In you, in me, the gray detritus
withers on the fingers.
It lies, every effervescence lies;
what is on your lips is not
what started in your spine.
"Seriously?" Abarai's voice broke the silence of the team meeting room. "We're supposed to do something with that?"
"He's just toying with us." Axel leaned his head back against the locked door behind him. He was still not smiling. Kalypso was realizing he must not wear that expression as constantly as she'd assumed. "Hoping we start psycho-analyzing each other, give him more ammo."
"Ammo for what?" Duibhne had taken a step closer to the screen, his eyes scanning over the faces and their mysterious classifications, but now he shot a wary look toward Axel. Wary? Maybe not. Disapproving, more like. "This is volleyball, not some kind of psych experiment."
"Hah." Okay, now the smile was back, in its twisted, darkened variant. "Keep telling yourself that."
"Even if it is just mind games," Cu Chulainn interjected, stretching on his stool, "I don't see the harm in chatting it up. Gotta admit, he's got me curious."
"Such a well-trained pup." That purr from the opposite side of the room was layered in poison.
Kalypso's chemistry tripped a wire in her brain she could not resist, and which, once her conscious mind caught up with her action, she actually approved of-as all the attention in the room swung toward Yang, she rolled her weight forward onto the heels, then the balls of her feet, and rose out of her tense little knot on the floor. The better to fight, or flee, or if nothing else, at least be on her feet for when whatever dread moment was coming came.
"Still," continued Yang, with a sort of disinterested lazy drawl that was completely opposite his apparently eternal state of murderous Flare, "wisdom lies in choosing one's battles. I'm sure the Lamb can attest to that."
"Don't speak for me." Kalypso spat the words out through nausea and migraine aura.
"Then speak for yourself, Kalypso Ixora," Yang said smoothly. "Tell me what is meant by 'Rubicon' as your ideal, and I'll tell you where you are weakest."
"Very generous." She didn't like that, not any of this, not every Dominion's eyes on her, nor this demand that she explain Xigbar's stupid epithet, nor this oh-so-kind offer to tell her which of her fifty glaring problems Xigbar had decided was the most egregious. "Maybe someone else will take you up on it."
Yang's golden-coin eyes sank into her like knives. It took everything in her not to take a step backward and press herself against the wall. Never show a predator you're afraid. You might not be able to do a damn thing to protect yourself, but you certainly weren't obligated to make it any more fun for them.
"Good answer." Redford straightened from his lean on the table. "Back off, Yang. If we're doing this, it won't be by dissecting Ixora."
It was a very stupid hypocrisy. A conflict of two wretched impulses: a Lamb's sickly, worshipful gratitude and Kalypso's absolute disgust at that selfsame feeling. Because Redford had stepped up like the Dominion he was and defended her, she did not want to be defended, even with Yang's hungry intentions spreading like toxins through her blood and lighting up his eyes.
"Listen," she said, regretting this already.
The amber trap of Redford was, in her mind's eye, seeping out along the floor with his Flare, but she tried for once not to lean on the crutch of her coping mechanism. Instead, swallowing against her seizing throat, she met his gaze and tried to see him.
"Nobody's looking forward to this, so dissect me if you want. I don't care. Twenty minutes. Just can you try not to-look at me, or be so… I, I have," Kalypso was fumbling, grasping now at humiliating straws and hoping they were at least coherent, "quite the chemical headache, and may throw up, possibly. If you'd rather I didn't, then-"
"The hell?" said Jaegerjaquez, from her left.
"You wanna sit back down, then," said Cu Chulainn. He'd pivoted completely on his stool to look at her-clearly either completely disinterested in or unable to follow her request, which was a disappointment, honestly, she'd been so very polite about it-and then actually started to stand up, at her, horror of horrors. "Head between knees, eh?"
"No, thank you." Because moving would maybe mean her knees would remember how to work, and because who knows, there might be some sharp edge of that table she could use to distract herself, Kalypso stalked forward, past Cu Chulainn, and planted her hands firmly on the edges of the hologram table. She leaned on them, closed her eyes for a moment, braced herself. "Okay. I dunno about Rubi-"
"No idea what 'narrative' is supposed to mean," said Axel loudly from his place by the door. "I just told them in that interview that I thought I'd do good if the folks either side of the net went into it like it was personal."
All attention slid to Axel, startled by his interjection. Kalypso experienced an instantaneous easing in her thudding veins, in her throbbing head. The gyroscopic aura crowding into her vision slowed their sickening shimmer. Relief slackened the tension tearing at her shoulders.
Duibhne said, "Personal? You'd play better if everyone, what, held grudges, is that it?" There was a sort of rush behind the question that didn't harbor any hostility. Kalypso licked dry lips, realizing he was jumping after Axel's change of focus with both feet. She tried not to feel too grateful. It was hard.
"Nah, like-if this guy wanted specifically to block that guy, if a couple were trying to make some play work and were getting there, that kinda thing."
"That's just volleyball," said Abarai.
"Sure, except it's personal."
"You like the story." God, Kalypso hated it when one of them snuck up behind her-but even as her heart rammed hard against her ribs and her stomach lurched threateningly, Cu Chulainn wasn't behind her anymore. He'd moved from his stool to stand opposite Axel, to lean against the massive wall monitor, in fact. It made him hard to see with that electronic light pouring past him and throwing his face into shadow. Not his eyes, though. Not bloody drill-bits, maybe-red-hot ones, with their own light source. "A hero story, a tragedy, a revenge story, what have you."
