applesaucedream | there's a tangled thread inside this head with nothing on the other end [closed]

Current Music: August 31st/September 1st

Entry tags:

there's a tangled thread inside this head with nothing on the other end [closed]

The sharp sting of the sea-smelling air and the pale blaze of tall, stately buildings are all tied to an inextricable specter of aching, deadened grief. Compared to the remainder of him, however, that which is flooded in ice and splintering exhaustion and the twisting contracture of agonized muscle, it is utter relief. He has torn his mind away to skid into a set of memories apart - an attempt at some blissful temporary landscape of subconscious manufacture, shrouded in stifling heat and glittering, crisply defined white buildings and disorganized stacks of yet-to-be-graded exams and a worn desk surface dense with the academic disarray of messily-scrawled papers and too many textbooks.

The point at which rational paranoia approaches irrationality is too subjective, too skewed by recent experience, and intuiting the correct order has become a crushing, pressing torture of navigating the wreckage left to rot in his own head. He is aware and he is present, but -

But he knows what will happen when he wakes. What is waiting for him.

The same that has been waiting for him for days. Assuming it has been days.

Temporal sequencing was never, in the light of humor and cruelty and irony - his forte.

He looks out beyond the scope of his office, into the hall that should maintain the uniform white interior but instead cuts cleanly to a corridor, smooth and faintly oxidized gray lit in a haze of blues and yellows. He exits his office and steps almost directly into the vast, overarching space of Destiny’s gateroom, rippled light thrown from the shimmering pale blue of the open gate.

The old walkways of academia, threaded seamlessly and incomprehensibly throughout the Ancient ship that’s long since been lost.

An imperfect interface for an imperfect state of mind.

He is shivering from the abrupt temperature shift, stepping from the too-warm, too-heated offices of a college campus to the overwhelming coolness of a ship's interior.

He closes his eyes.

He prefers this. He does. It will be brief, it will be transient, it will be - unbearably disorganized, this fracturing, easily shattered hell of two contexts interleaved on a single plane. The plane that exists within his head, or whatever state of disrepair it has been left in. He won't be able to hold onto it once he wakes. Once they make him wake.

He'll lose it all again, because he won't be able to hold onto it. He won't be able to hold onto anything.

It's better that way.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It only takes a bit of wandering to determine that this cannot be real, the interlocking spaces that shouldn't, don't fit together, all of it unfamiliar, no memory of how she came to be here. This is a dream, but it isn't her dream. None of this is familiar.

She's alone, everything sharply, disturbingly silent as she walks slowly through the hallways jammed together like a frustrated attempt at a puzzle or a collage. It's all super fucking creepy but it feels like she's here for a reason, and that doesn't necessarily make it better, but it does push her forward.

It's easy enough to hear a second set of echoed footsteps, standing out against her own, and she halts quickly. She puts her back against the wall, staring down the hall, trying to pick out where it's coming from. Now that she listens closer it's not footsteps, really, it's... clicking. More legs than two. An animal?

Then it rounds the corner, and she freezes.

It is a wolf.

It is a wolf and it is just here, chilling, and now looking at her.

What does one do with wolves? Who the fuck dreams about this shit?

"Hhhi," she says, her voice coming out thinner and breathier than usual.

This definitely isn't her dream; Daine's figured out that much. It's all a weird mish-mash of stuffy halls that make her think of libraries or museums, and some colder, more open space that's all over metal. It doesn't seem to matter what sort of exit she goes through, she always ends up in one or the other. What a bother.

Neither environment is any place for a wolf, but since she doesn't know whose dream this is or what she might find, she'd prefer to have better senses to work with than just her human ones. It turns out to be a good choice: she soon hears footsteps from a nearby hallway. The dreamer? The footsteps halt - perhaps they've heard her - so she keeps her pace steady instead of speeding up to make sure she doesn't lose them.

And it's a startled-looking two-legger. Daine flicks her ears back self-consciously, thinking that maybe she shouldn't have held onto her wolf shape for this part, but it's too late, now. Hullo, she says, belatedly flicking her ears forward and wagging her tail. Is this your dream?

Oh, it talks. Okay, great. Is that reassuring or no? She reserves judgment for the moment.

"No," she says, relaxing just a little. The wolf is wagging her tail now, which is pretty cute, even though she's still a WOLF, it's hard not to be at least a little unnerved. "Not yours either, then."

