ataraxionlogs | twenty-sixth jump;

Entry tags:

twenty-sixth jump;

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: Your average, run-of-the-mill jump—except some characters don't seem to be waking up from stasis like they should.

Don't worry.

THEY NEEDED THE REST.

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.

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[ it's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of reasons; first of all, because there's a surge of hope that comes before the crash. they made it. if they made it to neverland, and gold had a plan, it meant they could do it. they could get henry. and emma just has to get back and finish the job. she'll get off this damned ship.

but as belle's optimism bursts forth and she touches emma's arm, a tingling, creeping dread starts up the back of her neck and causes the shorter hairs to stand on end. bae is alive. she'd always known him as neal, never been privy to the part of him, and now that he was dead it felt all the more apparent how she'd never really known him at all.

except he wasn't dead.

a heavy pit forms in her stomach and a sour taste fills her mouth. for a moment, she's stunned into silence, unable to answer. it's not relief she feels at hearing that neal's alive. it's a fresh surge of all the pain he'd put her through, and an acute sense of dread. ]

Look, I get that you're all about … optimism, and best outcomes, and that's great, but Neal is … [ she shakes her head, visibly floundering for words and an inability to process even the possibility. no. it can't be true. she watched him get shot, fall through that portal, it can't be. and more than that, she realizes, she doesn't want it</> to be true. ] He got shot in the chest, I watched him fall through a portal, no one could have survived that.

[ Belle had been expecting something other than this - something like relief, or joy, even if it was tinged with disbelief and unacceptable, but nothing like this. Nothing like the straight faced denial that she's faced with. What is she supposed to do in return to this? She knew for a fact that Baelfire was alive, she felt it in her very bones and she knew because it had come from Rumple himself. The messages Ariel had passed on for them before she returned for her true love -- there was no doubting that.

Hand dropping, Belle shakes her head and offers a weak smile. ]

A friend of mine, Mulan, she found him - with Philip? They healed him.

[ That's as much as she knows; she has very little idea how Bae got from the Enchanted Forest to Neverland; she only knows the bare details that Ariel was given before she returned to Storybrooke. ]

It's not optimism if it's true, is it? Because I know he's alive. Rumple wouldn't lie about his son.

Maybe he's not lying. It could be some kind of trick. Pan wants to keep us from getting Henry, taking Gold out by sending him on some wild goose chase after his son seems like a hell of a way to do it.

[ send gold after. because emma doesn't want to follow that road, because what might be at the end of it isn't happiness and relief, it's pain. the chance that neal might be alive isn't a boon for emma, it's a weight, sinking heavy inside of her as she tries desperately to shove it off with rationality and reason and logic herself out of this one.

because neal can't be alive. she can't go through that again. losing him was hard enough, but if he's alive, it means she doesn't get to just walk away from all the way he hurt her. he's henry's father. she'd have to face all of the heartache all over again, and find away to make peace with it.

but the evidence is piling up and it's not logic on emma's side anymore. she knows mulan is in the enchanted forest, with aurora. but philip was dead, too. how could both he and neal ever - it didn't make sense, but the details were too precise to what emma knew to be true to be anything else. ] I mean, did you - Have you seen him?

[ Belle shakes her head; she wants to believe so badly that she almost can't bear to even imagine that it might be so gross hoax by Peter Pan. But everything Emma is saying to her makes complete and logical sense, it all ties together and - she can't even say for sure if Bae is alive or not. She has no proof, other than the secondhand word from her Rumple and even that might be something to think over, given his history.

Still, she wants to believe. Desperately. She doesn't want to imagine that, after searching for so long, Baelfire could have just died. It's too painful.

Her head finally lifts to look at Emma and she shakes her head slowly, looking a little broken at the idea that she could've been so very easily swayed to believe a lie. ]

No, I haven't - I didn't see him. You're not back yet, I just had a message from Rumple.

[ ... She knows what people think of him and she wants Emma to have the same faith in him that she has but it's not that easy. ]

I believe. I - I have to. I don't want to imagine that it's a lie, that... That he's lost his son forever.

He lost his son a long time ago.

