firstroar | V. IC CONTACT (RETIRED)

[that's an eerie shift. while he can't sense the machine, Blue has notion Jaime is influenced by...something. and it won't be the nicest discovery.

Blue waits a beat longer after that ok before taking hold of the hand. pushing past odd notions of scarabs, he reaches for the lingering image of a soldier. he bows his head, grabbing hold of Jaime's shoulder to brace the both of them as his breathing matches up with his.

it's just breath for the boy until Blue unravels his memory and links it to the soldier.

blinding light, sparks...the burn of overtired muscles and a furious pounding in the head. and with each violent blow bared down on a dome of raw will, the vision snaps to the very sight of Blue on his knees, struggling to hold fast. in that stranger's mind, a panic surging, on the brink of overriding the relentless drive to kill and kill more.

Die. Die. Get away from me. Die. Help. Help, someone. Stop. Die. Die. D--

each impact violently rips the mind away and back again, the memory slingshot between Blue's confusion and strain and a soldier's frenzy. again and again and ag--]

[Jaime only understood Blue in the abstract when he had first described what the clones' minds had felt like, and feeling it for himself is indescribable. In reality, he knows that he is merely sitting on a bed, seeing what Blue had once seen, but reality seems to have little bearing on anything when all of his senses are telling him that he is elsewhere, something else guiding his actions, when his senses are telling him that he hurts.

But pain, pain he has learned to work through, pain he has learned to endure. The panic and sheer tumult of emotion is an entirely different question, and his head spins with the force of it. He doesn't quite realize that the fear and dread rising in him isn't wholly his own, but the Scarab's as well, an immediate, visceral reaction to the mere suggestion of control being ripped away from them only to be replaced with an unquenchable urge to kill.

In the physical world, he sucks in his breath and holds it, knuckles turning white as his grip on Blue strengthens. He's seen enough. He would tear himself away from it happily, if only he knew how.]

[Blue catches and holds a breath, and his hand squirms against Jaime's hold. he pulls his mind away in a similar way, trying to avoid the violence of sharply cutting off an intense feeling. but better that than making the boy endure more than his share.

the vision leaves with him, his hand pulling away and curling to himself. he says nothing, not yet even looking.]

[Jaime draws away from Blue with a choked gasp. The sensations cutting off as suddenly as they did puts him off balance for a long, dizzying moment, but it's worth no longer having to dwell in the midst of all that suffering. He doesn't say anything at first, just leans forward and grips the edge of the bed with both hands, trying to gain his equilibrium.

He's not crying now, but there were a few tears shed while he was in there, in the moment, and it's not until he reaches up to wipe his face that he realizes that his palms are black with armour he doesn't remember ever summoning. He closes his hands into fists, and as he wills it back, it recedes. His breathing is loud and shaky in the quiet room, but he doesn't mind needing the time to catch his breath; words are lost to him, for now.

Eventually, he looks back at Blue, face dry but distress clear on his face.] I get it now, [he says hoarsely.] I... I had no idea.

[Blue is silent and still, absorbing the raw reactions radiating from the boy. those are more important than the questions all leading to the Scarab.

some time after those words, he moves, reaching toward one of the small, colorless drawer units in the room and lifting a hand cloth out of it. gingerly, he takes hold of Jaime's wrist and guides his hand down, placing the cloth in it. there is nothing but silence for the boy in that touch; Blue's closed off that two-way connection, willing to feel those incoming emotions alone.

softly:] This is only one piece of the puzzle, Jaime, harsh as it is. There are many things we still don't understand about them, about what led them to that moment in time in conflict with us.

[his hand, shifting from his wrist to his shoulder, squeezes it a little for his attention.]

But we were not wrong, taking the action we did. I believe that.

[He accepts the cloth gratefully and wipes off his face with a quiet murmur of:] Ugh. Sorry.

[He doesn't outright request it, but he's certainly hoping Blue won't tell anyone that he cried. He has a feeling that would make more than a few people question his reliability when it comes to getting all of this information out there.

That, and it's a little embarrassing, however little embarrassment matters in this moment. He stares down at his knees up until the point at which Blue's hand rests on his shoulder, glancing up to meet the other's eyes. He nods, slowly.] We had to get our people out.

[They couldn't have brought the clones back like that, not the way they were. He and Aoba had had a tough enough time just trying to contain one.]

It is just one piece, but - it's starting to come together now. [He hadn't been prepared to see what he saw, but he had been right about one thing: he needed to see that. Whether they end up trying to save or erase the clones completely, they are still people. They have a responsibility to at least try to understand them. His voice is still quiet as he adds,] Thank you for showing that to me. You had to see it all again to do that, didn't you?

[mildly:] It's my nature. I'm more accustomed to such things than you are. [read: don't worry about me.

his hand withdraws from Jaime's shoulder, folding with his other on his lap.]

Moreover, what's important is what's done with this knowledge from here on out.

Yeah. [Jaime leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His gaze drops back down to the floor once more, more of a thoughtful gesture than one meant to obscure his feelings or his expression.

What do they do from here? Before now, doing the right thing has always seemed so easy. That is no longer the truth, and there are two huge ideas that loom at the forefront of his mind, neither of them particularly palatable.]

What do you think we should do with this?

Build on it. We don't know enough yet to take action. We don't know how dependent these people are on the systems that have altered them. We don't know if they can even survive without them.

[he pauses, thinking. this is pulling all of his current concerns to the light. things he's reluctant to offer to others, but...must. he knows.]

Our greatest weakness is our lack of knowledge. We need to learn more about our enemy, and not only in this respect.

We don't even know the origin of this system, and not knowing is a terrible problem.

[Blue's answer is a lot more long-term than what he had been thinking of. His thoughts had simply been on recent events: the clones, the nuke, Exsilium.]

That's what you were getting at before, yeah? When you were asking everyone about what they'd do if they could just pull the plug on the UE's AI.

[he nods.]

The enemy knows we have the technology to find that point. To change it utterly. It's the finding it that could become one of our greatest tasks.

We could use trial and error, I guess? Every time we go back, learn a little more, get a little closer to when they decided that they needed something that extreme? Not to mention the why they decided they needed it.

[He still can't wrap his head around it, around Exsilium's past. Even trying to sort out time travel in his head gives him a headache, and the more he thinks about it, the more misgivings about it he's beginning to have.]

V. IC CONTACT (RETIRED)

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