Windrose June Mingle!

[passingthrough]

Who: SS Windrose + Visitors
Broadcast: Unlikely
Action: SS Windrose
When: June — anytime!

[Now featuring bathroom rank II for all your bathtub and and additional ten minutes of water per hour needs! We also have more and faster shuttles! Just last month we made it to actual double-sized beds for all your double-sized fun. Special features include a hanging medicinal herb garden in the cargo bay complete with bacon-flavored kelp and Officer Snuggles the resident security fox!

Please enjoy your stay. Unless you're The Stalker. There's a sandwich bag waiting for you.]

Comments

[pain_train]

For you. Watching you hurt yourself isn't easy for me. [Another hand squeeze.] Because you're really important to me.

[reconstitution]

You're important to me, too.

[ It absolutely kills him to know that he's the one that did this. He broke one of his best friends like a twig. ]

[pain_train]

Thanks. It feels... really good to hear you say that. [She closes her eyes for a moment.] I have nightmares, sometimes. [She probably shouldn't tell him this, but it's hard to think.]

[reconstitution]

[ She's one of the most important people to him here. He doesn't say it, but she must know, right? She's seen a side of him he doesn't like many people seeing, and she saw him at his worst.

His mouth tightens to a thin line, jaw tensing. He has a notion as to what her nightmares are. ]

Me too.. When I can sleep.

[pain_train]

[Wrath is very good at reading people, far better than she realizes. But there are certain blind spots she has. It's difficult for her to think around the embedded fact of you are nothing. Why would anyone care about a non-person who isn't even an effective soldier any more?

Nightmares seem to come with being what they are. A particular sort of powerless nightmare, being a passenger in one's own body.]

I sleep all the fucking time right now and I hate it. Because of the chems.

[She even drops off in the middle of conversations, sometimes.]

Can I help, though?

[reconstitution]

Sleeping is important to recovery, isn't it?

[ It's why she's sleeping so much and why he's tired all the time. Sleep is something he's trying to ignore, but it's getting increasingly more difficult when he can't use exercise as an excuse.

It must be ten times worse for Wrath, who can't even get out of bed.

He shakes his head to the question. ]

Not really a way to help it.

[pain_train]

That's what I keep hearing. [She gives Winter's hand a little tug.] And you have to recover, too.

[She's not going to argue with that, because sometimes, there isn't a way to help. It's fucking awful, and all you can do is try to keep going and endure. She's done that march before, too.]

Will you stay with me for a while? If I fall asleep? [And maybe that will finally convince her stupid brain that Winter is all right. That this is him, not the construct wearing his face that tried to smash her head into the wall.]

[reconstitution]

Working on it. You get better, first.

[ He knows that Wrath's healing is a little different than his. How long is she going to be bedridden? He wants to ask, but he's pretty damn sure whoever is seeing to her wouldn't want to talk to him.

Now that he's here, he's not planning on leaving until someone makes him. ]

I won't leave.

[pain_train]

Don't be dumb. You're gonna get better before me. My back was already super fucked up, and that wasn't your fault. [Maybe she won't get better at all. That still might be for the best.]

[She grips his hands a bit harder. Gratitude. It's a relief to hear that he'll say, that he can stand being around her after what happened and she doesn't make him feel too bad.]

Thank you.

[reconstitution]

No, I just made it worse.

[ He still feels like a monster posing as someone's friend, but at least she's not dead. It's a horrible fucking compromise, but she's here and she doesn't hate him.

He moves his hand in her grip so that he can lace their fingers together. ]

Don't thank me. You wouldn't be here if it weren't for me.

[pain_train]

[She's had a lot of time to think about blame.]

I made it worse by trying to stop a hostile even though I know I'm disabled. Because I couldn't admit that I can't do my job any more. [Because if she can't do the job, what is she? Nothing. She is nothing. She knows this.]

[It feels good when he holds her hand like that. It also hurts, but in a way she thinks is good. Maybe it'll be all right.]

It wasn't you.

[reconstitution]

Just because I wasn't in control doesn't mean I'm not at fault. I'm still going to remember hurting them.

[ Honestly, Wrath did her duty and did it well. She went into a fight that would have been impossible to win in her condition. Yet she managed to do the most damage early on. ]

..You probably saved people from dying.

[pain_train]

That doesn't make sense. You didn't make any choices that led to this. [... Wait what.]

... Do you remember fighting me?

[Though it does make her feel better, that she did something, even if it wasn't much.]

[reconstitution]

No, but I know what you did.

[ He cheated and looked at the network. He's been able to piece some things together, at least. ]

It'll come back.. eventually.

[pain_train]

The knife you gave me did the job. [Is that weird to mention?]

There are things I don't remember doing. Bad things. Probably even worse things I haven't found out about, but I'll never know.

What do we do? [Because if this is a question off responsibility for things like that, Winter isn't alone in it. Wrath has that same dilemma. So does Tenno, though it's not for her to tell Winter that. But at least he's holding on to her hand. It means they're not alone.]

[reconstitution]

I don't know what to do. I don't know what answers I'm supposed to have.

