Mental Link;

[miscreant]

DEVOUR beg for mercy and i will deny you	ASSIMILATE the scourge will wash over this world
LEAD we do what the living cannot	WANDER your kind has no place in this realm

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[wrackful]

[Kate and Remus fall away, and something in Murphy writhes. Like an animal caught in the jaws of a pain it can't comprehend, his mind thrashes, a pulsing, blinding ache of fear, isolation, loss. Desperately grasping out for what - who - is left, unrestrained and frantic.]

[miscreant]

[The pain of losing limbs is not one Seviilia is entirely unfamiliar with -- her entire body is a network of such a wound, and her panic is only momentary. The rune circuit would not just fall away without someone there to undo it, and the rationality of that has her blinking back the poison of tears.

What she isn't expected is the latch that is Murphy, clinging to the armor that is unused to carrying the emotional weight of others. She staggers briefly, but clasps the presence instinctively -- as if he were always one of her knights.]

( --I am here. )

[It might not be comforting -- but she is there, and like a pillar, she is unmoved.]

[wrackful]

[Conscious thought filters in, belated, quiet in comparison to the unrelenting waves still beating in his head. He's known loss. Worse loss than two near-strangers falling into comas. There hadn't been anyone there for him then, and that was the lesson he'd learnt. How not to need it.

But he needs it now. The thing in his head needs it now, twisting into him, making him into this. He's clutching onto Seviilia with a strength he can't pull back from, and he hates it. The weakness of it. The lack of control. The fact it helps, feeling her there, solid, her voice in his head. It's not enough, but it's better, holding against the tide of pain pulling at him, bearing it in increments.]

[miscreant]

[She senses that this isn't enough, and feels a tug in her chest that she doesn't know how to identify. It makes her pace her quarters, causes something in the back of her head to itch, and suddenly she needs to find him -- as if he were in danger.

So she tugs on their link, using it to lead her around the Station, trying to locate him. Its her duty -- she doesn't know when it became so important, but it is. She knows it, like she knew the Lich King's voice calling to her back to Icecrown Citadel.]

[wrackful]

[He isn't difficult to find. He'd been walking, when it had happened - maybe heading to the kitchens, he can't remember now - and so he's just in a hallway, unremarkable from the rest of the station's hallways, and thankfully currently empty. He feels her coming and wishes she wasn't, even as he's still clutching onto her, even as the ache in him is glad for her being nearer.

It's still overpowering, throbbing in his head like a fresh wound, and though as he's started to manage to pull his mind together somewhat, he still hasn't been able to get back to his feet. On the floor, curled in against the wall, he's only missing the blood and bruises that would complete the image of the aftermath of a physical beating.

His mouth tugs into a grim, flat smile when he sees her.]

Still feeling like it's a boon?

arrives in the shame pit with bells on

[unsea]

[ Ren goes. Ilde drowns.

And the Darkling turns up in Seviilia's quarters, soaking wet and barefoot and heedless of the chill that she brings by merely existing.

He's leaving puddles on her floor, to eventually be frozen. ] Hungry, o'tnika?

[ He's got something NEW for her, and absolutely no desire to hang onto it. ]

rings them happily

[miscreant]

[Seviilia looks up from her task of tooling her runeblades to blink at the Darkling -- it was not as if she had not sensed his coming. She would be hard-pressed to ignore the thunder of his presence so near to her.

She had sensed some far off distress not so long ago that she had forced herself to ignore, unable to track it among all the feedback from Ren and Peter's departure. Something in her head still twists and writhes with the weight of it, in spite of their lack of connection. In spite of how much she had fed since arrival, it was rapidly draining her reserves of tolerance.

As a result, she is unsurprisingly glad to see him, and sets aside her task to stand and greet him -- frozen puddles or not, she will not be seen as weak.]

Always.

[unsea]

[ Rey's loss felt like a limb had been severed, and he had persevered. She was young, short-lived, a candle alight at both ends. Ren had been a brother in arms, in comprehension - his loss is too close, and the Darkling is unable to escape the nest's sway in this moment. It's a weight, dragging him in the undertow as easily as Ilde had brought him below the surface.

He steps towards her and taunts her with it. ]

Come, then.