Well that's that sorted. Still Iman feels like there is more to discuss here. "You know you're a wolf, right?" she says, like maybe only she noticed. "Are you always like this? Did the Rift just... pull in a talking wolf?"

How neat would that be.

No, Daine says. Another group dream, then? Seems too soon - and too empty - for one of those. If everyone was here, surely she would have run into more than one other person by now.

She drops her head a little at the woman's questions, ears swiveling incredulously. Well, yes, she replies, each word separate and distinct. It's been a long time since she's had any confusion about what shape she's in, and she doesn't much like being reminded of when it wasn't so clear. I'm a wolf on purpose. And all wolves can talk, it's just that most folk can't understand them.

But for the moment, the shape has lost a little of its charm. And she doesn't want to scare this person, who seems as lost as she is. Hang on, Daine says, and a moment later, she's back in her human shape. "I'm Daine," she says, lifting a hand in a sheepish little wave. "This is my normal shape."

"Whoa!" Iman steps back sharply when the wolf rises up into the shape of - a girl. Oh.

"Hi," she says again, her eyes widening slightly. "That's incredible! Can you do that while you're awake? How does that work exactly?" For a moment her excitement over this strange new phenomenon overshadows the more important things at hand - only a moment though. She smiles, equally sheepish, and says, "Sorry, I... I get excited about... new things." That sounds downright childish, but this has been a bizarre introduction all around, so whatever, right? "I'm Iman. Pleased to meet you, even if it's... here."

She looks around dubiously, like oh right, this. "Suppose we should keep walking," she says lightly. Daine can answer her questions, or not, as they proceed.

Edited 2015-04-12 11:30 (UTC)

"Likewise," Daine says first, because that part's easy. She lets Iman pick the direction as they continue through the patchwork labyrinth, and considers how best to respond to the other stuff. She tends to be a bit bolder in dreams than she would in reality, but the sort of folk who respond with eager questions when they see what she can do are also the sort of folk who tend not to take 'magic' for an answer.

Well, she's not about to pin it on anything else. "It's called wild magic," she says with an implied 'yes, really, magic.' "It lets me talk to animals and take their shape - and heal them, too, if they need it." Since Iman has already witnessed the part she's least likely to share right off, she doesn't see the point in tiptoeing around the other bits. And honestly, she doesn't mind folk knowing about the healing part. Maybe then they'll take their sick pets to her instead of chancing it with a normal vet.

She glances at their surroundings, and belatedly registers that Iman had said 'here' as if it meant something specific - maybe more specific than just a standard dream. "Do you know whose dream this is?" she asks. "It doesn't really strike me as one of the big ones."

"Badass," comments Iman as she picks her way through awkwardly arranged corridors; she's been pretty well prepped on universe divergences now to accept 'magic' as an answer pretty readily. Sure, there's probably some kind of science to it, but there might not be an analogue she can quickly discern, and it doesn't much matter in this situation. If it works, it works.

"It doesn't, does it," she says absently, stopping at a fork and looking in both directions. She has an idea whose dream it might be - or a hope, rather, a bit of a desperate hope, she couldn't find him last night, but he has to be somewhere - and this feels uncomfortably apt.

"We'll find out soon, I think," she says. "This way." She goes to the right, following the curve of hall until they find a more open room, a room that looks central, important. Nailed it.

And there he is, centered in the grand circular structure at the head of the room, whatever it's supposed to be. "Oh thank fuck," she whispers, and picks up her step, hurrying toward him. "Rush."

Voices carry, more immediately familiar, not pulled from the corridors of this particular incongruous set of memories. He flexes his hand once - undamaged and whole here, with only a vague echo of pain from the tearing of damaged muscle over fractured bone - and turns to face them. Direct confrontation is the only option he’s willing to entertain. He has patience for little else.

This is certainly an intersection of events he hadn’t anticipated, every unrelated aspect becoming aligned on a single, splintering interface. The line of his shoulders tightens briefly, his expression clouding, conflicted. At least here -

At least here he may maintain the appearance of not being quite so physically broken as they have left him.

As for internally - they should be so lucky.

“Do you two know each other?” he demands, the question bizarrely inflected with unintentional, confused disdain.

That's a surprisingly brief response. Daine had been half-braced for a further barrage of questions. But it's a relief not to get them, and she smiles, faint and shy, at the compliment. For all of Manhattan's faults, at least the rifties tend to be an open-minded bunch when it comes to dealing with folk with unusual abilities. Well, they'd have to be.

