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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"As are you." Neither accusatory nor companionable. It just is. There's no point in panicking, and while this is utterly ridiculous it's not so unthinkable as to be a complete mindfuck. Severus lives in a society that meddles with time turners and prophecies and teleportation. The concepts in action here are ones he's familiar with, even if he was in no hurry to experience any of them first hand.

"There's plenty of screaming and crying to go around, if you're in need." Some people, he's noticed, are frightened and likely new arrivals like himself, while others trudge through with a weary normalcy he finds disturbing. More people still are quite fixated on punching some guy's lights out; Severus has given that quadrant of the medical bay a wide berth. There is a social structure here and he's not familiar with it - social structures are not his strong point, and so he finds the best course of action is to stand aside and mind his own business. He can investigate once he's found his footing.

"I'm alright I think, thanks," she says, with a little more warmth than he's displayed, letting it creep into her voice uninvited and without intent. In reality, Claire probably should be more accustomed to this sort of thing, or at least the potential of it. In some way, she had always thought in the back of her mind that things might turn out like this, especially with the government action that's been implemented in the past, but at some point, she supposes, she had just stopped entertaining it as a possibility, never pausing the upward climb that was every present struggle to consider what might be coming around the corner. Maybe she should have stopped, considered, spared a little time for forethought. Maybe.

Although, who plans for this? Her dad, probably, but as far as she's aware, Noah Bennet isn't lurking in the shadows of wherever it is she is, so Claire makes due on her own.

"Just stay away from that medical looking area," she advises him, glancing up once and hitching her small bundle of belongings more securely under her arm. "Unless you actually want to get punched in the face."

Severus spares a brief glance towards the commotion. He's not sure what the issue is, exactly, but he's gotten a vague idea based on overhearing snippets of conversation. Many people have been here for some time, and this is routine, and something happened prior to awakening again - something distinctly outside the routine. For him, it's just one more thing to look into. If it's important enough to cause fights, it's something he should note. ... From a distance.

"I've had quite enough trauma for one day." Pods. Goo. Abductions. Communal showers. This muggle girl! He doesn't sound particularly traumatized, though. In fact he sounds sort of bored, which is probably weird, but it's a wonderful (and likely transparent) cover for how irritated he is to be here. "It'll have to wait."

(Until he bumps into Sirius.)

It might have been beneficial to poke her nose into whatever it was that had been happening, given her a sense of purpose that she's used to having in terms of standing between one person and the oncoming battering ram. But there's a time and a place for that sort of thing, and while Claire is likelier to throw practicality out of the window, in that respect, and then jump out after it, there is obviously more at work here than just a collection of people being space vomited by some medical pods. That will all come in time, she thinks, and glances down very briefly at the numbers on her arm.

As for a reply, all Claire says is, "Yeah, no kidding." But that feels hollow and wooden, so she goes right for the jugular and just says, "At least you've go that trick to dry yourself off. How'd you do that, anyway?"

Just one more thing that'll be funny ("funny") later.

At that, he raises his eyebrows slightly. Was she too startled to ask, earlier, or did it just seem unimportant in the face of everything else? Well, they're conversing now, it seems. For better or worse. He does shut his locker door, finally, the rest of his things - jumpsuit, robe, notebook, communicator - folded together.

"Magic."

And, alright, he's kind of being a dick with that answer. Even in the eighties, he's aware that the sarcastic retort to any situation muggles don't want to explain to each other is it's fucking magic! But it's also the truth, and he wonders what her reaction will be, seeing as she wasn't that shocked earlier. The idea of living openly is fascinating, and something he's only considered abstractly, furthermore only imagined in a very past tense. Wizardkind lived openly among muggles only in ancient times, when a query like this might be only passing curiosity.

Edited 2014-02-10 04:14 (UTC)

"Magic," she responds, raising her eyebrows and nodding with some level well-rehearsed mock-incredulity. A small smile works at the corner of her mouth, less rehearsed and more honest.

