[ that reminds her of another dream, not hers but one she'd read about. she scrolls back as she listens, better at multitasking than she gets credit for but 90% of the time she is on the network, she is also at work and her work is stellar.
pun intended.
her head snaps up when cassian says the gas cut everything off, expression wrinkling in concern. the implications of an airborne anything being able to stop people or powers is unsettling. ]
It does sound like our power. Did it feel like it wasn't your choices or actions, like you weren't Cassian? Watching through someone else's eyes?
[ he is trying to transcribe his own notes, trying to make connections, but he doesn't want to forget anything about what he dreamt, and that seems important first. there are as many very concerning things about the dream as there are curious ones. like he couldn't figure out how to explain it, he doesn't know how to begin to analyze it. ]
I think it ended with me. Like I was in a machine, like the medi-unit, in the facility. It all faded out, dimmed and vanished.
Right before I woke up now, with you, it was like the question was posed again, about who I was. But it was more like... who was I now, as if it had changed again. It was like I was everyone.
[ who was he now, in a body. in more than one body. it sounds eerily like a byproduct of the empathy bond, being able to feel everyone, but her brain twists that backwards. maybe the empathy bond is a byproduct of the original feeling.
if pieces of the whole were spread amongst them... ]
When you said you were inside a compartment, was that the medi-unit at the end or was it, were you-- [ she huffs, fingers dancing together in front of her as she tries to verbalize the strange idea stuck on her tongue. ] Was it like you were inside the Swiftlet device?
No. I was everywhere before the Swiftlet too. But it was only after the Swiftlet where everyone seemed to... wake up. I think it was the medi-unit both before and after, because of the same humming sound.
[ he also thinks of the empathy bond, maybe because he is still touching jyn, still glowing. the displaced are already interconnected through the bond. it has to be related. ]
It was like they wanted to use the device to control me. They only used the Swiftlet on one person, but when I was that person, it was like my refusal to comply... sparked in others. I could feel myself breaking again, and I wanted desperately to be whole. I kept thinking, "not again, not again." That is when everyone seemed to connect together.
A rebel even when you're asleep, [ jyn teases, one hand falls to rest on his knee, the other lifting to press between her eyes, expression scrunching up. ]
It's the same idea we keep hearing. Unity, connectivity, community. Other words that end with -ity. [ her lips purse, tone going dry, ] A bridge.
[ she breathes out slow, moving back to the topic at hand. once they are completely done with the dream they can go back to the theorizing. ]
Close your eyes again. Do you remember anything you felt? Was the bed metal, was the medi-unit warm. Did you hear anything, orders or words or people coming in and out? Were there any particular smells that stood out, the gas maybe? Could you taste?
[ saw used to do this practice with her; when your eyes are closed, your other senses have to do the work for you. she had never been particularly good at the exercise when she was eight, but she'd excelled at it in prison. her cell always tasted cold. ]
Edited (it was repetitive ) 2020-04-20 23:17 (UTC)
Good. [ an affirmation for his memories, not that he didn't feel anything, though she supposes that is good as well. not really forefront on her mind, despite being very protective of cassian. ]
Stale air means the gas doesn't linger, no need to ventilate.
[ concerning, no trace would make it impossible to, well, trace. ]
[ how strange a feeling to know he was there, but also not be sure? he feels like he's starting to ask the question himself. who was he, in the dream? ]
That is the thing. I do not know if I was myself in the dream, not for sure.
I felt a desperate desire to figure out who I was. It was a constant question. Each time the perspective shifted. At the beginning of the dream. At the end, right before I woke up.
[ and she feels that on a deep, personal level. she knows cassian does, too. you don't spend more than half your life under assumed names and miraculously arrive with a stable sense of self when you finally claim your given name again. ]
I am not sure it was entirely my crisis this time.
[ she started it, and cassian is a master of self-deprecation. though he's not sure that qualifies, for once. both of them, hiding their real names for different reasons. ]
In the beginning, it almost seemed like they knew once before who they were. [ he frowns, so wrapped up in the back and forth perspectives that he'd nearly forgotten the start. he closes his eyes, yet again. ]
I slipped away. Unnoticed. Resting, from what was once the weight of the world. [ and cassian at least recognizes what that feeling is like. it's heavy. tiresome. ] There were others who pulled back too. My... creation changed. Evolved. On its own. There was something I was a part of.
