you manage to push the sound aside and listen with your true ears, you'd notice you can't hear anything besides this small group of fellow hosts: their footsteps, their oddly sharp breathing. There’s no sound of traffic, no wind in the trees, no birds, no hum of a ship. Only circulating air and silence.

You may not know what a brood is, but finding yours is easy. There are minds among these strangers that call to yours, their voices louder than the rest, their feelings sharper. The nearer to you they are, the more comfortable you feel. Is that strange? You don't know them, but you do. There are few answers to be found on the nesting deck.

Eventually you will have no choice but to head out of the room. There’s only one way out that you can see: up through a spiraling hallway that arches overhead. When it opens again the space seems slightly less alien. There are doorways of a kind lining the walls and each one opens to a small, nearly normal room. There are no doors, so it's easy to see all the rooms are vacant. In seventeen of them there are items neatly stacked on the bed. Most are hygiene supplies. Some of them - a toothbrush, comb, razor - may be familiar to you. Others less so. There's a flat horizontal ledge beside the bed with a small light and a single drawer. Another table, apparently built into the wall, sits across the room with a chair. A mirror is on the desk; it’s slightly mundane and not quite to the Station’s style.

This room is yours for the moment. It doesn't mean someone won't want to trade - or take. Beyond this life support deck stretches the rest of Station 72. It is quiet and and twisting and perfectly inert.

At its most familiar, the Station is merely a still, empty ship with broad chambers and gently mottled light. At its worst, it’s an Escher painting of strange angles and bizarre platforms that seems grown as much as built. There are many ways to many places and while it seems all doors and passages open to you, there’s an unshakeable feeling that the space doesn’t quite match up - that there’s even more to the Station which you can’t yet see. Don’t get lost!




For now, you reach the floor of the nesting deck. When you do, something blooms in your mind. A voice, disturbingly lacking any identifying traits but warm and comfortable like sweetened milk, says:

( ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬...There you are...▬▬▬..Welcome to Station 72 ▬▬. )

If you follow the thread of that voice, you’ll eventually find your way either to Cathaway on the bridge or The Prince in the training wing.

---

((OOC Notes: Welcome to Station 72! Feel free to check out the SETTINGS page for more information about the Station. If you have any questions about the setting itself, feel free to ask them there; otherwise, please direct all questions to either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages.

Prince’s top level should be live in the evening! Keep an eye out for it if you want him to give your character the introduction spiel instead of Cathaway.

Happy hatchday, everyone! :) ))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[apoptotic]

[ anakin can imagine what she is seeing. he is not the same man he was when she left. he is not the same jedi. the most obvious changes are the ones easiest to correct. hair grown longer, allowed to brush his shoulders. the black-and-gold mechanical arm left bare for once. an all-white attire out of necessity ( and obi-wan conspicuous in the absence of teasing: I knew you'd take after me one day.

the most significant changes are the ones not immediately evident. how much more weighed down he is. the extent of his disillusionment.

ahsoka has not changed at all. same height. same clothes. for a breathless, paranoid moment, he thinks her a trick. a creature called up from his memories to taunt him. and the urge to lash out — to push her away, to cut down this thing that dares to wear his padawan's face — swells like a wave.

but her vibrancy could not be created. his memories could not call her up so perfectly. when she reaches for him, his hand — his real hand, warm and living — takes hers.

a sharp tug brings her close. grabbing her by the shoulders, anakin embraces her tightly. his heart is pounding, an ache suffuses the surface of his eyes, but when he finally pulls back, hands left on ahsoka's shoulders, anakin is smiling. ]

I can't leave you alone, Snips.

[snippycup]

[She allows herself to be tugged, burying her face in his strange, ill fitting attire and subsequently wraps her arms around him tightly. When he pulls back, she does not. She had spent hours thinking that she had sent him to his death, and even a few brief moments thinking that the Senate and Jedi were so eager to pin the temple bombing on her that he would not return before they killed her. For a few long moments, she is three again, clinging to her mother's skirts while a strange alien reached out to her telling her of the power sleeping deep within her body.