[ Perhaps unsurprisingly, he turns on his heel and flees. Maybe remembering their last conversation - the one about the thrill of the chase. ]

[miscreant]

[He approached, so full of pain that she can taste it on the air he breathes. She reaches and doesn't expect him run, until she feels him tense. She swipes and just barely misses, growling with the slightest hint of frustration. How dare he bait her, when her loss was still so fresh in her mind.

The pit in her stomach grows, her shoulders tremor with rage, and she launches herself from where she stands, hitting the wall outside of her door with full force as she gives chase. Whatever thrill of the chase their might be, the end is always the sweetest.

She tracks him as a bloodhound does, following the scent of his pain, pulling the mental link between them taught to remind him that he can't really escape her.]

DAY :039

[wrackful]

[It's early, sometime in the hours when Murphy would normally be asleep. Nightmares might bleed, faint whispers of horrors and pain tangling quiet fingers down the connection between them. It isn't a dream that's driven him awake this time, though. The alarm in his mind is present, heavy, crying like a siren behind his words as he lurches urgent and forceful into her mind.]

( We have to go. )

[miscreant]

[Seviilia's sleep is only ever induced by the nesting pod, which she has currently forgone in the interest of the mission. Murphy's alarm, however, has her tense in a way she can't describe. Her ears twitch repeatedly, and mentally -- well, she's already there to receive Murphy when his warning finally arrives.]

( What is wrong? )

[wrackful]

[It's a question he's already asked himself. Confusion is quiet, swamped down by the rest of everything else in his head, but persistent. Like bubbles rising to the surface, being burst, only for another to follow.]

( I don't know. ) [It's the only answer he can give.] ( But we have to leave. Now. )

[There's certainty in that. He doesn't know how he's sure, how this works, only that he is.]

[miscreant]

[If she drew breath from her lungs, if her heart still beat, she imagined they would be racing to process the feedback she's getting from her broodmate. But she is already moving, sheathing her swords, and moving from her apartment.

What she wouldn't give to call Havoc now -- a horse would be twice as fast as her fastest speed.]

( Are you safe? Now, this moment? )

[That is what she needs to know, before she moves to collect Shepard and before she attempts to alert Noctis.]

After the Briefing

[earthborn]

( Right, so that was a disaster. Talk to me. )

[Give her some hope that there exists a light in this cruel, dark world.]

( Tell me we have some other plan. )

[miscreant]

( My plan does not change between operations. Land. Blend in. Wait for an opportunity. Quite simple. )

[Her mental presence slides along Shepard's perhaps a touch too close for comfort, like a snake sliding along grass.]

( It is my believe that we have a tendency to...overplan. Perhaps not an entirely poor strategy, given what we typically work with. Our fellow 'Commander' seems to have a tendency to hyperfocus, wouldn't you agree? )

[Not like them, as if Seviilia and Shepard were more alike. She likes to think so.]

[earthborn]

( I like to keep it simple. 'No plan ever survives contact with the enemy intact,' isn't that right? )

[Shepard likes Lexa, honestly. And even if she didn't she certainly dislikes Lexa less than a lot of other people she's been asked to work with here. But Lexa isn't the problem, and neither is Seviilia.

The problem here, is Cathaway.]

( We still need a better contingency. I'm told there's less than no plan for extraction. This goes bad enough, we might find ourselves in bigger trouble than just not winning. )

[miscreant]

[Oh. Well that is a problem, isn't it?]

( Well, we must arrive in one fashion, and we have been given weapons. If we leave in the same fashion, is fighting our way out not an option? )

[She smirks, obviously relishing the idea of killing a few of the Enemy on the way out.]

- after asuka sadness

[shri]

[ She has been - pointedly avoiding any conversation with Seviilia since... everything. But duty and responsibility are ever more important that discomfort and lacking surety in how to regard someone. Especially where a child is concerned. Still, even as she pushes through as she does just about most things... there's that feeling of holding her weight on the back foot, reading on the step if she has to take it. ]

( Will you be willing to see to it she has some company for a while? )

[miscreant]

[Seviilia's mental presence is chilly, but her attention is pulled without much trouble. She still smells of Lavellan's blood and the barithan, but she appears far more at peace than anyone else in the Nest.

A rare state indeed. But, for all Lakshmi struggled with reconciling her's and other's existence, she rather respects the young queen, and so her request is given the time its owed.]

