[ 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. ]
[ the hurt makes her want to recoil and blame, do something with how much this is seeping like a wound out of her. But that wasn't her way, so she just does nothing at all.
Grief is a twisting, knotted thing. ]
(I would. I do. Thank you.)
[ It's without her usual teeming giddiness, any of the softness. Just bare and empty. ]
[ It does make Ilde a little sad to feel how much less energy Angel responds to her with. A small pang, but in a way she feels it was inevitable and she believes quite firmly that Angel will be alright. ]
[ Assent, simple, and Ilde begins to head towards the shooting range, although she leaves the door open a crack to this connection lest the siren change her mind, prefer the solitude.
Ilde is waiting quietly outside the door to the range, the small datapad that she still does not quite fully understand clasped loosely in her hands. She looks up when Angel appears, ]
[ She's no better in person, body to mind the same thing. Her eyes tired, and she's forgotten to eat - her sleep is fitful and empty. No jump that she had been thought of, nothing at all.
Nor is she completely unaware what has passed as to why she feels this way. But she's too tired for blame, for hissing with hurt and rage, not even for forgiveness own sake, but she won't -- won't -- be Jack. ]
Oh? [ The smile pulls wane, exhausted at the edges. ]
[ Or at least a copy of it, now that they have it. ]
Neither Lexa nor I have the skills to decode it.
[ A puzzle, another distraction, and also simply fair. It was only through Angel that they had acquired it at all, she should have her share of the prize. ]
[ She is in no rush at all. She gives the girl the datacard and folds the tablet back into its tiny size to be tucked away. Then she opens the door to the shooting range, standing aside to let Angel go in front of her. ]
[ It stills her a second, because -- well 'I want it now, Angel, not later, now.' Swallows down the feeling that works up her throat all sudden and harsh that she swallows.
She's not dwelling on it, forces her steps forward, past Ilde into the shooting range. She sets the datapad to the side as they walk in, making her way to the gun rack. ]
It's a good idea. The vault hunters - [ stops, Ilde will have no idea what those are. ] - warriors I used to handle were always picking up new weapons in the field.
[ She looks over the weapons on the display and takes her time picking one up. Needs adapt her range, she can't rely on the rest of her siren abilities when they were still settling. Needed to learn more mundane ways of fighting in their absence. After this she'd go to her training room, trying channelling it down again. Maybe this time she'd not turn all her hair static this time or burn skin.
Picks what she saw the other siren's use most often. It helps make the SMG feel right in her hands. ] You'll never really know what you end up fighting with when it truly starts.
[ A nod, quiet and observing the way Angel handles the weapon, what she picks and how well it suits her. Something compact and rapid, Ilde can see that working well for her. Ilde chooses a set of daggers now familiar to her, medium in their size, of an average shape. Something she will not have to put all her concentration towards, keep some of her attention with Angel. ]
[ She grips it steady, fingers laced along the grip. How long before she had callouses of her own. The little burn marks where bullets flung and seared her - her own marks of living.
They might hurt, but she'd find it worth it. ]
They say it changes you, killing.
[ But then again, Ilde didn't seem to have much of a problem with it -- but she wasn't going to dwell. It was done. ]
[ Ah. In a ways he doesn't entirely want to talk about this, but she also knows something about Angel's lack of experiences. And perhaps if she shared her own... ]
It does. [ Silent for a moment to gather her thoughts, flicking the daggers in a sharp repetitive motion. ] Steven told me he had never killed anyone before. The idea hurt him, the loss of something precious. I am not hurt by death.
