mental link | early day :006

[nirsighted]

[It's late in the evening - or technically very early in the morning when not so people are at least considering sleep -and somewhere, something goes quiet. Very, very quiet. A pressure that was there a moment ago is now gone, snipped away like a cut line. It's a sensation with some growing familiarity: the distinct odd moment of being unbalanced that comes from a host sliding into a coma. It's happened twice already in the last few days, and now a third. Maybe there's something in the air of Concordia that doesn't agree with you?

In an echo of Castor earlier brood's experience with Jessica, the sensation of something missing sticks with Adara brood for a few lingering moments. But the pang quickly evens out, fading to a dull uneasy tingle at the back of the mind.

--Or would, if it weren't for the bolt of anxiety that follows. It's loud, frenetic. Panic sweat on skin. A pliable stick bent too far and cracked across the knee. It punches through the mental link connecting every host, rattling high and sharp, and is tangible like copper taste on molar teeth.

It makes sleeping, uh... difficult.]

( Stop that. )


((ooc: /hacks another limb off Adara. Hi friends! Ares has dropped and will be going into a coma; on day 007, Nirad will be taking a trip back to the Station to transport all our comatose friends home and pick up some new faces. Until then everyone please hug Adara brood and just...don't stop...))

Comments

[serenae]

[Carata sleeps easily, almost every night. And while she does love the evening, dark and saturated and neon-stained, she is, at her core, an early riser. Aligned to the sun. So she is fully asleep in the moments before Ares consciousness slides gently away, leaving a hollow space behind him. It is a dull, quiet, distant ache for her, barely there and quickly easing. Nothing like the harsh rough tearing that comes with a death.

Still, she wakes. Takes a breath, blinking at the cloud and star flecked darkness of her ceiling. Another one, then. Perhaps they would all awaken by the morning, but perhaps not. Either way, they were not prepared to care for so many of them in that state. They'd have to make another journey to the station-

Her thoughts remain orderly, calm, centered and thoughtful even as the hairs on her arms stand on end, tightness in her chest, the echo of his anxiety buzzing over her skin. It doesn't ease and it doesn't end and she is patient but he would affect the rest before long.

He must know it. He does know it. She is already on her feet by the time the words are shared. Padding quiet towards the stale sickening smell of fear-sweat in the air, bare below the knees and dark hair tangling wildly around her face. She takes a breath as she walks, lets her tension out on the exhale and invites him to share the feeling, what good it would do. She would be there soon.]

[nirsighted]

[He is not calm. He is not orderly. He doesn't want her feelings, all square straight lines and deliberate easiness. If there's an offer, it's flatly rejected: undermined and sliced away by the driving, churning, liquid fear.

They've been on the planet too long. They're taking something for granted that they should be told the new little minds. Something else should be been included in the briefing and when someone gets hurt or dies, it's going to be their fault. His fault. He wrote the first drafts. He's going to be responsible and it's going to happen. He knows it will.

Nirad's room is a disaster. There's junk all over every flat surface, disassmbled tech and clothes draped everywhere. That he's not in his bed is obvious enough by the low blue light from the custom wall, but the scrabbling choked noises he's making means it's easy to find where he's sitting on the floor on the far side of the bed. He's slumped low. He isn't crying but he's chewing on the scarred pad of his thumb, smearing blood on his front teeth.

He's not crying. He promised himself he wouldn't do that again.]

[serenae]

[His thoughts cycle anxiously through her mind, fear and death and responsibility and loss and pain and failure, but she doesn't try to block them out, to cut them off. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to isolate herself from him, but it would be entirely against the point of this. Instead she analyzes them as best as she can with a head fuzzy from sleep and calm threatening to collapse under the lashing waves of his fear. There was some rationale in them- some small grain in each disastrous thought, each ruinous image, but it's a small part of a bigger fear, and by the time she's crossing his threshold she's thinks she has already managed to separate the real from the imagined.

She steps over a pile of clothes, past a tangle of electronics. The path isn't memorized, because it always changed, but she can see well enough in the dim glow and she knows where she needs to be by the sound of him and the open wound of his mind.

