[That crash had been only moments before her first arrival in this world, and her three weeks away from this world back in July had given her another week after that.
[Well, it's not like it's some huge secret; the only reason she doesn't share this story without prompting it because it doesn't seem particularly relevant when the focus in this world tends to be on how you use your powers rather than how you got them, so she doesn't mind contextualizing it for him.]
That was the end of a big war we were fighting back home. Spaceship's the Normandy SR-2, the warship I was on (Jacob did a tour on it before me). She's mostly okay! Took us about a week to fix her up after that crash, but we got back in the air a little while before I came back here last summer. The robot's the ship's AI who got herself a body so she could see places the ship can't go.
[The body which had almost killed her under its previous management.]
The green light was from this machine built from ancient blueprints left for us by another species during their own war long ago, and it changed everyone and everything in the galaxy to be part organic, part synthetic, completely integrated. How I got my control over technology and [intense body dysmorphia due to internalized robophobia?] constant light show.
[ The description of E.D.I. gives him particular pause — her design had looked more obviously synthetic than what he was used to, but artificial intelligences often remind him of his mother — but that consideration flies right out the window when he reads the rest. ]
Oh. Wow.
[ Two tiny words to encompass all of it. If they'd been on voice, he'd be fumbling a lot more, probably spluttering into an awkward silence. This way, though, Luther can try to get his thoughts together and pin them down properly. ]
Jeez, I had no idea that [ how to describe it? best to go with her own self-deprecating terminology: ] light show was relatively new. I thought maybe you were born with them, or had them put in long ago. Like those biotic implants, or something. Jacob didn't have it, so I assumed.
Sorry-- I mean, you know what they all say about assumptions.
Hey, it's fine, like you said, you had no idea. Definitely not born with it but still not something I would have chosen, if I'd had the choice. Jacob didn't have it because things went differently in his timeline than in mine.
[It's almost easier, in a way, to tell someone over text, to give Luther an explanation without her struggling to word it or her open book of a face showing her rather mixed emotions as she's coming to terms with the change. It's not something she would have chosen, no, but she's almost okay with it now. Yet she's also jealous of Jacob and his universe without this mass synthesis, of Sara Ryder for being spared the consequences of her Shepard's choice, of the Shepard who's just recently arrived. It's complicated and dumb.]
[ Alternate timelines are a particular weirdness he hasn't had to deal with until the City, and even that already made his head hurt trying to keep it all straight. He can only imagine how strange it is for people like Ashley and William, seeing their own worlds diverge. ]
That's rough. Why did an ancient machine decide to integrate everyone in the galaxy? How does that sort of thing happen?
[ This next bit, he mulls over. Stops and considers and half-types out his response, deletes it, then types it again, before finally sending. They've vaguely known each other for almost a year, but he'd never actually explained either. ]
Mine was more straight-forward. Ape serum injected by my father to save my life. Gave me enhanced durability, but with side-effects.
The machine didn't decide to do it, my old commander did. That war we were in - it was a completely synthetic species trying to wipe out all sentient organic life in the galaxy. My commander thought making organic and synthetic life more alike than different would help us understand each other better and end the war.
[She's oddly touched by the responding explanation that she hadn't asked for nor expected in return. She'd wondered - hard not to when his siblings, for all their differences, were normal human sizes, and he's always seemed more uncomfortable in his own skin than they did. Much like she used to feel, and, thankfully, feels much more rarely now. It means a lot that he trusts her enough to tell without her asking.]
That sounds rough too. It sucks when people make such a big choice for you instead of you getting to weigh up the pros and cons and choose for yourself.
[Which is something that's stung intermittently about the synthesis in her own world, albeit something she's thought about less than her own discomfort with simply being synthesized.]
But I am glad you lived.
[He's a good guy, if a little awkward, and it sounds like he gets her when it comes to huge bodily changes that are uncomfortable even if done for good reasons.]
[ The general urge is there, as ever, to lurch away from this whole subject like he's been scalded. Like he's touched a hot stoveplate. Slam those doors shut and not talk about it any further.
