[ She's quiet, this time, there's no crackle of static, now raw flicker of her abilities, she's tired, and she doesn't want to move. It hurts, everything still hurts. Lost Parker, and she doesn't think this will ever stop hurting. Done not much else but lay in the small of her quarters, and splash the walls in imagined place to try and distract herself. ]
[ She doesn't need anything, but for all her anger when the thing that was not quite Cathaway had told her to be kind to Angel, she was still inclined to do it. In her own way. On her own time. Of her own volition. Not commanded to it like a dog. ]
[It is unlike him to do this in this fashion, but he recognizes the necessity of it. Still, when he reaches out it is unlike the gentle brush of Cathaway, uncolored by emotion, an empty space that seemed to gape, somehow nearly as unsettling as a mind too bare. His words are preceded by the obviousness of his attention, an anticipation, the mental equivalent to clearing his throat. And the words- stony and without warmth or comfort, unyielding and stern. He will not react to interruption. He won't even hear it.]
There are many things to discuss with you. [You- you, all of you, everyone he addressed- the clear knowledge that it was not a personal message, but a shared one.] This mission was a failure. Do not think to see it as anything less. The simplest of exercises intended only to allow those unaccustomed to gain some small experience with unfamiliar places. A harmless excursion.
[There's a pause, like a breath, a cold wind going colder.]
It was my failure that I saw you as anything but children, incapable of understanding that your choices have consequences. It is not a mistake I will make again. Your actions have proven you to be irresponsible, dangerous, and foolish. And as a result one of your own has died, for nothing. Those in his brood have now lost something irreplaceable. Do not imagine this feeling will go, do not imagine this emptiness will be filled by another. It will not. You will never be as strong as you could have been with him.
[It is simple fact, even as they grew they would lend each other strength. Now they had one less to draw from. There was a potential they would never reach. He has been cold, he is still cold, but for those in Adara there is an echo, more than simple sympathy. A clear understanding of what it is they have suffered.]
Hosts are lost. This is the reality of our situation, but Adam Parker did not die because we sought to strike a blow against the ones who hunt us. He did not even die because he made a foolish mistake. He died because you made a selfish choice. Remember this, your decisions effect more than you. Even your own life is not just yours any longer. You should be at least responsible enough not to drag those who should be able to rely on to their death.
[There is little point to this, he knows. Those that had behaved poorly would not listen to words, and if they had not yet learned a lesson there would be more loss and more suffering before they did. Still, this is too soon for this.]
There will be some time before you will be sent on your first true mission. I suggest you use it to better yourselves, for all of your sake.
[And the connection drops- cleanly as if he had flipped a switch. His mind was still there, as it always was, but distant, uninviting. This was never meant to be a dialogue.]
[ It's not a lesson she needs, she's still keening for the loss, it feels like something had ripped out something vital and on the way through had caught on every nerve, every muscle and rendered them from her. ]
(Yes, Prince. Next time, I'll ... )
[ She doesn't know, keep a closer eye on them? Yes, she would never let them out of her sight, now. Even if she was faced with someone like Parker again, someone who didn't want them around, didn't matter, she would do anything to never feel this again, to keep the others from it too. She doesn't have anything else to say, she'll crawl out of this eventually, she knows she must, and to that end, takes her time for what she'd done. ]
(I'm sorry, I lost control. When it...
I need a new datapad, mine became... damaged. ) [ rather she'd gotten too far entrenched, and it had overloaded with the scream of pain at losing so much. ]
[ He might've been looking for her on foot first, now there's a thin trail from his place in the Nest, traveling along to where he can begin to sense her.
He gives something like a mental knock, knock against a door. ]
[ She's to be found in her chosen room, small, tucked into the corner of her bed, her legs under her and an arm looped over them comfortably, save for the fine slices on her fingers where she hadn't been careful. Her head against the wall, and on her the bed around her is the cannibalised parts of her since destroyed datapad, scattered around like so many pieces of an animal skinned. Wires like tendons and metal plates like organs. Living things, to her, but now they're a desecrated mess from her own mistake.
