the white noise is deafening silence

[thespaceopera]

[In the very early hours of January 20th, as the Marsiva and her captives drift nonchalantly through the depths of the universe, there is a call. Every single personal communicator and console springs to life, spitting out a stream of indecipherable static and showing only gray snow on screen. It continues like this for a few seconds longer, going black and then going staticky, and then the signal switches to the encrypted channel generally used for speaking to the Interceptors when something big goes down.

This is a little more successful. The voice may be familiar to some, at least through the static.]

Zhade here! I trust I ███ your attention? I'm having some ██▓▓ble ██tting through. Some of the ░▓██▓█ are missing. I can't ░▓▓▓ read on their loc█████ns. [A particularly long burst of static.] ███stening. I'll s█▓▓█ more inf██▓▓▓▓▓█ I get it.

Stay sharp! [There's the sound of someone actually doing the fingerguns wink noise, and then static.

Any messages sent back won't get through, and Zhade isn't there to answer.]

[ A blip of lost time passes right after those words, before every passenger mysteriously wakes alone in their own unfamiliar room. The style of decor resembles that of the Marsiva's Hospitality Deck, if any passengers should remember what that's like. It sounds and smells the same as the host ship as well, all clean and chrome.

Welcome back to the Marsiva, dear passengers. It's time for round three of calibrations. ]

[ This mingle will cover all non-calibration room interactions. Please continue to come back to it for the duration of the plot! You are, of course, free to post any other mingles/posts/etc. that you'd like. ]

Comments

[necromanswers]

[She almost misses that slip-up, returning his stare with conflicted confusion, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides as she resists the urge to reach out for him again. She should leave, she knows, before she makes it worse or hurts him again. Even as she thinks it, though, she can't... get her legs to move in that direction. Leaving him alone like this... would that be worse?

She should get Magnus. She should call Kravitz. She should bring someone here to support him without hurting him, someone he knows and trusts and remembers. He shouldn't be left alone to deal with this. At least she's more used to that, right? She could handle it for a few days while whatever this is blows over.

She can't... quite shake off the words he'd said to her the night before, though. Things are a little blurry here and there, ethereal and distant, but certain parts of it ring through loud and clear.

"You can talk to me."

"He wants to remember you. I want to remember you."

And she definitely doesn't want him to give himself head trauma, hell no, but there has to be something else they can do. Something to soothe the static in his head, to ease this awful ache rising to life in her chest. She presses a hand to her heart, echoing his gesture unconsciously for a moment before she catches herself, and finally makes a decision, stepping forward instead of away, following him inside.]

Does... anything feel... different? Anything you can notice?

[abracafcku]

Yeah it feels different.

[He throws himself dramatically on the bed in an effort to regain his equilibrium. He isn't an angst factory. He's not meant to be the emo kid. He had a lot of shit happen to him, sure, and it sucked, but what was the point of dwelling on it, right? This is just another chapter in the long line of "Well, that's fucked up, innit?" chapters in Taako's autobiography, and he can deal with it as long as he doesn't think about it too much.

Which is hard to do with Lup right there, slowly prodding him into thinking about it.

He burrows into the blanket, which is not as satisfying as the pillow forts he could build with the mishmash of pillows back on the First Breath, and huffs.]

It feels like they ripped my heart open, which is impressive seeing as I don't have one. The assholes.

[necromanswers]

...Dumbass.

[It's a halfhearted murmur, barely audible. Of course he has one. This wouldn't bother him if he didn't, and she knows better than anyone what he's capable of when it comes to matters of the heart. She recognizes his obvious retreat, though, and it brings back that wave of unease, of indecision. She'd come in, she'd committed herself to this, but now she can't help second-guessing the idea. Watching him like this- it hurts again, worse than before. Her chest aches, heart pounding, and that sinking feeling in her gut is familiar in a way she can't place, not quite yet. When has she felt like this before...?]

Maybe you wouldn't have known at all, if I hadn't come... or maybe they knew I'd ask? Fuck, it's a garbage situation either way. Okay, well, it doesn't really matter- just, I dunno, try to forget about it-

[She stops herself, mouth clamping shut. A poor choice of words, and a joke in poor taste, besides. For her it's easier to make light of things or lock those feelings up tight than actually deal with them, especially when it's something that can't be helped, but it shouldn't be done at his expense.]

[abracafcku]

[He stiffens visibly underneath the blankets, hands clenched in the fabric like a lifeline. He's tired of forgetting. He's tired of being made to forget. And while he knows it's only a slip of the tongue, it doesn't hurt any less. Trying to decipher what he'd forgotten makes him nauseous, the floor slips and slides underneath him, the sound of static filling every space in him that isn't occupied by anger.

He's missing something, it was stolen from him, and he knows it was important. It's blatantly obvious and yet he can't see it. His heart is raw and for the first time since he was a child, he can feel how utterly empty it is. It should have been full of something, but it's gone now. Maybe it never existed in the first place. Or maybe having it back for a night and getting it ripped away from him just made him remember how long it's been since he felt whole.

After a tense moment of silence, he hisses out a reply through the strain of the static and the thin line of his own self-control.]

I'd know. It's hard not to know when there's a hole left behind.

[necromanswers]

[A hole...

...something just... clicks into place in her mind, as he says it. Ripped open. A hole in his heart. Stolen. It's too familiar.