But Ashley gets it, in a way that few do — he's sought out non-human imPorts before, but the ones he meets and helps at SELF are a different category. It's their natural bodies and it's what they've always known. They're not uncomfortable with it the same way he is. ]
And-- yeah. I guess at least he made a decision for his son. One person. I can't imagine making it for a whole galaxy. I'm good at giving orders and calling the shots, but that's... a big one.
[ There's another pause before he finishes typing the rest of this thought. Luther can't bring himself to ask something so blunt as How do you feel about it, but the question comes out phrased a little differently instead: ]
[An ending her Shepard never got to see, sacrificing herself as she did to make it happen. They're starting to rebuild now, and while Ashley's glad for it - safety for the galaxy is, after all, what she's been fighting for - she's almost glad she's here instead. She was trained to fight: What does she know of putting things back together?]
I don't know if I could have made that choice for everyone either. Never had a squad that big.
[She has her own pause when he asks. Other people have skirted around it before, but always in the context of trying to help her get used to it, trying to make her see it was okay to be this way. No one's ever asked just to ask, and certainly no one with their own huge change they'd never asked for.
[When she starts typing, it's slow at first, and then it all spills out - if she loses her momentum in saying it, she might not say it at all, but it feels important to say it to someone who gets it, who isn't trying to fix her.]
Definitely. Took the last couple of years and a trip back home. These robots caused the deaths of people I cared about even before the war really started, the last thing I wanted was to be like them. And I don't think it helped that I first arrived here really soon after it happened. All alone in the past and Jacob was from months before.
Last summer I ended up exPorting home for a week, and it gave me a chance to get used to it with the whole rest of the world instead of being the only one.
[She hits send before she can think better of it.]
[ It felt like there was a tight vise clenched around his chest, and it slowly, slowly loosens as he reads Ashley's message. It's one of only a couple times he's ever touched on this subject, and her sentiment grants him a comfort he's only felt once before. When Rikki told him, There's no rule that says you have to eventually like it. You're allowed to hate it.
Just permission to feel what you feel, without someone telling you earnestly to get better, to come to terms with it, and that you'll get over it. An empty baseless promise that everything will be fine. ]
Yeah. I can see how that'd be easier back home, if everybody else looks the same.
[ He's fiercely, painfully jealous for a second... but then it passes soon enough. Because Ashley's here. She's back in this world, not hers. So he does his own equivalent of typing quickly, clumsily, firing it off before he can let himself write and rewrite and rewrite: ]
Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm kind of glad to hear that it took you a couple years? It's been four and I'm still not used to it. Didn't really have to think about it for a while because I was on my own, not around other people.
[If only it had just been how they all look that she'd had to get used to.]
Everyone's connected back home, too. This kind of put us all on one big network. Here is a lot quieter by comparison.
[Which, to be honest, she does enjoy in its own way. It had been a shock going from that galactic... techno-mental network to sudden silence but for inanimate technology and the occasional imPort, but she does value the greater privacy this world gives her.]
And don't worry, didn't take it the wrong way at all. Hell, I'm almost glad it's taking someone else longer than me with their own big change, but I'm not really glad because it sucks.
[Now that is something she hopes he doesn't take the wrong way. It's hard to say "I always felt pathetic for taking so long but hey someone else is taking longer than me" without being insulting, harder to say "it sucks that you're still going through this awful feeling" without feeling inadequate. So she just leaves that there.
Huh. Like the mental network here, but... like, giant and permanently on? That must be overwhelming.
[ That's a bizarre thing to imagine. He's pretty much perpetually camping out in a corner of Allison's inbox via the mental network, but can't imagine having to field the whole world doing it, interconnected. Luther doesn't take Ashley's sentiment the wrong way either; his next response comes with humour dry as a desert: ]
No, I get it. Misery loves company. And as for me, I was...