There's a very tangible pause on her end, thick with a swirling mix of doubt and half-hearted acceptance, and Claire knows that he's being an asshole on purpose, but that doesn't stop her from taking it seriously. After all, why not magic? Two years ago - hell, two months ago - she might have reacted like any normal person would have: with a mocking laugh and an eye roll for all his sarcastic troubles. Magic. Right. How much of that would have been an act and how much of it would have been a genuine expression of ridiculous disbelief is neither here nor there. What is both here and there is the lurching of this facility all around them. What is both here and there is the fact that suspending disbelief in the face of what she is and what this is, this hulking chill and frantic, pulsing energy of faces and figures around them, trying to make sense. Magic hardly seems unlikely, and it's not like he lifted a hand to offer her a towel, either.

What rubs her the wrong way is that he is deliberately being a dick, and she can accept and even respect that, but she's less interested in extending her hand in some kind of unifying solidarity resulting from their circumstances than she was before. He probably appreciates it, given the exceptionally warm vibes he's given off at every turn. Reel it in, Bennet. Not everyone is as interested in making conversation directly after the insanity that has just happened to all of them.

"Wouldn't be the craziest thing I've heard all day." That's a genuine truth.

"No, I imagine not."

There's a hair less attitude in his tone at that, because magic aside, all of this really is crazy. He knows logically that not all muggles are predisposed to panicking and shrieking at the first sight of something they don't understand (and that plenty of wizards are), but his deep-seated prejudices make him find this girl's reaction unusual. If she is a girl, even; after looking a bit closer he thinks she might be older. Not that it matters.

"It seems to make no difference," he adds, wry, about their capture, or whatever it is. "Nor does technological advancement or familiar." People wandering around with swords and massive wolves (ew) and with glowing metal fuzed to their spines - he's seen them all, mingling, staring, sullenly changing at their lockers. They're all equally fucked, it seems, snatched up from home and set suspended in blue liquid, given the same metal confinement. And isn't that fantastic.

"Yeah, it doesn't look like this place is too picky about the kind of people it's chosen to snatch up," she agrees, and a thought crosses her mind, briefly, of the possibility of running into Sylar somewhere in these halls. Regardless of whether or not Peter's confident in his switch over from the dark side or not, he's still one of the last people that she'd chose to come across this far from home, in unknown territory with unsuspecting buffet items at his disposal. "Kind of a scary thought, though. I'm not actually interested in getting eaten by wolves anytime soon."

She can't worry about that right now, though, trying to get her bearings as much as she can. The shower had blasted away most of the fuzzy haze that had permeated her experiences at the pods, so she basically has no choice at this point in their brief, stilted - but growing marginally more bearable? - conversation other than to extend her free hand out toward him and say, "Sorry. I'm Claire, by the way."

Maybe it's a mistake to use her name, at least until she figures out where she is and what's going on, but that opportunity might never come and probably not any time soon. He did dry her off, anyway.

His expression flickers oddly when she mentions being eaten by wolves, as if he almost laughs, and not in a positive way. But it's brief. Maybe it's unrelated.

Oh, this is happening, then, isn't it. He only hesitates for a short moment before he takes her hand in a steady greeting; his palms are rough in places, working too much with his hands and not taking care of them well. Were he not just blast-cleaned by uncomfortable gym showers post-goo-soak his cuticles would be discolored from alchemy ingredients.

"Severus." ... Is a weird name. This isn't a ritual he's used to performing, but he's at least familiar with it, having grown up partially in the muggle world where it's common.

It is a weird name, but you can't just go around pointing that out to people and expect them to be okay with it. She had thought Gretchen was a weird name the first time that she met the girl, and that ended up being about as fine as anything else in her life, so going off of experience alone, this encounter at least promises to be interesting. Claire does start a little bit at it, though, just because it's nothing that she's heard before and isn't at all what she had been expecting, never mind that expecting anything had been out of the question to begin with, but she takes his hand all the same.

Her hands are unblemished and soft, and his palm feels rough against hers, and the whole thing feels like some kind of accomplishment on a strange level. She has a firm handshake by default, and she makes direct eye contact and smiles when she says, "Nice to meet you. Sorry it's not under less insane circumstances." She lets go without pretense or fanfare, keeping it short and to the point in an effort not to be anymore awkward than their days already have been.