[ Life is not precious, it is an agony of chaos and brutality. ]
[ she falls quiet, as Ilde speaks taking the time to think on it, the quite talking in contrast to the roar of gunfire. The remembrance of the people she relates so fondly to the sound. Fine, to keep listening, to in turn weigh her own thoughts against it. She doesn't expect Ilde to be more or less than she is, even if they don't always agree --
'Death is freedom.' Something closes high around her throat. The sharp click of metal choking out the breath, the stretch of skin around newly implanted metal, and she shuts her eyes tight against the bright, bright purple ( her cage is stone like amethyst is stone, the air burns with smell of lavender, the sun is ultraviolet out from behind her eyes and it's all she can taste, smell, hear, feel - ) that fills up her mind with a far too jarring memory, one she does her best to keep away from. Death is freedom. Freedom is her veins searing open, burning out with that light, she can feel every organ shutting down, she can feel her lungs giving out, she can feel it like an inevitability. Pain that is beautiful in it's absolute, it has no beginning, she can't remember what it was before
The gun clatters onto the bench and she catches herself on its edge. It's alright, she can walk now, she can move now. Recoils away from the memory she doesn't know an end off except the dark and black and - she shouldn't have come out of her room, she should have waited until this misery had abated, like the sick needed to eat plain foods. Should have, should have, should have - ] Ilde.
[ spits it out with a need, like the word didn't want to come out of her mouth. Then she's reaching for her hand, seeking with purpose not just for contact but she needs something press hard back into, to know flat and here and safe and - ] Please, I just need - [ she should call for the Cathaway, she doesn't want to let this slip, needs her collar, needs that hard line of herself that she can't manage, angling to Ilde's fingers around her throat instead, be solid, be here, keep her two feet on the floor. Because there's an awareness of Ilde that's not right, that prickling feeling that happens when she phase shifts, that way she slips in and out of here and there that isn't physical. Reality was never so solid, and dying felt like the last echoes of something that happened long ago, like radiation still transmuting through different forms until it reaches it's own end. ]
[ Ilde knows what is happening to Angel all too well. It has happened to her a number of times since she has come to this new world, this new life. One could call it some kind of panic attack, or a flashback, but with the many oddities of the symbiote involved, it became something so much worse, something soul deep that paralyzed in a flash. That was not the reaction was attempting to inspire in Angel, but she is hardly surprised. Such fits came like a strike of lightning, with little warning of their severity before it was much too late.
For all her understanding, she is not experienced with comforting others, she is not entirely sure what to do. No offerings from anyone else have ever really helped her, it is something she has always resolved herself. All she can do is react to what Angel feels like she needs, even if she can't fully understand its meaning. She lets Angel put her hand at her neck, and with the other Ilde loops her arm loosely around the other girl's waist, to keep control of the situation should Angel's weight sag once more.
There is a deep frown of concern on her face, severe, almost angry. Although if she is angry with anyone, it is with herself. She is beginning to feel as though she can do nothing but cause harm, the weight of the guilt the Prince wishes her to feel beginning to gather, but not to the effect he hoped. She lowers her forehead to Angel's shoulder and pushes those emotions out of range, there is no need for them when she is already suffering.
This is the most intimate situation she has ever been in, the most physically close, but she hardly notices that, instead listening to Angel's breathing and heartbeat to be sure she will not suddenly faint. ]
...It's alright.
[ Not the sort of thing she usually says, but she does not mean that everything will be alright. She means that she too knows such pain and panic, that it will pass, that there is no shame in being overcome. ]
[ It has all the grace of fingers holding together an open wound, a slit throat and her palm holds Ilde's fingers around her throat. Thumb under her jaw, her palm set against the delicate bones where she could feel them press when she swallowed. She feels stricken and empty, she is already pale, but her lips are numb and her body is feverishly cold to her. Leeching needfully from the other girl instead, pressing in them just there so that her breathing goes almost too shallow but has to take deep breaths to get the air she needs. Holds her almost too tight, sagging into her. There are no real things, there is just Ilde and empty corners of her mind and the faint noise of dust and rumble slipping in ancient places, tumbling to the ground.
She knows how those stone feels -- it is so wearing, so exhausting, to hold it all up. The want there, to crawl into Ilde instead of herself, to that beautiful garden, banish everything she couldn't handle away, and it felt like she could handle so very little. ]
It hurt, I don't remember anything else but -- [ Mad babble for things there is no explaining really. It is all she manages, where Ilde wraps around her, she, in turn, burrows like a root system into the earth, like sunlight to open upturned leaves. Searching for a way out from the rot that birthed them. Or find meaning to it. Hooking herself into the other girl's warmth, the set of her fingers, stitch herself back up with vines and weeds and things she doesn't know but to look at. ]
[ This is really just no good, trying to hold the girl up in the shooting range. She almost contemplates calling someone to help her, but she's not really sure more stimulus will help Angel in this moment. ]
Hush.
