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.

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[She doesn't know how to fix this. She knows, better than anyone, that there are pieces of the heart that don't mend when they're removed, she knows that Sirius is broken in a way that matches the holes inside of her. It's not why she chose him, but it's proving, more and more, to be a reason she stays.

She backs up a bit, looks him in the face, and doesn't smile. There is nothing to smile over, is there? Instead she takes his hands for a moment, squeezes, and lets go to get her slate.]

You should come stay with me. We don't have to talk.

[It is one thing to her merit, and that is that Seraphim is blessed with silence.]

[We don't have to talk, and a bitter smile jumps to his face. He stares down at her slate, hard, until it blurs a little.

The thing about Seraphim is, she'd make good on that. They could sit and be quiet and that would be all right. And maybe it would help. He doesn't know what would help, right now, because the last time James was gone--he was in the ship. There was something to be done. This is nothing, this is just emptiness. James is gone, and there's nothing to be done about that. He has to live here with that.

He stares at the slate a moment longer, and then, abruptly, takes her hand and shoves away from the lockers, heading toward the lifts. His grip on her hand is tight, and he doesn't look around at her.]

[She is shorter than he is, her legs are shorter, so she has to move faster to keep up with him, but she does. His grip is tight and it hurts just a little but she doesn't complain - not that he could hear it if she did, but anyway.

At the lifts she lets him decide the floor, whichever floor - hers, his, it doesn't matter. She has her notebook in her violin case, so if he just wants to sit and be quiet she'll work on math. If he wants to talk or hold her or scream, she'll let him do that too.]

[He stabs the call button, for the lifts--and then, inside, he stabs the button for her floor. The thought of returning to his own is something he can't manage, right now.

He stares furiously at the buttons, as the lift goes up, ignoring the drop in his stomach when it starts, ignoring the hot feeling behind his eyes--focusing instead on the clench of his hand in hers, the way that tenses his arm.]

James is gone.

[The words come out, dull and flat.]

[She holds on tight, moves in closer. James and Seraphim had only met peripherally - they weren't close - but she knows how important he was to Sirius, or at least she has an idea.

That's one benefit, she supposes, of not having her brother here. He would never disappear. Although Seraphim deals with those things differently, she closes her eyes and tries to disappear into the blackness behind them, as if it could swallow her up.

When the lift opens to the sixth floor, she leads the way. Her room is it's usual nest, white pillows and blankets everywhere.]

[Standing in the doorway, the room feels small before he even goes into it. Too small, confining, like he's going to break something just by stepping over the threshold--but he goes inside anyways, goes to sit on the bed almost automatically, his shoulders hunched.]

Remus left last month. So now it's just me, I s'ppose. Better suited for this fucking place than either of them were anyways.

[And that isn't a compliment to himself. Far from it. He stares down at the floor again.]

[She sits next to him, cross legged, dropping her violin case on the floor, her slate on her lap. She doesn't move to hold him, or kiss him, just sits quietly for a moment, and the finally takes his hand in both of hers.

He's so angry.

She wishes she knew how to fix this.]

[Part of him wants to lean closer to her, take some comfort from that. But he knows he couldn't stand it for very long; he would quickly grow claustrophobic, or else his anger would overtake him all over again. He can feel it even now, as he clenches his fists, reflexively.

And then he stands, all at once, pushing away from the bed, pacing across the room, and then pacing back again.]

I don't know what to do.

[He admits it, tightly.]

[She looks at him, and suddenly, like that, like a math equation suddenly making sense, she knows what she did to the Mayor. She knows exactly how it worked, but she's keeping that to herself.

She knows a little how to help Sirius.]

S C R E A M

[She holds it up, nods her head.]

Right now.

[He stares at the slate, and then glances at her. Something of that sudden anger has bled from him, a little, filled in by confusion.]

Me?

[She gives him a look, like yes, you, how do you expect me to do it?]

Yes. Scream. Just.

It'll make you feel better.

Edited 2014-02-11 05:15 (UTC)

[Yeah, all right. He huffs a laugh at the look that she gives him, something short and bitter--but he looks away again, his shoulders hunched.]

That's not what I do.

[She stands up and shrugs.]

It can't hurt.

[She wishes she could scream sometimes. That she could open her mouth and something would come out. Maybe it's projection. It would make her feel better.]

[Shouting at people, that helps, sometimes. Punching things--punching people, and he tightens the fingers of his left hand at that thought, remembering the satisfaction of punching the hell out of Snape--but it hadn't lasted. That satisfaction had faded, quickly, and the hole of James' absence had only seemed deeper.

When he opens his mouth, he doesn't say anything that he was thinking, nothing about the effectiveness of screaming or shouting or anything.]

I just want him back.

