incinerates | MENTAL LINK ( S72 ).

I'M HERE

[ It isn't long after contacting her broodmates that Rogue sets out to find one in particular. The finding isn't quite as easy as she'd hoped, her own raised shields and preoccupation making it hard to get even a sense of where he might be. Standing outside the barracks, she glances in the direction of the orchard, off toward where the village lies, and finally just gives up and takes the simplest path. ]

( Sugar, can we talk? )

[ Gentle. Hesitant. Worried. Her mind reaches carefully toward his and she hopes he answers. ]

[ It doesn't matter where he is, in the end, because she can find him with her brain. He can feel her, searching for him, as her mind weaves like a strip of silk through his messily-kept defenses, and her voice reaches him. Muted, for a moment. And then stronger. In any other circumstance, her voice would be so difficult for him to understand. ( The burst of his being precedes his voice: shoulders squared, fists clenched. Ready for a brawl. Every muscle strained against the weariness he feels. ) ]

What's there to talk about.

[ Of course it wouldn't be easy. What happened earlier wasn't, and now that she's trying to make peace with him... Well, she probably deserves it somehow. She hasn't exactly been the best broodmate, with her nightmares and not reaching out to him more. There's guilt there now, threaded through her words like delicate embroidery. ]

( I just— I want us to be okay. )

[ This is an olive branch if ever there was one, extended to him by a woman that's felt like nothing but someone who understands how to be gentle when teeth are bared at her. It's why he bristles, even now. Prickles all over, resisting the symbiotic need to forgive and make amends. To be whole again, with his "new family". ]

-- you said you'd defend him even if he hurt others. Nothing about that is okay, you know.

( Not everything is as black and white as that. It'd be so much easier if it were. )

[ She used to think things could be that simple, that they should be. Back in her early days with the X-Men, she'd been so set in her beliefs, refusing to look at someone who had done wrong and see anything but their actions, let alone judge them on anything else. But now all she ever seems to see are shades of grey. ]

( Will you tell me where you are? I'd like to talk in person, if you'll let me. )

Seems pretty clear cut to me.

[ He'd thought that of that girl too. The young one who'd killed, called it self-defense, as though hurting and-or killing people made anyone anything other than a murderer. Made them strong for surviving, when they should have been strong enough to find another way.

A long pause greets her, and then he answers. Begrudgingly: ]

I'm on my way back from the docks. Give me a few minutes, I'll go to the barracks.

( Thank you. )

[ Patience used to be a virtue she possessed, but now all Rogue feels is anxiety, a nervous thrum in her chest as she begins pacing. There's an urge from the symbiote to be make this peace, but more than that, she needs it. But she also needs a distraction, and so she passes the minutes by finding them some tea, pouring two hot cups and waiting with them in one of the corners of the room. ]

[ It takes him less than "a few minutes". By now, he knows a handful of shortcuts throughout the encampments -- from docks to the "Carbauschian" barracks barely takes him a minute, if he walks fast and nobody stumbles into his way. He enters backwards, his arms full of two, semi-damp baskets, one weighed down with enough eel-like creature to feed at least half of the nest. The half that isn't absolutely sick of seafood, that is. ( He's not; he comes from Japan, after all. The food may be alien, but it's a familiarity. As long as there's spice to go with it, he'll eat it until he's sick of it. ) ]

All right. I'm here, what do you want to say?

[ It might be petulant, but he sits on the floor with his basket of eel and begins to peel off his robes. Unraveling them, exposing blonde hair and red eyes. Broad shoulders and lean arms, before he purposefully begins to prep eels for consumption. ]

[ there's no knock at the door, no careful pluck at Bakugo's attention; one moment Juno is self-contained, wrapped up in his tangled knot of misery, and the next— ]

( You're not my goddamn babysitter. ) [ he's been wound tight ever since Elliot delivered the news about Nureyev's coma, and it's a tension that vibrates through him now, something dangerously close to snapping. ] ( Stop checking up on me. )

[ he knows the state he's in, and he's well aware of how it must bleed through the Nest, but he doesn't care. the absence of Nureyev isn't like prodding at a missing tooth, it's like trying to stand on a fucking broken leg. it seems that everyone else came out here to save the world; when they took that deal from the Host that found them, they thought about a future. thought about going home someday. but when Juno took that hand, it was a trade: him for Hyperion. he didn't need anything more after that, and all of this is just — just waiting around, the same way it felt those six months after Miasma. like Juno is already finished and the rest of the world just hasn't gotten the memo yet.

that had receded a bit, with Nureyev around. he'd given Juno a reason to stick with it, even if it was just to keep him safe. maybe to offer a leg-up on whatever plans he had in mind, he's thinking now, because Nureyev isn't like him, Nureyev doesn't need a reason to keep going and he means something and he deserves better than this. but he's not here and Juno is, and he hadn't realised how much of a life preserver Nureyev's presence had been until he's gone and Juno goes under again. still just waiting for the bomb to finally catch up with him. ]

Stop being such a sorry fuck, and maybe I wouldn't have to.