When she realizes this is Rush's dream, she raises her eyebrows. Maybe she should've guessed - this isn't much like the last weird ship she found him on, but it's not that much unlike it, either. Then again, it also seems a lot less aggressively unpleasant... which makes Rush's crankiness a bit of a puzzle.

"It's nice to see you again, too," she tells him with an arched eyebrow. "But me and Iman only just met."

Well of course he's gonna be like that. She's more surprised that he and Daine seem to know each other - obviously she and Daine have just been dropped into this situation together, it's not like they have history, like these two seem to.

"You know each other?" she counters, and waves her hand to move on without explanation, because that is so low on the list of important issues at the present moment.

"I'm assuming we don't have a lot of time," she says, looking Rush up and down as though she expects to see evidence of damage. It's not going to show up in here, other than in the fractured state of their surroundings. "What have they done to you? Where are you being held?"

He doesn't answer, not either of them. His eyes break off to sweep the deck plating, its surface smooth, half-remembered. He shuts his eyes with a sharp intake of breath, slamming back the inevitable spiking of pressure, the low and humming ache. Not yet. This is a rare opportunity. It may very well be his only opportunity. Not yet.

“They don’t let me sleep,” he says, shaking his head, vague and businesslike. “We must be between sessions.”

It is a clear window. It is not sufficient. He will make it sufficient. He can fashion a workaround, he can, and this is the door that has been opened to him.

Rush has always been rather good, he thinks, darkly amused, at workarounds.

With more effort than is generally typical for him, he pulls himself back to them, to here. To this subjective, ephemeral here.

"That's hardly salient," he says, relieved to hear a note of his more characteristic annoyance entering his tone. "Nor is it an executable solution."

Edited 2015-04-12 23:05 (UTC)

Daine glances between the two of them, baffled by how suddenly purposeful the conversation has become. Iman's half of it is easier to follow than Rush's, but she thinks she's gathered enough. Someone's holding him, and he isn't being allowed to sleep (at least not normally). "Who's 'they'?" she asks, frowning. That question could be for either one of them, but the next is for Rush: "Has someone caged you?"

"Romac," says Iman shortly, no time to beat around the bush with it, she doesn't know Daine but there's no time for obfuscation, and she seems like a good kid. And she knows Rush, that's as good a sign as any. "We tried to infiltrate them and they took him." She turns her attentions seamlessly to Rush, continuing, "I'll be the judge of what's salient or executable, here. Don't be difficult."

That's his natural state of course, and it's more or less to be expected with what he must be going through, and she bristles at the very thought of it - but if they're depriving him of sleep this could end at any moment.

"Wherever you are," she says, "it's not unreachable. I'm coming to get you out."

Maybe he didn't realize that.

His gaze snaps sharply away, one hand pushing through his hair - flinted and frustrated and furious. This may have to be less succinct than originally predicted - of course it would be, between the two of them. Of course it would be. Naturally.

“What they are ‘doing’ to me is nothing,” he spits, “compared to past experience and it is nothing I am not equipped to handle.” He locks eyes with Daine, the implication stark. He lifts his eyebrows, a quiet entreaty. "You remember. I know you do."

The feel of their heads crawling into his and despite the crack of bone, the overpowering, pervasive ache suffusing the parts of his body he can still feel, the shearing, unremitting application of continuous sound and tones that drill into him without promise of cessation - still this is preferable. Still.

“ROMAC suffers from the same misunderstanding of the fundamental concept of torture as everyone does,” he says with a shrug, fluid and dismissive. “Failing to realize that the affected will rarely divulge what is true but will rather say whatever they can to prevent further pain. They're capable of effecting lasting physical change, but ultimately it's immaterial. In essence, they’re wholly incompetent and utterly ill-equipped to deal with me - which serves our purposes rather well, don’t you think?”

His eyes flick to meet Asadi's. The level tone, steady, unworried. The insertion of that particular choice in pronoun. She'll know what he's doing, there will be no question, but - but the intent, Rush thinks, may be enough. Possibly it will be enough.

Of course it's ROMAC. Daine's expression darkens, and remains so despite Rush's attempt at - what, is he trying to reassure her? Is he really suggesting he's all right with being left in a ROMAC cell simply because it's not as bad as being in a tank in some spaceship? Which, from what she'd seen, he didn't handle very well at all. He's less panicked now, here, but that could just be because in this dream, no one's hurting or confining him. For all she knows, he'll wake up and scuttle into the nearest corner in a blind panic. With no one to help him.

