kore_logs | this city is killing me

She sends him a short message through the device on her wrist: "the beach is warm enough"; warm enough for this meeting, warm enough to tolerate the tide coming in against the back of her legs as she stands ankle deep in sand, hands thrust into the pockets of the oversized sweatshirt she's wearing on top of the summer dress.

It might be strange, to stand facing away from the sea, but she'd missed the sounds of living thinking souls echoing forever and ever (amen) in the empty chambers of her own head; as much as she found comfort in the quiet constant existence of being something as old as a tree, something as slowly reactive and fundamentally unchanging, she is still what she is:

→ assassin, child, dancer, genius, mutant, telepath, unquantifiable

She is what she is and her own orbit is shifting greatly with loss and new planetary formations. Erik is gone and she can't quite assure herself that he will return or that he won't; patience is not her strong suit, it never has been, and thus waiting is not something she feels very well versed in. If Erik returns it will be good, and possibly terrible depending on where he'd gone or what had been done; if he doesn't then Charles will continue to spin round a gravity well until he rights himself or doesn't and either way she'll be there.

That is what family means, and that is what she's decided. Erik, Charles, Ned - they are family, and by extension the ones they care and love as well. Raven with her fear of blue despite being the best and brightest blue River had ever known, and now Daneel who seems a contradiction in hope that River is concerned she will upend and unbalance with her sudden acceptance of this new side of the coin. The moment she told Meyer she had and would kill for those she cared about she'd swallowed that seed and allowed it to take root; a new balance for a new cadence in song. She can do this. She can protect, and she can comfort, and her hands can hold and strangle, and that's okay.

Now she just has to convince Daneel of this. Somehow. Because she does want to be his friend.

The beach is appropriate enough, and even if Daneel can no longer smell the salt and seaweed in he air in the same way, he remembers it vividly. He can hardly be said to be a sentimental creature, but the beach is a place of good things.

It's simple enough to find River, this human who has summoned him and who surprises him in her knowledge of things, and when he comes near he's already trying to listen to her, to make sense of her.

"My name is Daneel Olivaw." He hasn't ever introduced himself, so perhaps he should do this now. "I'm not sure how I should address you."

"Hello, Daneel Olivaw." River smiles a bit at the formality, but perhaps it can be understood; she doesn't mind it, either way. "River, River Tam, hey you. Perhaps if you think very loudly in my direction, but uncertainty lies amongst the silicon and little bits of metal there." Erik would find this man fascinating, River realizes, and then there's a pang of loss that gets easily swept up in the noise of so many others in her mind, coping with their own losses and gains and realities in the wake of such upheaval. The mental sensation of buried emotions, for her, is not unlike the waves that keep crashing against her legs.

It could be worse, she knows. She could be consumed by the noise instead of just feeling like a reef. She could be something not herself entirely, an assemblage of grief and anger and displacement instead of fighting, kicking, struggling to keep her head above water and be what others need someone to be. She could not be someone at all.

And here she is. "A shame she couldn't hold on to knowing, could have met and told you the difference between one state and another." That's what anyone would want to know, isn't it? Anyone like Daneel or herself, anyway, would find themselves incredibly curious. Does the mind remain as they know it to be when everything else changes, or is the mind still just the reflection more so of choices and situation than of biology and applied structure?

For a moment, Daneel can only take it in, trying to interpret the sudden flood of information. She knows him for what he is -- either she recognises him as robotic or she has heard elsewhere -- knows of his recent change, and her mind. Unlike any mind he's encountered before, certainly human but different in a way that alarms him.

Damaged, perhaps, in a way that horrifies him, a way that would have made him angry when he was human. And there is something else, that reminds him a little of Charles, of the way Charles's mind had reverberated when Daneel listened.

"You are a telepath, as I am," he says, only half a question. He strongly suspects this to be the case, although a different sort than himself, too. "If you could have told me the difference in my mind when I was human, it would have answered a great many of my questions now."

"Not as ...finessed as Charles." Normally she'd say strong but she's having issues with that term plus what happened to Ned, so there it is. Her thoughts almost center on her friend, but it's more like listening for a particular sound in a thousand piece orchestra based on the specific tuning of the one instrument and the way it is played by one member of the procession. "You see that too, the missing parts. Even changing her didn't change that."