Doesn't bother speaking so much, she's better in mind than body. She was exhausted before, wore herself out and she knew she'd crash eventually. No eridium, and a semi-constant use of her abilities had given her a hard lesson in her new limits - it would have been manageable by itself. But that hadn't been how that turned out, was it?
(Do you still trust the choice that they offer us?)
[Though Lexa uses the word "us," there is a sense that she actually means "you." No part of Lexa agrees that she has a choice, and after the Prince ignored her, she doesn't feel inclined to change her opinion.
But she is curious to see where Angel lies in all of this. Does she feel ashamed for what she may or may not have done? Does she feel empathy?
Lexa feels neither thing, so it is that which guides her here.]
[ What unfolds as soon as she responds from her direction is nothing simple, nothing restrained, it's grief raw and rips apart like a lava flow, because it is every touch and nuance of her mind, nothing escaped it. Grief, utter and whole. It's not a cold deadened thing right now that it might be with time, but it's a raw, twisting, hot thing, it burns and it burns and it burns. She's been crying, she's forgotten to eat, she can't move and it's harder even to think. Something had died in her when Parker had, something was gone, something was irreparably gone, and she will never have it back. Her skin feels heavy again, her clothes are cloying to her skin, like she's wretched and broken, nothing had hurt like this since Eridium, that had been different, that had been pure burning light and the betrayal of the only person she'd ever had, but this --
She carries guilt, she carries so much guilt, like this is somehow one more thing, one less thing, carries it like she deserves it and wants it gone from her because she wakes up in small bouts of sleep, clutching for something that isn't there.
Trusts Lexa or something near it and if not that, likes her, wants so much that surety. Wants to give something like it in return. It's what friends do, don't they? But she's capable of none of it. ]
( Are you asking me if I expected this? Or if I could go back if I could?)
[To a degree, Lexa would largely prefer to go to Angel's quarters to inquire about her state, but it's quite possible that she's with her brood at the moment. Besides, the last time she showed up at her room unannounced, it had been awkward.
Still, she recalls Angel's pain from before, and though Lexa had wanted her to cut away that emotion, she's accepted that Angel won't. That's how Angel defies what came before. Lexa will never understand it, not fully, but she has certainly come to respect it.]
(Angel. )
[For now, she only speaks her name to get her attention, to see if she's willing to speak or even able to. It seems like the thing that two people might do, were Lexa more accustomed to being an equal than something more to those around her.]
[ It's a soft chime, still her mind is loud, the many voices she dulls quietly to background chatter. Like she's standing just outside a room where there is a gathering of others. It's just the weight of the network heavy on her where it's that or -- deal with it all. ]
[ She can feel him before he formulates words, confusion, anger, a feral kind of helplessness preceding thoughts that sharply reach out for the one person who has yet to threaten or yell at him in any way. You give a demon a hand, he comes crying for your entire arm, apparently. ]
( Why does this happen? What's the point? Everyone's going away. Everyone's leaving, and you're gonna leave, and I'll be alone again. I hate this! I hate it! )
[ Cathaway's lesson come in handy now. She doesn't want to irk him further, this connection she knows can be a reflective, echoing back at each other. Rather her mind is a soft quiet, the murmuring of far off lights, all mourning and remembrance.
