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

nbd i am fry's dog for you ok

[uncurse]

[ whether he means it to or not, the statement turns into a dagger when it hits her, digging right between her ribs. the word was floods her mind and it's all she can focus on for a moment, so she ducks her head a briefly collects herself. no one knows that. only her and belle. that's not a fair response, let alone something she wants to dig into right now. she's got her own issues with it to worry about.

because it's worse than just henry losing his father, or emma's own conflict and guilt over how opposed she'd been to any chance that he might be alive - to the realization that she didn't want that he was gone. it's the name. baelfire. it's swallowing the pill that she'd never really known him in the first place. he'd always been neal, everything that had shaped into the person that he was, that had motivated him to do what he did in portland, she'd never had any idea. and it made her feel even more the fool to think about it.

so while the emotion creeps unbidden into her voice, leaving it thick and rough around the edges and strained, she doesn't say what she's thinking. she deflects, single word response, something equally curt to satisfy his statement of the obvious. ] Yeah. [ it comes with a curt nod. in the grand scheme of things, what she should really be saying is that it's none of his business. but she doesn't. ]

cries about fry's dog too

[capsize]

[ it's impossible to miss the emotion in her face and that minimal response. making sense of it, however, isn't quite so easy. the delay this time isn't because his mind's elsewhere — on memories of bae, on what getting this far has cost. this time the distraction's all her.

despite all his claims of being unsentimental, this is the sort of thing that trips him up entirely. it doesn't matter if the details are completely different, if he has no idea the effect his words have had; bae's something of an open wound for them both, and it's common enough ground for him to give her this, at least. he'd be happy to leave it there, just walk away, but— ] And we're going to Neverland.

[ not so much stating the obvious as cuing her into the fact that he's catching on, even if the mechanics are still all out of place. there's a measured, almost critical note of realization in the comment. knowing about the common link, it's easier to wrap his mind around why he'd ever risk going back to neverland for emma's son. that doesn't mean it's a realization he's thrilled with. it's like the solution to a riddle without the pieces in between, enough to throw a wrench in the works without cleanly shifting gears.

when he continues, he doesn't touch on any of it. doesn't pry into her business further, doesn't elaborate on the fact that she's just thoroughly confused his plans. ]

Then I've failed. [ so much for the distraction. that said, there's nothing vindictive in the statement. it's far from light, but if anything it's searching — putting together the fact that timelines are flexible, the same as worlds, and trying to resolve where he stands. ]

/collects your tears

[uncurse]

That's one perspective.

[ where before she'd been reactive, driven by pure stubbornness, she's reflective now. realizing that he's piecing together what's going on, she doesn't believe she's gotten through to him. instead, she wonders if she's let on too much and given him some kind of ammunition he can use. she doesn't expect hook to have given up so easily, even in her own timeline - and she certainly doesn't trust the glimmer of hope burning in her gut that he might have done a heel-turn over one familial connection.

as much as emma wants to believe the read she's gotten off of him, it's her own judgment of people that she doesn't trust. neal's betrayal had fractured her ability to trust her own judgments, and left her guarded and paranoid even when her gut recommended otherwise. she'd made her share of wrong calls in storybrooke (sidney glass among them), and she hadn't been without bad decisions on the tranquility either: julian sark and will graham, for instance.

so she leans on her healthy sense of skepticism like a crutch, keeps her guard up, watches him like he's every bit unpredictable at this point. it occurs to her that maybe she'd be better off leaving him to his thoughts, but at this point, she's too socially awkward to extricate herself from the situation when hook looks so damn blindsided by this. she had, after all, gotten him right in the midst of culture shock. damn empathy. ]

laughs a little bit at poor emma tho

[capsize]

[ heel-turn is the right description, but that's part of the problem: he's completely capable of such a quick turn, and he's just as capable of reversing it. the fight with bae was enough proof of that, and maybe some awareness of that is what keeps him from reading too deeply into her guarded response.

it's the right response, in any case. hook's blindsided, caught up in a healthy dose of hindsight, and that's enough to make him abruptly civil — but here and now, stolen away from his admittedly hollow victory and faced with a new place and new information, unpredictable's probably an understatement. that much is made clear by the underlying hardness in his voice, and in the end that civility seems more like a mask, tiding him over while he untangles the rest.

focusing on the current situation isn't exactly preferable, but at least it's simpler. he manages to make the gesture reasonably nonchalant when he raises his hook, drawing back his sleeve slightly to get a glimpse of the numbered tattoo. ] Assigned quarters, I assume?

[ in this case, at least, the edge is more aimed at the implication that he'll be settling in. he has no intention of being here for six months. ]

her life is actually horrible

[uncurse]

Yeah. [ emma nods as she affirms it, reaching to pull up the sleeve of her jacket and shirt to show off the tattoo she'd been imprinted with on arrival. sec » 022 » 157. ] First number's the floor. Second's the room. You should have one, too. [ she hastily pulls her sleeve down, with the idea that it'll be before he can process and recall hers. knowing people have her number to reach her on the network is one thing, putting it in the context of inviting people to know where she sleeps is just discomfiting. ]

[capsize]

[ he catches the quick work with her sleeve, and it doesn't take much to put two and two together — particularly since hook had, in fact, been noting the number for that very purpose. they aren't allies. she said as much herself, and he agrees, but as of now she's the closest thing on this ship.

hook has the utmost respect for the seriousness of the situation, given that most of it's at his expense. still, this odd, quiet tension — it's nearly unbearable. so rather than maintain it, he slips into old fall-backs, offering up a sly grin. ] Come now, Swan; you're dealing with a gentleman. If ever I visit your quarters, it'll be because you want me there. [ spoiler alert: this statement is super wrong. ]

[uncurse]

[ she arches her eyebrows, nodding critically in a way that makes it clear she doubts that day is coming any time soon. at least she's smart enough to keep her expectations low with him ok. neal did her a solid and ensured her expectations of men of all kinds are like subzero. she fully expects he'll come charging in unwelcome, but she doesn't need to tell him as much, because it'd only seem like a resigned invitation. ] Good. [ she'll just keep it curt approval of his plan to not come in uninvited ok, that seems safer. ] Then, we're through here.

[capsize]

[ good to know he meets expectations, at least. hook can't help a quick glance to his closed locker — indecision over leaving milah's portrait, given what he's learned since running into swan — but aside from that brief hesitation, he's entirely nonchalant when he looks back to her. ] I suppose we are. [ a beat, then: ] Unless you've got time for the private tour—

[ trying to goad her into leaving first so he can get back into his locker without looking like a total dork? possibly. ]

[uncurse]

[ she isn't even taking him seriously at this point, because how could she possibly? rather than be offended or defensive, emma simply rolls her eyes at the insinuation, holding up a hand with the intention of putting that dog down right now. hard-pressed for patience and no longer interested in whatever she's been getting out of putting up with him this long (why has she put up with him this long? sark's commentary nags at her, and she pushes the question out of her mind entirely), she drops the hand and gives him one final, exasperated look. ]

Try not to get yourself killed. [ she shakes her head as she turns away to excuse herself and head towards the elevator, with every intention of taking a jog around the halls before she actually loops back to her room to settle down. she's too keyed up - waking up while coming off the panic of the bridge, then encountering this ... unanticipated wrench that hook's made himself. yeah. she won't be cooling her heels any time soon. ]