She makes a face towards the sand. "She, I, we - the use of terms of self to distance self from the things she herself does not want to remember or take or accept but here I am, asking you to be my friend for friendship's sake. For Ned's sake. For my own." Wrinkling her nose slightly. "For yours, though the pacifistic telepaths brimming with faith in their fellow man have her won out two to one, a concession of a sort."

Which isn't the same as saying she won't hurt anyone who hurts you Daneel, so don't get too confused by that. "But they took the sound of knowing so I wouldn't have been able to tell you the truth of the matter anyway. Maybe it will happen again and we'll be ready."

"Then someone has done this to you." This is horrific to Daneel, that anyone would do this an innocent, telepath or not. Brains, whether organic or positronic, are complex and delicate things. To cut, to alter, to harm like this is so very wrong, goes against everything Daneel accepts. Because she is a telepath, because she listens? In his own time and place, the knowledge of what he can do would only lead him to be dismantled, his brain under scrutiny to see what had gone wrong to allow. Is it the same here, perhaps? A young girl with unusual abilities, subject to a surprisingly cold scientific scrutiny? It galls him.

But a friend he will take gladly, and even if it isn't faith in humanity that he has so much as just a need to protect everyone, even if they wish him harm, he'll accept a compromise, a concession, if that's what he can take.

"I could not hear minds either, while this happened." He offers a hand, if she'll take it, palm up in an expression of acceptance. "I am glad of friends, what few I've had. I would be pleased to count you among them, particularly if you are a friend of Ned."

"Could tell you the whole story, short and sordid, but initial meetings aren't supposed to be filled with unpleasantries and confirmation that powers are absolutely corrupt when the decisions over others become currency, become doctrine, become a matter of course for everyone. Like here, only a different scale and a new name. The Academy, Cape Kore. It means the same: stay and be changed."

She shakes her head and looks distant briefly before coming back to the moment again, grasping his hand firmly and shaking it.

"Kin through choice; more than centuries separate the chance for shared genetics beyond a certain level, but we are both mutated, and thus there is a name. Trying to show him the useful purpose of others and support and non-isolation but it's hard when the things that make a hollow sound in the soul know their old targets. He thinks kindness is his mask, but it's more a striation."

Her words are like riddles, and he has to pick them apart in his rapid, methodical fashion as she says them. Riddles are difficult for him, but they're nothing more than mysteries, but he can force his way through those. Partner Elijah taught him that much.

"You mean Ned," he concludes after a moment. Their differences, their mutations, kin because of that. "I agree that Ned is very kind. He should not be alone, no more than anyone should. But I feel emotions, not true thoughts, and I did not realise he thought such a thing about himself."

"He is the topic of the day." Hello, Daneel, how did you miss that? "You're taking it in with pieces too small. She's easier to understand as a whole concept and picture, everything else is fractions, figments and fractures. See? Apply non-literal concepts to the words you hear; when she's being literal it's so much clearer than the rest."

River takes a step forward and leans in. "You're thinking too much. See? Literal."

But the literal is harder for her, takes a bit more force and causes things in her mind to run up against one another. It takes effort, and when she's as upset as she is (and Daneel can definitely sense that, like a sharp undercurrent that moves beneath the rock that is the responsibility she's placed on herself, to care for the people she wasn't able to protect) it requires more energy than she can afford to give it.

"Ah. The echo exists and Charles is the only other she'd ever met; not sure if her brother back home applies or not." Debatable, and not a debate she can really engage in without Simon being present, which River sincerely hopes never ever happens. "But it's a different echo, I can hear it now, and yes. Ned thinks ...he is an awful person, or cursed, and has built the walls and painted them in bright, shining colors.

He thinks that means what's beyond them can't possibly be bright or shine too."

The problem is that literal thought is the only type that Daneel is good at. Metaphors are strange things he can only understand intellectually, but he can't take to them naturally. To him, they're a type of riddle all on their own.

An echo, though: he knows what that is, and understands what she means, and it's a good way to describe the sensation he had when he met Charles, and what he feels now. His own abilities seem very small now, but he'd had nothing to compare them with before.

"I only hear what others are feeling at that moment. I do not have the depth you seem to sense." And he takes her at her word, has to. "I did not realise he felt that way about himself, but I agree that he is very... bright, if I understand your metaphor correctly. He believes his own kindness is false, but it is kindness in truth?"

"Falling or drowning, a well of light and gravity that pulls everything in. She can take it or she can't, it's all sort of..." She waves her arms a bit. Depth is a good, terrifying word for it, what she can do.