She only lifts her chin enough to keep from muffling her snappish reply.]

White makes you look even shorter than Master Obi-Wan.

[Everything else -- she could comment on it, but she doesn't. Maybe when her heart stops beating so fast. Anakin is safe, thank the universe for that. But what of the others? What of the innocents?

She distracts herself by leaning into his organic hand and reaching for the bare machinery.]

Did those things attack you too?

[apoptotic]

[ her comment earns a brief chuckle, the first since he awoke. when her question digs under his sternum, his smile dips, then vanishes entirely. anakin has to drop his eyes, look away. with one hand on ahsoka's shoulder and the other in her grasp, he is careful not to close either. but his throat works to swallow stiffly and the tension that snaps back into place proves answer enough. ]

I was.

[ a lifetime ago, he had been on coruscant, receiving the best news of his life. more important than obi-wan telling him he would be trained. more thrilling than padmé confessing her love. for a few hours, his happiness was perfect. and then it was taken away.

anakin thought the jedi would be their only obstacle. he thought wrong.

a profound chasm opens beneath his feet. it had been dogging his foosteps. when he snapped the cord from his neck. when he sought out someone who could provide him with an answer. he will not see his wife or their child. a misstep and anakin feels it swallow him, and he discovers the hole not beneath but inside. padmé kept his heart with her and he — he has been hollowed out. ]

[snippycup]

[She knows better than to indulge, but she had only needed a moment. After she has it, she gently let's his mechanical hand go and leans back enough to look up at him.

It's impossible not to feel that sudden hole, more keenly than she cares to. It worries her, how deep and completely insurmountable it feels, but she can't help sympathizing a little. Still, it's impossible not to notice all the changes he's undergone -- not just emotionally, but how much older he seems when she had only seen him just prior to being locked away in her cell.

She's already far overstepped her boundaries in terms of expressing her emotion, so she lets her gaze drop also with an awkward swallow, composing herself in an attempt to ask all of her burning questions. When she first opens her mouth to address him, she has to bite back the subconscious habit to address him as "Master".

He isn't her teacher anymore. And the Council would not grant him his title without a Padawan, no doubt.]

Have you spoken to the one that calls herself Cathaway yet?

[apoptotic]

[ yes, he had spoken to the thing calling itself cathaway. that owned the body of what had once been cathaway. it had confirmed what he had suspected. ( what he had feared. fear is not for jedi, and he is a jedi. and here he is. afraid. afraid of having lost forever the woman he had promised he would marry when he was nine-years-old and too young to understand what that meant. afraid of having lost the child he had only discovered existed, and he already longed for through worlds and worlds.

he is afraid, though it galls him to admit. and underneath it lies the impossible dread. dread of what will happen when that fear breaks. )

anakin gives ahsoka no answer, but it is there to be found: the lack of question to the name, the tension roiling off him in waves, his continued avoidance of her blue eyes. ahsoka is perceptive. more than that, she knows him. or she knew him when he was still her master and she his padawan. before the war claimed them as it had everything else.

for padmé, for their unborn child, he remains on the ship until he receives answers. until he can throttle himself the dragon that threatened them. for ahsoka, he cannot recede into the perfect emptiness that had enveloped him when the mass speaking through cathaway told him "no."

the smile he settles upon her is new. framed not by the pride of a teacher whose student has overcome significant hurdles nor the pleasure that comes from old familiarity and long companionship, yet it it is the measure of both and transcends both. marked by patience rarely found in him and understanding reserved for few and kindness heartbreaking in its awful sincerity. it speaks to an emotion at once central to the jedi and forbidden.

his hand lifts again, his bone and flesh hand, to lightly tap a fingernail on her headdress in a gesture as playful as it is familiar. ] You haven't aged a day.

