ataraxionlogs | ( open ) show me how to lie

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( open ) show me how to lie

CHARACTERS: severus snape & a variety of people patient* enough to put up with his ass. (*maybe)
LOCATION: various.
WARNINGS: tba.
SUMMARY: open log for april.
NOTES: if you want to do something but can't think of an opener, feel free to send me a pm, i don't mind writing starters!

Maybe, Severus reflects as he stares down at his arm in the privacy of his small quarters, the whole department thing was a bad idea. SCI » 028 » 084. It inspires a kind of tired bitterness in him thinking about the advances muggles have made in science while wizardkind have hidden away and gotten very good at hovering in place. He remembers the American venture of Apollo 11, remembers the terror and wonder of it, nine years old and imagining if that's what these slow and dull creatures can do just think, just think, what's waiting for him in the world his mother comes from.

SCI. SEC. OPR. He imagines arrangements in three letters for other headings. For gravity management or temporal repair, for mysteries and healing. Science is such a lifeless word and here he is with it stamped next to another, older brand, both self-chosen in one way or another. Xenobiology is a joke and he knows it but his interest is real, and his determination is true - if he has to crowbar magic into this place with stubborn viciousness and arguments then so be it. He won't be trapped here otherwise and damn everyone who disbelieves or shrugs it off or rolls their eyes. They are incomplete people. They have to build machines to see just a fraction what he breathes and touches and manipulates. And he will not hide from them.

He works, both in the "safe" laboratory they've been shuffled to in accordance to security's fussing, and also up in the burned-out attic space of the forsaken genetics rooms. He senses the instability, but doesn't fear it. He cooks meals and occasionally tolerates company, he visits the gardens - for royalty or for his own version of hunting; he considers trying to plant things, has little aborted fantasies of potion-brewing, but doesn't go anywhere with it. He contemplates a dozen projects and, hell, maybe he'll do all of them. It's not like he's going anywhere anytime soon.

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Lately Rey has been trying not to close her eyes, and her sleeplessness starts to show. Not that she allows it to daunt her from her routine in any way. After patrols she still swings by one of the nearest bars for some respite, and afterwards makes her way back to the gardens to rest. She had, in more than one lifetime, survived several nights in warfare on one hour of sleep. Sleep was often seen as a luxury.

Well fed and hydrated, she travels from the paths of the garden. It's quiet here. Peaceful. And it's easy to lose sight of civilization. No wading through the throng of waking people in the medbay from one jump to the next. No patrolling corridor after corridor, waiting, expecting someone to come by eventually. No, she's made it this far because, before recent, she knew better than to stick her nose into business where it didn't belong.

So why was she only now getting involved...?

Rey needed to think. When she had to think, she meditated. But not in the way her father, a self-proclaimed Jainist, would have practiced. Rather, Rey settled in an enclosed area, surrounded by nature-like things. She likes nature things. They remind her of being alive. It's a rare moment she needs right now as she sits down cross-legged, her back to one of the trees as she pulls out a portable tape player from her travel pack. Putting the big headphones over her ears, Rey listens. The first act of Andrea Chénier begins to play.

In most cases, it's a soldier's habit to remain aware even during times of complete distraction. And she is. So very aware, even when she makes herself blind and deaf to the world with music and closed lids.

Severus spends hours in the lower levels of the gardens. For a little while, lost in thought on his hands and knees in dirt and plants, his primary consciousness forgets that he is where he is. There are a few surreal, dreamy minutes where he's at Hogwarts behind the greenhouses, pulling out 'weeds' with barbed ends for personal projects and seventh year assignments. But his gloves are woven mesh instead of dragonhide, and the sun that filters through against the back of his neck is unnervingly consistent. He is far from home.

The idea of potionmaking is a comforting one, even if he's not sure he can do it here. Maybe he can make a cauldron, but the best ones are formed the old-fashioned way; forged. There's a forge here, yes, but it's not staffed by anyone he recognizes as having the right education for what he wants done and-- part of him is hesitant because he thinks it'll feel worse to have it and not be able to do anything with it.

You've been trying to quit since you were hired, he tells himself.

It doesn't really help.

Severus ends up along a path, jumpsuit pulled down and tied at his middle in concession to the heat leaving him in a black t-shirt - and still his left forearm is bandaged. A rare sight anyway. He carries with him a flat basket full of bits of borrowed leaves, roots, petals, samples of earth. When he sees a figure sitting ahead, he stops. Considers. After a moment he sets his basket down and himself alongside it. Hell with it. He's exhausted, and he's not risking Apparating or wandering too close to someone who might leap into action and try and take his head off for disturbing them. He can wait.

Aware.

Sensing her surroundings shift, Rey's eyes snap open. Gérard's aria continues to resonate in her ears, her mind as she stares at the space ahead of green foliage.

--n dì m'era di gioia, passar fra gli odi e le vendette--

The scent of smoke and mortar fill her senses, if only for a moment. Just a moment.

--Ah, peggio! Uccido e tremo, e mentre uccido io piango!--

Then the smell is gone, and all that's left is green.

Blink.

In one life, trudging through the jungles of war, perception could save your life. Awareness. Instincts. Recognizing that itch when you find you're being watched, and knowing when it's necessary to act on it. One slight misstep could mean your life.