But Daneel gets it (finally) so River gives a nod. "He has reasons. Valid and true but self-reflection gets muddled and crossed with concepts of good and evil, bad things happen to bad people and good things are stolen away. He thinks this because death and desertion; he thinks this because it hasn't been fair. He thinks this because the people he cares about most are snatched off."

She peers at him. This is going to be problematic, she can tell; Daneel is a good person, and interested in upholding that self-same structure that means protecting people from the worst of themselves, but who protects Daneel? Not Ned, at least not right now, which leaves ...her. And Daneel doesn't want bad things to happen to anyone as a reaction of anything that happens to him.

Well. So be it. That can be the goal, but goals are meant to be meant, shattered, or discarded as necessary. "He is your friend and more, your well-being carries weight for his own. Is that compatible or should it be my concern?"

He's uncertain; this veers into things he has never been able to plainly decide. That he should be so important to anyone that his well-being should be weighed into consideration -- it's a terrible confusion of the First and Third Laws.

"The First Law states that a robot may not harm a human being, nor through inaction allow a human to come to harm." Even then, it's only words, only approximating a mathemetical construct in his brain. There is no arguing with math. Things are concrete and simple; this is not, and it involves some confusing potentials. "I have no wish to cease functioning, nor to cause Ned any distress by my absence, but serious harm to a human to protect me is problematic by my programming."

Daneel doesn't know how to sort it out. Not yet.

River frowns at this. "To give rules, to allow unbending; did they think they wouldn't evolve as well?" It angers her in a way, that someone somewhere would work to create consciousness and limit it in such a way that it cannot even fight for its own survival. It flies in the face of all sense of natural growth, which she can only imagine was at least half the point.

So this is her problem now and she can't even ask Daneel to keep track of risks to his own person. So be it; River can handle it. There is only a certain sort of person who would see needle reason to harm someone like Daneel outside of any philosophical disagreements besides.

"What is Ned to you? Where does he fit in that?"

Edited 2013-04-25 21:24 (UTC)

The implications of this question pass over Daneel's head, and he's only left beng very confused by it. He isn't supposed to have friends, though he has and he does. Ned is certainly a friend, and it's a rare enough thing for positronic potentials to shift around a person in the way they have with Ned.

"Ned is," he begins, slowly, "my friend. I wish him to be well, and to be safe, and to be happy. I wish him to realise how kind he has been to me."

His voice is soft. Friend itself is a heavy word for him. He can think of no stronger term to hang on an important person.

"There is very little I would not attempt for his sake."

"Good." He might not understand the implications but that doesn't mean his intentions aren't any less clear; Daneel says friend the way people speak of strong faiths and stronger loves and River doesn't care about semantics in this. Meaning is much more important.

"Old things, undying things, are patient. Broken things are patient. Ned needs patience. He was happy and now he's not; it won't be fixed in a day, a week. Happiness will have to be a slow infection. It will take time."

Is he old? Perhaps by some standards. Undying? Again, perhaps, if nothing unfortunate should occur. He's certainly nothing if not patient, and to make Ned happy would be... such a very small thing, but so valuable, so important.

"I will be patient with him," Daneel promises. "I cannot... I would not hurt him, not for anything, but I have never wanted to try to hard to make someone happy. This is a strange situation for me. I am... I am lost."

He is very lost. He is stepping into things he should not do, cannot do, but perhaps might try regardless. It might destroy him, it might not, but he's passing a point that being human for a time accelerated, brought him to far quicker than he was prepared for.

"Everyone is. It is the nature of being. If you aren't lost, then you're more lost than you know." Which is true, as far as River can people. People who believe they have their shit together? Don't, as a rule. It's only those who know their flaws well that seem to manage without stumbling as far.

But something in the way Daneel states it gives her pause. "But why are lost? You're a good person." Don't good people believe themselves capable of love above all else?

"I am a robot," Daneel says, as though this explains everything. To him, it does. There is a very clear line drawn around what a robot must do and what a robot is, and stepping outside that is strange and uncomfortable.

More explanation is necessary. He knows that. "I was human for a time, and we shared something." She must know this, he reasons, if she hears so much. "It was a valuable experience, but I'm not sure if I am capable of what Ned might need to be happy. If I am not, it may be wrong for me to try."

River rolls her eyes a bit. So he's a robot. So she's a telepath. So Ned can revive or kill people with a touch. So. What. Of it?

"You think, you feel, you concern yourself with others, you are alive by the definition of many. What does that mean? Does that mean you're not supposed to share 'somethings' with people?" Because if not, why is he even capable? "What do you think he might need? What you think might not be the truth."

"I am... not sure what he needs."

Someone who can understand what he feels rather than simply know. Someone who can return a sentiment in the same way rather than in his own, peculiar, robotic analogue. Someone who can support him and help him grow, rather than merely protect him and hold him back. He doesn't know if a robot can fill that role. He thinks of friend Jander, who once faced this. Friend Jander is no longer functioning.

But then, friend Jander never had the many years of experience Daneel has by now. That might make a difference.

"Would it harm him more for me to try and fail, or to fail to try at all?"

"The path a person is on climbs and clambers away; things that force new paths or returns to one long forgotten are sometimes purposeful but often not. The question, better: is the current path upward or down? Nothing is predictable, you know this. History is shaped by the reactions to other actions that are in turn reactions of their own."

So it's impossible to say if it would do more damage not to try or to try and fail, at least not in River's mind. That would mean knowing the definition of that failure or knowing what Ned himself would rather have. Impossible, considering River doubts Ned could answer that now. Or tomorrow. "Do you think he is harmed without? Do you think he would continue to be so?"

She sighs a little. "These are common questions and you're in a unique position to ask to evaluate to decide. To put the needs of another before yourself." As much as River thinks Daneel could learn to take care of himself as well. "But you decide."

River spins in a circle slowly. "But my opinion, flawed and imperfect and selfish, yes, not trying causes more harm. Doing nothing causes more harm."

Edited 2013-04-26 20:18 (UTC)

"Your opinion may be imperfect, but I value it nontheless."

And he does, very much. River hears so much more than he does, and she has the benefit of already being human, so she must understand these things deeper than he can. Even broken as she is, this must be so.

It's much to think about. It's too much to decide. Daneel gives a little sigh, an entirely communicative gesture. "I will... think on this, what you have told me."

River ...would argue that, and so would probably several other people, but none of them are here so Daneel doesn't have to worry about it. "Luck, then, if luck can be applied statistically to your situation."

She'll give him a hug, too, for good measure.

He'll accept the hug. He's not sure if luck is appropriate, if it's a quantifiable thing that should be hoped for, but he recognises the sentiment for what it is.

"Thank you. You have been helpful, Miss Tam."

"You'll learn. Children hate being called Miss. River, just River, hey you hey. That's enough."

She smiles and touches Daneel's arm in a gesture of soft understanding before turning and making her way back towards the houses and away from the ocean.

The other members of the household are occupied in their grief or personal concerns, and thus it is somewhat easy for River to slip in unnoticed when she wants to, taking the stairs two at a time with bare silent feet before she wavers in front of Ned's door, suddenly uncertain. He's been hurt in ways that offend her more deeply than it does him, but the pain he suffers from now is not the same.

What she wouldn't give to be able to vomit up his happiness from the days before like a pearl and present it to him - here, here is something real, something solid and good and more tangible than just memory sprinkled with terror - but she can't, that's not the sort of thing she is.

More's the pity.

Someone moves in the attic and River makes the decision to just go, hand on the knob and entering with the same sured silence that she used to move through the house. The lump in the bed is definitely Ned, though someone else might think he was asleep; River knows better, and moves to lay down next to him, wrapping her arms around blankets and sadness and quiet. A distance of embrace, but an embrace all the same.

If he pulls away she won't be offended.

"The crown you made me set in the sun to dry, and the trees you planted still reach towards the sun."

Ned is lying on his side, curled tightly around the hurt. It is lodged in his chest, a physical thing, poisonous and heavy. His eyes are open but dull, staring blankly into the dim blue shadows of the unlit room. He's sunk very low, since Daneel left. It's always been worse for him, at night. It was the same after his mother died. He'd gone through those first few months (years, if he's honest with himself) at the Longborough School for Boys wearing a mask of indifference during the day, but he couldn't keep it up when the sun was down. That was when the sadness snuck up on him, tip-toed its way into the dormitory (between the rows of other boys quietly sleeping) and hollowed him out. Left him a shell pretending to be a boy.

His lassitude is such that he doesn't even flinch when, out of nowhere, River is wrapping her arms around him. Before she speaks, he thinks maybe he's having another nightmare, like the first. Or perhaps it is another monster here to gobble him up - like so many others. He can't imagine caring one way or another. It's too exhausting. All the panic, all the grief, all the foolish hope: it isn't worth it. He doesn't want it.