[ because projecting that onto rumpelstiltskin is a hell of a lot easier than saying she'd rather he was dead because then she could just be done with it. she'd felt that pain of loss ten years ago. this wasn't losing neal, it was getting the chance to move on from him. if he was alive, it wouldn't be that easy.

so, she chooses to hold onto the blind belief that it might be some manipulation. ]

Look, I don't - Maybe you're right. Maybe Neal is ... alive. [ her tone is heavy with discomfort and disbelief even as she finally says the words. ] All the more reason not to make a big deal of it when Gold wakes up. [ come to think of it how the hell is he still not ... she turns around, brow furrowing. ] Which ... should have already happened by now.

[ The words are like a jab in her heart and Belle swallows, looking away. She knows that's true, she lived in the Dark Castle for months before he turned her away, she knew the tales of what he'd done and how he'd lost Bae in the first place. Emma's right, and it stings; because she loves him, adores him, and wants him to be happy.

So she nods her head and lets Emma change the subject. ]

He'd wake up in one of those strange beds too?

[ Belle turns back to the pods, looking around almost anxiously. But then - then it sinks in. That he's here, that she was going to see him again, that he was alive and well. The panic over reaffirming Bae's life had almost distracted her from the underlying message of it all - that Rumple was here. ]

He's really here? Safe?

Safe as anyone can be on the Tranquility. [ right. introductions, information dissemination, she'll get all over that. emma tugs her distracted gaze away from the pods and looks back at belle.

her heart twists in her chest to see that swelling hope there, not because she doesn't think gold deserves it (anybody who can manage to have love damn well ought to do what they can to hold onto it), but because it only stands in starker contrast with her reaction to the potential of neal even being alive, not even on the tranquility, just out there somewhere.

she may love him, the way that anyone never really stops loving their first love, but it's nothing like what belle has for gold. it's a heavy fog of misery and distrust, eleven years of pain. emma is allowing herself to be ripped apart by her past, while all belle sees is a future. ]

At least, he was before the jump. Give me a second. [ she moves to pull open her own locker. ] I'll get decent, and we can take a look. [ because it occurs to her only now that she's in her underwear and a towel, because she'd waylaid herself to belle's locker upon approaching them. ]

O-Of course, please, go ahead.

[ Belle turns away to give the other woman the room to change and get herself ready. She's buzzling with excitement, the thought of seeing Rumple again making her feel as though she might fly. It's only been a few days, true, but the weight of thinking that he might be dead or about to die, sacrificing himself for Henry... She didn't want to even imagine it.

She had promised that she would see him again and she was sure she was right.

Hesitating again, Belle steps back and purses her lips nervously before she finds that little well of courage inside herself and speaks up as soon as she's sure it's safe to venture towards Emma again. ]

Has - he's been good, hasn't he?

I - [ she sounds genuinely clueless as she finishes pulling her shirt down while belle turns back towards her. the thing is, emma isn't really sure where belle draws the 'good' line for rumpelstiltskin. he's pretty consistently fucked up as far as emma's seen, so it's hard to say based on belle's measure, since she's clearly pretty tolerant and forgiving. so she grapples for a suitable way to express where gold's at - because truth be told, as emma's observations go, he seems like he's been ... better than usual, at least. ] Yeah. I mean, I haven't had to stop him from beating anyone to death, so better than usual, I guess. [ mo french, hook - it's a pattern, ok? she gives a kind of sheepish shrug. oh and neal probably told her about whale and the boot thing too so there's that, lacey mclaceypants. ]

[ That is more than Belle had expected in all honesty. She had a great deal of respect for the effort her love had been putting in to trying to be a better man, to letting her be his balance and help pull him back towards the good in his heart, but he was still himself, still caught and entwined with magic in a way that poisoned his heart and urged him towards the darkness. In a way, despite how far he'd come, he was still a coward - afraid to go back to being who he was even if that man had become that way because he was so good, so pure hearted and full of love for a son.

She nods, almost shakily, and smiles at Emma as best she can.

As long as there have been no deaths, no curses, nothing that would come at a price he couldn't pay... ]

Thank you, Emma. I - I know he's trying, I just...