The first time Taako died after she'd become a lich, they'd fallen together, too quickly for anyone to stop it or help them. Her spectral form had survived it, but... he didn't. And it'd been close enough to the start of the year that she'd truly felt his absence. It was her first time losing him, losing her heart and her center and one-half of the tether around her sanity, after giving herself up to the power and emotion of her own arcane power, and she'd never experienced his loss to that degree before. For weeks she'd been overwhelmed, practically drowning in it, burying her thoughts of him deeper and deeper into the back of her mind to avoid breaking entirely. She'd been... unsafe to be around, some days. Barry had noticed before she completely broke, had dragged her off away from the crew and helped her through some coping methods, stuck with her more often so she could center herself again. By the end of the year she was finally stable, enough that she could face him properly as herself when they both returned to life, and they'd returned to business as usual. But for a while, she truly learned the extent of what a risk she'd taken, choosing to become what she is now.

There'd been a hole ripped into her heart. He'd been stolen away. She'd remembered him still, but hadn't that also been the problem? Isn't that the problem now, knowing him and wanting him back when he's out of her reach?

She inhales sharply, her fingers tightening in the fabric of her shirt. She knows. She knows what this feeling is, now.]

Sorry... I didn't...

[She takes a step backwards, her voice somewhat strained and unfocused as she works through the realization. This was a mistake. This was a mistake and now they both know and there's a hole in his heart and he's her heart but she can't fill it.

Barry's not here.

She's not safe to be around.]

[abracafcku]

It's--

[He takes a shallow breath that should have been a deep one, but the gradually subsiding pain in his head won't let his lungs take in the air they need. He feels like he's drowning right here in the bed, grasping at the surface but getting dragged further under the waves as he fights to remember what he'd lost.]

--not your fault.

[You can trust her.

But he doesn't trust anyone.

But you could trust her.

Taako squeezes his eyes shut against the voice in his head, the one point of clarity in the mud of his brain. He could confide in her, but what good would it do? She sounds hurt enough already and if him being a sulky bitch-baby over losing whatever it was that he had last night - a brief, beautiful moment of feeling right - then didn't he owe her to pretend to be fine? She'd sat by his bed while he was nearly dead, told him that she'd never go anywhere, made his heart ache almost like this ache in his chest right now.

But it'd been pleasant. A relief. He had thought that maybe he could believe her.

And now she's hurting.]

It's not your fault I can't remember shit.

[It's not her fault he feels like he's living a half-life, calloused over and hardened against whatever it was that used to be in him. What used to be soft and loving maybe. Now he only understands immediate gratification, the most immediate needs. He's full of thorns and walls constructed to keep himself safe against a world that never gave a shit about him.

Taako sits up and he forces himself to breathe, blankets still wrapped around himself like a cocoon.]

You don't gotta apologize for what the Voidfish or the Atroma did. It's not like you did anything wrong.

[necromanswers]

...I know.

[Well, she does and she doesn't, but they've already had that conversation and rehashing it right now would be pointless. She can tell by the sound of his voice that he's struggling in a similar way that she is, the pain of forgetting versus the pain of being forgotten, the conversation only serving to aggravate both. What else is there to say? To rant and rave against a problem they can't face? To get all riled up and accidentally out herself as some kind of monster in his eyes, thus separating him even further from her than he already is? Or worse, to hurt him more than what he's feeling now when the inevitable argument or combined misery causes her already strained control to shatter?

She needs to leave. She needs to leave right now. This chasm of separation, despite standing right in front of one another, is unraveling the tether around her soul one strand at a time, the one already frayed after ten years away from both of her centers. She can't think about this anymore, not when it feels like this.]

Listen, um... I'm gonna go. I have to take care of something. [Myself, my heart, my stupid fucking lich soul that kind of wants to explode everything in sight right now because this is the most frustrating thing in the universe.] No biggie, you just look like you need another six hours of sleep so I might as well do it now. But I'll be back s-

[She cuts herself off again, because- no. Not again. Never again. Those words still haunt her, that pointless, unhelpful note she'd left for them, the cause of her ten-year imprisonment with no hope of rescue. And until she gets this under control, she can't make any promises to him, period.

She takes a deep breath. Takes another step back, towards the door.]

I'll... talk to you later.

[And then she turns and runs out, because holy shit she can feel electricity sparking around her chest and she does not want him to see that. She runs straight for her room and does not look back.

Sorry, Taako. She needs help, and you can't help her.]

[abracafcku]

[When she mentions leaving, Taako's ears perk up and he turns on the bed. She's already pulling back though and Taako feels like his heart is getting pulled with her. It doesn't make any sense, but he keeps the confusion bitten back, held in check, because it looks like she's bolting. It's a sensation he's intimately familiar with and seeing her prepare to leave hurts, to be frank.

He can't blame her. It's not like he's given any real compelling reasons to stay other than a barely remembered dream and a bunch of static in his head. She takes a step back and Taako watches her as she runs, unable to get anything out before she leaves. The door swings slowly shut after her and Taako sits there, alone, staring at the spot where she'd been just a moment before.

He should have expected that and he lets out a half-hearted sigh, falling back onto the bed. Maybe he can knock himself unconscious and just forget this morning ever happened.

He seems phenomenally good at forgetting lately.}