[snippycup]

[Ahsoka watches his silence, feels it to the tips of her fingers and concentrates on him so fully that the tap on her headdress startles her into an awkward half-smirk. It turns to a more genuine smile as she goes soft, even as she senses his internal distress. She had long ago learned that there was no use in trying to convince Anakin to talk about his struggles -- it was simply the sort of Jedi he was, refusing to burden others and bottling everything until he had a proper outlet.

A dangerous tactic, to be certain. Many disapproved of it, though Ahsoka only ever had the chance to see positive results. She had assumed the same would happen when he set out to prove her innocence.

That aside, she can feel his thoughts about Padme, the overwhelming sort of fear that skips across their strange link, and she forces her attention away from it with as much of her mental might as she is able. There's a flutter of discomfort -- nothing felt more invasive and naked than the raw emotion that came from him.

Like his long past before the Jedi, it doesn't belong to her. She doesn't want it unless he gives it.]

I haven't been here that long. Woke up a few hours ago. [A pause.] You changed your hair?

[She raises an eyebrow at him, clear in her disapproval. There was much more to comment on -- the heaviness that all but radiated off of him, the stillness in his eyes. She can't bear the thought of dragging him out of his obvious delight by attempting to ask after his health.

Not yet.]

[apoptotic]

[ something in the way she says it has not been long gives him pause. that and the discomfort he senses like a shadow of his own have him pull back. more reason to keep to safe topics. ones that have nothing to do with him. ]

Hair grows, Ahsoka. [ an attempt at levity; at being unaffected. he can pretend with the best of them when he must. a task easier done when he is not grieving. …for it is grief despite neither acknowledging nor understanding it as such.

allowing her her space, anakin strides to the ship she had been examining, taking the time to eye it himself. it isn't a fix. something to keep him busy is not a cure. but he has a purpose. he has someone to protect. the station, the others, they are distractions, good for keeping him occupied. the sooner they can act, the sooner they can destroy the threat that brought them here…

and his hair at this length looks great tyvm. ]

[snippycup]

[She watches and feels him close off, though he can't remove himself from her entirely. Even if the connection is strange, it holds them together with his back to her. After counting on his return, finding him this way --]

I thought you were--gone.

[Dead is the thought she can't squash fast enough, and her eyes go guilty to the floor. She voices it all before she can stop herself while he's still in the process of trying to focus on something that isn't his grief. Grief she doesn't understand without context beyond the vague vibrations she feels among the rest of the feedback she is trying so desperately to block out.

I didn't want to go, they cornered me, I wasn't strong enough, I shouldn't have left, I was afraid, and I couldn't be responsible. Confessions she won't put a voice to.

Cathaway had not told her enough to determine otherwise. Anakin Skywalker wouldn't have gone down without a fight, and he would have died to protect the millions of innocents on Coruscant. Holding him again -- it was the most incredible relief she had ever felt in her short life. And unlike Anakin, she is not nearly as skilled at pushing past her emotion, has not yet managed to learn how to properly compartmentalize it.

It is a skill she won't learn for years.]

[apoptotic]

I'm all right. [ a bald lie. only hours before he had answered the same fear. then, it had been true. then it had preceded the discovery of something monumental. something wonderful has happened, whispers padmé and his mind's loop of it makes it senseless.

there is no serenity to be found through their link or through the force. incandescent, he burns. but his smile for her is kind. ]

Ahsoka, you don't have anything to fear. You did what you had to with the few choices you had available. If what they say is true, where you were— It won't be attacked again.

[ stepping closer once more, the months fall away like a discarded robe. he settles into old trappings as if he had never stepped out of them. ]

That monster was something new. To all of us. You're not responsible for it.

[snippycup]

[Anakin earns a light frown in return for the blatant lie, and he may or may not feel a ripple of distaste that she doesn't voice, a tightening of her jaw that clenches all the way down her spine. He should've know better than to try and pretend for her -- it just makes her feel like he doesn't trust her.

And considering the circumstances, it hurts more than she wants to admit. Anakin's (and Padme's) trust was all she really had left.]