Well, she's not standing for that.

"I don't care if it's nothing compared to what you've been through," she says shortly. "It's something compared to being out." Glancing between the two of them, she adds, "You can't just stay there." Little as she relishes the thought of going back into ROMAC for another jailbreak, she also knows Rush, of all people, doesn't deserve to be stuffed into a cage and tortured. Once was enough.

Edited 2015-04-13 02:30 (UTC)

She feels an entirely unwarranted spike of something asinine and childish - she's loathe to call it jealousy, but it doesn't keep her from a twitching glance between the two of them - when Rush implies Daine has some kind of intimate knowledge of his horrifying past. Like that's something to covet. Gross. Fortunately that bullshit is drowned moments later by gratitude and respect when Daine backs her position up cleanly, with a level of not-fucking-around as if the kid were after her own heart.

"Our purpose," she repeats with unveiled disgust, her attention fixed back on Rush. "Fuck that, you ass, I'm coming to get you. Precisely what she said. My purpose is you being out of captivity. You think I'm just gonna sit this out, wait for them to decide you're no longer an asset? You know me better than that."

He shakes the hair from his face with a low growl of frustration, eyes pressing shut, unable to look at them, unable to look at either of them. He breathes, deep and rattling, and wrestles a fucking grip on his fraying patience, crystallizing it, shaping it.

He opens his eyes.

"All right. Look. We do not have a great deal of time at our disposal so I will explain this to you. Once," he hisses, his diction poisonous. "ROMAC will very shortly be coming to the conclusion that the costs of keeping me alive far outweigh the benefits and I will cease to have value as a resource, at which point they will redirect their attention externally and devote all their resources to locating you." He stares at Asadi, the words subtly underscored with desperation, willing acceptance, willing acquiescence. Perhaps they are too similar that way. Too resolute. Too unyielding. "I have given you as much of a window as I can but they are not about to stop on account of you making yourself difficult to find. They will find you. Inevitably."

He advances, eyes blazing, expression hard and icy.

"I knew the risks. You knew them. We made that conscious decision, together, and I knew from the moment I stepped into that lab, I knew exactly what I was putting at stake. I understood the consequences. And I took every chance available to buy you time," he stabs a finger at her, unwavering, the ghosting agony of contracting fingers into an incomplete fist shivering deep within his skin, "to get the fuck out. So I am telling you."

With a massive, shuddering effort, he reins back and away, withdrawing, hand dropping to open and snap shut with distressing irregularity. To establish some tenuous composure. Semi-successfully.

"I am telling you,” he says, precise and measured and matter-of-fact, “to find a way out of the city." He meets her gaze, steady, intent. "You’re brilliant; I know you can do it. Create a workaround. Find a way out in the time it takes them to determine that I’m utterly useless to their cause. It won’t be long now."

Again he closes his eyes, closing away from her, from Daine, from the both of them, chin jerking in a movement both sharp and inadvertent.

It won’t be long at all.

Iman stares at him as he talks, his intent slowly unfolding, horror coming into her expression just as slowly, just as slowly transitioning to anger. She can't believe it - won't believe it, that he'd say these things to her, mean them, expect her to accept them. The compliment is nothing, an insulting scrape on top of the rest of it. She pulls her hand into a fist, unaware of how it mirrors his. She barely notices she's shaking.

"Fuck you," she whispers, incredulous. She stabs that finger right back, advancing a step into his space. "Fuck you. Don't you fucking tell me what to do. Don't you dare."

She turns sharply, forcibly pushing herself away from him, pressing her hands to her face. Of course, she should have anticipated this melodramatic self-sacrificing holy bullshit from him, she absolutely should have.

"I don't run," she spits, acidic, shooting a dark look back over her shoulder. "You think I'm just gonna let them - you think that wouldn't tear me up inside, you-" She cuts herself off again with a shuddering intake of breath. She's more emotional than she would have expected, but of course if anyone can get her to this point it's this asshole.

"We went in together," she says, barely sustaining composure. "We go down together, or not at all. That's how it is. You should have known that."

Would he have left her?

She knows he wouldn't.

What the fuck gives him the right to expect that of her.

