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

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."

A suggestion which only leads to Claire actively wondering for a moment what would happen if she were to chuck herself out of an airlock. Or what might become of her if she were to float aimlessly in the nothingness smothering all around them without a suit. Probably not something that she should experiment with right away, but in the interest of testing her limits in this place, in determining what kind of player she might be in whatever fray she, or others, might get tossed into, it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

As far as pickles go, she'd probably take that that over any other insane option that could be thrown her way. But then again maybe not.

She laughs at his suggestion, more a snort than anything but there's still genuine amusement in it. Possibly more than there should be, and both her eyebrows raise as if to consider the option. "Also a vital concern. If I could even find one. This place is a lot bigger than I thought it was."

"It'd have to be massive to sustain conscious life comfortably," he observes. "Particularly this many people. And judging by the number of passenger floors it seems to be running on low occupancy at that."

This is veering dangerously towards a 'rambling teacher' moment, and Severus abruptly stops talking. Nobody needs to know he's memorized half the handbook on the network in the time it's taken him to get through the lift. No one cares, you nerd.

"Supposedly there are windows in the shuttle bay. But it may be restricted to crew."

Still, he'll be creeping around to get a look sooner or later. You can't not look out the damn windows in space.

Claire mirrors that desire with a more vocal, "I'd love to get up there and actually look out." Not that it would make a difference. It isn't like driving back into Odessa or Costa Verde and recognizing where you are by street signs and landscapes. She's not going to peer out into the emptiness of space and recognize a few stars or a passing planet and think, Right, KitKat Galaxy. Makes complete sense. But it does have the benefit of making all of this that much more real. Whatever ground she can find to stand on without shifting too much as she climbs up, she'll take.

"I gotta confess, the only real understand I have of space comes from one astronomy class I'm supposed to be in the middle of and a bunch of sci-fi movies." She looks over at him, not appraisingly but without ridicule. What can she say? She thinks nerds are cool. "You actually sound like you know what you're talking about."

So either he's seen Alien a bunch of times or...

"I'm a schoolteacher," still sounds strange to say, even three years and change into it. "Not any subject relevant to space travel." He pauses there, unsure how to really explain his interests as 'everything', because it's not really true, but sort of covers it.

He settles on, "I like knowing how the world works. Are you a university student?"

University, college, is sort of fascinating as a concept to him. As a very small child before the idea of Hogwarts overtook his entire consciousness, he thought about the half-dozen prestigious muggle universities he might attend. He'd never admit to to anyone from home but part of him would still like to go.

Claire nods, saying, "Yeah, I'm about halfway through my first year. I haven't managed to figure out much about how the world works yet, but I made it past Thanksgiving, so I feel like that's an accomplishment." She could relate to being interested in how the world works if she wasn't already so mired in her own dramas with regards to that question. There's a level of fascination that she's always going to maintain, but given her circumstances and experiences, it's never not going to be colored just the slightest bit jade. "I'm not sure if they consider getting sucked into some kind of giant, interdimensional spaceship a qualifying reason to ask for an extension on midterms, though."

Not that it actually matters. If time is still ticking away at the same rate back on planet Earth with all its abnormalities, the last thing she has to be worried about is trying to determine what major she wants to declare.

"It's a little weird to know that schoolteachers still get into fist fights." Not that he's obviously proud of the fact - or maybe he is; she clearly doesn't know enough about him to say one way or the other - but he does look awfully young to be a teacher. Claire supposes, though, that despite her more recent exposure to TAs, her perceptions of teachers are still firmly rooted in the ones that she had in high school, and he absolutely does not come across like her chemistry and Spanish teachers. "What do you teach?"

'Thanksgiving' sounds vaguely familiar but he's not sure what it is; decides he doesn't care enough to ask. Some sort of Americanism, probably. He's heard that the magical community in the US is more integrated to muggle culture than the community in the UK, but there's never been much information available on it. Who knows if it's good or bad.

