ataraxionlogs | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ She moves to approach him, Lady by her side - the sound of something clanging against the metal had initially drawn her attention, so that when she finally makes her way down the rows to where he stands, head bowed and body braced, she can see that the tension in his shoulders has not fully abated.

Rather than reach out to him instantly - though the instinct is there, the urge to offer something more than words rising up from within - she lingers near, hovering in his periphery so that he will recognize her presence. Perhaps she will address him once he lifts his head. For the moment, she chooses to remain silent beside him - until she notices the state of his hand.

Still without speaking, she reaches out to rest her fingertips against the back of his hand, inches away from the bruised, tender knuckles. ]

[He's too focused, still, drawn so tight that he nearly jumps out of his bloody skin when he feels that touch on his hand--and he looks up, wild-eyed, staring around at--

Alayne. She'd stepped in so close and he'd not noticed her. Perhaps in another moment he would have at least looked around and seen her, or perhaps he never would have noticed. Everything in him is focused so furiously inward--only now he's staring at her face, and he knows he probably looks pale and mental, wide eyes and clenched jaw, anger and sadness etched too deep for him to try and correct. And he hates that. He should be able to correct it. He should be able to fight it down--but this is James, missing, and that wound is so raw that he can't manage it just yet.]

I'm--

[The word twists out of him, flat, miserable; he swallows, hard.]

Don't.

[She's had enough of this kind of shit. What little he knows of Alayne, he knows that she doesn't need more. She's meant to be smiling. And he wouldn't know where to start with that right now.]

[ There are things seen, glimpsed but not entirely explained; she'd witnessed pieces of his past, knows his allegiances and his dependencies. She hadn't quite been willing to ask him what he'd seen of her, which memories of hers he now holds alongside of his own. Not all of them are pleasant. Some of them leave her with a hollow feeling, as though she is witnessing it through the eyes of another. To be Alayne, she'd had to separate herself from Sansa's memory, and refused to glance back.

She is not always smiling.

To see him like this, jaw clenching as he nearly grits out the words - she very nearly recoils, curls in on herself. She is not afraid, but that does not mean she will ignore caution. ]

You are hurt.

No.

[He says it like he's correcting her, like she could have somehow seen wrong. When he looks at his hand, he thinks, yeah, no, she's right, but the pain hasn't yet set in. It feels distant.]

It doesn't matter. It'll get patched up. Everything here does, so we can keep going. For no reason.

[The dramatic tone of those words makes him scowl, and he stares down at the floor, lets his hand drop to his side.]

Where are you going, after this. To your room?

[ It is difficult not to believe in the futility of all of it, but she would not say that out loud. She would not do anything to take away some semblance of hope - though it appears it has been taken from him just the same. ]

Yes, I had planned to return there.

[ But she voices the thought hesitantly, uncertain now. She does not want to leave him in such a state. ]

[Part of him wants only to shove off, to go into the ship and tear down a wall, or at least wreck hell on it. And he will, later. He'll have to, to work out something of this tight feeling that's building up behind his eyes, and he looks at Alayne and he thinks--

Nothing. She looks pale, and a little uncertain. But she hasn't left yet. The clash of emotion in him ebbs a bit toward something quite like sympathy. Which is stupid. She doesn't need his sympathy, and he doesn't need hers, but he doesn't shove off.]

Don't go yet.

[He's asking, even if there isn't the lilt of a question to the words.]

Stay. Just a minute longer. All right?

[ There is undeniably a sense that he needs to do something, to break something in his hands. It is the desire to feel in control when circumstances dictate helplessness. She understands the desire, and yet - she had given up the hope of doing little more than screaming inside a long time ago. She could never afford to be that reckless.

His words surprise her, but only for a moment. ]

I will not.

[ She keeps her head lowered, her gaze away - so that her presence may be a comfort alone, and so that he does not feel as if he is being watched. ]

[He stares, fixedly, at the floor, for a moment longer--aware of her standing there and yet not aware. She's there but she's elsewhere--or, more likely, he is a little elsewhere. It's easy to feel detached, or it should be. It would be better than this idiotic helplessness.

The silence is very heavy. His shoulder are hunched, so hard it sort of hurts, and he sets his teeth against nothing, still staring.]

Girls, where you're from. They don't get to be angry. Right?

[He remembers. Just a little bit, he remembers, from the few things he saw out of her head, from the things that Alayne told him before. This Alayne but not.]

You have to be happy, and quiet. But you have to have felt-- this.

twenty-eighth jump;

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