... Well. Daine has no idea what's going on with these two, but it seems to her that an awful lot of fuss is being kicked up for no reason. Later, she might want to know more about Iman being able to figure a way out of the city, but that isn't what's important now. What's important is getting Rush out, which she's fair certain they could do if everyone stopped threatening to die for each other for five Goddess-blest minutes.

"Odd's bobs," she says, a flat dismissal of the awkward pause that had followed Iman's outburst. "Why are you talking about ROMAC as if they can't be beaten, or tricked? I've broken someone out of their cages before, and I can do it again, and I haven't heard one good reason yet why I shouldn't."

She slams the same barriers up, outraged and unwilling, and with the knotting muscles in his shoulders comes the steady ripple of phantom bruises as they begin to crawl, inexorable, into a state he can detect. The muscles in his hand lock in agony when he tries to clench its fingers again. This isn't favorable. This isn't ideal.

He looks at Daine, shaking his head, one corner of his mouth ticking wryly upward in pained amusement.

"Have some respect for the dead, why don’t you." He lifts one shoulder, the one not proximal to the arm that has begun to twinge with a renewed, familiar throb.

"Because it won't solve the problem. The problem of ROMAC -" He switches his stare back to Asadi, sincerity edged in concern, outlined in the flagrant cruelty of the removal of any and all pretenses. She'll see it for what it is - a tactic, a final strategy, the undisguised targeting of emotional output for the sake of achieving an optimal outcome.

"- targeting us." He breaks the consonants off with a sharpened hiss, and looks away. "You would simply draw their attention as well, which is - not sustainable. For any stretch of time."

"You haven't," Iman affirms with a sharp nod at Daine - thank fuck for this girl. And she's done it before - this exact thing? Perfect. She has a moment, a beautiful moment, of excitement, meeting Daine with a conspiratorial grin, but of course not, of course that can't last. Rush is still playing his stupid game.

She turns back on him, outraged again. "I don't care!" she explodes. She flings an arm toward Daine. "Here's someone who's done this exact thing before and she's still standing and she's willing to do it again, are you just going to ignore that? What is wrong with you?!"

She draws herself back again. He's trying to agitate her, she thinks, maybe trying to make her want to leave him, well fuck that, fuck him, all he's gonna do is make him want to save him more, that'll show him, the prick. "We will find a way to beat them," she says coldly. "I don't need you telling me I'm brilliant, I know I'm brilliant. What you're really telling me here is you think I'm a coward. You think I'd put myself above you. Who the fuck was it that made you think you weren't worth saving? Because I'm not them."

She's done with him. She turns away, fixing her full attention on Daine. "We'll do it together," she says. "I can find him whether or not he wants me to. How did you do it before?"

"You're not dead," Daine says to Rush with a disapproving frown. "And last time I broke someone out was January, and ROMAC hasn't touched me." Let them try, she thinks viciously. "So if they meant to target me then, they haven't done a very good job."

At least Iman is being sensible about this. They don't need Rush's blessing to get him out. What is he going to do if they kick down his door - refuse to leave? She'll carry him out by the scruff of his neck if he's going to be that difficult.

"I was with my friend when they brought him in," she explains, "but they never knew I was there because I was in mouse shape, hiding. When they went to move him between rooms, I took buffalo shape and carried him out." Smashed up their lobby a bit as well, but that isn't important. She nibbles her thumbnail thoughtfully. "That exact same plan is out, but I could sneak in the same way with you and start smashing things. Cause a ruction somewhere else, draw them away from Rush's cell. Or stick with you and help take down the guards."

"Neither of you understand," Rush says, both hands impulsively jerking up to run through his hair before he severs the movement with a strangled-sounding gasp. Peripherally, he notes that the patchwork of mottled bruising has sharpened into visibility, flowering over the offending arm. He snaps one hand over the intolerable ache, ramming it back and away and into irrelevance. He rakes them both with a panicked glare, their faces and the tips of their hair cast in the unearthly blue glow thrown by the gate's oscillating light. "Time is - is critical in this case and it will not be long before I'm -"

Destiny rumbles, deep and discordant. The spitting and crackling above their heads prefaces a cascade of sparks that shower the gateroom floor. The gate itself shuts off with a sickening, wet snap, steam hushing out from either side in a prolonged agitated hiss.

To what extent his own mental state is affecting the environment is not particularly significant unless -

"There is no guarantee I will be alive by that point," he snaps. "It is, in fact, based on an analysis of their current schedule, highly unlikely."