She puts one knee on the bed. Two. Crawls over it until she can lower her feet to the other side, tucking them against where he's folded himself up. She'd thought the taste of blood on the back of her tongue was just the sour taste of fear, but apparently she was wrong. She doesn't bother to say a thing before she folds her hand over the one he has pressed to his mouth, gentle pressure and a refusal to let him hurt himself further without stripping her skin off as well. She rests the other hand on the back of his neck, warm fingers curling soft there, her power humming just beneath the surface.]

Nir- [She folds forward at the waist, to peer into his dark eyes, her hair falling across her face. The blood is tacky on her fingers but she is, in that moment, nothing but fond of him. Perhaps some would see this as troublesome behavior- and perhaps it was- but how could you scold someone for having such a kind heart? Perhaps he cared too much, certainly it made his mind less calm, but it was part of who he was, and there were things you could not change. Many things. This thing, too.]

I will check the briefing again, in the morning. [A compromise, although she doesn't imagine it will need to be changed] Come here. [She could fix this, it would be so easy. If he would let her, she would do it.]

[nirsighted]

[He stiffens at the touch when it comes, a bolt of tension through the muscle and sinew of forearm and wrist. It's a brief, spark hot flicker or resistance punctuated by a sharp inhale, a high short note of protest, but he gives then under the warmth of her hand at the back of his neck and submits to trembling like some kind of young, frightened animal.

Sacrifice had long fallen by the wayside in his home, a memory marked now only by a large meal in the spring and in the fall but sometimes he thinks of it still: a picture of his grandmother when she was young, smiling in her festival dress and holding a bird by the neck.

He exhales. A shuddering, twitching sound. Nirad lowers his head, swaying low over the high points of his knees. If there was an effort to safeguard his mind against her before - or at least a refusal to take what she'd been offering - he lowers it now. It isn't an extension of a hand. He doesn't reach for her, but he does give.]

[frakkincylons]

[ Sam and Castor are still struggling with the loss of Jessica (prying her body from Ren won't be easy, Nirad), and not there's another echoing through the strings that connect them all. it's sad. ]

( Why does that happen? Is it something about the missions, or the travel? )

[nirsighted]

[The answer is immediate. Frenetic. Like pulling a plug from a basin and all the water comes spilling out of it: a young woman in a coma, then ten more, then fifty, then a hundred quiet would-be corpses filling the chambers of a too-familiar Nesting Deck, soaked with a sheen of nauseating fear. There's a flicker of unreality to it - an imagined scene more than memory -, but it tastes like the ash and salt of a panic sweat.

It's too much - the symbiote, being a hundred million universes away from where they belong, all the connections their brains weren't meant to make. You can't just graft wings onto a fish and expect them to fly. Even if they manage a few wingbeats, they just inevitably land somewhere with no water to breathe.]

[frakkincylons]

[ it's more than sam was expecting to be flooded with so soon after waking up, and sam flinches at the wave of it, panic and fear all mixing together in him. but it gets the point across. ah... that makes sense, really. they aren't meant to be compatible, they just happen to fit. he'd want to say 'then why would you put this in people', but they were people on their way to die regardless. nothing's lost. and there's an enemy to fight.

but something similar had happened to anakin as well. they'd told him he'd been out for the whole practice mission, and sam frowns, thinking on it. ]

( Is there anything we can do to help get them back? If there's a chance they could? )

[nirsighted]

[A series of uncertainties - the cold smell of ozone like rain gathering, the uneven chop of an ocean getting ready to turn from manageable to dangerous. There's a sensation of rising, of falling, the uneven buoyancy and a small wooden boat slashing through deep, dark, dangerous water--

Spray across the bow, the small craft shivering against the slap along its side. There's a nauseating moment of fear, the certainty that the little boat might turn or begin to take on water. But then, the sensation of two bodies throwing their weight in tandem. The bow of the speedy little craft comes up, rocking hard on the other axis to follow the well-timed wrench of their weight.

Can you keep ahead of a storm? How much is skill and how much is just plain, stupid luck?]

