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 )

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[shri]

( Oh that? - that isn't what I would call decorative. You never saw what a Muhgal could carve. )

[ It's flippant, undemanding, not truly at a loss. The weapon she could never wish to be parted with is kept still, strapped to her back. Heavy and ancient. Her husband's blade, a knight's hilt and the pendulum weight of the blackwater at her throat. ]

( But everyone should have and know how to use a blade. Guns will run out of ammunition. A sword offer requires a strength and speed. But a knife of that kind needs only the strength to push hard enough. )

[wille]

( I know how to use knives. But the problem with blades is -- you have to come up close, right? Stare a man in the eye and kill him while he's breathing into your face. Not everyone can do that. Anyone can fire a gun. )

[ She doesn't say, instead, not everyone nurses a bloodlust just beneath the surface. A roaring in one's ears that deafens as the life drains away from one's opponent. A bullet is much too impersonal. ]

( Can't you shoot vampires dead? )

[shri]

[ She starts to laugh, and she shouldn't - it isn't kind or forgiving. Of a memory, being thrown into the ground, the Lycan bearing down on her, and she gets her knee and foot up into its neck, the only thing that is keeping it from ripping her throat out: as she wrestles for space, her hands grip both sides to a pistol, and unloads the entire revolver into its face. ]

( Of course I can, I can shoot them, burn them, explode them, rip them apart by canons, ride them down with spears, crash their ships into the ground, drown them in oceans. Shove a grenade in their belly and pick their pieces out of my hair, if need be. )

[ Then it's a half turn, shoving the damn thing off of her. I've done it all. ]

( But I never liked it - that impersonality. I will not dishonor my opponents when it mattered by not watching them die. )

[wille]

[ Like listening to her own buried voice exhumed and proclaimed over a hill for all to hear. And she laughs too, amused rather than defiant, appreciative. There is no shame in rage, if Lakshmi has anything to say about it, no sin in wishing gut-spilling violence upon one’s enemies. ]

( Is it really about honor? I want to feel with my own hands the moment my enemy’s heart stops. )

[ But when she says enemy, she can only picture faceless men in uniform, a formless idea of what one of SEELE’s men might look like, and never does she let herself picture the form of the older Ikari. ]

( I want to see the look in their eyes go out — and my face, me, the last thing they see. )

[shri]

[ Honour, what was it? Really? She knew it was what she lived by, fought by, made herself to what she was by the teachings of, when her father put that first sword in her hands as a girl. Guided her hands. It was not something gilded and polished like the Knight's in their halls. Not the pompous display she had heard the newly made Maharaja in Gwalior and Tatya speak of as they drunk themselves to defeat rather than attend to their duties.

It was something in her hands, in each movement and action, it had to be, or it never existed at all. ]

( Feeling satisfaction is undeniable. I have felt it, many times. And when I have killed Lord Hastings, I will have my truth known. Then I will have my peace.

But I want more than vengeance. I want more than to give my pain to others. If I did, what selfishness is that? What am I? I must be better, I will be better - else I never deserved the love that was bestowed me by the very people I fight in the memory of. They deserved more, and I will give more. I can no longer afford the compassion I was raised with, but I can afford this. If not - what else is there?

I must be better, I will be better. Or I am not Rani. )

[ Righteousness - but not to be self righteous. To know oneself in its completion. She is this, all the way down.

But Gods, if Misato was not her - her on a battlefield twenty years ago. Screaming herself hoarse in every order and ever roar of canon, it hurts, so low, reaching for a daughter that she has not been without for just as long. ]

[wille]

[ There lies the difference then. Misato is righteous, furiously so, and she is proud, too much so to stoop to lies and trickery and masks. She would have her enemies know whose hands are closing around their necks. But she would sooner let herself to wield the weapons of her enemy, mold herself into becoming the very thing she once so hated if only to be the last to die, if not that, then to outlast those who sought to destroy her.

What else is there but survival? She thinks of honor, how like a picture of a water to a man dying of thirst. ]

( You ever heard this saying? It's about how people have children so there'd be people to tell our stories for us, and tell people what we were really like. )

[shri]

[ It isn't harshly meant, a mirth curling around her words like smoke as she thinks, shaking her to it. ]

(I know it. But we have been over my children - ) [ dead and lost to her. Devi made in her image. ] ( - and my name is a crime in my homeland, punishable with death.

That glory will perhaps be for another of my home, when it is time. )

[ No, she has made her peace - she is dead. To the world, she will always be so. ]

[wille]

[ Another person, now, would know to apologize and desist. Nothing could be more painful than losing one's children beyond their time. No mother should ever have to bury her son. But Misato remains as insistent as ever, testing the boundaries as she always does. ]

( It will be time. It was already time for you when I was growing up. I know who you are— I mean, what the stories say at least. )

[ This could easily be construed as an insult, a presumptuous one too, and she realizes but decides it's better to speak her mind than try to mold herself to the woman's liking. ]

( I don't remember everything it says . . . But I know you're not the bad guy. )

[shri]

[ Her silence is utter. The emptiness after an explosion. Where it is not so much that there is no sound but that there was something so complete, there is nothing else that could fill it.

She extracts herself - because she has neither the skill nor the practice to express any of it. Moving like through water, weighed down and weightless. The feeling when it still hurts to breathe after drowning. She pushes against the river current, treading water as she loses the need to hang onto something in just that moment as she had. ]

( Thank you. )

[ And the link severed and she pushes away. A need she cannot express that drives her to solitude. ]