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STATION 72 ; mental link
KALI She Who is the Great Destroyer ; She Who wears a Garland of Skulls | LAKSHMI She Who Believes in Truth ; She Who is the Mother |
DRAUPADI She who was Born of Fire Sacrafice; | DURGA She Who is perpetually endeavouring to protect the weak and the poor and remove their misery. |
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Or know that he ignores wilfully what they are, what they are capable of and he is putting all of you in risk of a life you can scarce imagine as you are. )
[ That's all it is, rest, to lay down. Put herself to the ground, to ashes. Oh please, oh please - she is tired, she is so tired. ]
( Since I know what I am and he knows what he is, I thought I would cut across his dancing around the topic and give him the option to get it over with. )
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[There is, somewhere in that walking anger straining against his walls, his leash, a desperate N O like a roar. On so many levels. Some flash of a memory unrestrained -- because everything in him is too busy holding onto the monster the Nest put in his brain.]
[Beasts, monsters. That thing in another Host's mind, lashing out, and he has to protect the others -- A monster like you... Yellow eyes from behind the glass. Mocking. Grinning. Broken and reformed - a MONSTER LIKE YOU has to make it stop he has to make it stop make it drop away into bottomless stars and M O N S T E R]
[Breathe.]
[Breathe and focus and count and don't let it happen again, you're in control.]
(Don't. Do this, Rani. Don't be like this... No one has to die... we need to stand together...)
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But it isn't useful to be like that. Isn't useful to pretend it isn't happening either and all thoughts she might be having otherwise come to a screeching halt. Pushing up sharply of her mind against his. ]
( Shiro - ? Tell me what you need. )
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[This is a word loaded in a lot of things. A sharp, pointed panic. The hot feeling of a fight. Infighting, darker, harsher, a broken, stabbing thing in your chest fractured in colored lights -- a structure, a figure tall and strong crumbling because you weren't good enough and MONSTER tossed around like weapons.]
[A sword landing at someone's feet.]
(Don't fight. Like this. We can't.)
[He needs this all to stop. People pulled in too many directions, pulling him in too many directions. He cares for him he respects her and he can't be that monster the symbiote in his head is clamoring for him to be. Like that memory mocks him for being.]
(Not now.)
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[ But now isn't the time for impassioned speeches, now isn't for declarations screamed so hard down the throat of that which tore her to pieces, fighting with claws in her stomach, the butchery she had suffered.
Because it wasn't that kind of fight anymore - what matters is right now, that unbearable pressure of Shiro's mind against her own. She cannot understand right now, and a fool could recognize the danger. ]
( If I meant real damage, one of us would already be bleeding. If you cannot believe my good intentions, believe that when I strike, it is without hesitation or in half measures. )
[ She is all of one thing, one action, and she does not play in the middle ground. She never had. She held too much faith to ever be that way. ]
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[He didn't say anything had happened. He said lashed out and the image of the sword was burned into his brain, anger and wariness, maybe we're too close -- none of this was logical. None of it was planned. Bottled anger and power wanting to let loose and held so firmly back it's physically exhausting.]
(-- say you did. Didn't say you did.)
[It's weak and breathless, even in his own head. Her assurance, though, the truth of her words finally starts to cut the symbiote-created monster down. Finally starts to repair the mental walls he's kept it behind.]
(I believe... I believe you.)
[And he does, despite the way the words come out, he really does. It's hard to form words, hard to apologize for this loss of control when the sudden absence of fear and protective rage and pressure makes his legs feel weak. Head feel heavy.]
(Sorry. For all of this.)
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( The only thing you ought to be giving to me is the one as to why you are not taking care of yourself at this moment. All else can wait.
Which I ask again, Shiro, what do you need? ) [ His name, and not dressed up as more or less than that for once: a want to anchor him, her strength where his is lacking to let him tumble into the wrap of her arms if he needs it. ]
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[That question feels foreign. Confusing. He's fine, isn't he? The fire is out. The symbiote slowly starting to calm, leaving him wrung-out, all but sagging into a seated position against a wall. Breathing. What does he need?]
(... I need to know what happened.)
[He needs to learn to better navigate the pitfalls of this thing in his head. Needs to understand the triggers and the rage coming with it. Needs a nap, needs this thing either corralled or gone, needs his memories back. But she doesn't need to hear all of that. As he feels himself calming, rationality starts to reassert itself.]
[No one is hurt. No one is dead.]
(Clearly. Please. Why were you two arguing?)
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( My broodmate - Elena. She is a monster, the same kind that destroyed my home. A vampire. Her beloved is the other one - Damon.
When I arrived, I tried to kill Elena. Damon, in turn, sought retribution upon me. We fought. He bit me, drank my blood, I stabbed him.
Sam tied me up. We made our peace, I gave my word not to lift a hand to either of them if he promised to do what was necessary when their true nature showed itself. He let me go. When we spoke recently, he sought to comfort me for the suffering of my home. I informed him I had no interest in pitying words for those who side with those that cause such suffering. He insisted that I was prejudging them and they did not deserve it. I told him I had given my word and he could ask no more lest I dishonour the memory of my people. He asked me how many more I was going to turn on.
That was when I sort him out and told him if he found what I am to be so dangerous - he ought to kill me. )
[ And there: a direct summary told like it all happened to someone else and if not for the palatable after taste of her rage, her indignation. But like a line cut through her, she removes it from herself. Her death, after all, is nothing she ever bothered to note. ]
this got long i am sorry
[A very good thing. What she's saying makes a lot of things ripple through his mind. Remembering his own meeting with Elena...]
