driftfleet | JULY PLANET MINGLE

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JULY PLANET MINGLE

Who: YOU. ME. EVERYONE.
Broadcast: IF YOU WANT
Action: YEAH!!!!!
When: July!

[Congratulations to the crews that did not get themselves blown up! Welcome to the Blue Planet, a planet full of charming islands and even less charming weather patterns! Are you going to take the time to enjoy the beach? Help out with the local Nunnilis population? Get caught in a storm with another person and have a rating boosting sexual tension moment? The world's your oyster!]

[Yeah in other words: ITS A MINGLE GET IN HERE]

[July Planet Info!]

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[Well at this point, she's laid out her case so there's not much else to say. And since he can't say very much back, it all falls to the silence of a brutal island storm and the sound of him wringing out his shirt.

Out of politeness, she looks away when he takes it off, but she has already seen that he's not at all dressed for tropical weather. How he could stand it was anyone's guess. She's actually glad Hawke helped her to come around to blending with the native and expected dress style. Otherwise, she would probably be just as miserable has Coil likely was right now.

She sighs, pushes to her feet, grabbing up her towel. She pads over to Coil, stopping about at arms length and holds out the cloth. It's mostly dry.]

Here. You need this more than I do.

[he recoils a little when he looks up from shaking out his sweatshirt and sees her getting closer. she's right there, and giving him something to cover up with?

well. guess what he was planning on doing with his newly wrung-out shirt.

a bit unceremoniously--even a little hastier than he'd originally intended with her surprising him--he kind of tosses the sweatshirt at her.

here. if anyone needs to put something on, it's her.]

[She snatches the heavy, wet thing out of the air on reflex. She gives him a flat look about it, and tosses the towel at him in return.]

I'll just hang this up, shall I?

[It's not actually a question. She turns on a heel and goes to find a decent rock shelf to put his sweater to dry on. She may also be muttering about how she can't believe he hasn't gotten heat sick from wearing such heavy clothes in the heat.

And yes, she is half climbing the rough rock in bare feet like it's nothing. Comes from all the rough living.]

[she's climbing the rocks in bare pretty-much-everything-else too. sooo... he'll just keep his eye down on his own hands, busying himself with the towel.

he's angry and uncomfortable and pretty much trapped. so, at least for the moment, he'll continue to hang out near the mouth of the cave and just dry off his hair.

also, trying to choose a moment when she seems to be the most occupied with rock-climbing and shirt-hanging, he presses fingers to his eye wrap to try and squeeze some of the excess water out of that too.]

[She sets the sweater up on a mostly flat space that's close to the cave roof. There's air flow here and it should eventually dry the cloth out. She then literally jumps down agilely.

And Coil is still by the mouth of the cave. She rolls her eyes.]

You'll never get dry if you stay over there.

[Stop being a stubborn child, damn it.]

[he looks up from under the towel he's scrubbing over his head to shoot her another pointed look, before he shuffles more toward the sheltered center of the little space.

he's moving over here because he wanted to, not because she told him to. so there.

and once he's as dried off as he can manage... he'll go spread the towel out near his shirt, since it's nowhere near dry anymore. and he clambers up and down the rocks as easily as she had, because he is also basically a ninja.]

[Well, she's said her piece and he's being...Coil.

So instead of trying to force it anymore, because he's obviously just going to resist, she goes back to the spot she'd picked out earlier and sets herself down to wait out the storm.

And then she makes some gestures with her hands, and orbs of light appear, floating in the air, giving illumination to the cave. She actually draws a few of these to her and starts to lazily juggle them. She did it because she needed something to do, not because she thought that maybe it would be hard for him to see, with the storm getting worse and the cave being darker.

That's her story and she's sticking to it. (She's such a sucker.)]