And then the question was about who I was now. Where I was now. That is when it shifted into the facility experience.
[ he must. her eyes drift down, fingers stretching out to touch the soft blue glow that appears despite nothing being in his chest. nothing physical, at least. ]
The paintings in Oslo, they showed this in St Oleg and Harold or whatever.
[ both wrong, doesn't matter, the implication is clear. humanity tends to have a desperate desire for power and st olaf and king harald had that power once, according to the paintings, at least. if that power pulled back, slipped away...
jyn doesn't doubt humans would take it by force. ]
Is this what I get for not giving a shit about gods?
[ yeah he gets it. he and jyn are alike that way, taking in this world's mythologies and divinities and subsequently not caring. it's like his dream came down and gave him a swift kick of 'gods are real.' now that the dream is out, he finds his thoughts are already scrambling to make sense of it. the blue glow is still lighting up the room, like it lit up all those murals. ]
[ the glow was very much present in oslo. in all four areas the displaced ended up with the gates, evidently. ]
There are always people who want power. If these figures and gods exist, in whatever capacity, their power would be hunted. Especially if it was... already shared.
[ jyn sighs, abruptly (and fairly melodramatically) throwing herself back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. ]
Maybe that is what they tried to wake up. Another-- ugh can we think of a different word besides god.
[ what she hates the most about the concept of deities is the superiority, the supremacy that comes with it, just because of a perceived power, and that isn't easy to divorce from the idea of gods. they need a placeholder word. ]
Maybe if we think of it like another species, with their powers as a genetic evolution.
[ not as dramatically, but cassian lays down again too, wanting to stay in close. there is nothing on the ceiling to stare at, but it does let him try to envision the dream. ]
Either wake these... beings up, or whatever the creature was. Maybe both. Spinetail wanted to wake up a beast, right? I thought of something as my creation. If it had power, it makes sense for people to chase that too.
[ why are there so many goddamn birds. ]
Meadowlark for the beings, Spinetail for the being's creations.
[ drily: ] I suspect Henries would have more information.
[ but that guy had to go and be both a dead end and dead. her fingers tap against the mattress as she thinks, mulling over who might have the appropriate information.
[ maybe it makes jyn very hypocritical, she does not care. she is hypocritical about a lot of things, add this to the fucking list. jot it down. ]
That's where Ren got his information, isn't it? Why not go straight to the source. Ball, as well. He certainly knows more than he's telling and I'm past tired of this cryptic bullshit.
[ cassian sighs. ] I do not have to like a source to recognize it as one. I certainly do not trust Cassius, but it does not mean he doesn't have information.
[ he is a spy jyn! sources are allowed to be questionable! ]
If only Ball were easier to reach out to. Cassius as well. But yes. I could do with a break from the cryptic. It is just more and more pieces, but the numbers keep increasing.
[ cassius is another story entirely and jyn's features scrunch up all over again as she tries to think of a way they can reach out to cassian. aside from the obvious of putting him on blast on the network and going outside and yelling at the clouds.
[ it's always we and most people know it by now. jyn and cassian are a team. they might have separate hobbies, different vocations, different taste in water temperature, separate friends, but they're still a team at the end of the day. or the middle of the night.
maybe it's early morning by now. ]
That power, it sounded like hers.
[ reflexively, her arm draws back to her chest. the pain of clarke's power had been excruciating and at the time jyn stubbornly powered through it until it was consumed by the grief of almost losing cassian and very much losing caroline. but in the aftermath, once clarke had come to her senses and returned the life to jyn's shriveled, blackened arm, there were still phantom pains. ]
I remember. [ jyn had told him about the experience in zerzura, another horrifying story to add to their collection of terrors. ]
[ but. ]
[ it reminds him of something that's slowly been nagging at him as he organizes his thoughts. if the displays were powers - ]
If that power is Clarke's, what if - what if the ground shaking was mine? [ it's not something he thinks he can do, but then again he's never really tried to do it. his running theory for his spine was power loss to a medi unit, presumably from an earthquake - but he'd just witnessed the ground shaking beneath a medi unit, alongside a handful of other powers scattered in the facility. he has control over the ground, who knows where that could lead? ]
[ her lips purse, considering it. she can feel the dangerous ground it could open up for how cassian feels about his back. they've been running on the theory that he was in a medi-unit during the earthquake in 2510, that is why his back didn't heal properly, why he has the cybernetics.
if he caused the earthquake...
maybe that is why their powers start so small, because they can't control them otherwise, but it could be a different explanation all together and she refuses to put cassian's own injuries on his shoulders until she knows more. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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pun intended.
her head snaps up when cassian says the gas cut everything off, expression wrinkling in concern. the implications of an airborne anything being able to stop people or powers is unsettling. ]
It does sound like our power. Did it feel like it wasn't your choices or actions, like you weren't Cassian? Watching through someone else's eyes?