And if what they say is true, those things were there because of me. How does that make me anything but responsible?

[But when he moves closer, she goes quiet and drops her gaze. If all of the misinformed intel wasn't enough to convict and kill her, this entire circumstance surely would.]

...I'm not saying I regret my decision. [She should, some part of her should, she was running away from the flippin' Republic military.] I just -- don't know where to go from here.

[apoptotic]

You think you were the only one targeted?

[ a cacophony of sound, smell, heat and fear — his and padmé's — bleeds from him. if he closes his eyes, the acridity of smoke again burns his nostrils. her shout rings in his ears. anakin keeps his eyes open to ahsoka's downturned face. again, he takes her shoulder in hand, the black fingers closing carefully. ]

They're saying it was the symbiote's recognition of us that drew them to attack. Same reason they won't risk sending a transmission back. [ suspicion colors the words darkly without being voiced out loud. a short squeeze urges her to look at him. ]

Not all has been revealed yet. I'm going to need your help.

[ a different plea lives in the shadows of his soft request, lingers in the shadows in his eyes, pronounces the furrow in his brow: don't leave me. stay with me. please. ]

[snippycup]

[For a few long seconds, she doesn't look up, not even when he opts to squeeze at her shoulder -- too burdened with guilt and a strange feeling of homesickness. He's not wrong -- about the symbiotes, and she can feel his suspicion. For once, she doesn't share it.

She does share the sounds. The scents that come with Padme's cry of surprise, all the other emotions that curl in her belly and make her curl her shoulders slightly inward on herself. Its distressing enough that she doesn't take the time to recognize that--those images don't make sense. Padme had been speaking to the court on her behalf. Anakin had been hunting for answers.

But all she thinks about is the feedback that she spends several long seconds trying to block out. More than anything, she wants things to go back to how they were -- and how they weren't. The war had ruined just as much as it had given to her.

Her hand moves before her head does, resting over his own and dwarfing it with the careful curl of her fingers. When she picks her head up, her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes, and she's quick to morph it into a smirk.]

Well duh. You always need my help.

[apoptotic]

Don't push it. [ he will pull out the list of times he rescued her because he is that petty. ask obi-wan.

but this is good. this is better. despite his reassurance, ahsoka continues to feel guilty. but anakin had expected it. she took failure, real and perceived, hard. in their experience, failure was a danger to themselves and those around them. in this case, as she had been during their ill-fated last mission together, she is not to blame. eventually, she will see that. he will get her to.

for the time being, they have other priorities. ]

Did you find a room yet?

[snippycup]

[Don't worry, she's kept her own list on him, even if he'd try to argue half of her victories in that regard.

His question makes her lips skew sideways.]

I hadn't gone looking...this whole thing still feels temporary.

[The engines don't sound the same as she's used to. The stars are different. The only place that brought any comfort was the nesting chamber -- but it was comfort that only one half of her felt.]

[apoptotic]

It will be. [ fact or promise? there is no apparent difference. when he begins walking, he falls into the easy expectation of her keeping up. ] We'll get home.

[ neither the temple nor the city-planet that is coruscant follow the word 'home.' home is an elegant suite that no jedi would own. equally unnoticed is his adoption of 'we.' that ahsoka will return with him when, and it is when, he finds a way to kill the dragon and be free to return is a given. ]

But for the time being, we should find a place to stay.

[snippycup]

[Ahsoka catches his thought, but immediately puts it out of her mind as fast as she's able. It wasn't that the idea was unpleasant but--

There was so much that was unclear to her now. How could she just--act like nothing was happening? Had happened? Who was to say that the Republic wouldn't continue to chase her in the absence of a conviction once the dust had settled?

Who's to say the Jedi wouldn't help them?]

Yeah. Good idea.

[She doesn't rebuff the 'we' in this. A familiar presence, especially Anakin, is what she needs right now. Being alone would only drive her mad with the circling guilt she couldn't chase away.

Ahsoka is quick to catch up and fall in step with him.]