seventeenth jump;

[mathematically]

CHARACTERS: any and all
LOCATION: Gravity Couches and beyond
WARNINGS: maybe some swearing, or even some violence, and more than likely some implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Another month, another jump, another round of new faces.
NOTES: Keeping up with the tradition and copy pasted like always from the last one 



You wake up in darkness.

There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're deposited on the floor of a stark, sterile medical bay.

You are not alone.
There are others who have come before you, others who are awakening beside you. Some may be familiar to you, perhaps even friends. Others have much less amiable plans. Some are merely alien and inexplicable, but there are always those who might mean you harm.

After you catch your breath and your vision returns, you notice a number on the inside of your forearm. Maybe it's a familiar number. Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just a number. But the number—completely unique to you—is a tattoo, and it does not come off.

If you enter the room adjacent to the medbay, you will find a small locker with your number on it, surrounded by rows upon rows of identical lockers. Inside, you will find a few of your personal items, a communications device, and a ship's uniform in your exact size. The comms device is fully powered and connects directly to the ship's network; it's your only means of communication beyond physical conversation. Upon turning the device on, a neutral, automated voice will say, "Please take the blue lift to the passenger quarters." Any other attempts at communicating with the rest of the network are met only with static.

This is your welcome party.

Comments

[firstofficer]

[ their lips meet and hold there. spock goes still against her, fingers slipping from her arm to rest delicately upon her waist- keeping her fixed in place as precisely as he keeps himself. the only two still points in the moving universe.

she apologizes, and spock acknowledges her sense of loss in it, but also dismisses it's importance. he has experienced her loss, and they have shared a handful of experiences, but they are not wholly necessary. what retains significance is their relation to one another. that despite time and space and memory, points in varying continuums where they might co-exist simultaneously- there is trust. the reach for a point of connection. that one thing, if nothing else, remains unchanged for them.

when they part at length, he doesn't move far. his palms move over her hips- finding a place for himself just beneath her ribcage, the pads of his thumbs tracing the curve at the base of her ribcage. his nose brushes her forehead, followed by his mouth, a steady murmur against her skin. ]

Where are your quarters located?

[linguistician]

[Her fingers slide from his hair, in a singular soothing motion, to curl her palm against his neck, thumb sweeping gently across the smooth line of his jaw. It's born of a desire to hold him close, when they part at length, to keep this quiet intimacy between them for a little while longer. To express the subtle pleasure at finding that there are some things that have not changed.

Uhura's eyes remain closed, let's the words murmured into her skin wash over her, and ignores them for a few moments longer. Breathes steady and even beneath his palms, and keeps the reality of her situation at bay, until she can be sure her voice doesn't waver, holds nothing but neutrality.

Telling Spock is different from telling Kirk. Telling her captain, she had felt, was a necessity. He had shown her his numbers first, used them as an explaining point, and might have noticed her discomfort in the matter- But he has never been able to understand her.

Doesn't hear her, the way that Spock hears her, with all the little things she doesn't say. Telling Spock is no less a necessity, and not only because he is still her commanding officer. It's only that she doesn't want to admit, doesn't want to discuss the depths to which all the ways this place has altered her already, bothers her.

Because she's an officer foremost, and she has never met anything she couldn't overcome. This, like her disorientation, will pass]

Floor seventeen, room one-eight-three.

[firstofficer]

[ there are nuances to all conversations. codes and signals, purposes and designs of the unit and of the individual, those that are shared, and those that are secret. ulterior motives. there is the promise that he will call upon her later, that she has granted him permission to seek her out when their shifts have terminated, when there is no work to be done, when there is need. it is spock's place to return his coordinates- but he has not slept in his quarters for some time now.

residence has always been something of a question, in his personal experience.
something he believes is intended to be synonymous with belonging, despite the void he possesses in terms of a frame of reference.

nyota's eyes are closed, and at this proximity, he is able to note the precise angle at which her lashes find her cheek- spread out as the dark feathers of a fan. the rise and fall of her chest is telegraphed through his hands, a pace he finds rhythmic, if incongruent with his own. ]

If you wish, I would not be averse to escorting you. Or providing a tour, after the disorientation subsides.