( My presence is rarely a comfort, your highness. But my eye is upon her. )

[shri]

( Good - )

[ A pause, flickering on - at least someone is, someone does. Of the unsurety sitting ember burning on her tongue. Is it really a boon for someone with Seviilia's ability to be watching over Asuka?

In the end, none of it mattered, not right now. It matters what Asuka needs. ]

(If you need me for any matter, call for me. I will come as swiftly as I am able. )

[miscreant]

( Your concern is noted. )

[All the grief over Lavellan has set her teeth on edge. Grief is an emotion she doesn't know how to process, and thus it converts to cold annoyance in waves. Seviilia takes a moment to turn her mind's eye to Lakshmi.]

( Do they enlist children where you are from? )

[It was not uncommon on Azeroth, but so many people here seemed to balk at the idea.]

DAY :019

[wrackful]

[Murphy is the churn of an open storm, a squalling hurricane turning dark over the landscape. His walls have shattered, the broken pieces of that ice dragged inwards, caught in the winds, chiming discordant as sporadic pulses of lightning crackle over them. Anger and grief, pain and loss, all of it seething furious around the eye at the centre. The wound.

He doesn't see, or think, for the first few moments pushing out from the tent he and the others had gathered in. The need in him is inarticulate, instinctual: lessen the pain. It drives him away from the place where it was caused, and nothing in him can offer any other course until his thoughts find the strength to tear away from the emotion of the fight. But his strength is spent, consumed in the days keeping himself contained, the storm swallowed down. Shattered, now, like his walls. His feet take him through the encampment with no direction except onwards, and it's only as he reaches the edge that another instinct tugs, pulls him in another direction.

He enters the tent Seviilia has been staying in at a stumble, searching for his broodmate like an injured animal looking for a safe place to lick its wounds.]

[miscreant]

[It was hard not to sense the storm brewing, even at a distance. Seviilia had tuned in too late, and was immediately hit with the emotional turmoil before she could shield herself from it. As a result, she is not difficult to find when Murphy enters the tent because she is already standing -- ready to fight whatever had come for them.

Her corner of the tent is easily seen by the mostly-unused sleeping arrangement, and the now-empty one next to it that had once been the Darkling's space. Presumably, she had been brooding not long before whatever had happened, happened -- her veils half attached, and her armor abandoned for more comfortable clothing beneath them.

She crosses the space, stepping around the belongings of both Shepard and Asuka in favor of meeting Murphy half-way. She'd never been very good at handling his emotions -- arguably, she couldn't handle such volatile emotions, they activated some distant fight or flight programming that often defaulted to the former.]

[wrackful]

[There's no fight following Murphy, no threat. He'd been the fight, the threat, throwing words with a vicious violence at Bellamy, and this was his repayment. The result of the ricochet. He stops, an arm's length from Seviilia, tipping unsteady on his feet between the break in momentum and the urge, present and strong, to reach for physical contact.]

You need to... [He fumbles for the words, a way to articulate what she'd given him when Peter had fallen away. But his thoughts are scattered, the storm of his mind snatching at them, his throat thick, chest aching. He yanks his veils out of the way, unmindful of how it reveals the wet of tears on his face.] Freeze my head again. Whatever the hell it was you did.

[The need is almost enough to make him say please. It hurts too much, ripped open like this, all of the grief, the memories of Emori sparking like flames that gutter in the wind only seconds later.]

[miscreant]

[When Murphy stops short of physical contact, Seviilia’s brittle tolerance to the symbiote makes up for it and she does it for him. Her hands move unspoken to the sides of his skull as he is in the middle of vocalizing his desire for it. There is the sensation that she might have been holding her breath, trying to stop herself from feeling quite so thoroughly. Tears were not a good look on a death knight, and she did not need any additional scars from this planet.

She invites herself close enough to embrace him, but restrains herself for more practical activity. Her gloves are discarded, blackened and runed fingertips finding the pressure points in his forehead. She does as bidded, slowing his thoughts and his grief with the ice of her touch, giving him a cool surface to rest against with hardly any distance between them.]

It’s alright, John.

[She remembers Lakshmi’s words about being a nurturing presence. It was easier to see now that her broodmate so clearly guided her mind to what he needed.]