ataraxionlogs | twenty-eighth jump;

Entry tags:

twenty-eighth 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: It could just be the standard sensation of air on wet skin, but if you bother to check, you might notice the steam rising from your body, barely there and gone within a minute. By the time you get to the showers, it will be clear that it's not just taking you time to adjust. The room is cold — colder than usual, but no worse than the last jump. While it's nothing dangerous, it's certainly motivation to hurry through the usual routine and get dressed quickly.

It's getting closer.

YOUR EYES ARE OPEN.

KEEP LOOKING.

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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[He pauses at the touch, not startled, but definitely surprised that someone is coming to him. He's a tall guy, a bit built and maybe a little imposing, especially when he turns to look at her. But once he looks her over and notes the confusion, Clint's expression softens and he raises an eyebrow.]

Just woke up? We're on a spaceship. The Tranquility. And you're probably in for a hell of a story.

( PODS | CLOSED TO DANA )

[ he's not sorry.

he isn't, and that's not going to change. whatever happened to the people trapped on the bridge, he isn't sorry he pulled dana out of it. that thought comes to him slowly, derek sliding out of the pod. it's never easy. it will never be easy, adjusting to the way everything feels raw, oversensitive. but he can hear dana, and he coughs, swallows hard, forces out a breath in relief. she's alive. she can be furious with him if she wants, but at least she's alive to be furious.

the concept of giving in like that is beyond derek. selfishly, he refuses to accept that decision from her. he straightens up, body turning towards her. he isn't sure what he's going to say, but he's already bracing himself against her reaction. he's not stupid. he knows it's going to be negative. ]

( LOCKERS | OPEN TO ALL )

[ when derek gets to his lockers, there's a fading red mark standing out against his skin. he looks simultaneously pissed off and guilty as he yanks his clothes out of the locker. he's dripping all over the floor, having dried himself off too quickly, not thoroughly enough. he's rushing. derek never lingers too long at the jump, but he doesn't usual rush, go through the motions quickly to get out of the med bay.

for once, there's nothing strange and ominous in his locker. derek allows himself to exhale, relax a fraction. he doesn't care much about the things the ship gives him, but he's tired of finding items in the bottom of his locker, reminders of home he never asked for. he hesitates for a moment, looking suspiciously into his locker like he's expecting something to jump out at him. if it did, derek wouldn't really be surprised. he still remembered the fox in river's locker, all those months ago. ]

About time this happened.

[ flatly, more to himself than anything else. he slams his locker closed and yanks his henley over his head, ignoring the way it sticks to the damp patches of skin he'd missed with the towel. ]

Someone was bound to approach him sometime. He's considered it before, but charming a blinking 'BUGGER OFF' sign to hover about his head at all times only seems like a good idea when he's had a drink, and is likely even less of a good idea in wholly unknown territory.

His attention settles on the intruder before his gaze does in an odd precautionary measure familiar to those of a paranoid mindset, and when Severus does turn his head to look, it's with a brittle rebuke already coiled in his teeth--

--that dies immediately.

He doesn't look like he's seen a ghost. Ghosts are an ordinary nuisance. This is something else. Severus has the tensely morbid thought of that killing curse must have done a real number to make Potter's corpse shrink a foot before the rest of his mental process catches up to itself, stymied as it is by the shock of adaption. After a moment of cold silence, he turns back to the locker. Without saying a thing.

Severus pinches the bridge of his (substantial) nose, as if fighting off a migraine, eyes closed. He's tried waking himself up from a dream already two dozen times and expects nothing, but now - now! He's losing his mind. That's what's happening. He's losing his goddamned mind. He hasn't gotten enough sunlight or he's inhaled to many dungeon fumes or something, anything, one of the ten billion possibilities that exist within the expanse of his work and experiments and history of interests, has gone wrong, finally, and now he is hallucinating. The headmaster's description of the omen-bearing child rings in his head as it has many times before, sliding around to coil in his consciousness, mocking.

Edited (that was not the right word) 2014-02-08 06:30 (UTC)

[ wanda is used to being smaller than all the men around her -- even in melanie's body, ian and jared could carry her like she weighed nothing, and melanie was a lot bigger than pet's body is -- so she's not intimidated by the man whose attention she caught. it takes more than superior size for her to get nervous. ]

A spaceship? [ but none of them are spiders... and she doesn't see any souls in cryotanks... ] But... How?

Right then. Ever the optimist, Harry is rather pleased to note that he is neither hexed nor cursed. (Yet.)

