twenty-eighth jump;

[ataraxites]

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.

Comments

Re: Lúthien | some ota and some closed

[fertilefeet]

[At first she tenses, as his mind seeks hers out and then cringes away from it just moments before he's there, grasping at her hair and making her cry out both in pain and panic. She doesn't need to have seen him before to recognize who he is, stories and the feel of his mind are enough. Instinct demands that she try to pull away but fear makes her freeze and Lúthien tries to steady her breathing, to seem less the terrified prey.

Very carefully though, while he speaks, she reaches out with her own mind, trying to find a familiar and comforting presence nearby. Anyone that could help. It is hard though with him there.

She had thought, with the voices of others, her own would be less noticeable. A naive thought when song was her gift, when her voice would bring about spring, but it had been a hope. And she couldn't ignore the song, couldn't not join her voice to theirs.]

Never have I sung in any other but in the halls of my father. Nor will I, if this is what I earn for it.

Re: Lúthien | some ota and some closed

[morgoth]

He imagines himself snapping her neck. She's frail. It would be easy. The life winking out of her eyes, her pale body going slack where he holds it.

But his violence is already drawing attention, and he is no more what once he was. His own powerlessness sets upon him wickedly, and he can almost feel his mind beginning to crack. Never has she sung in any other hall? His teeth are aching with the desire to rend her unliving.

So he turns her in his arms, so that her back now is pinned to the locker, and her face he upturns to him, one scarred hand gripping her chin, so that he may see himself reflected in her eyes.

"You have sung in these halls, lady, and they are not your father's. Dare you breathe treachery to me so lightly?"

[fertilefeet]

Lúthien is fragile, she'd never been so physically strong as her friends or as her fathers guards. What need was there when her mother protected them all and when she had such skills as her bloodline gave her?

Her breath is shaky, and so is she as he turns her around, and she tries to avert her eyes. Anywhere but looking into his own, she won't meet his gaze if she can help it. It's already enough that he's caught her unawares and vulnerable.

"I would not dare, no. I sing now because they did not deserve to die alone, to think that there were not those who would mourn them."

[morgoth]

His grip tightens, his fingertips depressing upon her scalp, her skin, hard enough to bruise, forcing her to look upon him.

"Little snake, slithering and sliding where you are unwelcome and unwanted, treacherous, foul spawn of your beast-bred mother." His mind reared up, coiling slowly around her spirit, as if it is a thing he can crack open.

"You will keep your forked tongue behind your teeth, henceforth. Won't you?"

[fertilefeet]

A whimper escapes her and she doesn't want to look at him or near him but she does, trying control her shaking still. If only in the hope that his hold might slacken. But better that than the feeling of his mind around her. At least that pain would fade quickly.

Her eyes burn, just briefly, at the mention of her mother. Her mother who is kind and brave, intelligent and strong, everything she thinks he can't be. Not in the same way, never in the same way. And she almost wants to voice her thoughts. Almost but she hasn't the courage to even try.

"My forked tongue?" It comes out more quickly than she can consider whether it is wise. And not for the first time since waking on this ship, she wonders just what she'd done, or will do, to so earn his scorn. Aside from the obvious fact that she even exists.