*#she still hasn't grown accustomed to how it feels, to be so confined, perfectly restrained, like a flower being dried in between the pages of a heavy book, held in place and forced into a more pleasing, useful shape, all the extraneous frivolities getting squeezed out. It is not something she is able to tune out, this constant, acute awareness of her being limited to the design her Lord @theblogof-rassilon has seen fit to bestow upon her, similar to breathing in and out whilst one's chest is encased inside concrete after it sets, or perhaps inside candlewax that has hardened.
It feelsā¦ Right, perfect, the greatest gift she's ever received, a blessing she's unworthy of. If she allows her mind to acknowledge the enormity of it, her eyes grow wet and the core of her trembles in awe, her fingers twitching with the desire to ghost furtively over the spots He's physically sutured her closed in disbelief, even though she can still feel it happening as if He hasn't stopped sewing through her skin. She doesn't, of course she doesn't, it's not her place to do something like that, it is no longer her body to handle without permission, but she hasn't managed to choke out the urge yet.
She will. She swears she will, she is not going to give herself the chance to disappoint her Lord so gravely. She'll find some way of becoming worthy of His efforts. Some way of being good for Him. Something, somehow, that will come close to expressing her gratefulness, her fealty, her devotion. Even if it ends up being something as inadequate and base as dedicating everything she is to Him.
Her thoughts orbit Him so steadily, so inexorably, and she's humming the quietest little repetitive scrap of melody as she's play-fidgeting with her fingers, she fails to notice anything else around her#*
Say, what is that music you're humming, my Lynchpin? It sounds... Familiar.
*Rassilon is attuned to her feelings, her ebs and flows, as he is to all life. He usually doesn't bother giving them this much attention; and he doesn't now. Well, barely; he of course notices, feels the inner turmoil. He gleans what are surely her most important feelings... Obedience. Devotion to Him. And, something he recognises as very distinctly Time Lord, something he thought was defeated when he returned from the grave, something like...
Stillness. Perfection is to stand, encased in the resin of time, atemporal, a-anything other than what he desired. He shifted slightly; he had never wanted his people to become stagnant as they did, having always been an inventor, a scientist, striving to improve the world. What was the point if the world was already perfect?
No, no, NO! He couldn't let those thoughts take root. Those are the words of another man, a man he killed for thinking this way. The point was perfection. He'd done it! He'd improved the world so well there was nothing left to do, and so it stayed still, encased in time's resin, and it was... Perfect. Then why didn't he feel it? He looked out of the window, thinking of his vast empire, his reach not across the cosmos, but under it, literally holding everything in place. Of course, how could he ever be at ease when there were parts of the universe out there who resisted his goals? Who refused his great gift and fought for ever-change? Rebels, insurrectionists... More people to crush.
He looked back at 'Lin, the solution to his great problem. She was perfect. Exactly as he'd remade her. Still and stagnant and... Straining. Under his pretty resin case she was straining, unable to stay like he made her, vibrating just below... A ticking time bomb. She could go off any moment.
No matter. He just had to make sure she was thrown at his enemies when she went off.*
*#His voice, giving shape and sound to His words, so clearly intended for her, cuts right through the waves of the borderline trance she was swaying through, sudden and unignorable like the flash of thunder during a moonless night, or the crack of a nail-studded whip on an unprotected flank. Her eyes immediately snap to His direction, even though she doesn't dare look straight at His face, abashed at her failure to anticipate His thoughts, her gaze falling somewhere around His elbows as almost everything she is goes into full stasis, all her essence focused on answering Him as comprehensively as she can.
She is so still for an indeterminate amount of time, she registers closer to a statue, a snapshot of preserved time, or a calcified corpse, than anything capable of movement, the only hint as to her living nature the way the capillaries in her eyes spark through with yellow in a rhythmic pattern close to the thumping of a heart, everything else of her outwardly as if frozen. Inside her mind, she's trying to shepherd words to answer His question, and finding them all lacking. After all, how can words even approach the way there's something at the edges of the empty, yawning silence inside her that's clanging out a melody like it's trying to draw her out? How can she express how the sound both soothes her and ruffles her, how it's both utterly foreign and unbearably nostalgic? Are there adequate words for feeling the melody reaching within her and plucking her core like a string, for the manner in which she strums and strains after, the sense of being cored out and needing to be filled up to bursting until she overflows? She suddenly feels like crying, or perhaps shattering into innumerable pieces, but she drowns the urge swiftly enough it only results in her eyelids twitching as if they attempted to flick#*
Iā¦ I do not rightly know, my Lord. I hear it, sometimes, in me.
*#her words are a whisper, wavering and unsure, the last part inaudible, mouthed and unvoiced, and her gaze leaves His elbow to flitter about the view outside the window; orange skies, the refractions of the suns on the domeās surface, perfection that might yet hide insurgents and infidels, somewhere underneath the surface. Unworthy vermin taking advantage of His generosity and glorious vision, offering nothing in return for such gifts. Is she any better, though?#*