"My name is Harry. If you want to come talk, I work on the flight deck or you can call me through the network here at 016-007. James and Sirius are here and they're children, but for now, that's it for wizards from our world. There are others from other times, like myself, or other worlds. There's no statute of secrecy." He's said his piece, but it doesn't lift the debt he feels that he owes Snape.

✚ Lockers

[Last month felt like a blur to Abbie. True, she met some new people and was able to reunite with someone old (literally and metaphorically; Crane is probably the only one with that honor to her). The attempted mutiny that she saw announced on the network made her feel uneasy; not because of the people behind it, but rather she felt as if even if she wanted to give a hand, she wasn't sure if it would mean much.

Those thoughts are carried with her as she and the others hurried to prepare for the next jump. And when she wakes up, gasping for breath, and a little steadier on her feet, Abbie is glad that third time really is the charm. She showers quickly enough and makes her way to her locker, self-assured in the fact that Crane could probably take care of himself, unwanted nudity aside. Right now, she's more interested in whether she'll receive something useful in her locker or not.

With her towel wrapped around herself, she starts by knocking on the door with her number trying to see if it'll be an empty echo like last time. And to her surprise, it isn't, but there wasn't a rattling of extra items either. The lieutenant mutters to herself as she opens it up.]

That is not a pair of boots I hear in there.

[What IS in there is entirely different and completely unwelcome. Anyone lingering around can hear a sharp shout from Abbie and see her stagger back. For behold, a decapitated and hollowed head of a man drops down and rolls out from inside her locker and stops. It is ghastly and fairly disgusting sight. The eyes are missing and the only reason there's no blood is because the wound around the neck was cauterized. But by what? Who's to say?

Abbie clearly seems to have an idea because as the shock sinks in, the horrible realization hits her too and she's shaking her head as if trying not believe her eyes.

Oh, HELL no!! Just... No. NO.

[She's got some of her wits about her and she keeps an eye on the decapitated head while grabbing her uniform. There's only one person she feels she can turn to right now.]

CRANE!! We got a problem here!!

Edited 2014-02-08 06:37 (UTC)

[Before the jump, L had been unwilling to assume that the group trapped on the Bridge wouldn't make it out.

The probability was high, he knew, but it wasn't a certainty--there was the example of Hotspur against the events at Strela (all before his time), and although it appeared to be one thing, and he preferred to be realistic, there was always the small hope that the situation could turn around.

A door had to open; that was all, nothing but a door. If they had been going to suffer and die, why hadn't it happened through the week? Why keep them alive until the jump so that they could die in that specific manner? A quick death when a slow one would have been possible? None of what he knew could be assembled into the kind of cohesive theory that he would have needed to fully believe that no escape might happen.

Now it's the usual post-jump discomfort, exacerbated by the consistent chill in the room, but he still looks around to see if any of the erstwhile mutineers have made it after all. He doesn't see Nathan right away, or Juliana... who else had been there?

Marty catches his eye. L steps into his path, peering into his face from about half a yard away. There's a beat before he says anything.]

You're not dead.

[He stares for another beat, then his face breaks into a rare, wide smile: elation and relief. If Mikalski made it, and the tragic element of his appearance doesn't go any further than a bloody nose--no appearance of sadness or guilt--then everyone else most likely made it, too.]

It's good to see you.

Edited (HTML! D: D: D: ) 2014-02-08 06:44 (UTC)

[ she watches him out of the corner of her eye when she asks one of the girls to help her dress, to pull up the silk blue gown and tie the lacing. it's not like him to be still, not to go about and seek some mischief but she thinks he must be waiting for someone to step out of the showers and doesn't think twice of it.

it's only a while after she left that she stops, frowns and thinks about the what if. there is always the little thought at the back of her head, the need to check and see faces and affirm that she had not lost them. cesare, robb, gwen, sirius himself. she stands and thinks and then, without so much as a word, she turns and returns to the place she had left earlier today.

she arrives in time to hear the clash of fist and metal and she doesn't jump nor looks startled. she moves - a display of angry violence is something she had seen and knows well, being a borgia. there would be a day when she herself will grow to do the same but it is not today

today she is still more lucrezia than a borgia. she moves over and gently (her fingers are warm) takes the hand that delivered the blow and presses her lips, slow and intentional, to the knuckles.

her brother would say lucrezia is so blinded by the beauty of the sun that she steps too close to it at times but she would shake her head and smile and say she has learned from Icarus' misfortunes.

he will not hit her. ]

[He may catch Johanna staring at him as he dresses. Curiosity, especially over his hand. She watches him put the hook in.

