fandomhigh | Detention, Depths of the Castle, Tuesday

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detention

Detention, Depths of the Castle, Tuesday

Another bright, shining, and pink day had begun for the ~~prisoners~~ guests being held in detention, and while the morning started off the same as the day before, there was a strange sort of feeling in the air once people began waking up. A kind of... musical feeling, in fact.

Umbridge might have taken over the island, but the island still had a mind of her own, thank you very much.

[No, the barriers of detention cannot save you from Once More With Fandom Day! The OCD is up, so have at it!]

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For what it was worth, Jono didn't seem terribly upset by the somewhat different sort of greeting. Hell, he would have smiled, if only he could.

//Afraid I don't know that one, luv.//

Liara's hands dropped away after a moment. "It is... an asari lullaby," she mumbled.

//It's lovely, Sunshine,// Jonothon offered, gently. //Too may of our lullabies involve ridiculous things like babies falling from treetops. You probably don't have anything to be ashamed of.//

He glanced around the room, and then looked back at her, attempting to put some sort of pleasant expression into his eyes, at least.

//Perhaps the lot of us down here need something like that. The island seldom picks songs at random, on days like this.//

"Maybe," Liara said, but she sounded dubious.

She had been calmed down from her embarrassment enough, though, to make her way to Jono's side and sit down. "This is common?"

//It happens once a year or so,// Jonothon explained, shrugging his shoulders a little. //It's one of the island's less traumatizing events, to be perfectly honest. Imagine a day when half th'people in here are small children, and you have to explain to them why they can't go outside. Or when they turn into different people altogether.//

And don't even get Jono started on the sex pollen, Liara. Those weeks got messy, fast.

Please don't get started on the sex pollen, Jono. She was only forty-five! She was much too young for that!

"That... does sound problematic," Liara understated wildly. She fidgeted a little before asking, "Are you still... sure... about what we spoke of yesterday?"

//Of course I am, luv. If we're careful about it, it should be fine, hm?//

Should was a funny word. But really, Jono figured he had nothing left to lose, and so long as whatever happened didn't cause him to lose control and incinerate everyone here...

... Though, perhaps that would be a mercy.

Liara nodded once, then twice, mostly to reassure herself more than anything else. "All right," she said, and moved so she was sitting in front of him. "You... should relax."

And she should... probably work out where to put her hands so they wouldn't burn.

//Relaxing, I can do,// Jono replied, and then blinked, noticing her hesitation.

Right. Hadn't she said yesterday that they needed physical contact for this sort of thing?

//Will offering you my hands do, luv? These are psionic flames, they won't burn you unless I want them to,// or unless he lost control, //but there's not really much left around them unless I start peeling off clothing.//

... Which he was also willing to do, if need be. Jonothon was fairly low on dignity, these days.

"That will do fine," Liara said gratefully, and reached for his hands.

She was reviewing every last one of her lessons on melding in her mind. Go to a neutral memory first...

She took a deep breath. "Relax," she repeated, and then shut her eyes.

//Relax,// Jonothon echoed, letting his own eyes slide shut, trying to keep his own mind empty. A blank slate, so that he could better pull up whatever he needed to, to make this go smoothly.

This would be a first, for him. //Lead on, luv.//

Liara let herself be drawn to that space in her head, finding the connection. Jonothon's mind was alien, the way she had been told non-asari minds would be: alien, but familiar, for he was sentient, and sentient minds had some key markers in mind.

All is one.

Her eyes went all-black but for the tiny circle around her pupil. "Embrace eternity," she called.

And then went spinning into the darkness for several seconds, terrified, until she found her anchoring memory and the darkness consolidated abruptly in a park on (http://www.deviantart.com/download/315864498/thessia_by_graceyn-d5822lu.jpg) Thessia (http://ryzabowlz.cghub.com/files/Image/242001-243000/242244/005_stream.jpg), standing on the stepping stones in a reflection pond with the water lapping at the rock.

Jonothon lived in the darkness in his own head. The sudden drop of anything remotely stable underfoot managed to do little to throw him. No, if anything, it was the sight before him once his feet found solid ground again.

Christ...

He wasn't going to manage words just yet, Liara. Sookie had taken him to breathtaking places inside of their heads in the past, to forests and fields and to the seashore on a sunny summer day, but he'd never in his life seen anything quite like this.

White-hot eyes stared out over the water, toward the cityscape set out before them both.

"Sorry," Liara murmured. "If I was more experienced, we could have gone directly into... well, we would be able to do what I came here for."

She felt a little woozy, but the feeling dissipated the longer she stood here. "This is just a memory," she added belatedly. "We... don't often share them, but..."

She wasn't sure how not to. Yet.

Edited 2012-07-25 12:15 (UTC)

//No, no this is fine,// Jono replied, glancing her way, his flames flickering down to a calm blue. //This is just... it's lovely. I've never seen anything quite like it.//

The cities that he was used to were a fair bit less... pristine than this one.

//We can take our time with this, get there following whatever path we need to, luv. I'm not in any hurry. We aren't going anywhere.//

Liara nodded. She took another moment to collect herself-- and there were a few flashes of memory, each more blurry than the last, a regal asari in a beautiful yellow dress and another park and a vision of space from through the glass of an asari transport vessel...

And then she was pushing forward almost timidly into Jono's end of their shared mindspace, searching blindly for his mutation.

Jono's end of the shared mindspace was... somewhat less breathtaking. Jono's end of their shares mindspace was back alleyways here on the island, whatever scraps he could find pulled together in an attempt to keep his face covered, flames licking out from the sides regardless. He'd had wrappings once, for them. They hadn't lasted long, and there wasn't exactly any way to replace them easily, while on the run.

Mostly, Jono's end of their mindscape was fire, wrapping around them both and trying to work its way through their bodies. Not burning, but warm, a deceptive sort of welcoming that barely masked how dangerous it was, underneath.

Edited 2012-07-25 12:34 (UTC)

Liara released a breath that made it sound like she'd been running a marathon.

She wasn't going to stop now, though, not with visions of flame-but-not-burn were pressing up against her mind in rapid succession. She powered on - finding a small reserve of stubbornness that would grow much larger over time - pushing to slip into the space of Jono's mind-voice, picturing the way it must be connected (all is one) with his flames and his self.

It was all knots. Elaborate knots, beautiful and intricate with one piece weaving through the next. Still, those knots seemed to hang loose and ragged around the edges, the product of so much disconnect between who Jonothon thought of himself as, and what he thought the fire made him into. There were pieces scattered about that looked as though they had been torn free. And still more that seemed as though they'd never been allowed to be woven into the whole in the first place.

His voice, his telepathic abilities, were one of the less tangled threads, though its hold was precarious at best. It was wrapped around a sense of self that was splintered, being held together by a mess of other threads that looked as though perhaps they had never really belonged there in the first place. Only, they did. They were all a part of the same skein, if one cared to go far enough back to trace them to their roots.

Jonothon was there and not there, looking at the mess set out before them with a frown on a face that he barely remembered, though fire still rose from his body to form more threads that reached out and wove in among the rest.

//It would seem I need to start paying more attention to housekeeping in here.//

Liara's voice panted a, "Yes, I think you should."

Asari mental abilities were all about connections, about the weaving; one thing she did know was the ability to use her own mind and her own knowledge to offer a handhold, a... sense of order.

She couldn't untie all the knots. So much of that was work that Jono had to do himself. But she could reach out and strengthen the underlying framework, push and pull until the pattern became less... tattered, more of an actual pattern.

Her panting became more obvious as she poked and attempted to do just that much, mental fingers tracing the fire. "This is... this could-- be part-- of your grounding," she said. "It's-- it could be power. Strength."

//It could be,// Jonothon conceded, looking at the flames from a half-step back. //It could be very much the opposite, too.//

The fire had ripped him apart. It had ripped him apart more than once, and was constantly eating away at what was left. It was difficult to find a place for the flames in the whole, even if they were going to be there for a very long time.

//What do you propose I do?//

"I can... use my mind... give you an extra frame-- a pattern," Liara wheezed, "Like a different... language?"

There were little blue sparks here, now, crossing easily because right now Jono's mind was her mind and the other way around.

"Should make it... easier... to find... power you might have... tied up," she added, "But that's... I can't find it for you."

//A pattern...// The fire reached for the sparks, just as it reached for all of the rest of him, trying to pull in everything around it. Warm, welcoming, ravenous. //... A pattern is... a good deal more than I've ever had.//

He would go looking. If ever the chance presented itself to get out of here, he wasn't about to throw away another means of escape, simply because he blinked when he was offered a chance to really know what he was capable of.

Too many lives could depend on him knowing how to lash out, just as well as he'd trained himself to pull back.

There was a flare of blue-- and another blast of memories that Liara couldn't quite contain, of stars and planets and her home in Armali, Thessia--

And then it was done and she was falling over backwards onto the floor of detention, staring up at the ceiling and feeling very dizzy indeed.

It took Jonothon a moment to pull himself back from the tangle, blinking still-white eyes as he registered that he wasn't sitting in amongst the flames any more than he had ever been, twisting up around him and tousling his hair.

She was... she was on the floor, and he was a bit on the dizzy side himself, bracing himself against the wall for a few seconds before leaning forward and reaching a hand to put onto her shoulder.

//I'm sorry about that, luv. I had... some idea of how bad it was, but I've never had it really put into perspective before.// Simply put, he was a mess. //Are you okay?//

Detention, Depths of the Castle, Tuesday

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