[It comes out too thick; he swallows, furiously, his fingers still curled into a fist.]

[She knows how it feels. She knows what emptiness feels like, like a missing limb, only everything looks so normal.

She looks over at her violin.]

I didn't know him well, but I can play what I remember.

[It might not be enough. It might make it worse.]

[He's heard her playing, but hearing her play and knowing who it is--what it's meant to be--that's different. That feels heavier, somehow, weightier, and it fights down the anger in him and queues up everything else--weariness and desperation and sadness. Anger is almost better, if only because it's easier to deal with.

He stares at her, and then his eyes flick over to her violin.]

Maybe.

[She looks at her violin and nods, and opens the case. There's a check, quickly, to make sure it's in tune, and it takes her a moment to center herself. To think of this boy she barely met.

It's the hardest playing she's ever tried, really. She doesn't know him well enough, and sometimes notes elude her, they don't fit quite into place. But where it does work, she can capture it, where it does come together, for movements, he's there, in the room.

Those moments come a bit more as she gets into it, brief glimpses of who James is, but at the end it's not as good as when she plays Remus or Sirius, it's simply unfinished.]

[He can hear it. Even through the wrong notes and the misses, he can still hear James, and it's so uncanny it makes his skin crawl a little--and yet he can't get enough of it; he doesn't want to stop hearing it, even though it hurts, even though he knows that it's a weakness, taking refuge--however brief--in these notes, and he shoves the heel of his hand against his eye and presses, hard.

When she finishes, with those last notes hanging on the air, he still doesn't say anything, for a moment. And then he laughs, once, short and bitter. It snaps in the air. It sounds wrong, after all of that. Good and bold and happy and a little angry, but always back to happiness in the end. Brave and clever. That's James.]

Yeah. Good.

[She sets her violin down, curls her fingers up. They hurt - playing with that intensity always makes them hurt a little, even with calluses, and then she reaches for him again. Please-

She can't fix it but she can ease the hurt a little.]

[He doesn't move, at first. He stares fixedly at the floor, his gaze burning. And then, blindly, abruptly, he reaches for her hand, his fingers curling around hers, gripping tight.

And he still doesn't say anything. He just grips at her hand, his shoulders tight and hunched.]

[She moves slowly, like he's a dog baring his teeth at her - her free hand going to his shoulders, carefully, and finally to his face. She strokes his face carefully, thumb over his cheekbone, and she grips his hand, tight, too.

Maybe this would be easier for him if he were a dog. But she doesn't think about it, she doesn't suggest it. She just keeps holding his hand as if he's a lifeline, or maybe as if she's his.]

[He's thinking it, even if she doesn't articulate it. And he'll suggest it, maybe, in a moment--or else just do it, shift and lose himself in simpler emotions. It would be far easier to deal with all of it if he did.

In a minute, maybe. Right now he grips tightly at her hand, staring past her, through her, a muscle working in his cheek.]

He's good. He's-- better than your music could get at. He's good, so much better than me, and he's gone back just to-- to fucking die. Because he's so good. It would be shit, to lose him, if I knew he was going back to something good, but I know what happens to him, to all of us, and there's nothing I can fucking do about it. Instead I'm here.

[He barks a laugh, once.]

And Snape. This bloody ship, it takes James and it gives me Snape instead. This-- total bastard, I can't fucking stand him, and it brings him instead. Who says this place doesn't have a sense of humour.

[Snape. Snape. It sounds familiar but she can't place it. A conversation with Remus, maybe? About someone named Snape.

(She cannot link them, Snape and someone named Severus who she met at the jump.)

So she reaches for hand with hers, squeezes, presses her forehead to his. There are words she could say except she can't, all she has to offer him is the neverending silence. Silence and a half-finished song for a boy she doesn't know.

But then she lets go.]

This place is horrible. But I'll give you whatever you need.

Edited 2014-02-13 18:20 (UTC)

[He grips at her hand still harder, even though he knows it's got to hurt--or else it's going to start hurting--and he shuts his eyes and he grits his teeth and presses his forehead against hers, hard, right up until she pulls away. Even then, he doesn't look up straight away, not even when he hears her writing--

And when he does, he smiles, small, miserable.]

I know.

[Maybe ten minutes before, he would have snarled at her, dismissed that. Maybe later he still will. His emotions feel fucking mercurial right now, unpredictable, shifting from place to place. But he grabs for her hand again, letting that steady him. Trying to make it steady him, or let it.]

Thanks.

[His grip is a little too tight, it does hurt a bit, but she doesn't say anything, doesn't let it show on her face. Instead she presses her mouth to his forehead and moves so his head is on her shoulder, so she's hugging him, so he doesn't have to look at her or think about anything but the feeling of being held, if that's what he wants.]

twenty-eighth jump;

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