STATION 72 ; mental link

[shri]

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.

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[shiro2hero]

(And because he thinks that... you want him to kill you?)

[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--]

[shri]

( I was under the impression you fought wars Shiro. That you have led others.

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. ]

[shiro2hero]

(Leading my team meant working with their problems. With their issues.)

[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.)

[shri]

[ It snaps hot and quick and sudden. Her rage is a palpable thing, both for the dismissal of a fear that shakes her so far through and what feels an insult to her own leadership - that it was just a matter of not reaching out to understand those around her, like she would turn away someone who came to her earnestly for help. Like she hadn't earnestly begged, over and over again for someone to help her.

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. ]