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I think it ended with me. Like I was in a machine, like the medi-unit, in the facility. It all faded out, dimmed and vanished.
Right before I woke up now, with you, it was like the question was posed again, about who I was. But it was more like... who was I now, as if it had changed again. It was like I was everyone.
no subject
[ who was he now, in a body. in more than one body. it sounds eerily like a byproduct of the empathy bond, being able to feel everyone, but her brain twists that backwards. maybe the empathy bond is a byproduct of the original feeling.
if pieces of the whole were spread amongst them... ]
When you said you were inside a compartment, was that the medi-unit at the end or was it, were you-- [ she huffs, fingers dancing together in front of her as she tries to verbalize the strange idea stuck on her tongue. ] Was it like you were inside the Swiftlet device?
no subject
[ he also thinks of the empathy bond, maybe because he is still touching jyn, still glowing. the displaced are already interconnected through the bond. it has to be related. ]
It was like they wanted to use the device to control me. They only used the Swiftlet on one person, but when I was that person, it was like my refusal to comply... sparked in others. I could feel myself breaking again, and I wanted desperately to be whole. I kept thinking, "not again, not again." That is when everyone seemed to connect together.
no subject
It's the same idea we keep hearing. Unity, connectivity, community. Other words that end with -ity. [ her lips purse, tone going dry, ] A bridge.
[ she breathes out slow, moving back to the topic at hand. once they are completely done with the dream they can go back to the theorizing. ]
Close your eyes again. Do you remember anything you felt? Was the bed metal, was the medi-unit warm. Did you hear anything, orders or words or people coming in and out? Were there any particular smells that stood out, the gas maybe? Could you taste?
[ saw used to do this practice with her; when your eyes are closed, your other senses have to do the work for you. she had never been particularly good at the exercise when she was eight, but she'd excelled at it in prison. her cell always tasted cold. ]
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[ it's easy to do as she says, her hand on his knee grounding him as he closes his eyes again, tries to throw himself back into the dream. ]
The room was cold. The air was... stale. I think that was true for every room. Everything was very white. Sterile.
The situation with the Swiftlet, I was in the center of the room. Sedated. I do not remember feeling anything physical, at any point.
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Stale air means the gas doesn't linger, no need to ventilate.
[ concerning, no trace would make it impossible to, well, trace. ]
Okay, last question. What did you feel like?
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That is the thing. I do not know if I was myself in the dream, not for sure.
I felt a desperate desire to figure out who I was. It was a constant question. Each time the perspective shifted. At the beginning of the dream. At the end, right before I woke up.
The beginning wasn't me at all.
no subject
[ and she feels that on a deep, personal level. she knows cassian does, too. you don't spend more than half your life under assumed names and miraculously arrive with a stable sense of self when you finally claim your given name again. ]
-- did they feel anything else?
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[ she started it, and cassian is a master of self-deprecation. though he's not sure that qualifies, for once. both of them, hiding their real names for different reasons. ]
In the beginning, it almost seemed like they knew once before who they were. [ he frowns, so wrapped up in the back and forth perspectives that he'd nearly forgotten the start. he closes his eyes, yet again. ]
I slipped away. Unnoticed. Resting, from what was once the weight of the world. [ and cassian at least recognizes what that feeling is like. it's heavy. tiresome. ] There were others who pulled back too. My... creation changed. Evolved. On its own. There was something I was a part of.
And then the question was about who I was now. Where I was now. That is when it shifted into the facility experience.
no subject
[ he must. her eyes drift down, fingers stretching out to touch the soft blue glow that appears despite nothing being in his chest. nothing physical, at least. ]
The paintings in Oslo, they showed this in St Oleg and Harold or whatever.