Johanna approaches, an axe in each hand. She looks a little threatening, but she's letting the axes hang to her side, just holding them, but prepared for a fight. She has a shaved head and is frighteningly skinny. She's also smelly, like body odor smelly, but she doesn't stop near enough for Hook to smell her (Or at least... so she hopes). She's evidently forgone any clothes. Hope you don't mind, Hook.

She has a smirk on her face, trying really hard to (and succeeding pretty well at it) hide how frightened she is, each word dripping with sarcasm.] We both got shiny little presents. So kind of them. I wonder who to thank.

Severus catches him approaching - he doesn't turn his head the entire way around and he doesn't watch him as if in comical slow motion, but he does see him before he's halfway there, slim seconds as that time may be. And yet the back of his head slams against the lift doors just before the folded jumpsuit-notebook-communicator drops to the floor, thunk-thunk! Black eyes stare unfocused at Sirius's face before his expression twists into something ironclad and hateful.

Regulus. For a second, he'd thought it was Regulus.

Nothing he'd been told by the Potter child and no amount of reflecting on it and discarding the notion of ghosts had been able to suppress the kneejerk memory impulse to assign that profile and that age to the younger brother, the dead one, the one who looked more like Sirius does now than the Sirius at home, rotting away in Azkaban, is sure to look. Severus can only imagine; he hasn't seen the other since seventh year, and has made no great effort to pay anyone a friendly visit. His wand is tucked into his sleeve against his wrist and he saw Sirius coming but he stood there, stunned. Anger fills him. Anger at Black, and at himself.

"Let go."

It comes out more dull than he expects. He doesn't want to do this. It's not going to end in a way either of them will be satisfied with and he can't completely justify decapitating Black after what the boy said, so why bother with it at all.

[ he would hold onto silk once he goes for her arm, deep purples and blue. The woman whose arm he had stolen would look only slightly startled, brows quirked up and all. she's a bit of a contrast, a fine silk gown, lips that she insists to keep red after a jump if only to give some color to features that are paler than usual - but hair a mess, kept up in a moist bun to keep from wetting the fabric but it seems to nearly give way.

what high ladies look like at 6 a.m sort of a look. she blinks once at him and then looks at her arm, a silent can I have this back please? written on her brow. she has heard the name before in passing so she knows, at least, what to answer. ]

Camelot.

[ because she assumed he is from New York, so the next stage would be to say she is not. ]

[Johanna notices all of it, when he approaches his locker- the red mark, how pissed off and guilty he looks. She looks back up at him when he speaks and watches him slam the locker closed. She lets out a bark of laughter.]

Got an anger problem, handsome?

[She can't really talk. The young woman addressing him is not yet dressed, lingering at her locker. She has a shaved head and is small and frighteningly skinny.]

( P O D S | CLOSED TO DAMON )

[ elena stumbles out of her pod, and manages to keep her feet underneath her this time. part of that is because she's just getting more used to the jump, but the other part...

the other part is three pods down, stepping out of his own. damon was elena's last thought when she got into her pod, minutes before the jump, and he's her first when she steps out of it. she's alive, and she sent damon that depressing message, and she knows he's going to give her hell for ever going onto that bridge in the first place, but she doesn't particulalrly care, not right now. she's alive and her boyfriend is three pods down from her, and he doesn't know that she made it, and that's enough to keep her on her feet even when she wants to curl into a ball and cry for a little while. nevermind that he's not really her boyfriend here, she still loves him just as much as she did when she got here, and he loves her, and she's not wasting another second waiting for him to make up his mind about what that means.

she's next to damon in less than a second, ignoring the way whooshing over to him makes her head spin. when he looks at her she's beaming, the smile equal parts sheepish and overjoyed. ]

Unless you have any strident objections, I'm going to kiss you now. Speak now or forever hold your peace.

( S H O W E R S | CLOSED TO JENNA AND RIC )

[ after her reunion with damon, ric and jenna are the first on elena's 'hey, look, i'm alive! please don't kill me!' list. she almost whooshes down to their pods, but decides that probably they're in the showers by now instead, so she walks as calmly as possible (or maybe she runs, you can't prove anything) to the showers, keeping her eyes peeled for her parents.

the second she sees one of them, all thought of staying under the vampire radar leaves her mind, and she's next to them in a blur. luckily she had the presence of mind to grab a towel first, or this could be really awkward. ]

I'm alive! Hugs before murder threats, please.