Doesn't speak with it, there's no response to it, rather she opens her mind to him, lets him yell and rage and shifts all accepting of it. Responds instead by giving him the location of where she is -- the Bearings. Her room. The invitation with it that he should come to her. ( Selfish too, she doesn't want to be alone right now, but she can't quite face the others either. Wants her own, what's left of it. ) ]
[ At the peripheral, there is an uncertain something wrong. A dancing flame on the skyline, at a distance unclear if it is a pyre of celebration, grief, or of warning. Before it can be ascertained, the flames diminish and disappear, leaving behind only a singed smell of smoke, the dirtiness of ash that Ilde carries around with her now that the embers have extinguished. Quieted, but not quite silenced sullen in pollutant. She appears for Angel privately, quiet and tired. ]
[ and there is no consideration, no backwards glance as she steps close to her, to take both Ilde's hands in her own, and steps back with her, leading her as Ilde had lead her when she had been just the same - all burned out with the misery and weight of it all.
But each step is purposeful, she takes her away, away, away. Out of the commons, out of Concordia, away from the city with its walls of light that she knows is foreign to her. They turn a corner and go through a door that as her markings ebb to life, they step from cold walls to a garden. A distortion, an illusion, but one she thinks Ilde could want, it's safety of high walls of glass on an impossible sky, the wrap of vines with heavy drooping flowers, warm earth and stone below her feet. Heavy leafed plants that droop with their own weight, the pepper of strange ones that she knows from Pandora that glow in a bioluminescence from the corners and the soft curl of mist like water ( better at making them feel real now, and she has Ilde and the hive to thank for that. Reality, more aching than anything that can be conjured ), it's special, it's built out of her mind for Ilde. Just for Ilde. The only one she lets into these corners of her. Lets her feed into her, into all of her empty dark.
She leans around her to shut the door behind them. There is no one now, just them, just this place and its false removal from reality. Privacy as much as they could have being so connected. ]
[ Which couldn't be better tired. She's looked over the details again and again and again and her head is pounding so his offer comes as a relief from the stress of it all. ]
(Sure thing. Be down in a minute.)
[ Finds jacket, find shoes, find fake ID - and she's there a few minutes later. Waving in greeting as she comes closer. ]
[ Oh no, oh no. She's a flood of embarressment and awkwardness over the connection all at once, and the warm, warm feeling that comes with the thought of Ilde in the same breath.
Little miss liar, manipulator, talks too much and always has a way with words, and right now she's got none. ]
[ to which she laughs, a collar of all things, but even so, after that and except when she's working, from then on, she won't be found without it. Wears it as often as she can, even if it doesn't match what she's wearing. It's pretty, and Petre had gotten it for her and that's all that matters to her. ]
[ Aoba is starting to lose count of the long alien days Angel has been a missing presence in his mind. Another missing presence, like so much of Adara. Hers has felt different from Romy's and Ares' though - close enough to touch if he just reached a little further, always just a little further. It's for that reason he's kept faith in her eventual return.
That, and if he didn't keep holding onto that belief, Petre's constant mental presence alone might drive him crazy. He's been ordering his food a little rarer than he liked before...
When that void in his mind starts to fill, it's like a long awaited tide finally coming in. His focus redirects entirely on her and the scope of his mind widens, ready to welcome her back. ]
Angel...? Angel?!
[ He doesn't wait for a mental reply, though hearing one would be refreshing after so long. He drops what he was doing and runs down the hallway to her room so fast, he nearly skids and falls over on a turn. ]
[ It's natural in it's way, rolling over in a mess of the close she had fell into her coma in, hair over her face and she's laying there one moment and then - coming back the next. Like clawing out from being under water too long. A roll and twist as she forces herself up in her bed. Every muscle in protest -
- and there is like this, only two people she'd call too as she awoke. He responds before she even manages to force a coherent thought into her mind. Just the spark of her abilities filling the machines around her - words without precise phrases, of reaching, she's here - she's here, a weakened body crawling up and awake and as he skids into her room, she's waiting for him. Beraggled and exhausted but - ]
Hey.