( I don't know. But they might. )

[bracchium]

[In his dreams, Bucky's looking down the scope at a redhead protecting his target. She moves quickly, he'll give her that, but probably not as swiftly with that lug of meat weighing her down. One hundred meters downrange and closing, wind coming in from the West at 6 miles an hour. He lines up the shot, the bright red cross in the middle leveling with the head of his target for all of a moment before the redhead once again steps in the way.

He needs a confirmed kill in a matter of minutes; he doesn't have time for this. Sucking in a breath steadies his aim and the stock of the rifle is nearly buried in his shoulder. The cross dances across the redhead's abdomen until she goes still.

He pulls the trigger and the crack of the rifle vibrates through him. Below, gore paints the side of a white van and the redhead is curled onto her side, eyes wide with pain. Time to go.

Except he doesn't anticipate the sudden sense of alarm that shoots through him. Run, run, run his body screams and in a heartbeat, he's up and moving. Disassemble rifle, pack it up, run. His pack is thrown over one shoulder, ignoring how dead his left arm feels, and he's off. He darts across a small living space and into the nearby lift before pounding the DOOR CLOSE button. Go, go, go, go.

He moves until his legs begin to burn, until he's tucked himself into a temporary safehouse, shoving chairs underneath the handle of every door in the place. He's a ghost, he can't wait on evac, he can't stay here long, but he needs to plan his escape, not run haphazardly into his enemies.]

[nirsighted]

[Go, go, go, go. There's nothing in the vibrating, frenetic mental link to discourage him from the urgency of the knee jerk reaction. It's a breathless, driving force - the feedback loop of anxious, trembling white noise hissed from both sides of the reception. If Nirad drives Bucky, then Bucky drives Nirad. This isn't the kind of fear meant for them to get a grip on and so Nirad makes no attempt to stop him.

Distance makes it better. Distance is safe. If you're alone, no one gets ripped away from or out of you.]

for NIR.

[erbier]

[ She sleeps in small doses, half an hour naps at a time whenever she decides she needs one. It was a habit entirely too deeply ingrained in her to change at this point in her life, even if she no longer has to fear being devoured in the darkness by the wild shadows cast by Dreus's phoenix-fire. Safety doesn't matter, it is what her body is used to, and she sees it to have benefits. It means she is awake at times when others are not; ready.

She feels the slow descent of Ares, like watching someone drown helplessly from the shore... And then the panic. The fear that is very familiar to her. She has such a problem herself, and she has also seen the sudden terror take down others as well. More than just what one would call an anxiety attack, made worse by the peculiarities of the symbiote.

Seated on the floor of her own room, in a position not very dissimilar to how Carata finds him, Ilde reaches outward. She feels as if she is groping in the dark first, unused to trying to touch anyone outside of those she has come to know, but she finds him soon enough, the rope bridges that lead elsewhere. ]

( What troubles you? )

[nirsighted]

[There's a channel there, a little rivulet of a waterway running between them - narrow usually, flooded now. She opens to him (or goes looking or his stricken mind goes looking for something familiar) and he presses into her like water filling a container. Fear seeks fear and Carata's soothing hand hasn't yet swayed him from a certain inclination to shred himself in the effort to find it.

He shakes, sea salt flecks and foaming sweat lather like an animal trying to swim in a tide current with nothing in the way of relief - no shore to swim to, no sandy tributary bed to sink a foot into. Nothing.

That's what he's scared of. Nothing. Isn't she? What could be worse than that?]

[erbier]

[ Don't fight it. The flood of him hits her roughly, threatens to overwhelm for a moment but rather than try to fight it off she relaxes into it. Drowns in it, lets it fill up her thoughts, and then waits for the tide of it to slosh and froth back down to a level she can handle. Catches the core if it in the balm of her hands.