Edited 2015-04-13 06:51 (UTC)

Iman thrusts out a hand, holding it up as if to cover Rush's face from her periphery; she doesn't bother looking at him when she says, "Shut up. If time is of the essence then you should stop fucking wasting it."

To Daine she says, "Good, that's good. I think it'll probably work better if we just stick together and bull rush them. Pun intended." This is exactly the time for dark levity. She hesitates, then her eyes go a little wider. "Wait. WAIT. You were the Buffalo Incident?!"

Even for as brief a time as she and Rush actually worked for ROMAC, it was impossible not to pick up some of the watercooler chatter from its actual devotees, and the 'Buffalo Incident' was definitely a beloved anecdote. She'd always assumed the story had been exaggerated by time and boredom, but now, looking at Daine, hearing her talk in this beautifully pragmatic, ruthless manner, she doubts that.

Edited 2015-04-13 17:55 (UTC)

There's a shift to the look of Rush's arm, a growing stain of dark bruises, as if he's suddenly come under attack by an invisible enemy. His hand can't quite cover it all, and she scowls at the damage before flicking her gaze back up to his face. "Save your breath," she says, and it sounds less like a dismissal and more like sincere advice. "We're coming to get you whether you like it or not."

Back to Iman, whose question startles her a little. 'The Buffalo Incident'? She supposes it's no great surprise that folk still talk about it, but she looks a bit sheepish all the same. "Unless there was another one."

The ship shudders from an invisible impact and another veil of sparks flares downward. Rush retreats, free hand pressing to the side of his head, unable to suppress the frustrated, tearing sound in the back of his throat. Any and all attempts to divert either of them have simply made them more determined to act otherwise.

There is one other tactic he could, potentially, attempt based on his knowledge of their interpersonal relations. It would approximate deception and it would approximate irrationality and it would not be keyed to the same logical thought progression he has been adhering to but - they would have no means for assessing the veracity of his statements.

"What about the angels," he rasps. "The TARDIS. They need warning. They need someone - who can get them out."

"This is about you," says Iman curtly, looking at him again, now noting the changes to his arm, oh god, what have they done. Her expression twists slightly. "We get you out, we get you safe, then we warn the others. I haven't gone to the TARDIS and I won't, I know we can't risk endangering her. But she's powerful and she's protected herself this long. Angels too. You're human, Rush."

She knows he'll hate this but she can't be fucked to care right now. She reaches out and puts her hand on his good shoulder. "Look, we have the buffalo girl. She tore that place up so bad they're still talking about it and they never found her. After we get you out we'll figure a way to deal with what we know, figure out the next step, but this comes first and you're a dumb fucking shit for thinking otherwise."

She lets him go. The dream is shifting and fraying around them. He's probably starting to wake.

She looks at Daine. "You know Wilmot's?" she says. "We'll meet there tomorrow. Earliest you can."

Daine gives Rush a cursory, baffled glance, not understanding why he'd bring up the safety of those best able to protect themselves. If it's meant to put either of them off, it's not going to.

But there's no time to argue with him. The dream's about to come down around their ears. "Yes," she says, turning back to Iman as sparks rain down from the ceiling and raising her voice to be heard over the groans of the ship. "I'll see you there."

He flinches, trembling under her grip - she could not have known what motion that emulated, the harsh digging of fingers beneath his collarbone but his muscles have locked and he cannot tear out of that grasp he cannot shatter the remembered sensation that initiated this that initiated all of this and she could not have known she could not have -

The mounting pressure behind his eyelids detonates. His back arches under buckling tension, head flung sharply back, teeth bared, before he adapts his trajectory and stumbles back instead, his shoulders hunched and his breathing heavy. His uninjured hand leaps to his face, to the hot trickle gathering on the ridge of his upper lip. It comes away slick and red.

Destiny echoes with an unnatural, shrieking tone.

"Epistaxis," he mutters shortly. "They’re waking me up."

He will need to alter his approach. This is absolute. This is unequivocal. This is a necessity. The prevention of future decoherence, of further failure on his part. He fixes Asadi with a stare haunted and torn, expression briefly, desperately contorting as he says quietly, "get out of the city."

It will not be sufficient. One side of his mouth twists into a pained half-smile, quietly meaningful, subtly mocking. "Please."

The ship rends itself apart in the snap into consciousness, the persistence of a single tone, the dark and disorientation of freezing concrete.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

there's a tangled thread inside this head with nothing on the other end [closed]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject