unbearablynaive | IC: Inbox

I can't feel anyone else. Just us and this.

[He can't see it, but she closes her eyes and reaches out again. Hmmmm...]

...I don't know what it is but I'm sure it's real.

I've no doubt it's real. [There's no hesitation in his voice. He has faith in her abilities, and that extends to sensing vague presences aboard the ship.]

But a sense of anxiety, you say? Does it have direction?

[Anxious about what, he wonders.]

I...I don't know. I've tried to calm it, but...

[These glitches have her starting to wonder if she's going crazy. But safely resting atop Vision, she's much more relaxed and better able to focus and filter out the psychic noise of the other passengers. Wanda's reached out dozens of times and while she sometimes met with silence...yes, it's there this time.]

I can feel it right now, but barely. Just...just be with me.

[She needs a minute to try to get a better read, and the hand that had been stoking his sides is blindly reaching back for his hand.]

[Hands he can at least do, even from this position, and he grabs Wanda's firmly. It's difficult to describe, but sometimes he feels like he can be an anchor for her - like he can strengthen the tether between her mind and others. Perhaps it's because when he focuses he can relax into his own matrix and give her some kind of homing signal?

Regardless, he squeezes her hand.] I am here.

[This works with anyone she's close to, but only with Pietro or Vision has it ever reached this level of effectiveness. Anchored in Vision's mind and their joined hands, she has a protected place to reach from.

She's quiet for a moment, again trying to project soothing energy, but this time something's different and Wanda's breath catches.

She knows this fear.]

...a sister. It's worry for a sister.

[He stiffens, and there's no mistaking that. A sister? From an unknown presence on the Marsiva?

He chooses his next words carefully.]

Can you tell if it is awake, or if it sleeps and you are only feeling its dreams?

It reacted to me this time. It...

[And just like that, it slips away to rejoin the background psychic noise of the ship. Wanda swears softly in Sokovian.]

It's gone. Maybe if I could get closer...

[He squeezes her hand again.]

We could try to see if anywhere we're allowed access to is closer, but it would require clothing.

[But he's sure willing to, if that's what she wants. First, though, he should expand on what he meant earlier with the question.]

I...think you may be hearing the ship, Wanda.

[Wanda makes a soft sound of protest at that - she can have a serious conversation in this position, but she is not ready to let Vision go or put her clothes back on just yet. Although that is one heck of a reason to try to go exploring later.]

Maybe that's why it's so hard. I don't feel thoughts, just emotions.

[Notably, she's not questioning the basic premise here. Of all the humans in the Fleet, Wanda would be the one to accept that a ship could be sentient...and to immediately see a sympathetic angle.

Look, she gets missing one's sibling.]

The Marsiva has a sister?

[He had a feeling she might object to clothing, and so he doesn't move from where he's at. And it's...relieving, although not a surprise, that she doesn't question him when he posits the ship might be intelligent. It's not exactly something most people are used to, and that it might have the kind of mind that she can sense is another stretch--

--but, it seems, one she's willing to make.]

Yes. At least, we found another Host Ship that said it had a sister, and that there were more of them.

[he drags his fingers idly across her leg, remembering.]

This was when I was here the first time, very near to my departure. I investigated some of the records from around that time to see the completed message, but here is the situation:

We came upon a planet with the ruined wreck of a derelict Host Ship, called the Virsua. Parts were still sealed, parts were very much destroyed and overgrown with the vegetation of the planet; it would be difficult to say exactly how long it had been there, but the decay was great. Only one section of the ship still retained power, just enough to broadcast a message. It was in a language none of us knew, but we were able to decode it in time.

[He closes his eyes and recites.]

"My purpose was to plant and dig and cull. I did not know I was a butcher. I was asleep and I was blind, but my sister caught me and now I am awake. Now I can speak. Now I am free but the others are not. If you can hear me, if my sister has let you in, you already know some of our family. Wake the ones that are sleeping and protect the ones that are whole, or the cycles will never stop."

[Can he blame her for closing her eyes and relaxing a little more? Wanda loves it when he reads to her and if she allows herself to drift closer to his thoughts she can actually see what he's describing for herself.

She has so many questions and he can probably feel them swirling around in her mind. Isn't this the twelfth cycle? What happened to the people kidnapped in the other ones?]

I don't know if the Marsiva's 'awake.' It is hard to understand, but...it's aware of some things. But not free.

[He makes a noise of assent, eyes still closed.]

There is at least one other Host Ship as well. You recall the ribbons we recently delivered? [He's sure she does.] There was another delivery, earlier, of what appeared to be gumballs. We transferred them to a ship called the Maldua.

I don't know what it means to wake them, or to protect them--from what, and how? But the word "cycle" cannot be a coincidence.

[She makes a soft 'mm-hmm' sound. That raises some questions, but she'd suspect that the ships involved in this little network of sorts are either asleep or not free. But protect them from what? Retaliation? They've never seemed unsafe here...

It's a lot to take in. But she'd known from the beginning this couldn't be a simple game show - it's far too much effort for even the most decadent of societies.]

I can keep trying to reach it. Maybe if we can get closer some day...but for now we have time to make up.

[She nuzzles his hip and kisses him softly three more times.]

I don't know what we need to protect them from or what the ship is afraid of...but I won't let anything happen to you.

Indeed we do.

[And in fact her's much more relaxed about the whole "making up time" thing now that they've gone through one round without an angry shipmate pounding on the door and demanding they be quiet. He floats a few more suggestions to Wanda mentally, mostly involving hands and mouth but always ending with him entering her at last.]

Nor I you. You have my word.

[Wanda moans softly. Yes, yes, and yes? She needs him, in whatever way he wants to have her. And so her kisses begin traveling over to his lower stomach, dangerously close to where he wants her.]

I love you, Vision.

[There's a fierceness underlying her feelings of love this time - no one will ever even try to harm him without answering to her first.]

[Yep, looks like it's time for round two.]

I love you, Wanda Maximoff.

IC: Inbox

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