A…story?
Despite her misgivings and her headache, Kalypso glanced toward Axel now, with the rest of them. His arms were crossed, his face set and stripped of that smile. When she looked hard at him, through the veneer of the hearthfire disaster her mind had boxed him into, she saw the two little tattoos on his cheeks and the way his still-vicious Flare cracked along its edges, curling back in toward him.
He thought of playing, his best playing, like a story. Like…being part of a story? Was he the story, or was it the whole court, the whole thing, the ball and its accidents, the lines and their ruthless arbitration, every failure, every lucky turn?
He liked it personal. Kalypso could, bitterly, grudgingly, understand that. Hadn't it been different than anything else, playing with-
"You give us your schtick, then," said Axel, before that white-hot thought could coalesce in her. He was looking narrowly at Cu Chulainn, expectation written in the arch of his brow.
"Ehhh," said the libero, his shoulders lifting in a slow, lazy shrug. Kalypso found her gaze pulled to him now, as if caught by chemical gravity. Those red eyes swept upward, away from her and all the rest of them, as though he were reflecting on a memory. "I figure I'm one of those answers that didn't really give 'em much. 'Stimulus'-c'mon. We're all organisms, the hell else we gonna care about?"
"Rank evasion," said Yang silkily.
"I don't hear you volunteering," Abarai growled at the distant redhead.
"I told 'em straight that I figure I play my game the same no matter the sitch." Cu Chulainn spoke across Abarai's glare, ignoring Yang's accusation. "Lessee-I think I said something about how sure, it'd be nice to find folks who matched energy, but ehh, as long as they gave me something to work with, I was gonna be fine."
"...And Xigbar took that and said 'Stimulus,' huh?" Redford sounded like he was feeling dubious on some aspect of Cu Chulainn's answer, whether it was the libero's truthfulness or Xigbar's faculty for assessment.
"He sure did. Beats me how, or why."
"Somebody explain what the fuck 'rubicon' means," interjected Jaegerjaquez, gravelly with poorly-leashed irritation.
Unhappy though she was to have focus return in any way to her, Kalypso was nonetheless a bit more stable now that some of the Flares had subsided and the Dominions had something for their attention to chew on that wasn't entirely her. "It's a river," she said, dropping her eyes back to the blank surface of the table. "I think he's just being a melodramatic prick."
There was a pause, and also a hefty spike in the timbre of her headache. No Flare boiled over her, but her blood seethed hot beneath her skin, and the flood of unfair and distasteful dopamine made her bite her cheek again. She focused on her breathing, trying to force it to stay slow and even.
"That sentence will comfort me in dark times," said Axel, after a moment. She didn't really want to look at him, but it sure sounded like a smile, of one kind or another, was back on his face. "Cheers, Kalypso."
"I'm guessing it's from the expression, about crossing the Rubicon," said Duibhne, clearly speaking with care. "Meaning something like, 'going past the point of no return.' Ah-why?"
Kalypso spread her fingers wider on the tabletop, stretching them until it hurt. "Dunno. I told him my ideal playing condition was a 6-2 rotation."
"Eh?" She wasn't quite sure who made that noise, but it came from several directions.
"Ah." That one she could identify-that was Yang.
"Vicious," said Cu Chulainn, and she could hear his toothy grin.
"So, three attackers, all rotations." Redford was hard for her to block out, because of his sheer proximity. She felt the way he shifted to lean forward, toward her, a little, like they were both koi stirring up their shared, too-small pond and making each of their movements the other's problem.
"Five," she corrected. "Six potential I guess, but five always swinging. That's my ideal condition."
"Five? Always? The libero shouldn't be setting that of-"
"No libero."
A silence, and with it, the hair on her arms and the back of her neck rose, and her headache pulsed across her scalp, pressing nauseating fingers to the base of her skull. Someone-or several someones-were taking issue. Great.
"Huh," offered Cu Chulainn, into the gathering threat of Dominion thunder.
"Good luck with that," Axel said.
Kalypso raised a hand damp with cold sweat to toss him a blind, sarcastic salute, still leaning on the table.
"Won't be happening here." Duibhne sounded apologetic about it, which made her rather wish to throttle him.
A faint pattering ran through the table, up through her hands; Redford was drumming his fingers. "Hmm. If we did run a libero for the middles, we'd have some options. That's still three in front-"
"Pulling fangs already, Redford?" Absurd, how Yang could sharpen a purr to cut through any moment like butter. "She's only been here a day."
That low-burning Flare, that soft carpet of heat, that chemical threat that Redford had been keeping banked and ready, bloomed upward. It took Kalypso's oxygen and her vision as well. Amber swept up her, choking and hot as tar. "And yet you still need a muzzle on you, don't you?"
A tiniest of clicks, and the sound of a motor-oh, maybe there was a merciful god-and the door to the team meeting room opened. Either Xigbar was taking distant pity on her, or twenty minutes were up.
Kalypso was lurching through that door with the rush of Redford's Flare roaring at her back, and if anyone tried to stop her, she did not hear them, or feel them, or care.