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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[ She affirms, but does not go further. Her presence in Kenos had been built on two things: the firm understanding of the Infinity War and that of one people who wanted "perfect worlds" could be. Being in a position to understand devastating monumental loss had only made her to believe if it had happened it was not impossible to change. ]
[ Nebula looks at his hand - but does not take it. Here, in this space, Set gets the feeling that to her trust is the most dangerous weapon. It's the most fragile gift, so easy to give and so easy to break. ]
There is nothing natural and true in this kind of devastation. [ She says it readily. Wars are one thing - as stupid as they are - but the sheer scale of what can be done far beats war. ] But you're right. Anyone who thinks they can make a perfect world are cowards and fools running from themselves.
[ Because it's those people who couldn't simply accept things. Who decided that the only way the universe could grow was to be under their thumb. Her father was like that. So many people in the universe were like that; It burns the rage in her. ]
[ She listens. And then she pauses. "Moral qualms about the reality of war," some worn down part of her wants to laugh. In the past there was never a qualm. If she had been as she was before, this would be no question. Success was all that mattered, who died along the way didn't. Now, things were different. She'd seen what haunted the universe. She'd answered so many calls from planets in danger, in war, and the innocents in between. The reality of war was never in question. ]
[ The fire that is her part of any communion is in hushed embers against the quiet snowfall, cold and warm all at once. She doesn't stew for long, but she answers. ]
There are those who think this all a farce. Maybe it is. If it isn't, then the fate of all worlds hang in the balance. Anyone who cannot accept that are idiots. Zenites are monsters who would choose to kill trillions for their visions.
[ The last part is spat out - clearly more a personal jab than not - but plainly. She does not let it linger. ] ...We all have choices. We can be a knife or we can be a guardian.
I am a Guardian. I will fight because it is all I have ever known. If an enemy comes for me or someone I call an ally I will not let them walk away without knowing what it means to try again. [ While she says it dangerously and severely, with every meaning in her body, she continues: ] But I will not attack children. I will fight, but I'm not killing anybody if I can help it.
[ While she says it, the intonation is clear: She is not afraid to kill and would do so if needed, but only as an absolute resort. Some ancient part of her thinks there are far better ways to deal with things than murder - slow and painful does the trick true. While it's there, the heavier empathetic side remains. It does not stop her from adding: ]
Yima can die. And if someone chooses to die with her, that's their choice.
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[ What he cannot tell Nebula, he realizes, is what he became after he was a guardian.
( A monster. A slaughterer of women and children, for no reason other than that he was weak and frightened and shattered and left to mourn himself, unable to strike against the man who had ripped him apart and left him to rebuild himself. To not even be able to do it right, or completely. )
He does pull his hand back, but no offense is taken. Everything about her is harsh and beautiful, and her resolve pricks in the back of his eyes and against the swallow of his throat. This is what he looks for, in people. Hayame embodies it so thoroughly, the strength of a warrior and the steadfastness of someone with honor, but the ability to do what they must, for people.
He wishes he was still like those two women. ( That he could articulate his admiration for them. That he could tell them: you are like my sister, my best friend, whom was once my greatest ally, and be without the mournful truth, that even his sister had turned her back on him when he needed her most. ) ]
Then, I will be honest with you in a way that I am not honest with those who I have taught to expect the worst of me: my only target is Yima. Not the people of Highstorm. But, I will mourn their deaths as they happen in war, once the war is over. And I will honor their endings, only when we can rest among those who are depending on us to be their protectors. To not give up. Because it is not about how much we lost.
[ Until then, he cannot flinch. Will not flinch. ]
Thank you, Nebula. I may not be a guardian god anymore, but you remind me what it was, to be one.
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[ Of course, she has no interest in those that call themselves gods. She cannot personally see them as such - even if their powers far outweight her own. But between those who claimed it: Thor, Ego, the High Evolutionary... in some ways her Father. All she can see them as is people who's might drew others to them - She can see it in the way this man holds himself. ]
[ Even if following anyone in such a manner is not something she will do. ]
Of course. Yima is the one at fault. It is not the civilians or the Shardbearers who have been dragged here... And there will be casualties. [ As there are in most wars, but the way she says it; "We do not need to become monsters," lingers in her mind. How much of her life had been led by being a monster? How much of herself has she lost? ]
[ She's quiet. ]
[ And then. ]
You're wrong.
