mental link - :018

[circumspector]

[ There's a crackle of static, of a radio station getting tuned in and a deep breath. Not a loud one, this one, just tentative brush at whatever is closest. ]

( ... Aoba? Petre? )

[ Well, someone's awake. Tired sounding, but awake and she tries to clear her mind to focus enough to reach out broaden to whoever might be nearby. More direct, a little more present. Nervous always, when she feels disconnected from others. ]

( ... Hello? Anyone nearby? )

[ and for anyone looking for her, she's around the Bearings as she catches up on what she's missed out on, getting herself cleaned up from her extended nap time, and plugging herself back into the nest of machines in the common area. ]

Comments

[deployed]

[ The memories come in a tickle, haphazard, more impression than coherent image. Bellamy tries not to look, but the sense of them lingers. Someone was hurting her. Lexa had implied as much, but it's difficult to listen to the echo of her screams. His grip on her hand flexes, tightening in a useless reaction. ]

( Of course, ) [ Nothing comes easy. Even this. Especially this. ] ( I didn't mean to remind you of...that. Whatever it was. )

[ Something painful. His eyes flick up, catching her face, wondering about metal plates and who would do anything to her to make her scream like that. He doesn't ask. ]

( Sorry. )

[circumspector]

( You didn't do it, you have nothing to be sorry for. )

[ Shakes her head, ducking down and lets it go. Hates how it creeps up on her - but there's nothing for it. It had been her whole life, after all. ]

( My home planet isn't a very nice place... and my father was one of the worst people you could imagine. But... ) [ She squeezes his hands in return looking up more fixedly, more happily. Like somehow he is as much a reason to smile as anyone was. The warmth is genuine, always is when she thinks on how lucky she is to be here. She'd made her peace with her end, to have more is - ] ( ... I'm here now, and I never have to go back. So there's nothing to be sorry for. )

[deployed]

[ Never.

He can feel the flare of her jubilation. It's hard to process, when all Bellamy wants is to go back. All the misery waiting there, it was a different kind of pain. He understands the discrepancies, even if he can't even begin to get his head around the idea of cutting ties completely. ]

( Wasn't there anything good? ) [ He asks, praying that maybe she did have something. Just one thing. Angel deserved so much more, but surely she had small comfort. ] ( Anything at all? )

[circumspector]

[ It feels so strange, to taste the hope like second-hand smoke. Addicted to its taste, and wouldn't - wouldn't it be nice. It would be so lovely to miss something, anything, because then it all might have been --

-- someone else's life, quite probably. Hers was what it was. Knew enough people were like him, would do anything to go back. They missed, they had something or someone to hold onto.

( Because if she did have anything to miss, that would be to have hope at all, and if she'd had even a sliver of that at all left in what she had been, she might never have - ) ]

( I don't think those are the sorts of things you really want to know the answer too. Someone of us... don't have lives like that. )

[deployed]

[ Hope is a hard thing to keep alive. What little Bellamy has left is carefully hoarded, kept alive by his people, by Clarke. The lack of answering echo from her is discomfiting, made worse by the realization that none of the small hope he's cherished can be halved and gifted to her. ]

( You can tell me, if you want to, ) [ He says simply, finally. ] ( Do you have that now? Here? )

[ Which seemed impossible to Bellamy, but in comparison, without anything to root her to her past, then why not? Maybe this is all there was. Maybe this connection, the nest, her brood, they could be something good for her the way Octavia was for him. ]

[circumspector]

[ She nods, the second part more than the first. Here -- here is much better. Here is more than she ever expected, and she can give him something back - because she hadn't wanted to make him feel sorry for her.

She leans in close then and there's something warm and tingling to her, a memory that she has embellished with the one's that Aoba gifts to her. It is just the feeling of weak sunlight on her skin the first day on Avera. Everyone had complained that it was miserable. But not her, never her, it's -- utterly pure. It's so clean, nothing, nothing will feel like that first breath, that speckling of light rain on her cheeks and the light, the light, the light - ]

( I do. )

[ she pours it over him, the happiness, it's everything, right then, it's filling up her lungs, it's trickling through her lungs, she is not just a sense of it, it is all of her.

This is the first day after the war, and the sky has never been so big. ]

[deployed]

[ This is what Bellamy has been trying to avoid feeling. Angel's contentment and satisfaction, the purity of her happiness, it's overwhelming. Bellamy holds his breath, savoring it unthinkingly. He hasn't felt anything like this in his entire life. Happiness always came with a price, with an edge of danger, even when he was just a kid. Knowing Angel feels this makes it hard to condemn anything, and he feels himself leaning in towards her until his forehead is pressed to hers.

She's not Octavia. For a moment, that fact is hard to remember. Bellamy has cared for so few people's happiness like this. Momentarily, it all blurs together. The sensation of that first breath and the feeling of rain mixing with the memory of Octavia's joy as she spun to face him in the open air of Earth. Surely this was the same exhilaration. Bellamy's happiness had been muted by the memory of gunfire and blood, but he'd seen this on Octavia's face. But it wasn't—

Angel's not Octavia. Bellamy's eyes open, mind humming, reminding himself. ]

( I'm glad, ) [ He admits, because whatever his own struggle to accept this place as his home, he finds the same pleasure in her happiness as he had in Octavia's. ] ( I didn't know it could feel like that. )

[ Being here, or just being happy in general. Probably both. ]

[circumspector]

[ She glances up when he leans in closer, pulling in a breath with the sudden proximity that - settles as she lets it go. Her head tilts against his, her face turning up into him for that one shared moment when it's all the splatter of rain and the wholeness of feeling. His as much as hers, catching the edge of a left over exhilaration. ]

( Neither did I. ) [ There is a smile on her lips. ]

( I spent my life locked up in a tower - like those stories about princesses and monsters in towers. I didn't know life could be like this. )