[closed to S72 hosts] mental link

[polyphonos]

[Hosts have returned to Station 72. It's the most populous this place has been for some time, but the dull ache of missing links - the numerous comatose individuals now carefully tucked back into their respective pods on the Nesting Deck - looms like a shadow here. It's quiet and still and strangely barren. The distance which stretches between the Hosts here and those who chose to remain on Hyrypia is a physical presence as well. It's as a curtain between two rooms, two slowily turning mirrors on different rotations, infrequently capturing eachother's reflections. In the gap, in the waiting stillness, Cathaway's mind is a steady, rythmic drip of cool water into the mirrored surface of some greater, unmoving body of water:]

( Should you need to reach out to anyone left behind on Hyrypia, we will happily assist. Find us if you need us. ) [There's no image projected along with the words, just the certainty that if someone came looking then they would inevitbly find her.] ( If you have questions or require anything else from us, feel free to ask after that as well. We're here to help. )

[There's a bizarre texture to the shape of the thought: it wavers and shifts, malleable and untethered as if for a split second she is uncertain. Then that two turns, solidifies. Curtly:]

( Welcome back. )

Comments

action

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ It's... good, being back on the Station. Sam'd say better than he expected, but he knew it was gonna be a relief to be here again, even with the uncertainty in his mind.

There's only two of his brood left, and he hates that they're fractured - hates that one had needed to stay and one had needed to come back. Hates that he could have stayed and kept them together, that part of him feels like he should have stayed.

Sam's not actually sure why he seeks her out. To remind him of what he said he was never gonna be, maybe, or to feel a vicarious connection to those left behind, or maybe both. He'd just felt like he needed to, and there's definitely a jumble of questions in his mind that he wants to ask about staying on the Station and helping, about new Hosts and missions, about the comas. He can't quite settle on where to go first.

He figures he'll have it sorted out by the time he finds Cathaway, but when he gets to her - all he can think about is Katie and Shiro, and the way they're more distant from him than they've ever been. ]

How far do you have to reach, to be able to connect to them more than - this?

[polyphonos]

[He comes looking for her and the Station leads him through its twisting belly at last to a small central chamber with pale mottled gray walls and a mirrored floor which absorbs so much sound. The small anteroom leads to a narrower corridor still, and beyond that is an intimate circular room filled with low, mismatched furniture and muddled with a thousand small creature comforts, and in whose floor is inlaid brassy golden lines and circular points: a map of some sky, both familiar and alien.

Cathaway is seated on the low sofa, wreathed in comfortable but worn looking pillows and draped in an elaborately knit, gauze thin blanket. A small cup and saucer balances on her knee, apparently forgotten. It's clear her mind is--

Elsewhere. Distant. She wears a far off expression, and for a moment she doesn't answer him at all.

Then something in the room or the air or the space between spaces shifts. She breathes in, drawing closer to this place like a kite being reeled in by its string, and at last turns her attention to him. She offers him a bare smile that doesn't quite change the lines of her face and pats the space on the cushion beside her invitingly.]

It isn't a matter of distance in the way you might think of it. It's one of...relation. Of knowing how to navigate the link.

action

[earthborn]

[Goodbye, however necessary, however temporary is always bittersweet. Shepard is so rarely on this end of things, the one sent back, out of danger. But, what else could she do, if staying meant endangering the purpose for being there, and the people you'd have stayed for?

She shouldn't have cared, honestly. If Shepard thought about it, forced herself past the haze of familiarity, she didn't even like most of these people. But the longer she stayed, the more it became impossible to separate the Hosts from her perceptions of them, memory softening the edge of reality into mush. That's familiar too-- what's the term? Familiarity breeds contempt?

Shepard is, for once, grateful for the clean emptiness of space, and the distance it gives her. Cathaway is, in her own way, a comfort; she's still just strange enough not to be comfortable, even after so long. Shepard seeks Cathaway out, at once. No point in idle hands, after all.]

Hey, I have a question-- You free?

[polyphonos]

[The room where they find themselves is hardly a grand chamber. It's bare and faintly hexagonal, its strange mottled walls identical to its floor. But there's a faint sensation of something invisible here - an odd density to the air, an imperceptible presence lingering in that space like a ghost.

Cathaway stands at the exact center of the room. Her head is faintly cocked, the gray curtain of her pin straight hair falling forward across her thin shoulder. It's as if she's listening to something, her attention divided into a thousand little splinters as her fingers idly turn a small silvery diamond shaped charm between them.

It's only when Shepard speaks that she diverts some part of herself back to the present. Her face clears and the rigid line of his spine relaxes by degrees, though her hands still work at idly turning that piece of metal. Maybe some part of her is still attuned somewhere else as well, separated entirely from this conversation:]

Of course. What would you like to know?

[earthborn]

[Cathaway remains... as creepy as ever. Times like this, she reminds Shepard of no one so much as EDI. Well, maybe a colder, less engaged EDI-- but there's that same inattention, as if there were a whole lot of shit happening on a whole lot of places, and only one of them was Shepard or anything she thought of as important.

It's not less annoying coming from an organic. But the familiarity inspires patience.]

You know the station pretty well.

[This is, Shepard feels, sufficient understatement to constitute a compliment, in a roundabout way.]

