forgodssake | ic inbox } ataraxion.

Princess Nu-- sorry?

( impatiently: ) Engineering, you haven't done anything foolish?

( if she sounds slightly frazzled, it's probably because she abruptly felt compelled to do this in a restless moment between attempts to sleep. )

Oh.

[ ...oh. He doesn't quite laugh down the line, but his next exhale suggests it. ]

No, no, I've stayed mostly in my room. I put up a few words on the matter a little while ago, but that's about it.

Oh, I am quite glad!

--though I am sure you would've acquit yourself well.

Oh are you? Thanks very much.

[ Yeah, he can see through that one, Nuala, but doesn't sound offended. ]

If I told you that I wasn't in the habit of running immediately headlong into danger, would you believe me?

You recall, I've met your friend Mr Lehnsherr.

( nuala is relatively certain that friendship in itself qualifies as a habitual acquaintance with poor impulse control and less of one with suitable safety measures. she doesn't sound terribly censuring, mind, merely knowing. )

Yes.

[ That knocks joviality off-balance, just a little. She sure did do that, and he sure does recall. But, you know.

Moving on. ]

No, Mr Lehnsherr got tangled up in this particular ploy, rather than me. A little by accident, so it goes, but there you are.

You must have been grievously concerned! I expect he considers it turnabout.

Is he well?

( the question is quite genuine, despite ... erik. )

For him, along with another companion of mine. Everyone that went into engineering appears to have suffered, some.

It is a wretched thing, this ship, for all I don't regret my presence here.

Really?

[ That reply is both immediate and incredulous. ]

It's an opportunity such as I've never had-- such as I'd never have had again.

That may yet have turned out to be a blessing, princess. Never having it. This place is--

You haven't seen it, pardon my frankness. I've hardly scratched the surface myself.

( a pause, and then a sigh: )

Don't think I doubt you, dear, for I don't, and though I don't presume to think I have seen all I will see, I don't think myself naive, either.

But I am a martyr and a murderess and if I am a queen, too, then my legacy may be naught but the end of my people. There are moments when my brother looks at me and I think for just that moment he has forgotten what I did, for all I am certain he has not. I don't forget his betrayal. He will not soon overlook my own.

But here--

Here I have an opportunity. I have the time that I didn't, then, and solutions that come not at the point of a blade I am loathe to raise.

[ There's a long silence. Despite being telepaths at one another, despite stakes rising high around the means of their acquaintance, Charles doesn't really know very much about Nuala, having only skimmed the surface.

Her perspective, necessarily, gives him pause. ]

Do you really think-- yes, of course you do.

[ Another hesitation. Words? Come on words. ]

It's a nice idea.

I had rather take his hand than take his sword. I have to hope that--

Already I see reason to go on hoping. You saw-- his Starks. Humans! Mortal men, and it was his hand that reached out to them. My brother.

( somehow, she sounds so terribly, terribly sad. )

I don't know them, you know. I'd spoken only to Robb, before that day. But my brother nursed a hatred in his heart that quickened his sword and spilled our father's blood, a hatred he would have unleashed in the form of an end of days such as your kind cannot imagine--

And he took my hand and offered ours both in friendship.

( it's like a talisman, his kindness to the starks. )

Good.

[ And he sounds glad, but it's also good that she's not a psychic by way of telephone. Somewhere, Charles massages fingertips on either side of the bridge of his nose. He has his irritating science reasons to believe that none of this--

Well.

None of this matters, very much. But...

Hope and faith, Erik had said. ]

To know him capable, anyway. I suppose I just sort of find all of this a little-- exacerbating. Fear is a poison, you know. Like hatred.

If all I take from this is to know that-- I will go back to my grave with peace I did not have.

But perhaps it's my ego, as much as anything else. Perhaps I had rather think of such things than think myself dragged forth from that end to play the puppet in an awful game.

--I don't think your acts on the bridge were wasted, you know. The young man who spoke of games and patterns, I think he approaches it wisely.

Mm.

[ This is warm agreement. Perspective. He can't fault her on that much and, indeed, does not. On the rest, he is reticent. Recent arguments still chafe. He redirects back to her. ]

And what about his approach do you like?

I'm not so arrogant as to think that which I don't understand can't be understood. He makes a clever point-- we have not seen all that we have been shown. And Severus - you know him, he says - Severus reminds me that even such failures speak to an indomitable spirit that is in itself a most valuable thing.

[ Another exhale, rustling the audio sensors that transmit these little nuances down this blind transmission. This one reads as slightly surprised. Pleased. ]

Well. That's good of you -- and Severus -- to say. [ A smile enters his tone; ] And I happen to agree.

It was Smiley that opened the doors, in the end. Lots of opinions floating around about that. And it.

I reserve my own, for now. What do you make of it?

That it's manipulative, and deliberately coercive, and has set up a relationship, or a system, of implicit trust. Situations where the alternative is death, and so it fears no resistance. The bridge was resistance, and look what it did. It became our saviour, just like that. Even Petrelli thinks so.

Some of those that have existed here longer, they do as it tells them to do. Witness what happened with engineering.

This Petrelli has been here for sometime, hasn't he? Does he share that trust that we have seen?

( he said 'even'. she is interested. )

I think so, in his way. He's thought about it, all of it, a great deal. But we're all susceptible to conditioning, after a time. Rationalisation sets in.

[ Even had been, perhaps, disappointment. ]

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