[ She swallows. ] I had no choice but to be a knife; I was taken from my home and raised as a weapon. Any time I lost, any time I was soft, another piece of me was taken away. The universe was cruel and I was weak. It was a lesson beaten into me with every loss, until it filled me with so much anger and hatred all I could be was the knife. Because if I wasn't he'd make sure I knew better.
It was not killing him that gave me freedom. It was... Something else.
[ There's a point to this; But she hesitates, like the words and knowledge are still something twisted and foreign. For so long she had live for killing him, had let the anger consume her. The anger she had tried to let go. The anger she gave up here - reflected now in the factual way she speaks of it, like she could finally be free. ]
It was the people. My sister. My family.
Seeing the people who needed protecting. The children all across the galaxies.
[ She stops. The sensation of someone looking away; Like they don't know how to finish before stamping out: ]
You always have a choice to be a guardian.
[ "You still can be." A knife is mindless. It's hatred. It sees nothing but it's purpose. If his words are true then he has no doubt he can be a guardian. ]
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— I was soft once, too.
[ The words come out flat, unpolished and empty.
A hollowness in his gaze and a tremble in his mouth, the twitch of his curled fingers as dark claws form from nailbeds like a cat that's just flexed its claws in defense.
The actions of my own family taught me how useless it was, to resist the destiny assigned me. At the very least, I can flex that destiny far enough and hard enough to be of benefit to Meridian. I was made for this, and that's okay.
[ His own wife had given his brother the power to ruin him, and his sister had turned her back on him as if he were a home-wrecking harlot. In the blood and despair, he had hoped his all-seeing mother, the night sky herself, would sweep him into her arms and weep for him. And she had been silent, silent as the dark, until he pursued his sister — and then the tears came for her, and her alone.
What a lesson that had taught him. ]
War is a complex system, and it is not the domain of knives alone. It also does not last, but when it lives, it breathes like a living entity [ he draws a breath in to emphasize that ] — and entities like me, cannot be powerful and free. I hope you appreciate your freedom, Nebula. It suits you well.
[ Set seems to mean it, standing where he does and looking upon her with such a strange expression. Before he adds, quick and almost unwillingly. As if gleaning something from how she speaks and where he can draw an almost empathetic parallel. ]
Even with all of that: I miss my sister, too. I wanted to make up with her, for so long... we hurt each other so much.
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[ She cuts in, first - heated, the presence of flaring nostrils. Every bit of her recoiling at the very idea; Because she was taught she could never be soft, that it was a weakness. Plucked away from her like a toy she'd grown too old for, replaced with the cool metal of machinery. She is not soft. She does not know how to be soft - even if she wanted to be - too twisted and tangled to find any other way. ]
[ He speaks. He speaks like a man who believes like he is incapable of change - not as a god. Not that she has a belief that so called gods are any different. She's experiences those, too, of course. It is why she speaks as she does now. Even if she listens. Even if that softness that is buried under fire as snow speaks out against it - a touch too well. ]
[ She does not say it. He reminds her of herself; It can be felt, in the barest twinges of something. Not sadness, not pity. Understanding. They were supposed to be talking about something else. ]
My sister. Gamora. [ Because she has a name and for too long she separated herself from other people by not using their names - it is something she tried to change. ] When we were children she had promised we would always be sisters. That no matter what we would help each other; He starved us and had us fight to the death. She left me to suffer. Again and again, until I became this thing you see before you - [ Well, this is communion, he doesn't see. But the gesture is there; The feeling of this body is not her own - could never be her own. Replaced into pieces until she couldn't even tell you what she looked like in the first place or could dare to guess if any parts of it before were left. ]
For years all we knew how to do was distrust. I tried to kill her. Many times.
[ So many times. So much anger. But there is no anger now. She cannot feel any anger about those times now - because she gave those up. It is fact. Her history. ]
And then one day we reconciled. Then he would kill her - his pursuit for power meaning more to him than his favorite daughter. [ She swallows. ] That Gamora is gone. She will never be back. But there was -
[ Infinity war bullshit logic. She's not going to explain. ] - a situation. A past version of her came back. And a past version of me.
