ataraxionlogs | hello time bomb [closed]

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hello time bomb [closed]

CHARACTERS: Rey and John "Kable" Tillman.
LOCATION: Hanging around the passenger's common area in the wee hours of the night.
WARNINGS: THROUGH THE FIRE AND FLAMES I don't know.
SUMMARY: With her quarters mysteriously out of commission, Rey hobos it up for now.

It had been something of an honest mistake, though it may not have looked like it much.

Of course, trying to make a credible excuse for why your sleeping quarters was set on fire sometime in the middle of the night seemed shady as it was.

So it wasn't so much as the entire room had gone up in flames, but the burnt, human-shaped hole in her bed now threw a wrench in her sleeping schedule. Then again, it wasn't like that was a huge loss here. Rey decided she'd walk it off before figuring out a new arrangement, if there needed to be one at all.

At first, she figured she would just think it through, but the more she did so, the more tired she became. Her skin still burned, her insides still ached. She was vaguely reminded of her conversation with Natalie -- knowing that this pain hadn't gone away ever since.

The longer she opened her eyes, the more difficult it became to distinguish the contour shapes of the surrounding area. Before long, she had stopped walking.

Which ended up with her standing there in the middle of the room, eyes closed and only slightly swaying from side to side.

And yes, there was slight snoring as well.

...sleeping while standing up. How classy.

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Tillman had spent a lot of time in Simon's room following the little incident that had gotten him temporarily detained. He wasn't so much worried about getting jumped as he was about what might happen if he defended himself after getting jumped. They might not let him go a second time...

While fear of imprisonment was a fairly good motivator, barricading himself in a room had turned out to be a self-inflicted prison sentence in and of itself. There were only so many times that he could clean his guns, only so many push-ups he could do, only so many times he could ask Simon to shut up, before the walls started to close in. Unlike back home, he had the option of leaving when that happened.

Thankfully, the halls seemed largely deserted at this hour. The first person he came across had their back to him and didn't seem to be doing a whole lot of anything. It set a warning bell off in his head. He kept toward the door and observed, wondering if he should just leave the stranger be.

And then he heard the snore. He entered the room cautiously to investigate, keeping his footsteps quiet and giving her a wide berth until he could see her face.

The snoring abruptly stopped, though she wasn't quite awake yet. Actually, upon closer, outside inspection, she wasn't even breathing at all. Rather, she just stood there, a non-breathing, tethering person moving from side to side, with her chin rested over her sternum.

The quiet shuffling of footsteps, slight as they were, just barely called for a twitch of the lip; her eyebrows furrowing. She wasn't quite at that point where she had reached REM sleep, not yet, but was apparently getting there prior to the company.

Tillman's eyes narrowed, his progress slowing. It was just so bizarre. Was this one of the robots-turned-human that Simon had been raving about? It certainly seemed behavior fitting of one.

He observed for a few more seconds before deciding that creeping up on sleeping folk was a pretty good way to get put on a few more watch lists. He didn't need that. Best to retreat before she woke up.

His communicator beeped, piercingly loud in the silent room. Tillman fumbled to shut it off. Simon.

Inhale.

A breath that felt like swallowing a mouthful of hot ash, spilling down her throat. It was a crude awakening, but so was the initial alarm of not remembering where you were, and that there was suddenly a person that wasn't there before.

Hostile reflexes had a tendency to lead into less-than-favorable outcomes. Which may have led into an instinctive assault, making for neck to squeeze her fingers around in order to choke out some kind of response.

How did that saying go -- let sleeping dragons lie?

Tillman's communicator clattered to the floor as he brought his hands up, half-defense, half-displaying that he was unarmed. Fighting was the exact thing he was trying to avoid. Maiming someone over a stupid mistake would definitely not earn him any points with the other residents. He darted backward until he collided with a wall.

"Easy there!" Was all he said. No explanation. No absolution of guilt. Tillman wasn't one for words.

Slipped from her fingers.

The disorientation washed away into a lucid realization as to where she was, and that her very brief respite had come to an unwelcoming end. By now she would have reached for a gun, or a rifle, but remembered she had neither of those for the time being, which was probably a good thing.

Note to self: Sleeping in hallways while standing up -- bad idea.

"What the hell are you doing?" Like Rey was one to criticize.

"I was walking," he responded, slowly dropping his hands as she stopped looking like she might gouge his eyes out.

"What the hell were you doing?"

She stared.

