Got A Letter From A Messenger / I Read It When It Came

[martianmonster]

WHO: martianmonster and fuck_chapstick (and later also is_fear_itself!)
WHERE: The asylum where Karu-Sil is being held, then later the house M'stra has taken for herself
WHEN: Wednesday afternoon/evening/night.
WARNINGS: BRAIN VIOLENCE!
SUMMARY: M'stra breaks Karu-Sil out of her holding cell and takes her home dammit! >:[
FORMAT: Para Para Para

Comments

[martianmonster]

Karu-Sil didn't even blink. Her head lolled back against M'stra's arm under her neck and for a terrifying split second she wondered if the corpsman might be dead, or dying even still. But then the hiss of breath past her teeth a moment later brought hope and fury back together in a rush...

The Doctor was stepping into the room, asking who the hell she was, and M'stra realized belatedly that she'd dropped her mental control over him the second she'd seen Karu-Sil. He'd seen her now, but no matter...

She lifted the limp woman into her arms, off the floor, gathering her against her chest and trying to get a lid on her own trembling. Lashing out with a fresh set of tentacled limbs she shattered the lights, shielding Karu-Sil from the rain of broken glass as she stormed for the door. The doctor backed up, eyes wide with terror, screaming for help. M'stra silenced him with a fast stab as his mind that left him curled in the corner convinced he'd gone blind.

She'd have LIKED to rip his eyes out for real but she didn't have the time just now.

She worked er way up through the facility, on a rampage through the lab area for confiscating some supplies on the way, then up to the front doors. Staff and patients alike were deflected with fury and precision, minds shaken up and traumas torn open incapacitated by phantom agonies M'stra made their brains invent. By the time she slammed out through the front doors half the building was incapacitated.

Still, she marched out, Sil in her arms, without once looking back.

[fuck_chapstick]

The escape doesn't register to Karu-Sil. Everything is dark and nothing is happening, nothing reaches her, nothing but the suggestion of a noise off in the distance, and then everything is dark and time is lost to her again.

And again.

And then, it wanders back to her.

Karu-Sil's mind comes back before her motor functions do, and it takes her brain several minutes to signal the rest of her that it is okay to open her eyes. When she does, she wonders what has happened. She is no longer under the lights, or in The Room. So much has been lost--had she ever been there? What had happened to her? Those questions stir, and then lay dormant again. The drugs are still there, and too weak to fight against them, she shuts her eyes and sleeps.

[martianmonster]

M'stra beds Sil down in the master suite of the house. It's the warmest, with the bathroom attached so it's not far to take her if she wakes up sick. It takes her five tries to get the IV in properly. Caring for someone like this is not on her list of skills.

She doesn't sleep, doesn't leave Sil alone for a second. Just sits at the side of the bed, trying stimulate her brain back to waking little by little, shaping her dreams - when she can form them - with warm memories and promises of comfort.

In the brief moments that she feels her stir to wakefulness, M'stra finally feels releived.

[fuck_chapstick]

karu-Sil remains asleep for much longer (for how long she can't say, because it doesn't register), wrapped up in nothing at all at first, and then gradually to pleasant dreams. There is just comfort in her mind. Somehow, she knows that where she is now is safe. No more Room. No more lights. No more barriers between her and her pack.

Finally, after a considerable amount of time, she is able to overpower the tranquilizers in her system and open her eyes. She sees M'stra, but is unsure if she is actually seeing what she's seeing. She tries to speak her name, but is too weak to translate her speech, and she mangles M'stra's name almost as badly as she damaged her own face.

"Stuh," she breathes, unable to pronounce the R fully and the M at all.

[martianmonster]

M'stra jerks forward in her chair at the sound, shifting closer and leaning over Karu-Sil, stroking her cheek and brushing back her hair. Her eyes grow quickly wet and she brushes it determinedly away, focusing on those black eyes and the new light of coherence in them.

"Shhh, it's okay." she murmurs. "You're out of that awful place now, chala. You're home with me, Sil-darling."

[fuck_chapstick]

"Ack," Karu-Sil manages, because the B in that word requires lips to produce. "Oou'rr back."

[martianmonster]

"That's right. It'll be okay now." M'stra combs out Karu-Sil's hair lovingly again, sliding an arm beneath her shoulders and climbing onto the bed with her so that she can hold Sil in her lap.

Any space separating them just now aggravates her for no good reason, but the solution is simple at least.