[and he may not act like he'd even heard her... but he is thinking. after he hangs up the shirt and finds a spots across the (very small) cave to lean and settle down to ignore her, the wheels just keep cranking away in his head.

he watches the little lights dance, and the tension quietly winds up. the thunder rolls and the winds rage outside, and Coil just keeps thinking.

a year or so ago, he would have been able to keep it all to himself. maybe retreat and plot it out into something that he could handle with cold calculation. but he has become his own, angry creature since then, and not having Zhas' shadow looming right nearby has him feeling a little more free than he knows he has any right to be.

so, eventually, he can't stand it anymore. he stomps his foot once, just loud enough to get her attention so he can communicate.

he knows that she doesn't understand sign language, but he doesn't care. the signs are pretty vivid anyway. he points at her, and forms the sign for Cassandra (a hooked finger drawn down the side of his face where her scar would be), and then takes a couple angrily-hooked fingers from each hand and knocks and grinds the knuckles together. it's really the sign for 'problem', among other aggravating things, but the motion conveys his feelings about them even if she doesn't specifically know the word.]

[No, she doesn't know the words, but she's not dumb. She gives him her attention intensely. And the idea behind what he means is pretty clear.]

I'm aware of how you feel about me, and Cassandra.

[When she says Cassandra's name, she mimics his gesture across the cheek, with a bit less intensity than he used when doing it. She's intending to learn.]

The question is how do we live together without coming to blows.

[he nods in that exasperated way that says of course that's what he wants--so, he's not seeing the problem as his fault.

and she may or may not follow the exact meaning behind it, but he points at her, then moves his hands where one forcefully blocks the other, and points to himself. because that is his biggest problem right now. it's fine if they don't quite get along or like each other, but they're stopping him from doing what he needs to do, and that is an issue.]

[Her gaze is pretty intense while she tries to puzzle out what he's intending to convey. It takes her a minute, and her hands repeat the blocking gesture vaguely.

And then she gets it. Her expression goes from that tense anger to something else, softer but no less serious. She's sad, and she's also scared. Because she sees no other way to make him understand her than to let herself be vulnerable to him.]

I had to.

[It's softly spoken, but she doesn't shy away from showing him her face. There are wounds on her soul, and they show in her expression.]

I've been in that position before. Strapped down, cut open, observed like your pain is nothing. I know what it's like. And sick or not, that was a living being. It's better to just die, than to suffer like that.

[he still knows that she's wrong, he still knows that he's right... but he can't stare into the face of all that she's baring.

it's too much. he glances away again, glaring toward the storm instead.

and if he'd had an easier way to communicate, he might have raged against her stupid reasoning, demanded that she think about the bigger picture. he'd have a million valid reasons to throw at her, and could have picked hers apart until it meant nothing.

but he doesn't have a way to do any of that. and he has to--once again--remind himself that he gave up that right willingly.

he doesn't know why he's even trying to discuss things. does he really think he could have fixed any of it? he should have just left it alone and kept his proverbial mouth shut.]

[When he turns away, she doesn't think she's won. No, she thinks he's protecting himself from her. You can't be distant and objective when the subject on your slab is a person to you. And part of her knows she needs Coil to see her as a person. She might not change his mind, and it won't make them friends. But her gut tells her she has to reach him with this.]

He picked me apart. Did experiments on me. Most of what I remember is the pain, because he even took my memories. When I try to recall it, it's like knife blades in my skull. But I do know, he wanted to see what he could push me to, what might happen. He wanted to take my life and reorder it for his use, then throw away what he didn't want anymore.

He's worse than dead now. But what he started, it's still with me, still working at me. Still running under my skin, in my mind, my heart. My soul.

[She swallows hard, and feels a weight of guilt for what she's laying on him. But in her mind, there's no help for it. He needs to see.]

No one is so beneath us that they can be used like that. I had to stop you, Coil. I'm sorry, but I had to.

[the 'he' that she's describing is someone that he was intended to be. that person was every member of his first family--everything they did and everything they stood for. it's how he was raised, and he still trains and studies for it now.

even with his new family, strapping down things that deserved it to further the greater cause was part of everyday life.

he watched it happen to his sister, and still lives with the vague, nebulous fear that it will someday be his turn on the table.

...so, for the most part, he doesn't understand. and when he finally shakes his head, it's somewhat disbelieving.]

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JULY PLANET MINGLE

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FINALLY Im sorry this took forever