But then Ned recognizes her voice and it shatters the spell of calm despair. "River?" He pulls his knees closer to his chest, squeezes his eyes shut. "What are you doing here?"

Edited 2013-04-24 00:49 (UTC)

"Taking care of my family." She makes sure not to hold so tightly as to prevent Ned from curling in tighter, since that seems to be what he wants to do; not to mention the height disparity, knees tucked or otherwise. River has always been a bit on the small side of things. "That's what I do, and practice makes perfect. Like any good thing, any art. I'll take care." A pause; River is a lot more uncertain about this than she'd like to let on.

Ned was happy and now there's this, and it isn't fair because it isn't something she can physically fight, and it's too important to just be an impartial observer. Ned is too important. So on another day, perhaps, they could commiserate over the problems of actually caring.

"I'm sorry."

The word 'family' echoes in his head, becomes like a lead weight tied around his ankle, dragging him deeper down into a grief that is cold and black and airless like the bottom of a frozen lake. Because he doesn't have a family. Doesn't get to have one. The timing is too perfect for it to be a coincidence. Jesse had been fine (for certain definitions of fine) all his time here, until Ned came along. Until he'd offered his friendship. And then just as Ned had started to rely on the existence of his jokes and his goodness and his particular smile and his way of speaking, the universe had snatched him away.

The rational half of Ned's mind knows that it isn't his fault. It's self-centered (and a little insane) to feel responsible in a matter he's only tangentially involved in. But that rational half has its shadow. Half-formed ideas about curses springing from the way his very being breaks the laws of nature, about divine punishment for his sins, about some faceless scientist engineering a sick joke (is there any difference between the three?) flicker through his mind.

And what if River is next? It makes sense, according to his tortured line of logic. The parallels are inescapable. Jesse had said he'd take care of Ned, when he was so tired and frightened of the nightmares he'd gone days without sleep. (Ned hadn't told River about the nightmares, he remembers, hadn't wanted to worry her while she had an opportunity to be quiet and tranquil and still, like a tree). Jesse had curled up next to him then, the way River is now. And Ned had been grateful for the company. Ned hadn't worried about Jesse, then, because he was a werewolf, had healing powers, could look after himself.

But apparently, he couldn't. So how is Ned supposed to just accept that River's telepathy and her ability to fight will keep her safe, when her name comes to the top of the list of things he's scheduled to lose?

Because it's a when, not an if. That, he's sure of, in this frame of mind. After twenty years of precedent he'd tried a new outlook, had let people get close. Had let River and Charles and Jesse and the rest of them convince him it was safe to do so. But it isn't. The last week has taught him that. Jesse died. Charles turned on him. What horrible thing does the Almighty have in store for River?

(He thinks of it in these terms. The old Sunday school terminology creeps its way back in under the walls, uninvited, when he's wounded and vulnerable and distracted.)

"You deserve better family than me," he whispers, wishing there were some way he could take it back, could make himself not care about River (and he does care, too much, that's the problem) or anyone. "You shouldn't have to-" he trails off, silence standing in for all this, and all River's done for him in the past. Saving him. Being kind to him. Being careful with him, patient with him, despite the fact that he's done nothing to earn it.

"Hush," she says direct into his ear, with no real weight or displeasure but rather like shushing someone who has cried to the point of hiccuping pains, "this poisonous foolishness won't tolerate."

As that's what it is: foolishness. Ned says River deserves better because part of Ned wants River to walk away, to not look back. Ned knows what abandonment feels like, knows he can live with that weight and that loss. It is uniquely different from having someone taken away, someone being hurt; if she leaves, then Ned has a chance to rebuild that distance between himself and caring, has a chance to decide he doesn't care anymore, and while she can respect the desire she wont tolerate it by a long shot.

She presses her cheek to the space between his shoulder blades and squeezes his hands through sheets and comforters. "You deserve me. You deserve happiness. You deserve protection. You deserve love." In the absence of the near dichotomy Charles and Erik represented (one mourning and fallen prey to hubris' folly, the other vanished without a trace) she finds herself swinging between the two extremes like a pendulum whose tip has been honed sharp and slicing. It's a desperate fierceness that settles into her bones. Jim Kirk is gone, Soobie is gone, Darwin is gone and she looked at Cass upon waking with the voices of so many flooding her head and still isn't sure if she was seeing or remembering.

