eighteenth 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

kurt's pod aka the pod of sad feels as long as it's empty

[cons]

[ Wichita's already been there for a while. not right there, she's trying not to be so obvious. but she's a few pods away, back against the wall and her arms crossed over her chest. she's not as good about brushing off the loss of a friend as she used to be. mostly because Kurt wasn't just her friend, he was like a little brother, in a lot of ways. he saw the darker parts of her life when that fog hit the ship, talked her through a lot of really shitty times here. that's pretty much as close as anybody's gotten to her here, and now she's gone.

they really are all gone now, aren't they? Percy, Simon, now Kurt.

it makes her chest hurt and her head throb with the effort not to lash out.

but then she sees him, someone else coming here to check up on Kurt. she knows of him, of course she does. she's talked to Kurt about him before, but not too recently, so really he's mostly just a name and a face on the network. Kurt's boyfriend. she keeps her eyes downcast while he checks out the pod, trying not to intrude on his time dealing with it, but then- but then he's dropping to the floor, and this is the last thing she should be doing, she is not fit to comfort anyone, ever, but she feels herself push away from the wall and head towards him, leaving a bit of space between them once she's crouching down to his level, her hands out but not reaching for him, not yet ]

Hey. Hey, it's alright.

[ what did she feel when Brendan was gone. when Simon and Percy were gone. what did she feel, how did she handle it ( not well, she ran as fast as she could ), but what should she have done? ]

You have to breathe, okay? [ she stops to think for a second, feeling a little out of control of herself, like she's watching someone else dictate her actions ] Bells- Bells, right? Listen to me, yeah? Don't let the ship do this to you.

and pod of sad feels it shall forever be known as

[lacksgrace]

[ He doesn't hear anything at first. It's difficult to focus on something like that when he's trying to remember if he needs to tell his heart to keep beating, wonders what would happen if it just stopped suddenly. It's not like he really needs it anyway, not to function or anything else. Not anymore. Not when doing that means doing it without someone he'd learned to care so much for.

And those words are nothing to the loud crack working up from the inside of him, spreading across his chest and straight into his throat where he chokes on it. Breathe, she says. It's a she, right? Someone... Bells can't even muster the strength to lift his head, move his arms. His entire body feels weighed down, impossibly heavy like he's drowning. Swimming in his own misery and barely afloat. ]

What do you know? [ He's curling up tight, remembering it's better not to lash out and hurt. It had happened last time, losing control, and he'd barely come back from that. But how-- how is he going to come back from this? ] I can't— This isn't happening, okay? It wasn't supposed to be him.

[cons]

You think you're the first person to lose someone here?

[ she doesn't mean to sound so defensive, but what do you know strikes a chord with her. she's dealt with loss here, and back home, sometimes she thinks she might know the feeling better than anything else. but it's weird to think of it that way, and she'd never admit it. instead she's just focusing on his reaction to Kurt being gone more than her own. deflect, deflect, deflect. ]

At least you know he's back home. He's not stuck here on this hell ship. He left during the jump which means he's home, safe. Not dead, not gone forever, home. Which means- [ it's actually really hard to sound convincing when she's feeling her chest tighten up too, but she's trying ] You need to keep your shit together, because he might be coming back. [ she only half believes it, even if she's seen it happen before. maybe he will come back. ] And you'll need to still be you when he does.

[lacksgrace]

[ He flat out ignores the first question. Of course he isn't. People come and go all the time. They leave and never come back, so it's only fitting that someone as beautiful and caring and gentle as Kurt should go there too. Back where he belongs, not kept in this place that fucks with everyone and makes them do things they don't normally do or know how to cope with. Bells' last memory of Kurt is trying to convince him that he's fine, he's okay, and that memory isn't the one he wants to remember him by.

Remember him because he knows there's no way he's going to be here again. No way at all. ]

You don't know that, okay? How can you even know that? [ Bells doesn't want to talk about this. He doesn't even know what he's saying now. ] Hardly anyone shows up once they've left, and who says he's gonna be the same? He's not gonna be my Kurt. He's not--

[ He pulls his arms even tighter over his head and doesn't move. He doesn't want to think or breathe or live. Hundreds of years, and only now does existing seem to hurt. ]

[cons]

Been here long enough to see it happen a few times.

[ her eyes are burning up, enough that she has to squeeze them shut just to avoid choking on the feeling, all the tell-tale signs of I'm going to cry. which, for her, is the worst thing she could do right now. ..or ever, but now especially. crying when she doesn't want to cry ( for a con, whatever ) is not acceptable, not an option. she doesn't think of herself as everybody's big sister, she's not that caring, but she does have the mentality that she needs to buck up when someone else can't, and now is one of those times.

so she just keeps her eyes shut, and tries to focus on the steadiness of her voice, making it believable. ]

Kurt would be pretty upset with me if I sat here and watched you freak out over this and didn't try and do something to help. So yeah, assuming there's a chance he'll come back, I can't just let you- [ break. ] -do this to yourself. Think about it. Maybe he won't come back the same, but what if he does? What would he want you to do?

[lacksgrace]

[ Reasonable words, yeah. He gets what she means, but he's been around a while too. Plenty of time to see what becomes of those who make it aboard a second time, where it gets them and how people react. Bells is sure that if Kurt came back different, he'd lose it worse than when he'd found Lor had gone home without him. All those memories--it really is just a fleeting moment for something like him.

His fingers dig into the hair at the back of his neck, arms still wrapped around him. He doesn't want to look at her, doesn't trust himself enough to do that yet. ]

I don't know. [ Because he honestly doesn't. ] I don't know what I'm supposed to do, okay? There's no one-- I just wanna stay here for a while.

[ Until the next jump. And the next. And the next. ]