His only response to that is a monosyllabic noise of.. something, perhaps it's agreement or perhaps it's just forced acknowledgement because he knows on some level that there's a fill-in-the-blank requirement for normal human interaction. Severus doesn't want to carry on this conversation because it's just as weird - if not weirder - than anything else going on right now. Muggle or not, pretty girls don't walk up to him and attempt to socialize; if it was six years ago that would be 'pretty girls don't walk up to him and attempt to socialize unless it's for a prank', but if there's a prank going on here, it's nothing so crude as that. So Severus leaves it as it is, and goes on his way.

His way leads him to bumping into a few other people, including Sirius Black, an encounter during which he does indeed get punched in the face. Then he gets sniffed by some guy's pet dogs. Then he finally, finally, gets in the damned lift and goes to the passenger quarters, an ordeal that ends up taking him much longer than he would have liked.

Thus, later: Severus is walking down the hall of the twenty-eighth floor, looking much the same as he did when he left the medical bay aside from the even stormier look on his face and the blood on his shirt. He's repaired his face (as much as a face like his will repair), but hasn't bothered cleaning the rest of himself up. He would like to find his room and seal the door shut behind him for a week, at this point.

Later Claire is coming out of her room on the twenty-eighth floor, having quickly realized what the numbers on her arm had signified with some sort of minute relief. While that hasn't erased the overarching possibility that these numbers are for more nefarious purposes - something she's gotten the impression happens a lot around this place, given what she's picked up from others and sussed out on her own - it's at least given her a spot to drop her stuff. Sitting in her room and staring at the walls isn't exactly her style, though, and while she might not be able to find too much out during her first twenty-four hours aboard the Tranquility, she intends to determine what she can rather than siting idly. Not to mention the inherent claustrophobia she feels in being shut up inside that room. It's like being back in the dorms but without the added knowledge that she had actively chosen to be there.

So she's got her little communicator flat in the palm of her hand and is working on shoving it back down into one of her pockets as she steps out of her doorway. At least the jumpsuits are kind of cool, she thinks, and maybe once she can get a better handle about what's going on, she might be able to allow herself one momentary admission that being on a spaceship with a bunch of people who she's never met before is as exciting as it is horrifying. She walks at a comfortable pace, neither hurrying nor taking too long.

There are people scattered throughout, but Claire recognizes that face and the cagey posture without having to look twice. Maybe because it was one of the more interesting encounters she's had in an otherwise overwhelmingly eventful day, and maybe because he looks possibly even less pleasant than he had when she spoke to him the first time. "Hey!" she calls out, looking to get his attention more than anything else, coming close with every step. Claire has her hand up in a little (embarrassing) wave before she realizes that he's got blood on his shirt, which is about when the forcefulness of her approach drops down several degrees. "Is that blood?"

What now. Severus stalls when she calls out to him, reeling in the impulse to fall into a defensive mindset. It's not someone who's going to attack him - if it was, he thinks they'd be missing a limb by now. His patience is threadbare.

.. Is it? He glances down. Oh. Right. Severus looks back up at her, expression flat. "Yes." Well. "It seems I've only half-heeded your advice."

He didn't get punched in the medical area, anyway. Severus raises a hand to his face to make sure he's not still got anything on his skin, having only done a quick job of healing himself after he and Sirius finally parted ways. It's fine, though, just the remains on his shirt standing out still. He'll clean it out soon enough but he'd like a mirror, and also to not have to deal with any more former classmates. Ever.

And Claire thought she was the one who went looking for trouble after being told expressly not to. Not that she expected him to listen to her remotely. Not that she was being serious in the slightest by suggesting that he do exactly the opposite of what he's done. Regardless, she's hardwired and programed to actually show concern and express as much. Maybe it's a by-product of not having to worry as much about herself in that capacity. Maybe that's just who she is, has always been.

"More people get punched in the face when they do that," she says, keeping a careful distance but still coming a little closer to inspect the damage, arms crossed. Except there isn't actually any damage that she can parse out, which is. Interesting. Though maybe not so much considering the way in which he had apparently used magic before. "Don't take all of my advice, I mean. Is that yours or someone else's?"

It doesn't hurt to be sure.

