thecapitol | A dream I dreamed // OPEN

Who: The Disciple & Anyone
What: Exploring the center from the elevator doors
Where:Training Center Elevator/Any Floor
When: Today, anytime
Warnings: Probably tears.

Too many hands had touched her this morning for comfort. A woman used to living alone and running if people came too close was not suited to strange aliens manhandling her or others insisting that her clothing be changed. Her hissing and tearing at the clothing they pressed at her just got hurt scared looks and she felt a pang. No stronger than grubs, these creatures with their clothes and devices held out pleadingly. Eventually guilt and a sense of inevitability made her take the clothes she was offered and let them pull the knots from her hair.

They called themselves humans when she asked. Humans. Aliens. Was she merely a creature to them, to be kept for their amusement, killing and playing their games. Hardly. She pulled on the only thing she had managed to save from their hands, a long skin and fur cape, and held it closed over the clothing. As much as she liked the leather and fur that adorned her outfit, she almost wanted to tear it off.

The Disciple did, at least, want to find out where she was being kept beyond these rooms. A way out was probably too much to ask at this point, given that they had subdued her before. Their words and explanations flew over her head, things she didn't know of or understand. They at least managed to explain the elevator to her and when she asked if she was to merely stay here, they encouraged her to go look around. Technology she didn't quite understand swept her up and down until her stomach was queasy and at each new floor, she surveyed the area from the elevator doors and occasionally stepped off to explore.

She's not as silent as she hopes with new clothes to adjust to and the ding that precedes her at every floor makes any hope of a silent entry impossible.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She knows that. That's why she was targeted before--why she is targeted now it seems. Her Signless, her Kankri, always making trouble. She could laugh, if she didn't want to cry. Can't she leave you alone anywhere Kankri. Instead, she wraps her arms tight around his neck. He's real.

"You can't blame yourself for any of this. It's who you are. It's who you'll always be." She bumps her forehead against his, trying to calm him when he calmed her, "You are you. I would never expect you to keep quiet in the face of this..."

He smiles, even though it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "It's been so hard, keeping as quiet as I have. And I've still been marked as a troublemaker." He shows her the wrist on which he wears his cuff, the one given to him all the way back when Ariadne was executed, just a day after he learned the real details of how he died.

"They're always watching, always looking for ways to twist what we say and do into an excuse to humiliate or punish us. Promise me you'll be careful."

She runs a finger over the cuff. It reminds her too much of his execution cuffs for comfort and she presses her lips together, trying to hold back the urge to tear the thing off. It would probably just get him in trouble.

"I'll be careful. You have to promise me too." She clasps his hand in hers, "You'll be careful. I don't want to lose you again."

He nods.

"No one is going to lose anyone, I promise." Except those who are already lost. He frowns.

"I need to talk to you about Mituna."

Her head snapped, a mess of guilt apparent on her face. Another person she left and lost.

"What--is he here? Is he alright?"

His voice is heavy. "He's here. And he hates me. After I died, he suffered hundreds of sweeps of slavery as a Helmsman to the Condesce, and I think it broke his pan. And he blames me."

The words come fast, because even though he can talk about this with Karkat, Karkat platonically hates the Psiioniic too much to really understand. The Disciple will. She knew him before he broke.

"He hates me, Meulin, and he broke my diamond and left me for someone else who hates me just as much as he does, and it's to the point that I hate him because I still pity him so deeply and I don't want to anymore. It's exhausting caring for someone who doesn't want you, wanting to help them and knowing the only way to make them truly happy is to just stay away from them entirely."

There's a selfish moment where the guilt she feels settles heavily in her stomach and she knows that it's not misplaced. It's real and true and she deserves her guilt and pain. If he blames Signless who died, what of her.

But she sweeps that back in her mind. Focus swung back to the situation before her. Her hands curl into fists then settle on his shoulders.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." She whispered between them and shakes her head, "It's not your fault. He just--time messes with things and moreso with that torment. The Mituna we knew would never have blamed you. He just broke. He must have broke and he had to reconcile everything. I'm so sorry he chose you to blame."

She thought about trying to smile for him, trying to put up the familiar diamond shape with her fingers and tell him he always had hers. But that wouldn't change the situation.

"Maybe you should both cool down. He doesn't hate you in pitch."

"I wish he did," Signless mutters petulantly into her shoulder. "It would be so much easier. Going pitch for him is the only way I won't lose him entirely."

"Kankri..." She doesn't particularly approved of him going pitch for Psiionic but she would never really presume to dictate his quadrants. Even for all of that she sort of ends up in all his quadrants at once. Or she did. Time and loss seemed to have brought out all the flushed and pale and little else.

"Do what you must but I don't think it'll work out well. Wanting him to be close is one thing but you never hated him. Keeping him in a quadrant shouldn't be above keeping you both sane. Don't force things just to keep him romantically."

Then she pauses, "...Mating fondness for Mituna. Hmn."

"But I do hate him. I hate that I pity him still, I hate that because of everything he's been through I pity him more than I ever did before."

It sounds stupid, and he knows it sounds stupid, but he also knows she knows him well enough to understand his awful inability to not blend every quadrant possible. He presses his face more firmly into her shoulder.

"It's unbearable here, sometimes. And I can't even hope that maybe one day I'll be able to return to Alternia, because nothing I do there will matter."

Her heart hurt. Nothing will matter--it mattered to her. It mattered to her when she was writing his words out.

"Don't say that. It did matter. We didn't succeed but it did matter. Don't tell me it didn't..." She put her hand on his head softly but her words are a little harsh, "We did so much for you and for this, don't say it was meaningless."

After a moment she rubs her face against his hair, "...Signless, love... He may not feel the same way. Please just...take it easy."

A dream I dreamed // OPEN

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