She has done this before. Has weathered this with others and with herself, and she grows only more steady each time. ]

( I know. ) [ The way fear spreads like a poison in the air, like a sickness. ] ( How may I help you? )

[ Cannot help those who do not wish to be, and he is not brood. ]

[nirsighted]

( Don't go away. )

[It's a simple, reflexive response - as much images as it is words, a sinking feeling of fear and loneliness. The sensation of being lost somewhere unfamiliar. The uneasy way a grip shifts around on something: fingers opens and then closing, tightening. Clamping down like the solution to losing things is to hold the rest tighter.]

[vocalis]

[ Aoba wakes with a jolt. A falling sensation, a feeling distinctly not his own but one he's felt before. A perception of slipping under, falling down deep, a cold unwaking coma.

He springs forward to sitting, the sheets of the small bed clinging to skin chilled in a layer of sweat. He's breathing hard, a pressure rapidly building behind tired eyes as he goes over every connection he has left. Petre is there, Angel tingles with an anxiety similar to his own, and Ares-

Ares has gone cold and silent as Romy, back on the station in her coffin of a chamber. ]

Not again.

[ He does a shit job of keeping calm. The room remains dark as he fumbles and falls out of bed. The panic that follows is coupled with a fast growing migraine and nausea. Emptying the contents of his stomach in the cramped bathroom helps the latter, but makes it impossible to keep the medication he tries to take down. All the while his emotions run rampant over the network, turbulent and sickening, with words in voices that echo and leak over each other. ]

Destroy

What?

Destroy

No.

Destroy

Stop.

D e s t r o y

[nirsighted]

[The acrid bile taste lingers, sticks - turns coppery, the tang of blood on the tongue. It rushes to fill the gap, Nirad like a presence there crowbarring open the gap between the two disparate elements of Aoba's mind. The space of something falling apart, of cracking open or splitting into two seems familiar, resonant and in the flash paper panic of the moment he can't stop himself from wanting to exist somewhere between the two - the place himself in the gap, grasping for that sense of being surrounded even if it's dangerous. Even if it cuts.

He'd had a brother once who looked and sounded just like him. This is close enough to that, isn't it?]

[vocalis]

[ From his room, Aoba hisses in a sharp inhale and exhales a soft groan. Another consciousness forces itself through the vulnerable openness of his connection. It wedges inside the fractured pieces of his mind, but it does nothing to fill the holes left by the missing members of Adara. The fact that only makes the aching worse. It takes a moment for him to recognize the new presence as Nirad, a frantic and familiar noise giving him away. ]

Nirad? What are y

DESTROY

ou doing? That's hurting me more an

D E S T R O Y

d this headache is only going to hurt you back too. Ple

YOU CANNOT REPLACE HIM

ase... stop.

[ The voice, that other part of him he so rarely acknowledges, that he refuses to acknowledge even now, grows louder with the pain. Louder still, above Nirad's signature presence. Aoba sinks back down in his bed and curls inwards, gripping a pillow tightly to his chest. There's blood in his mouth, (he thinks - is it his?) and blood behind his eyes as what little light he can see flashes red. ]

[nirsighted]

[There's a rigid resistance, a rope drawn tight between two points and vibrating from the jerk of it. And then-- and then-- and then--

A knot at one point slips undone. The rope drops, unravels; somewhere, Nirad recedes like the tide running out. He's there just long enough to exacerbate the pain of the division, to cause damage, and then rushes away just as quickly as he'd pressed in. A rapid retreat, the jagged edged barbs of his mind smoothing as he slips away.

He's stopped, that flightless bird panic rapidly settled.]

[serenae]

[She's very quiet. Both her steps, barefoot and sure across the smooth floor of Bearings, and her mind, as neat and contained as it was. Her thoughts weren't isolated or hidden away, she was open, but they were as calm and gentle as a breeze, a slow creek, as the sound of the sea from a very great distance.

She doesn't knock, and Aoba's door slides open for her without a shred of resistance. The sight that greets her is certainly no more tormented, no worse than the torrent of his mind, the ragged, pained, shredding panic that radiated out from him like shrapnel. He'd catch the others in his fallout, as Nirad had.

She lets out a short breath before she moves towards the edge of the bed, carefully sidestepping any obstacles, drawing up close, hands slightly raised at her side, fingers soft, ready to reach out at a moments notice.]