[ She worries, she can't help it, she frets over him and with him being gone, perhaps to his death? She had felt broken hearted. ]

Love him. [ she looks something between mingled pity and wistful longing. she hasn't had any decent experiences with love, but belle seems to be doing all right - so maybe emma just wishes she'd had good ones instead of feeling sorry for belle being in it. ] I know. I ... get it. [ the problem has never been how much emma cares about other people, but rather what she gets in return. the thought is far too fresh in her mind with the question of if neal's really out there somewhere. she feels like she got slammed by a mack truck and she's trying to walk it off. she gestures in the direction of the pods. ] He bailed in a blaze of glory and you haven't seen him. So, let's just - Get you two back together.

Yes. I love him. [ She isn't ashamed of that fact, either, her head held high as she watches Emma. She knows very little about the other woman's experiences, only knowing things that she's witnessed as she and Rumple helped one another, but she isn't sure how wary she should be of her pride in her love. Still... ] I just want to know he's safe. That's all that matters to me. [ It's hard to explain the panic and fear you feel when your true love is out of reach and suddenly there again; the fleeting joy and panic all rolled into one. ]

Well, as far as this ship is concerned, he's fine. [ she navigates through the pods, peering in to try and catch a glimpse of whether rumple might still be tucked in one. it's ... odd. more than usual seem to still be resting inside. emma's brow furrows more the further they walk among them, but she keeps talking plainly. ] And no matter what he and Hook have to say on the subject, I'm pretty sure it's gonna take more than a fairy kid in a green hat and Neverland to change that. [ seriously she has no idea why they're pissing themselves over peter pan wtf. ]

[ She nods, obviously brightening. ] That's good. I'll be able to see him soon, then? It has only been a few days, but... [ But he'd left with the intention to die and that's not something she can forget. Belle's eyes flicker over the pods, leaning close to examine the faces, looking for the one she'd know anywhere. ] I think he has a plan - a good one. He sent me a message asking for me to send him something... Pandora's Box.

Maybe he can shed some light on how that's supposed to help us save my son when he wakes up. [ she stops in front of a pod, casually gesturing down at it and turning to belle. ] There's your guy. [ it's still bothering her, in the back of her mind, refusing to quiet. a tiny question of why the hell he hasn't gotten out of that pod yet - he should have. everyone should have, but some remain. ]

[ Belle brightens instantly, going to the pod and putting her hands on the glass. That's him, that's her Rumple, asleep in there, almost waiting for her to come and wake him up. She smiles softly before she turns back to Emma. ] When will he wake up?

He really already should have.

[ there's hesitation in the way she says it, because she clearly knows that's not good news, but it's something belle needs to be aware of. 'any minute now' might be comforting, but it's not gonna prepare her for if that doesn't happen. ]

I wonder what's wrong? Does this usually happen?

[ It's easy for Belle to slip down and settle beside the pod as best she can, content to stay and watch Rumple and see if he awakens. She'd attempt their kiss if she could, but the pod makes that quite... Difficult. ]

Not that I can remember, but that doesn't mean much. I haven't been here that long. He'd be able to give you a better answer if he weren't the one sleeping in. [ she grinds her teeth for a moment, hands finding her hips, then she finally offers; ] There's a ship-wide intranet. Some kind of network to communicate. Like a phone, I guess, but everyone can pick up the receiver. You might try asking someone there.

I will wait a few days and then try, I think. [ Belle is quite happily settled against the pod, watching Rumple with a soft smile. He might be asleep but she's assured that, somehow, he will awaken eventually - otherwise she would be quite fretful about it all. Instead, she runs her fingers along the glass. ]

Probably a good idea. [ not getting worked up right away, but giving it a few days. emma hadn't expected that out of her, but maybe it's time she stopped underestimating people. ] Do you need help with anything else? Ship's pretty straightforward. The tattoo'll take you to the room that's set aside for you.

The tattoo? Y-You mean the numbers here? [ She lifts her arm and strokes over them absently, tilting her head before she nods. ] I will find my room after I've watched over Rumple for a little while. He might wake up. [ Still, never let it be said that Lady Belle was at all rude. She shifts to stand, smiling and reaching to squeeze one of Emma's hand. ] Thank you so much for all your help, Miss Swan.

Emma. You can call me Emma.

[ she squeezes belle's hand in return, offering a smile. ] Let me know if there's anything you need.

Emma.

[ She nods, letting her hand drop slowly and turning back to Rumple. ]

I will. And I'll tell you if he wakes up, too.

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