meadowlarklogs | This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?

Maybe it's the fact that he's seeing faces he doesn't recognize, but he's not sure the lurching in his stomach is really only about his brother's death-- a death he can't quite remember. Moreover... he does recognize the name "Abby." Legitimately recognizes it.

He frowns as he looks around him, and then despite his best efforts to not move, suddenly, he's in that room with them? A transition he knows happened, but he doesn't exactly remember.

He's angry, but also, he's confused. The confusion is growing every second as he stares at the man and the woman.

"What is this?"

It's his own, honest thoughts. And then it hits him. This isn't his dream. None of the features are familiar here-- and he isn't sure he remembers enough of the world outside the safehouse? But still, he's there, staring at a man and a woman, gun in his hand, pointed at both of them.

Mako's confusion threatens the fabric of the dream, and it ripples, churning, trying to come apart at the seams. His hands don't look like his own, they are freckled and scarred and calloused from holding a gun, from strumming a guitar-

And then with a snap of feeling, he's standing to one side of where he was before, watching a young woman standing where he was just a moment ago, rage and fear suffusing her face. Her hair is dripping, and she smells like seawater, like sweat and blood and gunpowder. Like desperation.

"Where's Abby?" she asks.

"You're that girl from Jackson," says the man, and she nearly cuts him off.

"Tell me where she went."

It fractures; the world flickers, memories rushing and fighting each other, like this scene wants to be something else. The same girl with the same gun, pointing it at a different woman, also with her hands up.

"We could have killed you," the woman says, her voice strained, a memory as plain as this one, overlaid with rasping breaths.

The feeling rushes through Mako's chest, rage and despair and grief, and guilt -- and self-hatred, so strong it threatens to crack her in half. The whisper tears out of her, crushing with the weight of it. The gun shakes in her hands.

"Maybe you should have."

Okay. Okay, this is not something he remembers, but he knows he should try to de-escalate? But that's never been his strong suit, despite his best efforts. He always gets too caught up in procedure, and yet, he can't just give up because it's not what he's good at. He can't give up just because of these feelings that he knows can't belong to him.

And so he shifts to stand in her way, the dream logic of both understanding how a gun works, with the fact that... he actually doesn't understand how a gun works, and how she doesn't need someone touching her or pulling her back.

He just needs to break her attention.

"You don't have to do this."

The dream pulls around them, and breaks at the edges. Static, like a badly tuned radio. The rushing, overwhelming scent of seawater. The push of waves, and blood. Fire and gunpowder.

The world twists, and the young woman stares at him, a completely shattered look in her eyes. They are haunted, desperate, nearly unseeing, and she still has the gun trained on him.

The scent of blood is thick around them. Seawater, and something like fungal rot. Organic.

The floor is sticky, and she lowers the gun. Her hands are shaking. Between one blink and the next, there is blood splattered in arcs across her face, across her hands. The light is red, pulsing, an emergency backup.

It flickers again -- a basement with red light and fungal spores. An aquarium filled with seawater and rot. A beach, foggy and freezing. And that same terror, that same despair, that same feeling of desperate rage.

It's a compulsion. She's far past the point of stopping.

"I already did."

Her response hits him, and what that means, and he gets it. The years he'd lived in dreams of imagining what he'd do to the people who hurt his parents. The people who had left him and his brother on the streets-- and he doesn't move.

"Then you don't need to live it again."

And for the first time, the scenery seems to shift at his behest, pulling them to a city, but unlike what she would've known, this one is bustling. And the architecture is different, with arched roofs, and heavy shingles. With paper screen windows.

And the style of dress is different too, probably unlike what she would've seen. But more importantly than all of that, the city isn't in ruins, and it definitely doesn't have the blinking flashing lights of terror. Not this particular memory of it. Rather, there are vines growing between buildings, and floating spirits weaving among cars-- all more like horse drawn carriages than what she might know.

It's not exactly calming-- but it's calming to him.

It's different, a push of consciousness against her own, a measure of control that she didn't realize was possible.

Ellie hasn't imposed her dreams or her nightmares or even many of her memories on others -- just feelings. That's what she can control the best. This is them spilling over. When she realizes what the stranger is trying to do, she latches onto it like it's a lifeline, something to keep her from drowning, and holds on tight.

She pulls herself into it, pressing away the thoughts, smothering them as best they can. They lurk in the edges, waiting. Her skin is salty, bloody, sunburnt. She looks worse in the light, out of place in this street -- but she draws in the feeling of calm. Of things being right.

It's not something she can totally adopt, but it fades out the edges of her own memories, gives her something to concentrate on instead.

"Where are we?"

He didn't totally realize he could do that, but focusing on "calm" had brought him back here, and he doesn't hate it. Here, he still has his firebending. Here, he still has a purpose.