Severus isn't sure if he thinks she's actually concerned or just being nosy; fortunately they're alone in the hallway, or else he'd have inched away already, unwilling to be a spectacle more than he already has been today. As he's already 'met' Claire, at least the scrutiny isn't as uncomfortable as it would be from a complete stranger.

"Mine," he tells her, almost warily. "I got the worst of it, there's not.." he trails off, not sure if he should make a joke about a body stuffed in a closet. Probably not. It should hurt his pride to admit he took the brunt of the physical damage in an altercation with Sirius, but he doesn't see anything worth being proud of in graceless brute strength. He broke his nose. So what. Severus only restrained himself because he knew if he didn't, Sirius would be dead. ".. It's fine."

In his defense, she's probably equal parts nosy and concerned. They bleed into each other so frequently that sometimes there's no telling the difference between the two of them. She likes to think that she's a good enough person to favor concern over curiosity, especially in coming across the only real person she's had an exchange with that didn't leave her confused or aching. She still hasn't been able to shake off seeing Nathan and has shoved it back into the corner of her mind somewhere in favor of focusing more directly on the dark splash across the color of Severus's shirt.

Blood she can deal with. Seeing people she's buried walking and talking like nothing has changed is what's got her all caught up.

"You look pretty fine for someone who obviously got punched in the face," she says, stomping on the urge to make an you-should-see-the-other-guy joke. "More magic? And how exactly did you manage to entice someone into trying to break your face?" She kind of laughs, not outright and more as her own way to break tension over anything else. "We've been here, like, five minutes."

"I ran into an old friend," he says, the faux-casual tone of his voice tempered down with dryness. "This place does not recognize time as a concept when borrowing people, and while I am many years removed from schoolyard grudges it appears he is not."

That is a very generous description of what happened favoring Severus rather unfairly, but oh well. Sirius did start it. He almost feels like laughing about it, but that might lead to him looking like a crazy person and that's best avoided. Not for the first time he permits himself a brief fantasy in which he killed Sirius; it would solve so many problems. He was furious that he was taken away to Azkaban three years ago, wishing immediate death on him instead - over time he'd come to believe it was better, making him suffer for years first, losing his soul bit by bit to the Dementors. Now he rescinds that change, because now that he knows Sirius is locked up for Pettigrew's crime, the possibility of him being released exists. And what a shame that would be.

"And, yes. More magic."

Edited 2014-02-11 18:44 (UTC)

Claire makes a noise in the back of her throat, something like a snort wrapped up in a bitter ball of twine, exasperated and black with humor all the same. She wishes they were walking but is equally glad that they aren't around a throng of people to clog up her perceptions and blur her peripheral, both for the sake of the blood on his shirt and for her own selfish purposes of not really wanting to answer anymore questions. You don't remember? or we thought we lost you, and she has no idea what any of them are talking about. At least this conversation makes as much sense as it can given the context. It's always been easier for her to investigate others in the interest of not talking about herself but that might have been a clue right there, that small sound in her throat.

"This place seems big enough that you might actually be able to avoid each other if one of you tries hard enough," she points out, though without knowing the scope and depth of his resentment and the fantasies that accompany them, it just comes off as trite. She's been on both sides of the line, but she can't say with any amount of honesty that she ever wanted Jackie dead. Considering how dead she actually ended up, schoolyard grudges seem so stupid in retrospect. Considering the small, red splash on his shirt, they don't get any less stupid.

Vaguely, she wonders how old he is, what the other person's name is, any number of questions that would get her any number of answers, but rather than asking that question instead says, with a look that borders on a wince, "Sorry you've had such a crappy day."

He'd have an easier time with those questions she doesn't ask. This general feeling of polite concern, sympathy, he's not sure what to do with. For a moment Severus just looks at her, in the space of conversation where one might say 'It's alright' or 'I've had worse', like he's an actor who's forgotten his lines. She may feel as though he's staring at her like she's suddenly grown a second head.

What are you playing at? What do you want from me? He doesn't ask because no matter how paranoid he is he isn't quite so stupid as to think there's a personal motive here. They have the same preceding numbers on their arms (his is covered, always will be, because of what else is on his arm) so they'll be housed near each other, he is now a 'familiar' face, who did her a favor. He's dug his own grave here and he's unaccustomed to doing anything besides shouting at people from the pit. At the moment he doesn't have the energy.