[ Luther's never really broached this subject with anyone, either. Ever-reluctant to do so; it's another angle, another corner to his past that doesn't actually have much to do with how he looks. This one's an invisible wound beneath the skin instead, with more barbs the more he looks at it. It's turtles all the way down. ]
I was stationed on a lunar base on a monitoring mission, alone. Kind of like Aegis' Panoply Station, actually.
But it lasted too long. Four years.
[ In case she'd ever wondered why he's so hopelessly awkward socially, well, there's an answer. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
obediences) wrote2019-03-28 10:51 am
no subject
So I'm guessing I can add you to the count? Nothing embarrassing, I hope.
[Please not a xenophobic, sex, drunk, or hungover memory!!!]
no subject
[ It's a short, feeble way of describing the all-consuming event that rewrote Ashley's entire goddamn galaxy forever. ]
no subject
[That crash had been only moments before her first arrival in this world, and her three weeks away from this world back in July had given her another week after that.
[Well, it's not like it's some huge secret; the only reason she doesn't share this story without prompting it because it doesn't seem particularly relevant when the focus in this world tends to be on how you use your powers rather than how you got them, so she doesn't mind contextualizing it for him.]
That was the end of a big war we were fighting back home. Spaceship's the Normandy SR-2, the warship I was on (Jacob did a tour on it before me). She's mostly okay! Took us about a week to fix her up after that crash, but we got back in the air a little while before I came back here last summer. The robot's the ship's AI who got herself a body so she could see places the ship can't go.
[The body which had almost killed her under its previous management.]
The green light was from this machine built from ancient blueprints left for us by another species during their own war long ago, and it changed everyone and everything in the galaxy to be part organic, part synthetic, completely integrated. How I got my control over technology and [intense body dysmorphia due to internalized robophobia?] constant light show.
no subject
Oh. Wow.
[ Two tiny words to encompass all of it. If they'd been on voice, he'd be fumbling a lot more, probably spluttering into an awkward silence. This way, though, Luther can try to get his thoughts together and pin them down properly. ]
Jeez, I had no idea that [ how to describe it? best to go with her own self-deprecating terminology: ] light show was relatively new. I thought maybe you were born with them, or had them put in long ago. Like those biotic implants, or something. Jacob didn't have it, so I assumed.
Sorry-- I mean, you know what they all say about assumptions.
no subject
[It's almost easier, in a way, to tell someone over text, to give Luther an explanation without her struggling to word it or her open book of a face showing her rather mixed emotions as she's coming to terms with the change. It's not something she would have chosen, no, but she's almost okay with it now. Yet she's also jealous of Jacob and his universe without this mass synthesis, of Sara Ryder for being spared the consequences of her Shepard's choice, of the Shepard who's just recently arrived. It's complicated and dumb.]
no subject
That's rough. Why did an ancient machine decide to integrate everyone in the galaxy? How does that sort of thing happen?
[ This next bit, he mulls over. Stops and considers and half-types out his response, deletes it, then types it again, before finally sending. They've vaguely known each other for almost a year, but he'd never actually explained either. ]
Mine was more straight-forward. Ape serum injected by my father to save my life. Gave me enhanced durability, but with side-effects.
no subject
[She's oddly touched by the responding explanation that she hadn't asked for nor expected in return. She'd wondered - hard not to when his siblings, for all their differences, were normal human sizes, and he's always seemed more uncomfortable in his own skin than they did. Much like she used to feel, and, thankfully, feels much more rarely now. It means a lot that he trusts her enough to tell without her asking.]
That sounds rough too. It sucks when people make such a big choice for you instead of you getting to weigh up the pros and cons and choose for yourself.
[Which is something that's stung intermittently about the synthesis in her own world, albeit something she's thought about less than her own discomfort with simply being synthesized.]
But I am glad you lived.
[He's a good guy, if a little awkward, and it sounds like he gets her when it comes to huge bodily changes that are uncomfortable even if done for good reasons.]
no subject
[ The general urge is there, as ever, to lurch away from this whole subject like he's been scalded. Like he's touched a hot stoveplate. Slam those doors shut and not talk about it any further.