Versus being lost, and being pulled into how lost her memories feel.

"It's Republic City," He says, calm, self assured. This is home, and whatever his feelings were on it varied day by day. He could center himself there. And she might feel the pull of him trying to do such-- he's not used to sharing his dreams.

"It's where I grew up."

So, of course in the background, she would see a Water Tribe Yoga group in the park, waterbending as they move through forms.

Normal stuff.

Calm, self assurance. Comfort and familiarity. A sense of home.

It's... strange, feeling that. Alien in some ways. Ellie's had places she's stayed, some of them much longer, much happier than others. But when it comes down to it she's always viewed them as temporary. This fits in a way that leaves a lump in her throat.

Ellie turns, and as she does, the blood washes away, leaving her skin healthier, still freckled and scarred, but cleaner. She puts up her gun, staring at the waterbending. At the spirits, drifting through. The vines are familiar, but it doesn't seem to be destroying what's under them.

So many things, coexisting.

"It's beautiful."

"Are you alright?" His question focuses on making sure she's fully pulled out of whatever nightmare they were both just in, rather than focusing on Republic City. This was the city at its ideal state, with figures flowing in and out like water.

It's all fluid in his mind, though contained to a set time period, rather than the scarred city he just left. But Mako had always been good at hyperfocus-- it's what made him such an effective firebender and lightning bender. What made him so good at pro-bending.

And what ultimately made it possible to break out of what she was feeling. Just that deep confidence and sense of self, only disrupted by one person, conveniently absent from the scenes of Republic City.

"That was intense, to put it lightly."

She might be able to see the street urchins running scams out of the corner of her eyes. If she focuses, she might see a figure who looks vaguely familiar, but younger, ducking into an alleyway as another, smaller figure suddenly calls for help at a rich looking woman in the distance.

Ellie parts her lips, but the words die off, because it would be a blatant lie. Anyone with eyes can see that she's not doing well. But the stubborn set of her jaw makes it clear that she doesn't want it to be that way.

She wets her lips instead, breathing in that feeling of self, of confidence. Of focus.

It lays like a wash over her, comforting if it can't touch the deep undercurrent of what she's working through. The channels that contain more than she wants to look directly at, things that won't be solved without a good deal of work.

This is soothing, though.

"Sorry you had to see that."

Ellie fixes her eyes on the children, watching them. They are important, but she doesn't know how yet. Everything else in this place is general, built by feeling, but this seems more specific.

And the child who disappeared into the alley, leaps out just to be an antagonist, his hands alight with fire. The old lady, pulled in by the other child at first, doesn't know what to make of it. She can't fight this new vagabond off.

And so the other child, determined to help, does it instead, flinging earth and rock, easily beating the other child who disappears again, "overwhelmed" by this kid's awesome power suddenly. The lady, relieved at not being robbed, tips him some money. And he looks so disappointed with the amount. "Only two yuan?!" she hears in the distance.

But closer to her...

"It's fine," Mako replies, following her eyes as she watches. The two children regroup, and then run off, off to buy lunch. Probably. But it's another piece of the fabric for the city. And as she looks at them, she could probably feel the familial bond between them, more the frustrated feelings of the older child ebbing into this sense of focus and calm.

It's not fine, and they both know it, but she accepts it -- in the end they have to move on. Have to process and keep going. It's how things are; they don't get to stop for a break to let things heal over.

But this is nice.

Ellie grows slowly more clear as they watch, clothes less frayed, bloodstains disappearing. Less starved and haunted and wounded. The scars heal over, and it settles into something else. Flannel and a rifle. The smallest two fingers on her left hand missing.

She still doesn't look well, but it's at least more stable.

"... your brother?" she asks, her voice quiet. It's a guess, but she felt what he felt. What she was projecting had twisted itself, burrowed into his closest bonds to make sure it all made some modicum of sense.

"Yeah," he answers simply, though he's focusing on her and observing the changes. "We grew up on these streets. Ran small cons like that to survive." Though he wants to know who she lost, what happened, and maybe try to understand her.

Because he knows that sometimes you can do bad, horrible things when you're desperate. And sometimes what you can do when you're not-- but what he'd felt, what he'd experienced, that felt like desperation. A kind he could sympathize with.

"After our parents died, we didn't have much else we could do."

Trying to communicate that he understood.

"Better than what some people did."

Ellie doesn't sound particularly judgmental about it. Hell, she can't be. She's known and loved people who have done far worse things for the sake of survival, let alone for revenge. She owes her life to smugglers and cutthroats, to torturers and worse.

Shadows creep in at the edges of the dream -- the vines are old, breaking down foundations, reclaiming. He might get a whiff of fungal rot. This isn't industry and nature living in harmony. Instead it's squalor, home to scavengers, everyone looking over their shoulders.

It's indistinct. More a feeling than a place.

This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?

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