[ Not exactly the most comforting, but Angel didn't need to explain herself. ]
Come, let's get you back to your bed.
[ She'll carry her there herself, if she needs to. ]
[ She nods, accepting it with a simplicity, falling quiet and clutching her still. She'll go so easily sometimes, for all she is trying to get in the habit of dragging her feet about what matters. But somewhere safe sounds better. It's so hard remembering how to walk, easier when someone can do it for her.
Rather she focuses on the one thing she cares about so much then: ]
Will you stay?
[ Don't leave her alone, comes so suddenly and viciously a thought, she almost doesn't care who, just that she's so tired of being alone. The quiet where there is nothing but herself to fill it. ]
[ That pricks something in the depths of Ilde's own memories... The mad king's head in her lap in his few and brief moments of lucidity and regret. It almost chokes her with its suddenness, the briefest ember of resentment. It catches her off guard, but she manages to grab hold of the foul feathered thought by its tail and smothering it until it is broken and silent. ]
[ She nods, and falls quiet. Easier to do when her heart is still beating fast-fast-fast in the high of her throat. When her hands are shaking from the force of something that has long since left her, but she understand is never going to truly leave her, just like Parker's death, an emptiness that will never be whole.
She lets herself be guided the rest of the way without complaint, pushed and pulled like feathers in a breeze. The thank-you there in the clutch of her fingers against Ilde's, the steady breath she feels not in her mouth but against the press of Ilde's palm. No resistance to her at all, just a gentle bend to whatever she's asked from there out. ]
[ When they make it back to the room, it is impossible to untangle herself from this sorrowful little clinging vine. She could forcefully shove her into her own bed, but that does not seem conducive here, she will have to coax this trailing plant into standing tall with patience. Ilde knows that. So she lies down in the bed with Angel cradled into her side, just like she lies down in the gardens with her ear pressed to the earth, to listen, to offer her love and her warmth. It is difficult for her to do the same with another human being. They are so different, so full of complication, resentment, disappointment. Madness. Human beings were all full of madness and cruelty, and for all of Angel's sweetness on the exterior, she knows something about her lies, many and vast.
She has refused to love anything she could not control for all of her life, and now she is here with a weak girl in her arms whose heart she may or may not have broken. ]
The thought of losing any member of my brood is terrifying.
[ She is here, this is happening, the only way to relieve the tension in her lungs is to let the ideas out. ]
[ She turns herself into her, and it takes -- more than it should be to learn how to be close to another when she has catalogues of her spied upon moments of others doing this to draw reference from. Just no one prepared her for the soft warmth of another human being, willingly being near her. Not the cold observation of a fearful team of scientists, not the ghosts of cold metal being joined to her spine, her skull.
For awhile she can't do much else but lay against her and breathe, scared of how much space she's taking up, of how much this truly was to her. Of Jack's memory conjured up somehow and destroying it all. She leans into the echo of Ilde's thoughts -- how short she'd known her, but how easy it was to let Ilde into her mind, to let her lay in turn against the bed of her thoughts as Ilde let Angel lay against her.
Perhaps that is alone why she tries to put it into words. ]
It is. [ she shifts against her side, her arm settling low across Ilde's hips, her eyelashes blinking against her shoulder. The warm trickle of breath as she tries to ease the words flat. ] Keep them close, don't let them out of your sight. They don't know how fragile they are.
[ People never knew, they never knew how easily they could be shattered. Did Parker? Did it matter anyway? It had happened as it had, regardless of it all. ]
[ A sigh of breath that ruffles Angel's dark hair. Ilde stares off at nothing as she contemplates those words. They are true, even in the ways they are not... Castor is a brood of very fragile people, deeply injured and yet still struggling onwards. It is something that binds them all, the familiarity of their pain underneath even if they do not know everything about one another. Not yet. Ilde understands all this about her brood, that there is no coincidence to them, that they are all a little bit toxic. ]
They understand. [ Not precisely rejection of the sentiment, ] They understand our influence on one another.. Now. Now that I demonstrated how it can go wrong.
