[His reaction is... subtle, but noticeable if she's paying attention. A quiet, uncomfortable noise from the front seat, and a longer pause than his initial response to her comment. Despite that, he kicks the plane forward and it takes off into the sky at a speed she might find alarming, as it's much, much faster than the shuttles of the fleet. Still, it's a smooth ride, and after a moment the ship bursts through a swirling wormhole, and as they pass through on the other side the whole world burns white and reforms into a disjointed mess of what can barely be called a memory--]
----------
He's walking through a city in chaos. People are shouting and running around him- away from him, towards him. He wants that. He wants both. He reaches for them.
need to kill
In the distance, a child shrieks.
keep walking
A body slams into his side. He grabs for it, all instinct, and when it falls to the ground he drops with it. It has a face and it's making noise at him that might be words, but he recognizes neither.
He reaches down and something crunches beneath his fingers; when he pulls back they're wet. The noises stop.
He doesn't stop. He can't stop.
need to kill
An explosion. The sound of falling. An impact against his head, red trickling down his cheek. He doesn't feel it. He's hit, over and over, and he feels nothing. He hits back instead until it stops.
Something screams in his face and a hand, like solid iron, tears out its throat to silence it. His hand. He did that.
another
there's blood on his face his hands his tongue and he feels nothing, nothing, but the laser-focused urge the drive to kill to kill to kill to
killkillkillkillkillkillkill--
ANOTHER
....
singing
------someone's singing
The world slows to a halt. Silence, deafening. No voices, no chatter, no thrum of life around him. He's still walking, one foot in front of the other, mindlessly observing what is around him without truly seeing it yet:
Bodies, haphazardly scattered in the street, bloodied and unmoving. Crackling fire, buildings half-crumbled and ripped apart. Broken vehicles, downed planes, used and abandoned weaponry everywhere.
He is alone.
The throbbing pain in his head continues without end, but he can hear, through it all, the distant sound of a woman's voice- haunting, soothing, calling out to him. It takes him a long, long moment, but eventually the sound of it untangles itself in his mind and reforms as a song.
And suddenly, just like that, reality snaps back, consciousness returns to him, and he understands everything. Where he is. How he got here. What he's done. He looks down at his hands, drenched in red. Still wet, still fresh. Not his.
I killed--
I killed----
everyone.
everyone killed. everyone died.
everyone died.
he screams. he screams in the middle of an empty city surrounded by the corpses of everyone he's ever known, and no one hears it.
----------
[When the memory fades, they're flying over a broken city, and Messer is silent and grim in his seat.]
alfheim
He's walking through a city in chaos. People are shouting and running around him- away from him, towards him. He wants that. He wants both. He reaches for them.
need to kill
In the distance, a child shrieks.
keep walking
A body slams into his side. He grabs for it, all instinct, and when it falls to the ground he drops with it. It has a face and it's making noise at him that might be words, but he recognizes neither.
He reaches down and something crunches beneath his fingers; when he pulls back they're wet. The noises stop.
He doesn't stop. He can't stop.
need to kill
An explosion. The sound of falling. An impact against his head, red trickling down his cheek. He doesn't feel it. He's hit, over and over, and he feels nothing. He hits back instead until it stops.
Something screams in his face and a hand, like solid iron, tears out its throat to silence it. His hand. He did that.
another
there's blood on his face his hands his tongue and he feels nothing, nothing, but the laser-focused urge the drive to kill to kill to kill to
killkillkillkillkillkillkill--
ANOTHER
....
singing
------someone's singing
The world slows to a halt. Silence, deafening. No voices, no chatter, no thrum of life around him. He's still walking, one foot in front of the other, mindlessly observing what is around him without truly seeing it yet:
Bodies, haphazardly scattered in the street, bloodied and unmoving. Crackling fire, buildings half-crumbled and ripped apart. Broken vehicles, downed planes, used and abandoned weaponry everywhere.
He is alone.
The throbbing pain in his head continues without end, but he can hear, through it all, the distant sound of a woman's voice- haunting, soothing, calling out to him. It takes him a long, long moment, but eventually the sound of it untangles itself in his mind and reforms as a song.
And suddenly, just like that, reality snaps back, consciousness returns to him, and he understands everything. Where he is. How he got here. What he's done. He looks down at his hands, drenched in red. Still wet, still fresh. Not his.
I killed--
I killed----
everyone.
everyone killed. everyone died.
everyone died.
he screams. he screams in the middle of an empty city surrounded by the corpses of everyone he's ever known, and no one hears it.
[When the memory fades, they're flying over a broken city, and Messer is silent and grim in his seat.]