[ croaks out, and she's not sure how to reach for him ( these human gestures others took for granted are so hard, like learning a second language she's not always sure about the exact translation ) so directly but it's there, wants him close, close as she can. Come here, please. is the echo. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
circumspector) wrote2016-03-14 03:55 pm
DAY 164
no subject
( What do you need? )
no subject
[ She doesn't need anything, but for all her anger when the thing that was not quite Cathaway had told her to be kind to Angel, she was still inclined to do it. In her own way. On her own time. Of her own volition. Not commanded to it like a dog. ]
( I thought you might appreciate the distraction. )
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
cw: gross
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no one look at me
looking into your eyes so deeply
(no subject)
Day 165, mid-morning
There are many things to discuss with you. [You- you, all of you, everyone he addressed- the clear knowledge that it was not a personal message, but a shared one.] This mission was a failure. Do not think to see it as anything less. The simplest of exercises intended only to allow those unaccustomed to gain some small experience with unfamiliar places. A harmless excursion.
[There's a pause, like a breath, a cold wind going colder.]
It was my failure that I saw you as anything but children, incapable of understanding that your choices have consequences. It is not a mistake I will make again. Your actions have proven you to be irresponsible, dangerous, and foolish. And as a result one of your own has died, for nothing. Those in his brood have now lost something irreplaceable. Do not imagine this feeling will go, do not imagine this emptiness will be filled by another. It will not. You will never be as strong as you could have been with him.
[It is simple fact, even as they grew they would lend each other strength. Now they had one less to draw from. There was a potential they would never reach. He has been cold, he is still cold, but for those in Adara there is an echo, more than simple sympathy. A clear understanding of what it is they have suffered.]
Hosts are lost. This is the reality of our situation, but Adam Parker did not die because we sought to strike a blow against the ones who hunt us. He did not even die because he made a foolish mistake. He died because you made a selfish choice. Remember this, your decisions effect more than you. Even your own life is not just yours any longer. You should be at least responsible enough not to drag those who should be able to rely on to their death.
[There is little point to this, he knows. Those that had behaved poorly would not listen to words, and if they had not yet learned a lesson there would be more loss and more suffering before they did. Still, this is too soon for this.]
There will be some time before you will be sent on your first true mission. I suggest you use it to better yourselves, for all of your sake.
[And the connection drops- cleanly as if he had flipped a switch. His mind was still there, as it always was, but distant, uninviting. This was never meant to be a dialogue.]
no subject
( Yes, Prince. Next time, I'll ... )
[ She doesn't know, keep a closer eye on them? Yes, she would never let them out of her sight, now. Even if she was faced with someone like Parker again, someone who didn't want them around, didn't matter, she would do anything to never feel this again, to keep the others from it too. She doesn't have anything else to say, she'll crawl out of this eventually, she knows she must, and to that end, takes her time for what she'd done. ]
( I'm sorry, I lost control. When it...
I need a new datapad, mine became... damaged. ) [ rather she'd gotten too far entrenched, and it had overloaded with the scream of pain at losing so much. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
Day 165 (after dad's serious message)
He gives something like a mental knock, knock against a door. ]
no subject
Doesn't bother speaking so much, she's better in mind than body. She was exhausted before, wore herself out and she knew she'd crash eventually. No eridium, and a semi-constant use of her abilities had given her a hard lesson in her new limits - it would have been manageable by itself. But that hadn't been how that turned out, was it?
Answers quietly, in return, come in. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
day 165 (after the Prince's message)
[Though Lexa uses the word "us," there is a sense that she actually means "you." No part of Lexa agrees that she has a choice, and after the Prince ignored her, she doesn't feel inclined to change her opinion.
But she is curious to see where Angel lies in all of this. Does she feel ashamed for what she may or may not have done? Does she feel empathy?
Lexa feels neither thing, so it is that which guides her here.]
no subject
She carries guilt, she carries so much guilt, like this is somehow one more thing, one less thing, carries it like she deserves it and wants it gone from her because she wakes up in small bouts of sleep, clutching for something that isn't there.