[ Complicated. She's not pleased with the results, but she also cannot apologize for reacting as she saw appropriate. The Prince continues to speak as though she did it simply to flout his law, and that rankles. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
circumspector) wrote2016-03-14 03:55 pm
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[ 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. )
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Grief is a twisting, knotted thing. ]
( I would. I do. Thank you. )
[ It's without her usual teeming giddiness, any of the softness. Just bare and empty. ]
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( I will come meet you. )
[
It's dangerous to go alone]no subject
( Alright, just at the range? )
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Ilde is waiting quietly outside the door to the range, the small datapad that she still does not quite fully understand clasped loosely in her hands. She looks up when Angel appears, ]
I also have something for you.
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Nor is she completely unaware what has passed as to why she feels this way. But she's too tired for blame, for hissing with hurt and rage, not even for forgiveness own sake, but she won't -- won't -- be Jack. ]
Oh? [ The smile pulls wane, exhausted at the edges. ]
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[ Or at least a copy of it, now that they have it. ]
Neither Lexa nor I have the skills to decode it.
[ A puzzle, another distraction, and also simply fair. It was only through Angel that they had acquired it at all, she should have her share of the prize. ]
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[ That does peak her interest, not a lot, even if not for everything else, she's still just baseline exhausted. ]
Thank you. I am not sure how long it will take me to decipher. I couldn't get a very good read on it from that distance.
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A gift, not a demand.
[ She is in no rush at all. She gives the girl the datacard and folds the tablet back into its tiny size to be tucked away. Then she opens the door to the shooting range, standing aside to let Angel go in front of her. ]
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She's not dwelling on it, forces her steps forward, past Ilde into the shooting range. She sets the datapad to the side as they walk in, making her way to the gun rack. ]
Have you been practising?
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[ She felt to practice her precision was relevant, no matter what the medium. ]
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[ She looks over the weapons on the display and takes her time picking one up. Needs adapt her range, she can't rely on the rest of her siren abilities when they were still settling. Needed to learn more mundane ways of fighting in their absence. After this she'd go to her training room, trying channelling it down again. Maybe this time she'd not turn all her hair static this time or burn skin.
Picks what she saw the other siren's use most often. It helps make the SMG feel right in her hands. ] You'll never really know what you end up fighting with when it truly starts.
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Perhaps until it ends.
[ Why you gotta be so grim Ilde... ]
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They might hurt, but she'd find it worth it. ]
They say it changes you, killing.
[ But then again, Ilde didn't seem to have much of a problem with it -- but she wasn't going to dwell. It was done. ]
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It does. [ Silent for a moment to gather her thoughts, flicking the daggers in a sharp repetitive motion. ] Steven told me he had never killed anyone before. The idea hurt him, the loss of something precious. I am not hurt by death.
[ Life is not precious, it is an agony of chaos and brutality. ]
Death is freedom.
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'Death is freedom.' Something closes high around her throat. The sharp click of metal choking out the breath, the stretch of skin around newly implanted metal, and she shuts her eyes tight against the bright, bright purple ( her cage is stone like amethyst is stone, the air burns with smell of lavender, the sun is ultraviolet out from behind her eyes and it's all she can taste, smell, hear, feel - ) that fills up her mind with a far too jarring memory, one she does her best to keep away from. Death is freedom. Freedom is her veins searing open, burning out with that light, she can feel every organ shutting down, she can feel her lungs giving out, she can feel it like an inevitability. Pain that is beautiful in it's absolute, it has no beginning, she can't remember what it was before
The gun clatters onto the bench and she catches herself on its edge. It's alright, she can walk now, she can move now. Recoils away from the memory she doesn't know an end off except the dark and black and - she shouldn't have come out of her room, she should have waited until this misery had abated, like the sick needed to eat plain foods. Should have, should have, should have - ] Ilde.