Do you know anywhere in this place big enough to constitute a zero-G practice room? Maybe a spare cargo hold or someplace we can keep pressurized but drop the gravity, or something-- it doesn't have to be...[She gestures at the minimalism inherent in their surroundings. Shepard's been here for long enough that she'd have to be an idiot not to sense the something that follows Cathaway around like a trailing cloak. Whatever controls this place, it's not physically tangible, that's for damned sure.] ...fancy.

Unless that's easier, somehow.

[polyphonos]

['You know the Station pretty well.' There's a flicker of humor there in the older woman's face, some wry appreciation for what it's meant to be regardless of its accuracy. Yes, some people might say that. In the grand scheme of things, it's very nearly true.

The easiness of her expression lingers for some moments after. It's true that her attention is divided, but at least the fraction that stands here in this strange empty room has a personable attitude.]

We're sure we could find something like that. Would you like us to take you there?

[earthborn]

Only if I'm gonna be able to find it myself, later.

[Your weird psychotropic station is a horrible warren of confusion and death, she means. Our station. Whatever.]

Kinda hoping to hold a few instructional get-togethers. Kinda defeats the point, otherwise.

[polyphonos]

[She laughs. It's a bright, sparkling sound - strange given the narrow space and how distant fragments of her remain.]

It's fine. We're sure once you've been there, you'll remember the way. It isn't really that hard.

[With a decisive step, Cathaway moves from the center of the hexagonal room. It's clear she has every intention of leaving it in the exact same direction that Shepard had arrived from. She touches the woman's elbow lightly as she passes (and there is nothing unusual or chilling about the touch; it just is) and then leads the way from the bridge.]

Is this for your personal use, or do you have something else in mind for the space?

[earthborn]

I wanna use it for training. A lot of the people we have here aren't spacers. They don't how to move in Zero-G and they don't know how to manage basic safety precautions, for themselves or others.

[She offers Cathaway a shrug-- not that she can see, up ahead as she is. But then, Shepard has no doubt she'll get the gist.]

Seems to me, we're doing a lot of space travel. Last I checked, the margin of error was still pretty slim out there, so it just makes sense.

[iuno]

( Yeah, I got a question. )

[ he's jittery again, restless more than uneasy, although he grinds it under his heel a little with Cathaway's presence on the periphery. she's not the worst of the lot or anything, but he still doesn't particularly like any of the older Hosts, much less trust them. ]

( Anything that needs doing? ) [ brusque — he really means it, though. desperately wants something to do with himself, hands itching for want of it, this need to be useful and to matter. ] ( I didn't exactly come back up for a vacation. )

[ wouldn't have come back up in the first place if it weren't for somebody's sleeping body. ]

[polyphonos]

[That wavering, unsteady line of her mind frays then twists then remakes itself - unwunding and rewrapping from some unknown point in the distance as her attention redirects to him. from--

Somewhere else.]

( You can do whatever you like. ) [Then: a spark. The sensation of a point being sharpened. That wasn't the question at all, was it? When the line of her thoughts shape into words again, it's more direct. Candid. If it weren't for the eponymous 'we', the sensation might even be...normal. Or as normal as is possible.] ( Sorry. We're distracted. What're you good at? )

[iuno]

[ ... well, that was — odd. he doesn't know enough about Cathaway or the Nest in general to have any clearer thoughts than that about it, but that didn't seem entirely good. the blunt edge of his mind recedes a little, cautious and wary. ]

( Shooting things. ) [ that's his obligatory sarcastic answer, although it isn't untrue. ] ( ... Investigative work. I'm not really a Jack of all trades. Or many trades. Kind of just the one, in fact. )

[polyphonos]

( There's nothing to shoot here, Juno Steel. )

[It's a bland remark, every edge blunted and plain. But after-- after, something softens or gives or melts. The shape of her mind in the yawning Station is malleable. Cathaway thinks:]

( Would you like to help us rearrange some things instead? )

[iuno]

( I know. It's terrible. )

[ what good is he if he has nothing to shoot. he does actually consider her offer, though; the tap-tap-tap of drumming his fingers along a surface, weighing his options. well. he doesn't really have any other options. so he's not as opposed to the idea as he sounds: ]

( What kind of things are we talking about? I'm not a secretary. I have my own secretary for that stuff. )

[polyphonos]

( It's not like paperwork. It's more mechanical- or near to gardening, maybe. We could do it on our own, but it's easier with a second. But it will require us to be near one another and for you to accept our guidance. )

[What's the mental equivalent of a worked eyebrow and a knowing look? Whatever's slithering out from her mind, probably.]

[iuno]

( Urgh. )

[ he's so enthusiastic. ]

( Well, you've probably already mind-read it out of me, but my track record with guidance is... ) [ a lot of picking fights with authority, digging his heels in. stubborn certainty that his way is the right way and then he gets punished for it. his time with the Hyperion Police was all friction and it combusted pretty quickly. ] ( ... not good.

Especially if I don't like or trust the people guiding me. Just a funny quirk of mine. )

[ he's still not turning the offer down. begrudging menial labour is better than being bored out of his mind up here; if he spends any more time sitting alone in his room with nothing to do, the Hyperion-shaped black hole in his chest is going to eat him alive. ]

[polyphonos]

( Yes, we suspected that might be the case. ) [It's a blooming amusement kind of thought, a dark colored flower widening in the sun.] ( If you'd like, we can find something less...connective for you to do. There's lots of equipment to be categorized and filed away on the hangar bay and the Prince only has so much time to do it in. )

['So much' as in 'too much'.]

( That said - call us biased, but we think you might prefer our work. It's much more interesting. )