COMMUNION
Communion with Nebula is as much an oxymoron as she sometimes is. It's the feeling of soft snow, gentle and embracing with its touch. A snow that feels too easy to fall into, like one's own nature. In the opposite extreme there's a fire that's searing to the touch - a constant thrum of anger. In this space, it encompasses all of it, though it's embers now. Embers that are quick to catch and burn and die again. For those who see into it enough it's in moments when she's angry - but most notable when she feels weak, when she struggles, when she worries.
This burning sensation fights ever with the cool nature of the snow. As if the anger isn't nature here and the fire is becoming more malleable in its embrace. Ever lingering, but faltering under the softness of that snow -
The snow is ever gentle and embracing, but lacks the cold (it is warm, it is self). But there is something that twists and coils in the sensation that is cold and empty. Something not alive is ever present, silent and moving, but is overwhelmed by the rest. It is not focus nor is it the all of here, but a moving part.
When Nebula speaks here it lacks the husky, mechanical sound her voice does in person. It's softer, but not warmer. It's just as conflicted and in this voice you know that this realm, in her mind, is the place she finds most comfort. Is the place she's far more willing to be herself than anywhere else: It's freedom. But the rage can burn up quickly, taking flight into sky-covered landscape. It feels like anger is the quickest thing to cling to and accept and even in this shared space any other (positive) emotions are in conflict of understanding.
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[ That was the life she had been used to for so long. Even if it's not now, the scars are etched into herself enough that she eats she stews. She feels the burning eyes of the shopkeep and resists the growing urge to turn and yell at him. Yell at all of them. ]
What they saw. [ She laughs, the sound with no humor and sounding more like a rasp than not. ] I did nothing of celebration in there.
[ If she did to anyone's eyes it was not to hers - All she saw was weakness after weakness. But then, in her opinion, a win would be through fighting and most of those times were worked through with emotion and resilience. ]
[ You were a Guardian, Hayame says and that makes her stop for the first time. To swallow thickly as she glares down at the food. ]
I am a Guardian. [ Refuted, quickly - more an assertion to herself than to Hayame. She had once used those words "was a Guardian," when they'd met - that she had retired and she had. But now in Kenos she's pulled back to that world; And if she's the only Guardian of the Galaxy left in the entire damned cosmos she would die a Guardian. She would die for her family. ]
[ She ignores the emotion behind the conviction. ] I was an Avenger, too. "Earth's mightiest heroes." [ She wants to scoff at the thought but there's a further point. ] And a Daughter of Thanos.
[ Despite the factual way she says it there's something stilted in the phrase, said more like a curse than it is to be proud of. She tears at a strip of chicken. ] ... There were people who knew of us. Or tried to gift the other things. Weapons. Trinkets. Stupid goats.
[ STUPID GOATS!! She doesn't pause. ] Most of them did not look at me. Most of them still knew me for what I did under my father's control.
... I do not blame them.
[ There is nothing about her for them to want to admire. So she tells herself. It sure is a good thing she doesn't know the extent of what Earth people are doing. Cosplaying as her would be horrific to know! ]
crawls back from tokyo
I might have been devoured by shadows, were you not at hand.
[It is merely fact worth noting, as shameful as it was for her to admit. But now... Now, she is confused just slightly by the chance in tense. She was a "Guardian", now she is... ? She is also an "Avenger"? (Side note, other worlds sometimes had such odd words for things...) But it is not Hayame's place to question, now. It was time for her to listen. (Even if being gifted goats was... well...)
And when she is done... and the silent stretches between them. Even if it seems like a question with an answer that can only be negative, can only be suffering...]
... What do daughters of Thanos, do?
[She wonders if it is anything like what stable breed jinba with both their arms do.]
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[ She stews before sighing. ]
You don't know that.
[ Retorted, quickly, fiercely an addition: ] You would have broken through it.
[ The illusion. She thinks, hopes, believes — because she wants to believe she herself would. Because, she can't imagine if she hadn't and what that might mean. (She knows what it would mean, they all did, but that did not shake her faith in Hayame). ]
[ Look, Hayame, don't question things sometimes you have complicated feelings about your retirement and decide this fight is for your family, for the Guardians. And if you're going to die you're going to die a Guardian!!! ]
[ She glances up, finally, at the question and the cascade of thoughts and feelings that accompany it. What do they do...? What didn't they do. She almost laughs, she doesn't, though the huff of one remains in her throat. ]
I told you some of it; How our Father stole and weaponized us in his pursuit of balance. [ It's a brief overview, a quick reminder, because that's all she'd said before. ]
Before he had the Infinity Stones — his Oracles — we were part of his army. The Stones made his work quick, before that... If he wanted a planet wiped out or a person killed, it would be us he would send in.
[ To kill, to destroy. Just as he had done to each of his "children," that he had adopted, blessed with a life by his side. If you could call it a blessing - she doesn't. She doesn't think the entire universe does. But it's neither here nor there. ]
It was the only life we knew.
[ Taken as young as they were, with any semblance of normalcy stripped of them. With loss, grief, and anger the first things they were taught. She pauses; Thinks of herself, from so long ago. How if circumstances were changed it'd be a different Nebula on another side. Lost and full of hate, and with only one purpose.
It's, perhaps, why she adds one last thing: ]
It's the only life he would let us have.
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And Nebula would have to live with her awkwardly, curtly, expressing her gratitude. Briefly acknowledging the debt now created between them before moving onwards.
To something... darker, perhaps, than most women would bring up over a free meal in a lovely cafe surrounded by citizens that admire and look to them for hope after the Harbinger Oracle trial had been broadcast across the city. But they are not most women, are they? This is what they have.
So Hayame listens, quietly, because she was the one who asked. She turns the phrases over in her own head, giving them the weight they deserved. And even though it was a far different life from the one she had led in the sense of... scale, of space... Eventually, she just nods. Having been automatically eating still, she does pause... Long enough to say,]
I see.
[She could end it there. Just acknowledgement, and nothing else, a question asked, then answered. But that does not feel fair, or right, somehow, and having once felt... so alone, in Meridian, thinking that no one else was in position to sympathize with her thoughts or where they came from... and insisting to herself that it would not matter, and if even if not a single other soul supported her she would simply force herself to carry on. Nebula did not deserve that, even if she might not choose to take what she offers.]
My stable master insisted on being called "Lord", though. Not "Father".
[Understanding.]
... And we were meant for the auction block once we finished our training and came of age, not a place at his side.
[A daughter of Thanos and a daughter of Armless breeding stock raised to be an overseer of her own kind sold to the highest bidder.]