[someone worth helping -- he knows she doesn't mean it. He knows it. But the words, the sudden flicker of something else. They ring hard in his head and in his memories of a monster like you -- and she isn't the only one flinching]
[... How much he suddenly, painfully understood where she was coming from. Her voice in his mind, knowing with absolute certainty she meant what she said -- I'd never forgive myself if I hurt someone here -- how the sentiment mirrored his own feelings.]
[Pidge's voice, angry, determined, "I know you'd never hurt anyone!"]
(You both. Have points.) [Words are careful, chosen slowly, between ragged breaths and a racing pulse.] (No one should have to be tied to something they hate. But... none of us can help it. None of us can change it.)
[A memory beyond ragged shields. The moments in which he'd thought he'd been tied to one of his own personal demons, yellow eyes gleaming in the dark. That one of them was in his head. The horror and anger.]
(But -- Rani. What hurts one of us... it hurts everyone. We know that. He knows that. Elena...) [And he hesitates. But god he respects her. Like a lightning rod in a storm -- that's her in his mind.] (People like Elena and I... are trying. To be more than what we were made to be.)
[His shielding is ragged. Too strung out to keep memories away from her. To keep away the vague glimpses of the gruesome aftermath of thinking there was a Galra tied into his head. Where he'd lost himself completely. A monster...]
(No one. Is killing anyone. No one who's trying to be something more... and not you, and not Sam.)
(Please.)
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The other reason she isn't - is because that laughter would all too quickly become hysterical in its fear for them. Like all rage, it comes from a place of terror - that what had happened will be repeated and she will be left burying them too as she has so many others in their stubborn need for a compassion she does not understand in such a way. ]
( You are not like Elena. )
[ Thrown out first and hard - she does not know the comparison he makes. That much is clear to her. ]
( and I have given my -word-, Shiro, as a Queen. If I am not held by that, I am not held by anything. )
[ Even when it was to her own detriment. It might just be about getting what she wants, in the end, but she does it all the same. ]
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[He doesn't feel bad about that. It doesn't feel wrong to admit it. Part of him is even grateful for it. Grateful there's someone who knows, in part, what it is to feel that way. Fighting against what They Made You.]
[The earnestness, the honesty, continues. No, he doesn't know why the thought of Elena makes her so angry. He doesn't understand where she's coming from... but like when the Darkling had threatened to drag him down into dark water, into grief and called him mine... he wants to understand.]
(I didn't want to be... what I am now. What the Station and my enemies in my world made me. Neither does she.)
(We're doing the best we can... So -- I get it. I get her.)
[Breathing is steadying. Calming. He's still exhausted. Still run ragged by the angry symbiote power in his brain. But starting to unwind.]
(I know.)
(But why tell us to kill you? Any of us? If... you've given that word.)
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(Expediance.
He started, I finished. )
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[Exasperation, shoving aside the exhaustion. It makes no sense. Nothing he knows about Sam says that's even remotely logical.]
[Maybe some people say he cares too much about the man. But -- no, that doesn't make sense. Even with that taken into account... no.]
(And you shouldn't die for not seeing things the same way!)
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( I have been war with beings like Damon and Elena my whole life. I have seen thousands slaughter to that kind of hunger. He insists that they are better than that, and have every right to live.
This isn't about not thinking the same way. )
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[Maybe he understands too much of what Elena feels. Maybe that brief talk with her made him too eager for someone who knew where he was coming from.]
[But to do anything less feels like a betrayal.]
[We'll be okay, he'd said. Like a promise. We can do this.]
(Or because you can't agree on how... monsters... should be treated?)
[A monster like you--]
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What else do you not understand? )
[ She had quite enough of hearing these things said back to her where she cannot work out how she could be plainer in her own meaning. Yes, it is something she would die over, and if no one else could understand that she was not playing a game, that she was somehow unwilling to die over it - then she could be no plainer and was done attempting to explain it. ]
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[Tired, worn as he is, there isn't any way to hide the flicks of memory. Of Lance and Keith butting heads. Pidge threatening to leave, Hunk's flying hangups. Not monsters. None of them. They don't have a Galra in their midst, but...]
[But leading people meant working with them. No matter what they had in their heads. In their blood.]
(If... one of them were ... I would never throw them away, or throw myself away because of something they couldn't control.)
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So she takes those memories, she takes them in both hands, and does what she does best these days. These hands do not know how to do anything else but grip anymore, to the pommel of a blade, to the curl of a trigger. She takes his memories of his team like her own and she bathes them in the smoke of her burning city.
She takes them and it's so easy. She has seen stubborn boys, clever girls, she has seen what it looks like ( the putrid stench of stomach pile as the creature - vampire - she labels it, rips out flesh by tendrils, the way that vein on the inside of the leg when it's ripped off at the knee, keeps pushing out blood, that way that someone can't feel something, anything, once the shock sets in, and is that a mercy or a curse as the head rolls back and they're still alive as the eating begins ) afterwards. Of what those faces of everything he holds dear - will look afterwards.
Rani, please, please, it hurts, Rani - what's happening to me -
Of the screaming, the screaming, the screaming. They will scream, they will scream like he has never heard and he will be at fault, he will have failed them, just like she did. ]
( I assume you do not mean to insult me as you have just done. But I have lived long enough to know the prattling of idiots who cannot fathom the hell they have unleashed upon themselves. Ever speak to ignore my words again so profoundly again, Master Shiro, and I will presume you mean the insult this time. )
[ And she severs the link, like searing a thread, snapped in half. ]