But Ashley gets it, in a way that few do — he's sought out non-human imPorts before, but the ones he meets and helps at SELF are a different category. It's their natural bodies and it's what they've always known. They're not uncomfortable with it the same way he is. ]
And-- yeah. I guess at least he made a decision for his son. One person. I can't imagine making it for a whole galaxy. I'm good at giving orders and calling the shots, but that's... a big one.
[ There's another pause before he finishes typing the rest of this thought. Luther can't bring himself to ask something so blunt as How do you feel about it, but the question comes out phrased a little differently instead: ]
Was it... Was it hard? To get used to yours.
no subject
[An ending her Shepard never got to see, sacrificing herself as she did to make it happen. They're starting to rebuild now, and while Ashley's glad for it - safety for the galaxy is, after all, what she's been fighting for - she's almost glad she's here instead. She was trained to fight: What does she know of putting things back together?]
I don't know if I could have made that choice for everyone either. Never had a squad that big.
[She has her own pause when he asks. Other people have skirted around it before, but always in the context of trying to help her get used to it, trying to make her see it was okay to be this way. No one's ever asked just to ask, and certainly no one with their own huge change they'd never asked for.
[When she starts typing, it's slow at first, and then it all spills out - if she loses her momentum in saying it, she might not say it at all, but it feels important to say it to someone who gets it, who isn't trying to fix her.]
Definitely. Took the last couple of years and a trip back home. These robots caused the deaths of people I cared about even before the war really started, the last thing I wanted was to be like them. And I don't think it helped that I first arrived here really soon after it happened. All alone in the past and Jacob was from months before.
Last summer I ended up exPorting home for a week, and it gave me a chance to get used to it with the whole rest of the world instead of being the only one.
[She hits send before she can think better of it.]
welp i love this conversation so much
Just permission to feel what you feel, without someone telling you earnestly to get better, to come to terms with it, and that you'll get over it. An empty baseless promise that everything will be fine. ]
Yeah. I can see how that'd be easier back home, if everybody else looks the same.
[ He's fiercely, painfully jealous for a second... but then it passes soon enough. Because Ashley's here. She's back in this world, not hers. So he does his own equivalent of typing quickly, clumsily, firing it off before he can let himself write and rewrite and rewrite: ]
Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm kind of glad to hear that it took you a couple years? It's been four and I'm still not used to it. Didn't really have to think about it for a while because I was on my own, not around other people.
me too (though my speed might imply otherwise)!!!
Everyone's connected back home, too. This kind of put us all on one big network. Here is a lot quieter by comparison.
[Which, to be honest, she does enjoy in its own way. It had been a shock going from that galactic... techno-mental network to sudden silence but for inanimate technology and the occasional imPort, but she does value the greater privacy this world gives her.]
And don't worry, didn't take it the wrong way at all. Hell, I'm almost glad it's taking someone else longer than me with their own big change, but I'm not really glad because it sucks.
[Now that is something she hopes he doesn't take the wrong way. It's hard to say "I always felt pathetic for taking so long but hey someone else is taking longer than me" without being insulting, harder to say "it sucks that you're still going through this awful feeling" without feeling inadequate. So she just leaves that there.
[She hesitates before asking.]
How come you started out alone?
no subject
[ That's a bizarre thing to imagine. He's pretty much perpetually camping out in a corner of Allison's inbox via the mental network, but can't imagine having to field the whole world doing it, interconnected. Luther doesn't take Ashley's sentiment the wrong way either; his next response comes with humour dry as a desert: ]
No, I get it. Misery loves company. And as for me, I was...
[ Luther's never really broached this subject with anyone, either. Ever-reluctant to do so; it's another angle, another corner to his past that doesn't actually have much to do with how he looks. This one's an invisible wound beneath the skin instead, with more barbs the more he looks at it. It's turtles all the way down. ]
I was stationed on a lunar base on a monitoring mission, alone. Kind of like Aegis' Panoply Station, actually.
But it lasted too long. Four years.
[ In case she'd ever wondered why he's so hopelessly awkward socially, well, there's an answer. ]