station72 | mental link | early day :006

[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...))

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[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.]

[ 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? )

[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. )

[ treading on the edge of falling, that's the idea Sam gets from what Nirad projects. Jessica's barely balancing between here and there, and losing her would be as easy as gaining her back.

this isn't like any kind of simple coma, it seems, and the typical medical tips likely won't apply. it's the issue between the symbiote adapting to her mind and rejecting it, and Sam's far too under-educated about any of this to even start trying to theorize what might help, if anything. the best they can do, it seems, is be here for her if or when she reaches out for them. ]

( Have you lost any from your Brood like this? )

[A scrambled, jerking response in reply. Brilliant sunset colors bleeding from the sky. Nirad-- no, his brother who looks much like him - wraps a line from his hand to his elbow, quickly and efficiently winding the cable in a way that's not so different from how he would have done it at home against a very similar sky. Had Niran ever been homesick? Nirad doesn't remember.

He tries not to think of what his brother looked like when he'd died. The feeling sits yawns like a pit under both their feet though, a deep dark pit fed by the link between his mind and Sam's.

No. Not like this.]

( Not mine. Other people's though. )

[ a picture of family, and a deep feeling of loss and mourning. watching it play in his mind, and sifting through the emotion of it, sam's feeling his chest sinking, like something caving everything in.

he'd known this, once. when kara didn't come back from her flight. ]

( I'm sorry. There's nothing that fills that void. )

[There urge to go wading into that low, sinking void is intoxicating - tempting. It's good to feel things and to know them openly. Maybe there's a narrow masochistic streak in him where he just wants to furrow deeper in that echo of Sam's grief as a means of sharing. It's good to be seen, even if it's while miserable. Isn't it?

It helps that some of the frantic scrabbling has leveled off. Somewhere in Bearings, Carata must have her hand at the back of Nirad's neck to steady him.]

( Sorry. )

[For lots of things. It's not fair that Sam's here or that people keep going to sleep or that he knows anything like that it's like to lose a person. All those things are sad.]

[ He can understand that feeling, the want to just zone into that misery with someone else and let it fester. So it's at least not you alone. Lee had been so strong after Kara left, and Sam was an embarrassing mess. With Kara gone, he'd felt more alone in the universe than ever before.

It's nothing to feel bad for, he thinks. It's just, well. Human. ]

( It's alright. The bad's always mixed up with the good. )

[ Can't really have one without the other. If certain tragedies hadn't have happened, they would have been here today, to help these people on Concordia, or in the Nest. Fate's never just across the board kind. It can't be. ]

[It's a comforting thought in the way that 'I'm sorry for your loss' is a consolation. It feels bland, but that doesn't mean it isn't true or that it couldn't mean something. The vague dissatisfaction in it rattles around: a glass marble in jangling in an empty can. But it's a far away sensation or one that's very low. There's nothing to be done for it.]

( I guess. )

[A long, hollow pause.]

( All right. You can go back to sleep.)

( If there's a better way to view it, other than 'I'll see you one the other side', I haven't heard it. )

[ There's a note of apology in his tone. There really, truly, is nothing that can be said that makes that kind of sorrow better, or fixes that kind of loss. Not of someone so close. Sam had tried taking up piloting, to bit himself in a cockpit to at least feel somehow close to her, and while it was a good distraction, it didn't heal that wound. ]

( I don't need to, if you want some company? )

[ dark thoughts, bad times. it's better to have them with someone else around. ]

[There's a lull, a sensation of water receding and then washing back up - the even, rhythmic push and pull of some small wave at the edge of some distant, alien tide pool.

The warmth of Carata's hand on the back of his neck--]

( No. I'm okay. )

[Dull. Strip everything that stings and put it somewhere else.]

[ he has her with him, so that's good. at least he has a friend, someone to insure he isn't alone in this. then again, how alone can you ever really be with the nest? ]

( Okay. Take it easy, man. See you tomorrow. )

[ it's something of a comfort to have shared something so personal with nirad, to get a feel of knowing him better, though sam would of course wish neither of them know that grief well enough for it. a sad fact of life. ]

mental link | early day :006

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