[ There's teeth in that statement, an embittered, unwanted pseudo-envy he projects onto Juno because apparently, there's something about brood that makes everyone stupid for someone who's asleep. It itches, as much as Bakugo fights it. Itches under his ribs and at the back of his throat, unwanted and unwelcome.

( He envies Juno, because the things that he feels for Hadrian are real. They're not born of some biological urge that binds symbiotes into familial groups. ) ]

I keep thinking you're going to do something stupid.

( What's it to you? )

[ it doesn't really have anything to do with Bakugo, so it isn't pointed the way it would be if he had something against the kid personally; this is vicious but blunt, lashing out at anything that comes near him just to keep it away.

something about it, though — something stupid. that sounds like Nureyev, enough so that he has to wonder if the symbiote isn't just making him hear a connection between them because of the Brood. not that it matters either way. once the similarity has struck him, all he can think about is being on the inside of the airlock with his heart caught in his throat but happy, light-headed with relief, because Nureyev will walk away with the best of him and they won't ever have to see it turn sour. the serene certainty of this is it, this is it, it's done.

he remembers Nureyev's voice (Hadrian's voice but not, a different pitch, sincere, warm) going high and thin with desperation: open this door. open it now! and then how it had dipped in despair as he had realised that Juno meant for this to be the way things ended: you idiot. Juno, you idiot. he knows that if he asked, Nureyev would probably think that was the stupidest thing Juno has ever done, but — it wasn't. him for the world is a good trade. win-win, if anything. and he already made that deal to get here, so none of it matters, does it? he feels— he doesn't know. some mornings he wakes up and isn't sure he's even alive now. ]

( Fine — I'm not going to do anything stupid. ) [ all he has to do is wait. it hovers on the fringes of his thoughts, buzzes underneath his skin. ] ( Alright? Is that good enough for you to leave me alone? )

[ "What's it to you", Juno asks. Bakugo's answer is immediate, an honest reaction, more than a calculated response. ]

Everything. Why shouldn't it be?

[ Some might call it youthful naivety, egocentrism, a host of other things that bring to mind untested children, full of innocence and hope. He's not like that. He's got the hope, certainly, but he's far from innocent. Far from naive and foolish. Far enough to begin to understand the implications of a door, solidly locked behind his ( Juno's ) back. That raw satisfaction. At least this way, it all means something. Crashing, burning beautifully, making a life worth something. ]

You're a LIAR. Just like Hadrian, you lie because you think you know something everyone else doesn't and the only thing that matters in the end is what you think. It's just so much fucking easier to be alone, because then you can close your stupid blast doors and make some stupid decision all by yourself.

[ He snaps the words; they sound too raw, too close to proper self-reflection. ]

[ throwing the scene in the tomb back at him gets a reaction like an electric shock: ]

( It's not— )

[ —like that, but it is, isn't it? he'd been waiting for that moment in the airlock his whole life. he hates that Bakugo is right about that, because he hates even more that accusation of easier. something about that grates. hits a mark he doesn't want to examine too closely, or at all. and this isn't the first time he's heard this from someone, not even close. self-centred, self-aggrandising, self-loathing — he knows all of that already. what he doesn't understand is why people keep trying. hasn't he made it clear yet, the kind of ending Juno Steel's life is going to have? ]

( ... So why bother? ) [ he isn't being plaintive or fishing for pity; it's still angry, bitter, the way he asks himself the same question sometimes. ] ( If you've got me all figured out, why stick around? )

[ if only he could ask Nureyev that. ]

[ Bakugo is not an articulate young man. He's not one to chat about the way he feels, or the complexity of the mind and emotions - he's one to feel things, like an electric jolt through his heart. Right down to the core of him, and he reacts roughly, shoulders burdens that he shouldn't be, not at his age. Because the Atlas'ian feat of being the strongest one, both psychologically and physically, sometimes means taking on someone else's fucked up brain.

He's got Elliot and Joshua in his brood, and there's enough said about that. Hadrian, and all his layers of dark glass and careful deflection. Rogue, who finds it acceptable to be hurt if it's not really someone's fault. There's enough fucked up brains to go around, so what's one more -- what does Juno Steel think his fucked up brain has on anyone else's? He's not the only one, in this "nest", with a brain full of FUCKERY.

It's why the answer comes easy to Bakugo. It'd be textbook, if he wasn't reflecting on his life before. The symbol of peace. The broad shoulders of All Might, calling out to victim and villain alike: I'm here. The rank and file of teachers, compassionate and strict all the same. Pushing him to do better, to act better, to be the paragon of virtue and courage. Because, in the end, what mattered most to a hero was not what they did for themselves. Despite his attitude, even Bakugo did not act in his own self-interest. ]

Because someone has to cut through your idiocy, to show you that you're worth it. All of it. Duh.

THAT'S	WHAT
HEROES	DO

MENTAL LINK ( S72 ).

no subject

hyrypia day :038

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

DAY :040, EVENING

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject