[ He had tried to read the FAQ before realizing it was a whole lot of words and then fell asleep using the text-to-voice option on it several times, so he's gotten bits and pieces... sort of. ]
[ she says it a bit aggressively, near frantic, the way she clings to simon and begs him not to go, don't go around the corner, the end is waiting for them.
it's still waiting. only thing one has no face and no name and river doesn't understand it. they changed the blood. ]
[ not that he's been stalking you or anything, river. call it... continually accidentally and incidentally catching a hold of his attention. which is, on a good day, slippery. ]
[ when he wants to unravel a puzzle, like the tranquility is, he finds it best to just grab a hold of a thread and pull. ]
Not nearly enough. We're in a new system with new stars and new planets and the holodecks pretend but it's not the same. Can't paint a mural and say you've seen the landscape.
[ he'd looked, in fact. discovered that he didn't know where they were, terrifyingly exhilarating. there's not many places in space and time that he can't pinpoint on arrival. ]
And you're maybe my favorite for being good at that.
[ it's true, in a way, the way she says that. because if she can say this and peter doesn't know that'll make it real and make it tangible and makes it possible for her to do these things. makes it possible for the sun to burn the wolf who dared defy her natural order. ]
Time to push back and burn. Maybe. I haven't decide if he'll really burn like he has before.
video » locked » but what if i want to ally what if i want this thread forever.
[ river just smiles sweetly, almost childishly; playing make-believe with the innocence not to know the difference and the experience to believe it anyway. ]
It's not the fire that burns, or the scars left behind. It's the one that lights the match.
[ lydia isn't wounded because a wolf tried to reach her insides. she was hurt because a man made it in and tried to take what wasn't his. if there's anything, anything river understands, it's that.
[ a man made it in and tried to take what wasn't his. it splits between them now, almost like warring sides, if lydia thinks about it too hard ( she doesn't because that means acknowledging again and again that she is not herself— she is not who she is supposed to be ). lydia just wants it back, wants everything back to normal because she needs it that way.
she needs a lot of things. this is the only one she can control. ( she thinks, and hopes. ]
And I have the match ready to be lit when I want to. I want to do it soon. I— I am not myself you see.
[ river ducks her head, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. hope. ]
I have - there are ... pieces. Missing. And some days, I think I have them. Some days, I know -
[ that she doesn't. that they were sliced away and they're not coming back, not ever. river can't be fixed. she can only be managed. ]
But I know I'm me. I know I have fingers and toes and they're mine, even when I don't know they're there. Still River.
[ she looks up then, a bit sheepish. hope is a foreign concept, but river exists in the spaces where concepts and reality blur into colours only she can see. lydia is red, and she burns like the sun. concepts in reality. ]
Even when you forget you hold the match. You're 'Lydia first.'
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