[ Hell, he still doesn't know what the hell to do outside of this situation. How can she not tell that he's just really okay at faking it? ]

[pain_train]

I don't have answers either. But...I think we need to figure it out. You and me and... Maybe another guy. Because this is ours to carry. Like... If what happened is your fault, I think that means what happened before that I can't remember is my fault. Otherwise it doesn't make sense.

[This is so hard to figure out. But if Winter is bad and dangerous, that means she and Tenno are as well.]

[reconstitution]

I don't know. I'm sorry.

[ He doesn't want to be the Soldier anymore, but that doesn't excuse him. He did what he was told- the same as Wrath and this other guy she mentioned. Figuring out who is responsible for what isn't really something he wants to think about right now. Especially not in front of Wrath. She has enough to worry about. ]

[pain_train]

[This is one of the things she's worrying about, a lot. But she can tell he doesn't want to talk about it, and she doesn't have the energy to fight on it at the moment.]

Don't be sorry.

[Maybe she needs to figure it out. But if she does, well he listen? Does she even have that kind of authority? It's probably above her pay grade. So who should decide?] I'm not smart enough to figure this out.

[She sighs, closing her eyes.] Did Charles help you?

[reconstitution]

[ Don't be sorry. What else is he supposed to be? He doesn't know the full extent of what he's done, and already the guilt is sitting heavily on his chest.

He side-steps the comments and answers the question with a nod. It was a recent development, but Winter was feeling a little desperate not to have a repeat of the Iskaulit. ]

He did. He says they can't access the protocols anymore.

[pain_train]

Good. I'm glad he helped.

[But she wonders... She's hesitant, which is weird, because she trusts Charles, absolutely. She isn't afraid of him. But there's another mental conflict going on that she can't parse.

And it's one thing to tell someone they can use telepathy on you in a casual sense, another entirely to ask them to do something to you. And Charles hadn't even wanted to do the first, more innocuous sort of thing, so...]

Should I ask him to fix me too?

[reconstitution]

He didn't do anything else, just.. the programming.

[ Winter stays quiet for a moment, contemplating on whether he wants to admit the next part. ]

He could have done anything while he was in there, and he didn't. [ It's not even the fact that he didn't trust Charles. People with power and using it to their full advantage is just something he is resigned to. The fact that he hadn't is still surreal. ]

I think..[ hmm.. ] if you want him to look, he'll do a good job.

[pain_train]

[Quietly:] I trust Charles. More than I trust most people. He's my friend. I even told him he could use telepathy on me if he wanted, just like for no real reason? But he said he didn't want too. I think my brain is too fucked up, maybe. He's a good guy.

[But...

Winter is the one person she feels like she can try to explain this to. She can't talk to Tenno about it, because Vision is his Captain too.]

But... it's hard to explain. I get confused sometimes. You know that. [Winter's seen it happen, she's pretty sure.] I got confused in front of Captain Vision. He said he wanted me to talk to Charles and Wanda about getting it fixed.

I know I should obey, because my C.O. said so. [The fact that she hasn't feels... bad. But that's part of the problem.] But... I don't know. I don't feel good, and when I try to really think about it, I get even more confused.

So I don't know what to do. [Other than follow orders.]

[reconstitution]

I think he just wants a reason to. Not just because he can..

[ People who do things just because they have the ability to tend not to be very nice people in the end, anyway. It's nothing on her. ]

I'm sorry you get confused. I used to. Back when I first got here.. [ Before Jim took him under his wing and helped him be a person. He wouldn't be where he is without him, or without Wrath. ]

It's not anybody else's decision. It's your head. Do you want him to or not? That's all that matters. I had him help me because I'm dangerous. One less thing for me to stress about.

[ Really, he needs all the help he can get trying to de-stress his life. ]

sorry for the wall of text, lemme know if he'd stop her & I can edit

[pain_train]

I don't know. I don't fucking know.

[She needs to try to explain this better, like she did with Vision.] It's like... I keep trying to think opposite things at the same time, and all of them are true, and all of them can't be true because a lot of it is. Um. Mutually exclusive, and then I get confused. Like...

Like I know that Captain Vision is my C.O., and I'm a good soldier, and good soldiers obey their C.O., and that's true, so I need to do as ordered because I'm a good soldier. And I know that Compliance protocols are in place for a reason, and that bad things will happen if they're tampered with, and that I will not be effective or functional without them because I'm broken. But if--if I am broken, everyone says it's because Compliance broke me first, and I shouldn't listen to them, and I know I can trust my friends that say that. And I know I'm broken and need to be fixed, and I know I need to report in for debriefing, but I can't, and I'm glad I can't, and I shouldn't be glad because I'm a good soldier.

And--and-- [Her voice cracks.] I know I've had so many people fucking around in my head that I'm not even real any more, so what the hell is going to be left of me after another round? And none of it makes sense together and I'm really fucking confused and it keeps happening more and more. So how the fuck am I supposed to figure all that out? [So maybe she's going to be nonfunctional soon anyway, and that's a horrifying thought. Maybe this is why they kept wiping large portions of her memory--to keep her from getting confused.]