Trusts Lexa or something near it and if not that, likes her, wants so much that surety. Wants to give something like it in return. It's what friends do, don't they? But she's capable of none of it. ]
( Are you asking me if I expected this? Or if I could go back if I could? )
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
late day 006
Still, she recalls Angel's pain from before, and though Lexa had wanted her to cut away that emotion, she's accepted that Angel won't. That's how Angel defies what came before. Lexa will never understand it, not fully, but she has certainly come to respect it.]
( Angel. )
[For now, she only speaks her name to get her attention, to see if she's willing to speak or even able to. It seems like the thing that two people might do, were Lexa more accustomed to being an equal than something more to those around her.]
no subject
( I'm here. )
[ a soft chime, an absent wash of words. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
did u miss me big sister - after ares is lost
( Why does this happen? What's the point? Everyone's going away. Everyone's leaving, and you're gonna leave, and I'll be alone again. I hate this! I hate it! )
[ sighs deeply ]
Doesn't speak with it, there's no response to it, rather she opens her mind to him, lets him yell and rage and shifts all accepting of it. Responds instead by giving him the location of where she is -- the Bearings. Her room. The invitation with it that he should come to her. ( Selfish too, she doesn't want to be alone right now, but she can't quite face the others either. Wants her own, what's left of it. ) ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
no subject
But each step is purposeful, she takes her away, away, away. Out of the commons, out of Concordia, away from the city with its walls of light that she knows is foreign to her. They turn a corner and go through a door that as her markings ebb to life, they step from cold walls to a garden. A distortion, an illusion, but one she thinks Ilde could want, it's safety of high walls of glass on an impossible sky, the wrap of vines with heavy drooping flowers, warm earth and stone below her feet. Heavy leafed plants that droop with their own weight, the pepper of strange ones that she knows from Pandora that glow in a bioluminescence from the corners and the soft curl of mist like water ( better at making them feel real now, and she has Ilde and the hive to thank for that. Reality, more aching than anything that can be conjured ), it's special, it's built out of her mind for Ilde. Just for Ilde. The only one she lets into these corners of her. Lets her feed into her, into all of her empty dark.
She leans around her to shut the door behind them. There is no one now, just them, just this place and its false removal from reality. Privacy as much as they could have being so connected. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
pre-mission thing !
[ His usual little knock on the mental door. ]
( I'm downstairs, heading to Alpha Block. Need to some air. Will you come too? )
no subject
( Sure thing. Be down in a minute. )
[ Finds jacket, find shoes, find fake ID - and she's there a few minutes later. Waving in greeting as she comes closer. ]
Are we just walking?
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
no subject
Little miss liar, manipulator, talks too much and always has a way with words, and right now she's got none. ]
( Well. She's uhm - she's... )
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
backdated to before the bout it out tournament
no subject
day whenever angel wakes up
That, and if he didn't keep holding onto that belief, Petre's constant mental presence alone might drive him crazy. He's been ordering his food a little rarer than he liked before...
When that void in his mind starts to fill, it's like a long awaited tide finally coming in. His focus redirects entirely on her and the scope of his mind widens, ready to welcome her back. ]
Angel...? Angel?!
[ He doesn't wait for a mental reply, though hearing one would be refreshing after so long. He drops what he was doing and runs down the hallway to her room so fast, he nearly skids and falls over on a turn. ]
no subject
- and there is like this, only two people she'd call too as she awoke. He responds before she even manages to force a coherent thought into her mind. Just the spark of her abilities filling the machines around her - words without precise phrases, of reaching, she's here - she's here, a weakened body crawling up and awake and as he skids into her room, she's waiting for him. Beraggled and exhausted but - ]
Hey.
[ croaks out, and she's not sure how to reach for him ( these human gestures others took for granted are so hard, like learning a second language she's not always sure about the exact translation ) so directly but it's there, wants him close, close as she can. Come here, please. is the echo. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
cw: fucked up relationships probably???
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
It's personal. )
no subject
( Is her life going to be in danger? )
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)