She'd told Daneel that Ned built walls and painted them bright colors, certain the contents were much darker and that's half true; but even the walls are cracked, and the ruins are the walls, incorporating as much of the exterior as the interior it hides. She thinks about the art of cracked pottery and melted gold in the new seams, creating art out of things that were once shattered, making them worth more in the repair. She thinks about the ghosts of warmth that Ned believes he doesn't possess anymore, because he doesn't deserve, as if it were ever that clear cut.

As if terrible things didn't happen to good people, as if bad people didn't rise to power all the time, every day.

A house that once held five souls is down to two, possibly one, and River doesn't know what to do with this other than cling tightly to the ones she can. "Maybe I'm scared too," she says softly, "but nothing in this 'verse or the next can stop me."

Edited 2013-04-25 18:30 (UTC)

He hears the words, but he can't bring himself to believe them. Not yet. All the same, River's saying them, meaning them, and it had never occurred to him in all the years of solitude how much it would hurt if someone were to ever care for him.

It seems an impossible combination: River is good, River knows him, River cares about him. He cannot make the three compatible in his mind. Not all at once. He can imagine someone good who knows him but doesn't care about him, or someone who is good and cares about him without really knowing him (Daneel his mind supplies cruelly, or Jesse, or so many of the others), but how can anyone who is good and really knows him - what he is, what he's done - and still manage to care about him?

But there she is, impossibly, a stalwart if small presence curled against his back, refusing to leave.

More than her reassurances, more than her closeness, it is thought that she might be frightened, too, that stirs him from the suffocating hold of his sad stupor. It is his Achilles heel, the fatal crack in his fortifications. He doesn't want River to be scared. He knows that she is braver and stronger than he could ever be and hardly needs him to play the white knight, but being brave and strong doesn't mean happy or unafraid.

Why is he worrying about harm that might come to her, when for all he knows she is hurting right now, this second? He isn't psychic, like she is, doesn't know automatically what's happened to her and what's going on inside her. His concerns about being cursed, about her future, give way to more immediate worry.

Had she known Jesse, too? Or had someone else been hurt or killed or gone missing? Was she feeling responsible for not keeping everyone safe - him included - the way she'd so badly wanted to? Had someone hurt her, while he was a dryad, quieter and more peaceful but also more vulnerable without the ability to hear into the minds of others? He'd been so beset over the course of the week that it seems possible if not likely. River could still fight, he'd seen that when she rescued him from Charlie, but- but there was Charles and his soft words, and perhaps others like him, making it impossible. Why had he let himself get swept away by his grief, why hadn't he checked in with her immediately, made sure she was alright, first?

Ned stirs faintly, knows by now that he doesn't need to speak, that River can sense all of this, but he still wants to say something. "Are you alright?" He thinks of River's brother, so far away, thinks that if she's going to insist on thinking of him as family, that ought to go both ways. Ought to mean he's keeping her safe and happy and whole, by all rights. Or as close as either of them are ever going to get.

She hadn't intended to open a floodgate of worry that merely re-centered itself in the present instead of a possible future, but here it is and she can't turn away from it either. So instead she just touches Ned's shoulder briefly through the safety of several layers of bedclothes. "Jesse is my friend too." Jesse made art and Jesse understood art as a communicative device of suffering or insanity or whatever. Jesse is a good person, by River's measure, and she can't even do anything because of the rules and decisions on who or what is responsible when who or what is responsible can't be held accountable.

Not that she should think on that too much; if she does, then by that logic she should lock herself up for any number of deaths (she can count them all on a good day and this is a bad day, so). "I set myself to swing between True North and South, and the points of the compass have worn away. Erik is missing. Soobie is gone. The house stands empty with only ghosts of their own memories inside. Everything changes so quickly here and ...adaption takes time. Time we don't have. What if control is lost? Who will get hurt? How can it be fixed?"

A sigh. "Nothing in the 'verse can stop me. That isn't good, Ned, and neither am I."

It is strange to Ned, knowing that Jesse was River's friend, too. That she is mourning just as much as he is. The same is true of Galen, Kenzi, anyone else who knew Jesse. Ned's past losses had been intensely private ones, shared by no one around him. There had been a funeral, yes, and a conglomeration of adults who shed tears for his mother while he stood there like a stone. But then, once he was at boarding school, no one knew that his mother had ever lived, much less that she had died and left him empty and aching in ways that, even if they had known, they wouldn't have understood. None of them knew what his father had promised him or about his silence and absence stretching through all the years that followed. So it is strange to think of someone else sharing that hurt with a hurt of their own.