( ??? | OTA! )

[ want to see elena after she meets up with jenna and ric in the showers? in the lockers? feel free to make it happen! ]

Edited 2014-02-08 07:00 (UTC)

My name is Harry is all he needs to hear and the rest of the speech is halfway muted out. Of course his name is Harry. Of course this is what's happening. Severus gets his hand up in a 'halt' gesture, making a sharp movement when he realizes the words are continuing-- Stop! Stop. S t o p talking.

"I know who you are," he grinds out, almost over the end of what Harry's saying. He's still facing the locker. He is tempted to feel dizzy, but sets it aside. Severus finishes buttoning his shirt, tucks away his wand, and folds up the rest of his things into a neat pile. Then, finally, he turns back to-- Harry.

"How do you know who I am," is said alongside his index finger being held up, one, and two: "..Restart that."

Sorry, he couldn't hear you over the sound of his existential crisis.

[cortana wakes up with a gasping start, as if she was just plunged in icy water and her lungs fill with air. it isn't that she isn't used to this by now, it's that she thought she wouldn't live to see this moment. the fear that once again she'd be leaving the world behind without experiencing anything - without feeling something other than fear and need.

mutiny did not look well on her; it was more like a foolish, adolescent thing that was spurned by emotion rather than logic. at some point, she didn't want to think, didn't want to experience the feeling of thinking over and over again.

she's never cried before either. every situation she's been in, she's always had the master chief to look to, that his confidence was infectious and coupled with her own pride and hubris, they were an unstoppable team. she used to think that seven years was enough, that seven years was all that she wanted with him but now that she actually could feel being apart from him? it was unbearable.

cortana didn't know why, but for some odd reason all she wanted was to hear his voice. to hear that familiar "it's going to be alright" or "it's not over, not yet" - anything. she might be a sword, a shield but he was her rock, her everything. she lets herself have this emotion, the sobs of fear and relief just seeping through her as she has a third chance at life before she gets up. shaking, even as she gets out of the pod and she looks around before heading to the showers.

(mission objective: showers, gather intel, find out what happened and how we're alive)

these are things she can do.

the sight before her? something she can't. 6'10, brunette with a sort of primal attraction around him, scars across his left eye, down his jaw and - and his eyes. emotion takes her over as she bolts towards him, remembering that all she wanted was for him to break down that bridge door and rescue all of them - just like he always did.

she didn't know why she was glad to see him; he shouldn't be here, he lived and she died so that he could continue to protect and this place is awful. it's not the case, her arms around his neck and her face is buried in his shoulders as she just holds him and never lets him go, her feet far off the ground.]

[ John has never been font of surprises. A snap to the neck, however, usually finishes those in less than a second and he can move on.

This surprise, however, is not one he would like to break, maim, or throw down. She is blue and small, throws herself at him without a single word. I've waited so long to do that, she'd told him, touching the front of his chest plate, and he felt for a moment, that synapses connected, that he felt something he ought not have felt. That it wasn't enough. He's still slick and wet, steam rising off of his shoulders and the crown of his head as she buries her face.

The faint whisper of her makes his arms curl slowly, disbelieving.

(How long has it been since you've wrapped your arms around something that wasn't a plasma cannon? Handled something even more delicate than the smallest pieces of a standard-issue DMR?)

He doesn't want to crush her, but he feels every nerve in him shake on overload. He brings his arms together anyways, around her, as if maybe desperate to pull her inside of him again, feel her flitting through waves of information, a hummingbird ghosting along electric waves, protecting him. I am your sword. I am your shield. All he knows is that his chest tightens, that the sensation flits through the irregular pulse in his jaw.

John is normally a man of silence, but even now one might call him dumbstruck with lips parted in breath and eyes bright and wide, even as he holds her tightly to keep her from sliding down his slippery front.

He breathes her name. ]

Cortana.

[ She feels real. All warm skin. Her data pulses on her shoulders, her back, her swinging legs--they don't move, they don't travel. They are stationary. She is but a fixed point in time and she is real. ]

"This ship or whatever controls it takes people from different times and places. From our world, I come from furthest along the timeline." Save Ginny and Hermione, they've also all been dead from Harry's particular point in time, but that's an issue for another day.

"And I know who you are because I've worked with the version of you that..." This is why he never took any of those higher year temporal arithmancy courses. He's never been able to wrap his tongue around the terminology. Scowling at his own inadequacy, he decides to just stick to names and avoid anything more complicated. "At Dumbledore's request, a man named Severus Snape trained me in certain spells."

There's a hot, sick flop of feeling in his stomach as Harry realizes that the information he'd tried to push on the Marauders would be welcomed by Snape. If anyone could be entrusted with it, to make sure that the horcruxes are destroyed and to prevent the second war, he's sure Snape would do it.

[ oh, dana was dragged back to her pod, alright -- literally, for all she knows, derek had to knock her out to get her to leave the doors. she's on her way to the showers when marty finds her, her knuckles bloody from punching derek in the face and then punching brad's pod when she realized that he wasn't coming out. her best friend is dead and the two people she can stand on this ship have turned out to be either backstabbing pieces of shit or flakes.

maybe she can sneak into gunnery and grab a gun, take herself out quick. what's the point of sticking around if marty isn't here too?

she's so dejected, angry and afraid and alone that she doesn't even notice marty. ]

[The blue slime used to feel as if it burned. Now, it's nothing more than a mild annoyance. That doesn't mean she doesn't feel absolutely awful when she wakes up after the jump; it just means that she doesn't mind sitting outside her pod for a few moments once she's dumped to the cold metal floor.

Her back is almost flush against the pod, only some room left for her wings to remain uncrushed. They're stuck to her back anyway, she isn't very worried about them right now. The chill wakes her up just as much as it makes her want to crawl into the perceived warmth of the goo and go back to sleep.

The dizziness is worse this time around than it has been in a while, and so her few moments turn into a few minutes. Her embarrassment about her own body and the bodies around her has chipped away over the past year or so, and leaves her with few qualms about sitting on the floor in just her underclothes. They all have skin and bones that stick out a little, after all. Her only addition is the feathers. There's a small pile of towels just a few feet away, but she can't bring herself to move towards them right now.

Just when she thinks she might actually fall asleep there on the cold steel, Nill remembers those locked in the bridge. Her eyes snap open. She had known people in there; maybe not well, but she considered those on the ship a strange sort of family, even if she'd never spoken to some of them. Those people hadn't been able to get out. They had said goodbye as well they could. They are dead.

They are dead.

She jerks to her feet as best she can, leaning heavily on the pod to catch her breath. She knows Heine wasn't there, but she needs to see him. She needs to find him and prove to herself that he isn't dead too. The slime makes her slip away from the pod and she lands hard on her knees, tears springing to her eyes. A towel is what she needs, and she starts back to her feet so she can get one to wipe her face so she can look around for Heine. Please don't be dead, please.]

Edited 2014-02-08 07:35 (UTC)

PODS

[ this isn't the bus — ward has no recollection of leaving the bus and he has no recollection of anything that might lead to a scenario in which he's suspended in a tube of blue fluid, breathing through a tube in his nose, which means that his memory must be failing him or the bus was ambushed. neither one of those are acceptable options — but the thought process is delayed when the fluid drains and he ends up on the floor, barely catching himself in a crouch in time before his face hits the ground.

this is not the bus. this isn't anywhere familiar; nothing he recognises. he's naked, but that is secondary to unarmed in this moment, eyes narrowing as he pushes himself to his feet.

there are others stumbling from pods just like the one he'd been in. there's a tattoo on his arm — none of this makes sense and if someone had time to tattoo him, that means he was out for too long.

where is his team? ]

LOCKERS

[ in the end, he'd followed others into the showers and then towards a room full of lockers. he keeps his head down, but that doesn't mean he isn't watching his surroundings carefully.

at least the locker contains tac gear and weapons and some of the tension in his shoulders bleeds away as he checks over the two guns, the ammo, loading them — that he doesn't strip them entirely is the only concession to time and place.

only once he's assured himself that they're functional does he set them aside for long enough to actually get dressed. in tac gear, rather than the unfamiliar uniform. ]

The impulse to deny all of this as hallucination is a strong one, but it's one he knows is cowardly, too. His subconscious demons would surely manifest Lily's son, but not the rest of this, full of metal and machinery he's never so much as imagined, faces he's never even seen in a crowd. The information this boy is spitting up is frustratingly sensible, if only so because of the ludicrous context. He has to face this and accept it and not bury his head in the sand.

"As my student." There is something slightly mystified about his tone. Genuinely, he is surprised to hear he may live even that long.

"Alright." Severus rubs a hand over his forehead and pushes his hair back - which is clean and almost tidy, at the moment, freshly scrubbed free of life support sludge. He seems torn between weary and wary. "You said Black is here."

pods.

[After being ejected from the pod, and taking a moment to stop reeling from the utter shock of disorientation, of the feeling of being cold and practically naked and sick to his stomach, Yuri manages to lift himself off of the floor. His hair is sticking to the sides of his face, but it does very little to hide his prominent scar -- something the man would not take kindly to, if not for the fact that he does not even register this yet. He lifts his head up and his eyes flicker about to survey the situation, somehow holding back the feeling of frustration and panic threatening to burst, lips pressed into a very thin scowl.

Where, when, how, why. All of these substantial notions are currently far beyond his comprehension, and needless to say it doesn't sit well with him. Was he hallucinating? Was he truly so misfortunate for them to now become so... complex? If he were to sit here for a few seconds, for a few minutes, would everything around him dissolve away -- like day nightmares eventually do -- and he'd find himself in a state of normalcy again?

He doesn't know; but he's willing, with an air of cool acceptance and faint anxiety, to find out. And so he remains seated, goo still dripping from his body, waiting to see. Strangers move in all directions, catching in his peripheral, and he watches with the detachment of a wary outsider -- but he doesn't move. He doesn't speak.]

lockers.

[So it was real, then. How unfortunate.

Yuri seems unapproachable (he certainly feels that way), but at least now he's dressed. Standing in front of his open locker, he had found a jumpsuit that was hardly suitable, and his own clothing that he was much more inclined to wear. And thus he stands in his suit now, tie and all, currently tying back his hair with a black ribbon. His scar remains visible and he is now aware of this fact, but keeping to himself helped to deflect any comments concerning it. He frowns, his hands not feeling as limber as they should -- clumsy with the uncertainty of everything that surrounds him, the consequence of his mind in a million places at once.

His brow knits together as he momentarily gives up, rakes his hair back again with one hand into a ponytail, and attempts to tie it again. Despite being quiet during the majority of his arrival, he cannot help but say, through clenched teeth:]

Inconvenient.

[Yes. Inconvenient. Everything. Absolutely everything.]

Edited 2014-02-08 07:48 (UTC)

[he's everything that she imagined that he'd be. not by looks, because she has that memorized. what person can say that they have another's neural pathways memorized? not another. it is because there is no other john, no other master chief. there may be those who are smarter, faster, stronger, more cunning, but they are not brave like him, self sacrificing like him or as lucky as he.

he is hers and she is his and once more everything is back to being one as it should be. or as close as it can be anyway.

his skin is rough like him, scars feel like jagged stories across his skin, just like her data pulses once were. his mouth is just as it always is, stern and taciturn and once again she finds herself crying.]

What are you doing here? [you should be saving people, protecting them from whatever they've unleashed on the galaxy. was the didact dead, did they find a body, what about Requiem's status, did he ever find Halsey? all of these questions, but all of them boil down to why are you here?]

I know we've done strange before, but this, this is beyond even my understanding. [says the AI come alive.]

[ Granted, in her time aboard the TQ, she hasn't seen that much nudity. Sure, there's that brief freak-out everytime you open your eyes to blue goo, and the showers are a lot like high school gym, which means there's nudity if you look for it. But it's not a big deal — it's definitely not like this, which is rounding the corner only to see a guy very, very confidently walking his way around, and it's not like Veronica hasn't seen her fair share of cheating wives and husbands mid flagrante, but— ]

—oh my god!

[ Quick, Veronica, put your hands over your eyes to protect your mythical (ha) virginity (double ha). ]

Do you— clothes?

[ A beat. Her fingers open, just a little, and only from the waist up because, you know, space crazies. ]

Are you Ryan Gosling's body double?

[ That's a good question, right. ]

Edited 2014-02-08 07:54 (UTC)

[ It's not an accusation, John can hear it in the tone of her voice. It is disbelief, maybe something else. Cortana has been more to him than anyone--when his brothers and sisters were lost, she'd been there, only her and only him. He used to work alone, now the thought of it makes him fidget inwardly. Alone never felt so unappealing.

He tries to think of various ways to answer her questions, all lightening quick, but nothing fits. Your guess is as good as mine.

They were removing his plates, they were pulling him apart piece by piece and now he's here and Cortana... Cortana is here too.

For once, John finds that he can't care for about two minutes. He can't prioritize anything else. He shakes his head slowly. ]

Where is "here" exactly?

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twenty-eighth jump;

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derek hale | closed thread for dana + ota.

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OTA

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lockers!

lockers

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lockers

lockers!

elena gilbert;; closed pods, closed showers, and anywhere else ota!

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nill | open

GRANT WARD ( so very open )

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yuri petrov | pods, lockers | ota!

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hahaha i meant pods.

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