"I'm sorry I went without telling you. Megan did it. She got us both killed and ported out. But I'm back now, and this time it's just me. That little brat is gone for good, I promise."

M'stra rocks the other woman gently against her shoulder as she talks, saying things more for herself to hear them than for Karu-Sil's benefit.

[fuck_chapstick]

The past week has been a nightmare for Karu-Sil, and she is still not fully processing what is happening at that moment. What she knows is stimuli, response. Stimuli, response. M'stra's voice, a rush of comfort. M'stra's touch, leaning her head against her. The decisions are instinctive, and they come to her without thought. This is what to do. She feels such shame at not being able to speak properly that she scrapes together every last bit of strength she has to translate her speech.

"I knew." She says softly. "Knew you would come..." And then the energy fades. "...ack."

[martianmonster]

M'stra nods against Karu-Sil's hair, eyes welling up again though she doesn't want to show it. She murmurs to her, "Always, chala, always.", gathering the blanket off the end of the bed to wrap around her before she gets cold.

"Just rest, Sil-darling. That awful medicine they gave you will be out of your blood soon," she says fiercely. "And when you're well we'll kill them all for what they did to you."

She keeps rocking, keeps murmuring soft things, trailing on and off, dabbling between English and Martian words as they come to her.

[fuck_chapstick]

The notion of murdering them all for what they've done both comforts and angers Karu-Sil, because it validates her suspicions that awful things did happen, that she didn't just dream them, that she will wake up well enough to remember what they did to her, and her life will be horrible.

But until then, she focuses on M'stra's voice, and drifts off again.

[martianmonster]

M'stra rocks her gently until she sleeps, then rocks her still just because she wishes to. There are long hours between Karu-Sil's rest and her own.

[fuck_chapstick]

This time, when Karu-Sil sleeps, she dreams. They are restless thoughts of the jungle, mixed with the asylum, mixed with the Room, and the calls to her family in her sleep.

In the room, three flecks of light circle M'stra before fading back to nothing, and she lies still again.

[martianmonster]

M'stra startles awake again when she hears the faint gargling growls of Karu-Sil calling her fathers. She strokes her hair, nudges at her dreams to form warm comforting shapes. The brief light of the pack beginning again to emerge makes her feel better, feel secure enough to leave the corpsman tucked into a nest of warm blankets so that she can step out of the room for just a minute.

Her emotions are raging hot and cold. Anger and sorrow and fury and helpless relief tripping over each other in the pit of her stomach, tangling her energies until she ends up vomitting over the sink int he kitchen.

She rinses her mouth the goes to the living room, paces clutching her comm, then goes out to the yard just to SCREAM, once loud and long and then again in a curse, greatful for how far off from it's neighbours the house she's taken on is.

She paces the lawn, destroys a few plants, then finally picks up the comm with conviction and makes a post to the network, to be sure the lanterns know who they've crossed, and to get the urge to shout at someone out of her system.

Chilled and feeling vaugely more stable she comes back up to the bedroom and curls up again with Karu-Sil in her arms.

She is still this way when Crane calls, and it's just as much exhaustion as genuine need that lets her accept his offered help...

[is_fear_itself]

Questioning himself all the while, Jon stepped out of the car and surveyed the place, a briefcase full of various drugs in one hand, shoving the keys in his pocket with the other. The birds that followed him scatter to nearby perches, three dozen strong, but none of them moving to accompany their master to the front door.

He hesitated momentarily, mentally drawing up dusty old schemas for normalcy should they be needed, and then knocked.

"Hello?"

[martianmonster]

The knock brought M'stra padding down from the master bedroom. Broken glass from a mirror she'd broken before ever leaving the place was scattered all over the front hall and she swept it aside with her feet as best she could making a path to the door.

"Dr. Crane." she gave him the briefest of tired smiles as she opened the front door for him. "Forgive the mess, it's been a rough few days. She's upstairs, I'll show you where."

Nodding her head toward the stairs she let the door swing shut and began climbing up to the second floor.

[is_fear_itself]

Well. She was certainly not a woman he'd want to casually cross, but he suspected that from the outset. "Not at all," He said, regarding the state of the place.

He followed her up, taking care to avoid the glass, and doing his best to conceal any personal concern he might have for Karu-Sil. Professional concern was fine, but there was no reason to act like a maudlin fool in public.

Jon found his safety in questions. "Has she said anything, or done anything, since you recovered her?"