[ both wrong, doesn't matter, the implication is clear. humanity tends to have a desperate desire for power and st olaf and king harald had that power once, according to the paintings, at least. if that power pulled back, slipped away...
jyn doesn't doubt humans would take it by force. ]
no subject
[ yeah he gets it. he and jyn are alike that way, taking in this world's mythologies and divinities and subsequently not caring. it's like his dream came down and gave him a swift kick of 'gods are real.' now that the dream is out, he finds his thoughts are already scrambling to make sense of it. the blue glow is still lighting up the room, like it lit up all those murals. ]
[ the glow was very much present in oslo. in all four areas the displaced ended up with the gates, evidently. ]
There are always people who want power. If these figures and gods exist, in whatever capacity, their power would be hunted. Especially if it was... already shared.
no subject
Maybe that is what they tried to wake up. Another-- ugh can we think of a different word besides god.
[ what she hates the most about the concept of deities is the superiority, the supremacy that comes with it, just because of a perceived power, and that isn't easy to divorce from the idea of gods. they need a placeholder word. ]
no subject
[ not as dramatically, but cassian lays down again too, wanting to stay in close. there is nothing on the ceiling to stare at, but it does let him try to envision the dream. ]
Either wake these... beings up, or whatever the creature was. Maybe both. Spinetail wanted to wake up a beast, right? I thought of something as my creation. If it had power, it makes sense for people to chase that too.
[ why are there so many goddamn birds. ]
Meadowlark for the beings, Spinetail for the being's creations.
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[ which was ...something, though kriff knows what. maybe a creation, maybe a particularly vivid fever dream, a simulation, mass hysteria. who knows. ]
Was it a thing that you created or was it people?
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[ he hadn't done a lot of digging in zerzura, more concerned about getting out. more concerned about how he'd gotten sucked in too. ]
I thought of it as my own creation, but there was no sense of what it actually was.
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[ but that guy had to go and be both a dead end and dead. her fingers tap against the mattress as she thinks, mulling over who might have the appropriate information.
which might be the source of ren's information. ]
You're not going to like my suggestion.
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[ he needs to go back and reread some of the sources he tucked away, watching people talk about this man. there was very little to go on so far. ]
[ he turns his head to look at her, not really smiling, but still feeling a certain ease at simply seeing her (very pensive, almost grumpy) face. ]
There are many things I already do not like about this, Jyn.
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[ maybe it makes jyn very hypocritical, she does not care. she is hypocritical about a lot of things, add this to the fucking list. jot it down. ]
That's where Ren got his information, isn't it? Why not go straight to the source. Ball, as well. He certainly knows more than he's telling and I'm past tired of this cryptic bullshit.
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[ he is a spy jyn! sources are allowed to be questionable! ]
If only Ball were easier to reach out to. Cassius as well. But yes. I could do with a break from the cryptic. It is just more and more pieces, but the numbers keep increasing.
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[ cassius is another story entirely and jyn's features scrunch up all over again as she tries to think of a way they can reach out to cassian. aside from the obvious of putting him on blast on the network and going outside and yelling at the clouds.
maybe that would work, she doesn't know. ]
Maybe El could facilitate it.
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[ the 'we' falls out without even thinking. it's just kind of a fact now, they're all out for each other. ]
Start with Ball, then try Cassius. Ball at least seems to be a fan of the Displaced, whereas Cassius is more a loose cannon.
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maybe it's early morning by now. ]
That power, it sounded like hers.
[ reflexively, her arm draws back to her chest. the pain of clarke's power had been excruciating and at the time jyn stubbornly powered through it until it was consumed by the grief of almost losing cassian and very much losing caroline. but in the aftermath, once clarke had come to her senses and returned the life to jyn's shriveled, blackened arm, there were still phantom pains. ]
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[ but. ]
[ it reminds him of something that's slowly been nagging at him as he organizes his thoughts. if the displays were powers - ]
If that power is Clarke's, what if - what if the ground shaking was mine? [ it's not something he thinks he can do, but then again he's never really tried to do it. his running theory for his spine was power loss to a medi unit, presumably from an earthquake - but he'd just witnessed the ground shaking beneath a medi unit, alongside a handful of other powers scattered in the facility. he has control over the ground, who knows where that could lead? ]
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if he caused the earthquake...
maybe that is why their powers start so small, because they can't control them otherwise, but it could be a different explanation all together and she refuses to put cassian's own injuries on his shoulders until she knows more. ]
Maybe other people had dreams? You could ask.
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