"Walking." The word came out, almost more of an echo than anything else. "I was -- walking."

At least, that was the last thing she had remembered before she zoned out. Clearly she wasn't one particularly taken with surprise awakenings, either.

Tillman snorted in amusement. "Fair enough."

Silence settled between them for a few seconds, but he couldn't leave it alone. He continued in an amused rumble. "You always snore when you walk?"

Blink.

"...I don't snore." Or she could keep telling herself that.

Actually, she had no way of knowing for sure if she did or didn't, but she wasn't about to admit that.

There was no way he was going to get into it about snoring with her. He knew what he'd heard.

"Do you always lunge at passersby?" He raised an eyebrow slightly. It was idle curiosity more than anything. It wasn't like he could judge, given his track record.

Good idea, Tillman.

Then there was staring again. In spite of her own confusion, she was aware of what she'd done -- or had almost done, rather. She could have always just played dumb.

"No." Pause. "Sorry."

Except that it was a pretty hollow for an apology.

"There's kids here, you know. And others who might not evade you quite as effectively," he pointed out casually, just to see her reaction and get a feel for what he was dealing with. Not that it was his business, but gathering intelligence seemed like a better way to spend his time than aimlessly wandering the halls.

"...I'm aware."

It wasn't like she had intended to lash out in that manner, however disconcerting as it was. When she had been just walking one minute, and the next...

Well, she didn't really know.

That would be the disconcerting part.

Tillman quirked an eyebrow. He never really was good at dancing around a subject. The direct approach was more his specialty.

"If you're going to continue to sleep," he said the word a bit doubtfully, still wondering how she had managed to pull it off, "in the hallway, I'd recommend one with less foot traffic. Attack someone and there's going to be a lot of unfriendly types breathing down your neck."

His gaze flicked down to her wrist, the number there. "You.. are aware you have a room, right?" It's like he's going for his merit badge in 'assisting strange women on a spaceship.'

Rey brought her arm to her shoulder, tightly clenching it while simultaneously covering the tattoo. She couldn't say that most of her actions were driven primarily off of instinct, no matter how close to the realms of truth it was. Sure would've helped if she had known what she was doing half of the time.

So instead, the expression she gave him spoke volumes, and practically said noted, or some kind of affirmation to whoever's relief it was intended for.

"...I'm aware." Seriously, was anyone starting to hear an echo in the room by now? "Doesn't help that my room went out of commission a few hours ago, though."

Or, she assumed it to have been a few hours, if her internal clock was any indicator.

Tillman raised an eyebrow, but didn't otherwise react to her defensive posture. While he did not intend to push her buttons, he was somewhat out of touch with how to have a normal conversation. Of course, he was conversing with someone who could sleep standing up in a hallway, so perhaps abnormal was alright.

"Out of commission?" His brow furrowed briefly. Her phrasing implied that there was no assignable blame, which meant that it had somehow happened spontaneously-- perhaps her tattoo key wouldn't unlock the door. He thought of being unable to reach his guns and became uneasy. He did not voice any of this, however. "How did that happen?"

"Don't know. Wish I did. But it's all burned up now, so it doesn't matter." She spoke so matter-of-factly on this, as though it was more of an inconvenience than something that one should be legitimately concerned about. The most she thought about it was the fact that she was going to have to find someplace else to sleep, not Oh god, my room is on fire!

Priorities. Rey has them.

Tillman blinked. The lack of concern threw him. "Your room caught fire and you don't know why? Have you told the rest of the ship?" This was the kind of occasion that he assumed the network was designed for. Other people should probably be made aware of potential spontaneous combustion or pyromaniacs running wild or the ship itself attempting to exterminate them...

"No, I didn't really think about it." She was tired. And on top of everything else, the controlled nature of the fire itself and the fact that Rey had been the only one present in the room... was a little odd. Maybe even suspicious. In hindsight, she was starting to wish that she hadn't said anything about it in the first place.

Tillman's lips thinned into a grim line. The conversation had stirred up concerns that he was grateful to be aware of. Air in outer space was a bit of a hot commodity. A fire had the potential to do some serious damage.

Did the ship have safety measures in place for that kind of thing? What could have caused it?

"If you see any other fires you should probably sound an alarm," he suggested.

"Mmhm. Noted." Her tone came off vaguely automatic-sounding, like it was something that she imagined she would be saying in a situation such as this.

Just came to her, like a reflex or something.

Who knew why.

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hello time bomb [closed]

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