"Erik's missing?"

He hadn't known that, hadn't realized. Hadn't thought to check in. Ned knows that Erik and River are close, that he is close with Charles as well - and how must he be handling it? Ned has never been able to hold a grudge: not really, not for any length of time. He can't stand the thought of so many frightened friends, so many mourning lovers, so many people like River and Daneel left rattling around in empty houses that used to be full of people.

The weight of it (all that loss, all that sadness - not just him, but everyone here) descends on him, crushing the breath out of him. How are any of them supposed to put up with it? How are they supposed to just go on with their lives in this state of heightened uncertainty? He remembers what Daneel had told him earlier, about everything being temporary, about it meaning he needed to hold on more tightly to what he had in the present. But the transience of things here is on fast-forward, is too much for him to keep up with. He can't cope.

"I wish I could promise you I would never disappear," he says very quietly, "I hate that I can't make that promise. I hate that you were Jesse's friend too and he's gone. I hate that Erik's gone." And that's it, he thinks. That pressure on his chest right now isn't sadness: it's hate. "I hate this place. I hate the people behind the cameras. I hate that they can do anything they want with us."

"Good." River moves to place her head between Ned's shoulder blades, hands fisting and then relaxing against the blankets he's wrapped around. What else can she say? She knows he can't promise these things, knows that it hurts to loose and be lost, knows that she can't make any real promises of her own. All she can do, the only thing she can do, is her best and her best, in this place, is hideously limited. "Well placed, and well timed."

Maybe it isn't fair to need everyone else to be one thing or another so she can recent herself, but then again not a single blessed thing about this entire situation strikes her as fair. She should know when people vanish, should know where they go and how they get there; she could've covered half the surface of a moon back home with knowing, and here it's trapped, contained in a bubble that would make her panic if she didn't find other outlets for her frustration.

If she didn't think it would be useless to scream at the sky. Amusing to her captors to see her strain against invisible chains. She knows how the humor of such men turn, how they tell themselves they work with the greater good in mind while also telling themselves that the person they're changing is barely worth that title at all.

River refuses to be useless, or amusing, so River fights the compulsion to let lose and get lost, to chase the echo of her own screaming in her mind until she remembers all the words for starlight in any language she's ever heard. She refuses to be a victim, refuses to accept and swallow and lose herself to madness or panic.

What would happen then? What of the people she promised to protect? It wouldn't get her home, she knows that much - those keeping them here care very little for the effects their lab rats have on the cage, on the other rats. If they care at all it's selective and conniving and untrue. All the things River doesn't want to be the tool of again.

"When it settles I'll give you a gift. A word. To you and one other. Like a break. Full stop. A safety measure."

Little by little her presence, her voice is uncurling the cold fingers of despair from around his ribcage. He still aches with sadness for Jesse, and now for Erik and the others who are gone, but at least, for the moment, River is demonstrably here with him and not going anywhere.

The hatred, too, budding and hard-edged, warms him from the inside. River doesn't discourage it, doesn't draw away in disappointment or fear. Because she is River, who knows what he is thinking without an effort, he knows she knows just how deep that hatred goes. How far he thinks it could go, if he ever had means and opportunity to exercise it against the people who brought them here and put them through this. She can see that, and still she isn't pulling away. She approves. Thinks he has a right to be angry, a right to feel wronged, and that means more than he can say.

"A word?"

Ned doesn't know what it means, doesn't know the significance, but River says it like it's important, so he believes her. What he doesn't know is...

"Safety for you or safety for me?"

Edited 2013-05-03 23:53 (UTC)

"For you in the instance. For both in the long run." She'd never forgive herself if she lost control or had it wrested from her just to hurt Ned. "When things settle, not a warning bell now, just a thought, a sign. It sounds like a song but so much does." She isn't concerned that she'll come unhinged now but it remains something to consider.

Simon had known. It makes sense to give it to Charles (she'll need Charles to find it in the first place) and Erik is still the only person she's met that she would trust with the ignition. But Simon had known, so Ned should know, because ...there are friends and there is this. These people, her family, her crew.

"One wish to have one wish to give; take you to the stars too."

this city is killing me

for Daneel, @ the beach, early afternoon

Re: for Daneel, @ the beach, early afternoon

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for Ned, house 20, late evening

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