Aoba, you need to calm yourself.

[It's not a reprimand, her voice is nothing but kind. A suggestion. A truth. He was hurting himself, and it would do him no good. It would do Ares no good. It did no one any good. There were things you could only accept.]

[inflori]

( I'm not doing anything. )

[ His voice is resentful, exhausted. He doesn't need much sleep to keep his energy, but all the emotions and sensations associated with losing someone from his own brood are a lot more draining that he could have ever imagined. He hates this stupid mental link more and more each day. ]

( It's not my fault. )

[nirsighted]

[Isn't it though? Isn't it their fault? Maybe not this, the part where the brain collapses and can't connect to the Nest - for a little while? For longer? Sometimes they wake up and sometimes they just sleep forever -, but how many hosts go to sleep and how many of them die bloodily? Those feel like his fault. Nirad feels it in his bones and blood, in the empty gaps in his brain like stronger ghosts of the connections there now.

He feels it, so Petre feels it too: too transparent, too obvious, too familiar and too alien all at once.]

[inflori]

[ For a while he says nothing, curled up on the bed in his room. There's a strange, feverish restlessness in him, as though he were pacing around with four walls and no doors or windows. His mind is racing, the gap leaving him feeling like he's gasping for air that won't enter his lungs. What's the point to any of this? Why do they save people if they can't even keep them alive and awake? They shouldn't have made him part of the Nest, they should have just left him somewhere so he could live a life where none of this mattered.

It feels like... it feels like losing Diana. Over and over again. ]

( Give her back. I want Diana. I don't want anyone else, they're all leaving anyway. )

rolls up a million years late with starbucks

[circumspector]

( Ares. )

[ No, no, no, no, not again -

The screen she's holding burns out of her fingers, and it's a race, she forces herself to disconnect even as the wires burn out of what she's holding. Dropping it and kicking it away from herself where she's standing in the Bearings, the case smoking off the small bit of machinery -- another frippery, another nonsense thing she's bought just because so at least it's not important.

There is tears leaking down her face. Why them? This wasn't fair. There was so few of them left. Just the three of them now. Her chest hurts all over again. She can hear the rage from the others, the hurt, Aoba and his strange other voice roaring for destruction, Petre's burning and fire and sulfuric aftertaste of hurt. The residual pain left over from Parker that never seems to quite fade.

She flings her machines from her, hand pressed to her chest, sinking into her fingers. They'll need her to be calm, she knows that. She has to look after that. But for that first split second, it just hurts. Clutching at her clothes like she could tear this pain out of herself like something physical.

Stop it. At the rest of the hive, at herself, at everything. Just, just stop it. Stop it hurting. Stop taking this from her. It's taking bits out of her. Touching her right now is a bad idea, the buzz and hum sparking off her as she stands there, trying to will her calm into place. Hard to manage it. ]

[nirsighted]

[Stop it. The shapes of the thought like the edge of a blunted knife sawing away at something tender. All the sinew shreds, viciously slow, and it aches and it takes until the pain becomes something both numb and too tender. He can taste it in his mouth - a slicker copper tang on his tongue and a feverish sweat at the back of his neck; can she? Does she feel it?

Of course she does. It buzzes. It burns. It smells like ozone in the summer over a jet dark sea.]

[circumspector]

[ The pain echoes back, and she knows that smell -- she knows that smell better, she knows -- to be burning. It leaves her groundless, drifting far out of herself as she shuts her eyes tightly. Sway of some far off thing, a distance breeze in the treetops, that seems safer than remaining in the body that hurts her in some intangible way.

Clutches at herself like she means to pull the pained part out with her nails, remake them like talons, tear herself to bits, see what's left after - not much, now. Not much. She feels her body rebel again, like she wants to heave that burning taste out of herself. It will taste chemical coming back up her throat, it always does because it is was every emotion tastes like and she --

-- swallows, she can feel the curl of destruction under her fingertips. Shuts her eyes tighter, scrunched up nose in the effort of concentration. Latches onto the numbness, curling around it sharply with a sobering deep breath. ]