[ spits it out with a need, like the word didn't want to come out of her mouth. Then she's reaching for her hand, seeking with purpose not just for contact but she needs something press hard back into, to know flat and here and safe and - ] Please, I just need - [ she should call for the Cathaway, she doesn't want to let this slip, needs her collar, needs that hard line of herself that she can't manage, angling to Ilde's fingers around her throat instead, be solid, be here, keep her two feet on the floor. Because there's an awareness of Ilde that's not right, that prickling feeling that happens when she phase shifts, that way she slips in and out of here and there that isn't physical. Reality was never so solid, and dying felt like the last echoes of something that happened long ago, like radiation still transmuting through different forms until it reaches it's own end. ]
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For all her understanding, she is not experienced with comforting others, she is not entirely sure what to do. No offerings from anyone else have ever really helped her, it is something she has always resolved herself. All she can do is react to what Angel feels like she needs, even if she can't fully understand its meaning. She lets Angel put her hand at her neck, and with the other Ilde loops her arm loosely around the other girl's waist, to keep control of the situation should Angel's weight sag once more.
There is a deep frown of concern on her face, severe, almost angry. Although if she is angry with anyone, it is with herself. She is beginning to feel as though she can do nothing but cause harm, the weight of the guilt the Prince wishes her to feel beginning to gather, but not to the effect he hoped. She lowers her forehead to Angel's shoulder and pushes those emotions out of range, there is no need for them when she is already suffering.
This is the most intimate situation she has ever been in, the most physically close, but she hardly notices that, instead listening to Angel's breathing and heartbeat to be sure she will not suddenly faint. ]
...It's alright.
[ Not the sort of thing she usually says, but she does not mean that everything will be alright. She means that she too knows such pain and panic, that it will pass, that there is no shame in being overcome. ]
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She knows how those stone feels -- it is so wearing, so exhausting, to hold it all up. The want there, to crawl into Ilde instead of herself, to that beautiful garden, banish everything she couldn't handle away, and it felt like she could handle so very little. ]
It hurt, I don't remember anything else but -- [ Mad babble for things there is no explaining really. It is all she manages, where Ilde wraps around her, she, in turn, burrows like a root system into the earth, like sunlight to open upturned leaves. Searching for a way out from the rot that birthed them. Or find meaning to it. Hooking herself into the other girl's warmth, the set of her fingers, stitch herself back up with vines and weeds and things she doesn't know but to look at. ]
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Hush.
[ Not exactly the most comforting, but Angel didn't need to explain herself. ]
Come, let's get you back to your bed.
[ She'll carry her there herself, if she needs to. ]
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Rather she focuses on the one thing she cares about so much then: ]
Will you stay?
[ Don't leave her alone, comes so suddenly and viciously a thought, she almost doesn't care who, just that she's so tired of being alone. The quiet where there is nothing but herself to fill it. ]
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Of course.
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She lets herself be guided the rest of the way without complaint, pushed and pulled like feathers in a breeze. The thank-you there in the clutch of her fingers against Ilde's, the steady breath she feels not in her mouth but against the press of Ilde's palm. No resistance to her at all, just a gentle bend to whatever she's asked from there out. ]
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She has refused to love anything she could not control for all of her life, and now she is here with a weak girl in her arms whose heart she may or may not have broken. ]
The thought of losing any member of my brood is terrifying.
[ She is here, this is happening, the only way to relieve the tension in her lungs is to let the ideas out. ]
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For awhile she can't do much else but lay against her and breathe, scared of how much space she's taking up, of how much this truly was to her. Of Jack's memory conjured up somehow and destroying it all. She leans into the echo of Ilde's thoughts -- how short she'd known her, but how easy it was to let Ilde into her mind, to let her lay in turn against the bed of her thoughts as Ilde let Angel lay against her.
Perhaps that is alone why she tries to put it into words. ]
It is. [ she shifts against her side, her arm settling low across Ilde's hips, her eyelashes blinking against her shoulder. The warm trickle of breath as she tries to ease the words flat. ] Keep them close, don't let them out of your sight. They don't know how fragile they are.
[ People never knew, they never knew how easily they could be shattered. Did Parker? Did it matter anyway? It had happened as it had, regardless of it all. ]
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They understand. [ Not precisely rejection of the sentiment, ] They understand our influence on one another.. Now. Now that I demonstrated how it can go wrong.
[ Complicated. She's not pleased with the results, but she also cannot apologize for reacting as she saw appropriate. The Prince continues to speak as though she did it simply to flout his law, and that rankles. ]
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cw: gross
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no one look at me
looking into your eyes so deeply
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