"That's nice of you," he says eventually, awkward.

Yeah, second head about covers it. She wonders if she should go or say something to fill the space in which he has apparently forgotten how to respond. Maybe she's being annoying. There's a very real chance that she is, given the circumstances and her inability to leave him alone. In reality, Claire probably doesn't need to prolong any of their interactions, given how often she's maintained that she doesn't need anyone's help and would be better off doing things on her own, never mind how much she enjoys the company when it's there, but this is good. This focus on someone else, no matter how much he probably doesn't want it.

"I could punch you if you're feeling weird about it," she almost immediately replies, decidedly less awkward than him.

He raises his eyebrows in a 'Could you even reach my nose to break it again, shorty' kind of way, but doesn't comment. No, as used to aggression from other people as he is, that will not be necessary. Her friendliness, he realizes, is another sort of aggression in itself, though one he's unused to being confronted with. She should probably go find and easier fussed-at target, really.

"Your advice is becoming contradictory."

That is a joke. Kind of.

You're hardly the first person to give her that look, Severus, and as a result Claire is more than prepared to return the volley with a look of her own, trying to climb the inches between them in an effort to compensate for what she can't match. It's silly, even more so here in the middle of a spaceship's hallway with numbers etched into their skin and communicators that crackle with static and strange messages when she puts her ear up to it. But maybe that's a little necessary at times.

Either way, what Claire lacks in height she makes up for in sheer ferocity. It's just his luck that she isn't the one who's hellbent on breaking his face - although, part of her thinks she might like to know who is, just for the sake of knowing - and is rather momentarily fiercely devoted to crowbarring her way into his time aboard the ship.

"Don't tell anyone. People might stop taking me seriously if they thought I was inconsistent."

If she keeps up the crowbar act, she'll find out. He knows the cease-fire with Sirius is temporary at best. The ship may be large, but it's still a confined space. They'll come to blows again sooner or later.

"What a shame that'd be." It's not as cynical as it might usually be, with him. Severus is tired - in the few hours he's been awake post-tube full of space goo, he's had a hell of a day that's rather sapped his will to behave like a bear trap against the slightest breeze. He'd rather spend the next twenty-four researching instead of sleeping, though; while it might be tempting to crash and hope to awake at home, all of this just a strange dream, the idea of letting his guard down so completely so soon makes him nervous.

"Already off into the new frontier?" He sees you going in the opposite direction of your room, Claire.

"I've never really been good at sitting around and waiting for something to happen," she answers, taking his less than sour approach this time around as an invitation to not cut the encounter short.

It's by sheer force of will that she's managed to maintain this level of both productivity and general amiability given the situation. That, or some kind of resigned expectation and acceptance that everything in her life is on a crash course for the worst scenario possible at all times, speeding along without any intention of stopping unless she physically gets out of the car and stands in the way. She's tired, too, which says a lot about what's at stake and what's actually happened, but she maintains a carefully polished front without having too try too hard, as used to keeping up appearances and smiles as much as possible, enough that it's become as engrained in her personality as anything else about her.

The idea of becoming stagnant, of not moving, of not trying to get to the bottom of things as much as she can, makes her feel suffocated, trapped in a glass jar.

"If I wanted to sit in a small metal box and wait for a roommate who's probably going to plot out a career map or smell like pickles, I would've just stayed back in my dorm room." And she sees that you obviously haven't been to yours, Severus. "You should check out yours. I'm sure it's at the height of interior design."

"Indeed, a vital concern." Smelling of pickles. Yes. What? You're weird, Claire. Severus considers the logic behind that (the sitting still thing, not the pickles thing) and he understands it. He's doing something similar with reading the entire two-year backlog linked through the network's information directory, but less physically so. Soon enough he'll be out poking everything hands-on, matching idea to reality.

That is, if he doesn't wake up back in his quarters at the school. Though he feels intuitively that's just wishful thinking.

Maybe it's his time to offer pointless advice, so: "Don't fall out an airlock."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

hi from work

you must be hella busy

and then i had a table that wouldn't leave

fffff

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject