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

[ 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. ]

[Okay. Okay, Marty. Approach carefully. Don't spook her.

Don't get murdered for seeming to be dead? Good plan.

He's kind of worried, what with the bloody fists and raises his hands like he's trying to prove he's not a threat. It's a stupid motion really, all things considered.]

Dana?

[ dana's head snaps up when she hears marty's voice, and for a second she can't move. she can't even breathe, she's too shocked -- he's here, marty is here and he's not dead. it's not topher, she knows that for sure -- scent is all wrong, even through all the goop she knows that, even if it's weird. maybe it's a different marty? that would be pretty insensitive of the ship, if so. she doesn't want a different marty, she wants her marty. he of the space potato chips and pickle juice ice pops.

new marty or not, the second dana can move again, she draws her first back and punches him in the face. not hard enough to break anything, her fist or his nose, but hard enough that her hand aches and his nose starts bleeding. that takes care of the hallucination question.

and after that she grabs him and clings like a fucking limpet. ]

[Talk about a doozy — first he's reeling from a fist to the face, and then he's suddenly being squeezed to death. He just sort of lets her smoosh him and blinks hard in an attempt to clear his star-spangled vision. But he does eventually curl his arms about her shoulders.]

... Hey, uh, Minx.

[ dana is not even a little bit sorry about the punching, and probably won't ever be. as far as she's concerned, marty deserves far worse for what he's put her through the past week.

it takes genuine effort not to start crying, and she digs her own fingernails into her arms to ground herself. for a long time she can't think of anything beyond the fact that marty is alive, and she's angry at him for scaring her but so relieved...

eventually she takes a step back, still holding onto marty by the shoulders. her eyes are watery and her voice wavery as she speaks, but the words come out clear. ]

If you ever scare me like that again, I am going to kill you, and no one will ever find your body.

[He still looks a little nervous, dripping blood and eyes wide and sort of childish in their concern, and he nods a few times.]

Got it. Don't scare the dangerous lady, don't get airlocked.

[ oh, god, those eyes are making dana feel worse than she thinks they have any right to. she was full of righteous fury a second ago, and now marty's turned the puppydog eyes on her and she wants to apologize for her complete normal reaction to the not-death of her best friend. not cool, marty. ]

Right. Okay, now that that's clear, and aside from the part where I punched you, are you alright? Any wounds that need attention, psychological trauma that you need to vent?

[Marty hesitates on that — but really, while it was fucking awful in there and his brain is all whacked out, he's just... here. So. He'll persevere. Instead he just smiles toothily, relief on his face.]

I'm just glad to see you again, is all.

[ at any other time, dana might have seen through him. might have insisted that he talk, because he's obviously not alright and she needs him to be alright so that one of them is. without marty, she has nothing to hold herself together for, and if she's not holding herself together... well, it wouldn't be good.

but she's just too relieved to see him here now, needs him to be okay too much to look too far below the surface. he's here, and he isn't traumatized or injured, and that's good enough for her. ]

I'm so glad to see you, Marty. You have no idea. I thought -- if you didn't come out, I was going to --

[ she can't finish the sentence, dropping her hands from marty's shoulders to run her hands through her hair. derek had refused to let her go through with it, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. marty got out, and if she'd just been allowed to wait a little longer, she could have been there for him. ]

twenty-eighth jump;

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