I killed her because she would have killed our sister.
[ She does not explain, but the feelings are there. The hollowness of understanding, of knowing that this other version of yourself thought they could never change. That they were trapped in a world of cruelty, torture, and violence. That anything less was weakness to be discarded. That there's a part of her that will never be free. ]
[ She swallows. ]
You are not made for this. None of us are.
We all have a choice.
[ Even if that means she belligerently doesn't see him as a god (sorry Set) but maybe that's beneficial - in its own way. ]
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[ He hasn't heard that name in some time, but it is a name he has a passing familiarity with. ]
I knew a Gamora. She was here during the Iconoclast Oracle, and gone too soon despite her strength of will.
[ The rest, though... yeah, it reminds him a lot of him and his sister, as well. Isis and he had been inseparable once; best friends, trusted confidants. They were the most alike out of their quartet of siblings, hot-headed and passionate, sensitive and capable of the most destructive of feats without hesitation or mercy. Her husband had hurt him, and instead of looking upon him with sympathy ( or even pity, he was so desperate as to accept pity at that point — ), she blamed him. As if he was a common harlot.
So, he'd hunted her for millennia, and ripped apart every woman he came in contact with! Because every one of them reminded him of her in some way, and she needed to be punished for abandoning him. 8) 8( ]
Nebula, you... [ Another individual might apologize here, might tell her that she didn't deserve the pain she went through; the depersonalization and dissociation that she experiences echoes faintly within him, like an old numbness that he's now forgotten even exists. ( His body is a weapon, however he has to use it. Every inch of him designed for battles, to be used and wielded. Not for him, never for him. The only time it was ever his was when he held his wife, his son. And they were never truly his, he came to find out. )
"You are not made for this." Ah, and only if that were true.
The experience of a god ( for belief in him aside, he was one — ) was so different, especially Set's. Unborn, made in the image of rivalry and evil, wickedness and disorder, he struggled with a sensitive heart and a sweetness unbecoming of something so terrible, something made to give reason and shape to other things. The redheaded stepchild of the universe.
In Communion, he releases the sands. Blows them away to the ends of his mind so that they do not catch in her limbs and grind harshly at her, leaving instead the stillness of a dark, empty plane that ripples as if the surface of the water. ]
I will try to make a choice that helps us all. [ Not a good one, or the right one, just the one that does the most for Meridian and his allies. That helps them get home. ] I could use your advice, if you want to look over the weapon's design.
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[ She hisses the word out. Nebula is not a calm person. She is eternally filled with rage, pain, and self-hatred. The softness of snow clutches and curls, like a lost child trying to remember how to walk-to run in the direction it needs. Her temperment is harsh and rarely falters and yet... The surprise is prominent, inescapable. The expectation palpable. ]
[ Logic reasons that there must be other Gamoras in the universe, not hers. Something more fragile: belief, hope, a sardonic understanding of her life - their lives - tells her there is no misunderstanding. If there is Nebula, there is Gamora. Always first, like the lightning. And then there was Nebula, just as powerful a few seconds behind. Always behind. It as much a fact as there are stars in the sky, no matter where or when, Nebula will always be second to Gamora. An escapable feeling, though now it is no longer fueled with anger. For Set, to Set, the emotions escape in cascades with the image of green skin, dark hair tied red, and a promise: You will always be my sister. ]
[ In person, outside of communion, she swallows hard and does the mental equivalent of slamming the lid shut on a trash can. It does her no good. Gamora is not here. None of it. Dwelling on what is and isn't has never helped. The only thing that will is ending all of this - returning home. To where she could finally, truly be free. ]
[ She does not say it. She deftly ignores his exclamation 'Nebula, you-' and perhaps somehow she didn't hear it, despite the intimacy of this place. A flame shoots up and dies out, the impression of a flared nostril, the hint she has. She scowls, deep and low: ]
We will all make a choice.
[ They have all already made a choice, but she doubts how far some of them would go for it. (She dares not doubt how far she will go). She tries to force down her thoughts and expressions, become the steel and machinery that make up her being. Pinpoint all of it down and so she asks: ] What are you looking at?