"Everyone gets into fist fights in the right company," he says dully. No, he really isn't proud of it, and would like to have avoided it - he doubts he'll maintain a completely peaceful relationship with Black on board, but it'll never get to that point again if he can help it. Next time, he'll put him down immediately.

"I teach potion-making. Alchemy."

She supposes that's true. If she saw Sylar right now, she's sure that she could be enticed and antagonized enough into punching him in the face. It's never actually taken much when it comes to him.

"That seems more like chemistry than magic," Claire points out, making inferences based on the whole leaving her dry, if not warm, thing back there at the lockers. "Has it done much to tell you how the world works?"

She's only being half-sarcastic with that one.

"Chemistry," oh lord here we go, "is the scientific study of the changing properties of matter. It is more staring for hours into a blown-up slide of a cluster of atoms than it is things that fizz in jars. It is a mere facet of alchemy, which is not only study but practice, and is hardly confined by something as crude as physical matter."

He raises his eyebrows. "And it has."

A little taken aback, Claire raises her eyebrows in return and doesn't immediately say anything. When she does open her mouth to reply, her tone is a little more agitated than it's been currently, taking on an edge that's expressly used for sass and exasperation. "Hey, when I took chemistry, there was plenty of fizzing in jars to go around for everyone. And we don't exactly have alchemy at Arlington."

If they did, she probably would have signed up for it out of sheer curiosity.

"Or magic."

Hey, lady, you're the one who slighted his life's work by comparing it to dorky scientists flailing around in goggles.

"I expect that is the crux of our differences." A little dry. "The school I teach at focuses exclusively on magic." Pause, then-- "My society tends to avoid interaction with the outside world due to lack of understanding."

Understatement of the fucking century but it's an easy explanation and one much less insane than being abducted to a space ship residing in another dimension outside time. Magic users are too different and too dangerous to go mingling with the muggle world. That's the party line. The one Severus sticks to like a good little leashed Death Eater, these days.

Maybe she thinks chemistry is cool, okay.

"I don't know about that," she responds, which isn't a slight against him but probably comes off that way, given the tone of her previous comment. Part of her would like to say something, just to get a point in on her own, maybe about the carnival or about the free fall that brought her here - it's the last thing that she can remember, anyway - or about the running and hiding and holding her breath in abject horror at the thought of being discovered. None of it would make any sense without context, however, and she's not really in the frame of mind for story time. She gets it, though. Look at Gretchen. People are terrified of things they can't explain. Or obsessed.

Still, now she's even more interested than she was before. If anything, this is a little like hearing Samuel talk about the carnival, albeit with less nefarious purposes and overarching bad deeds. As far as Claire can tell at this point, anyway. "Is it a big society?" she asks, unconsciously running her fingers over the number on her arm.

Potions are cooler.

Severus hasn't considered that Claire might be anything but a simple muggle girl - because he's self-centered and as tolerant as he's being right now, he doesn't actually hold any respect for the average person. Average people are dull and uninteresting and probably violent; her tone makes him reconsider. But only a little.

"Not compared to the overall population of the United Kingdom. We have one school... it's..." he trails off, thinking about the population. Before Grindelwald, before Voldemort, Hogwarts might have a thousand students circulating at any given time of year. "We used to be larger but times have changed. There are maybe four hundred students at any time. Ages eleven through seventeen usually."

Distracted, suddenly, these thoughts reminding him sharply of who he is-- "I need to go, I'm bloody exhausted."

He's fine with discussing the facts. He's done it with plenty of parents, ones horrified to discover their mixed or muggle-born child has been sorted into Slytherin, or ones newly relocated to the UK, or ones too rural to know anything before the fateful letter arrived. But this is different and after talking with Harry and fighting with Sirius, dissecting Hogwarts like it's normal when it's a billion lightyears away by now is unsettling.

twenty-eighth jump;

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hi from work

you must be hella busy

and then i had a table that wouldn't leave

fffff

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