And Rey knows this. Because she's misstepped before, and lost her life countless of times. But there is no do-over on the Tranquility. There is no death and rebirth, certainly not for her. So she acts, purely on instincts.

She rises, prepped to reach behind her back for the knife behind her belt as she announces: "I see you."

Rey knows better than to treat this ship like it's a battlefield. Announcing her presence is otherwise not an action she would make habit of.

Severus gets a few minutes to space out in, and then the woman stands up poised for what he can only assume is precision disembowelment, and he's content in his decision to have kept a wide distance.

"I assumed you would," he says, calling out to her in a dry tone. Calling out as much as he does, anyway - low-pitched, only just loud enough for another human to hear. (People expect him to be louder, with how sharply he can speak, but Severus has a habit of forcing those around him to pay attention.)

"I don't mean you any harm."

--is not something he normally points out, but she looks like she's going to pull a weapon on him, and he's just. Sitting there, across the way. His own memories of war are dark shadows like silk and stabs of strategic pain, blood and acid under his fingernails; her battlefield is not his.

The shots fire, the gunpowder and rise of smoke -- dissipate into a memory as the present takes hold.

Where are you now? she asks herself, since her father is no longer around to ask her such a question.

Oxygen Gardens. Tranquility. Here.

Here.

The word repeats in her mind again before it becomes real, and she's grounded again.

"Apologies." Rey drops both arms at her sides, showing that she's distancing her fingers from any weapons on her persons. Some may call her paranoid. Rightfully so.

It's a little concerning, but he's not defenseless, and for once he's not in the mood to snipe at anyone verbally. Severus just raises one hand, palm up - the universal signal for 'it's cool, yo.'

"Everything all right?"

He doesn't sound very invested in the question. Clinical, not personal. There's a reason that Ilde came to him to figure out her recent ailment; she assumed he wouldn't ask about her feelings. She was right. It holds over elsewhere, as a rule.

Rey nods, silent at first. She glances down at the spot where she had previously been sitting.

"Meditating. Though it seems to stress me more than less." How Jainists or any people could base their whole philosophy on the act is beyond her. She divulges the information rather matter-of-factly, though, with no sense of urgency despite her initial disposition.

He shrugs. It's a shallow movement.

"Some minds are not meant to go still."

Severus cannot bring himself to do anything like meditation, personally. He does enough to his own head already; turning it off when he doesn't have to seems claustrophobic and uncomfortable. No thanks.

He remains where he is, sitting, an odd contrast to her alert posture - doesn't feel like getting up yet. A sudden drop in temperature is an unrealistic fantasy, so he needs another minute before he'll feel capable of basic function again.

There are a number of people she can think of at the top of her head that would apply to that statement. Rey did not think herself to be one of them, until she had several lifetimes of true and false memories restored into her brain. Now her mind is like clockwork. Constantly in motion.

It's a miracle that she can ever get herself to relax. At the very least she can get herself to a less predatory posture, as she reminds herself that this isn't the time or place.

"Suppose so." She pauses, giving the stranger's presence some consideration. "What're you doing here?"

More a question out of curiosity than one that demanded an answer. She certainly wasn't going to start kneecapping him for one.

Waiting out the patience of someone who seemed like they might try to kill me isn't an acceptable answer, so: "Coping poorly with the loss of my reality and the failure to mimic it here." Wry, and probably not serious. He pushes his hair back, and thinks he probably looks worse than usual right now, the victim of sweat and untidy attire.

"Just looking at plants," he offers soon after. Severus isn't actually that bothered by the Tranquility itself, not like so many others are. There are a lot of problems to work around, to be sure, but Severus is a problem-solver and not someone who accepts a knot as unable to be undone. He has plenty to do, even though he might prefer to do something else. That something else isn't possible, his preferences are not really that important. So he's fine.

A couple years ago, Rey might not have quite caught the implications of that tone of his. She'd have taken things literally and asked him to elaborate.

She doesn't, because as such, she's had plenty of experience with the art of sarcasm by now. It's his lucky day.

"Looking for any specific plant?" Rey asks, more keen on getting to the point.

"No." There is no point. He's just sitting here, not keen on getting jumped. "I'm an alchemist. Everything is, inherently, interesting." But not inherently useful. There are a lot of plants here that look familiar, but given the setting and the circumstances, he can't be sure they are what they are, or that they have the same properties as he's used to. It's going to take quite some time to sort through everything.

"Alchemy." Rey cants her head. "I gather that's what they used to call it."

She's seen a lot of things. Considering her father's research, it's not far beyond the realm of reason to assume that he could have, at some point, been considered an alchemist in his line of work.

"Science," he begins, forcibly patient, "is a field whose origin is rooted in failed alchemists being upset at being called frauds, which is what they were. It's moved along admirably."

Comparatively, is the inaudible, wry addition. Severus finds elements of science interesting and he finds the ingenuousness of muggles occasionally fascinating - but it's also sad. The passion and effort that goes into building more and more complex machines just to do things that witches and wizards can do at will is enormous. It should be sorcery that has that backing.

Pleasant, this one is. Not that Rey is one to talk -- quite the opposite, actually.

Her eye squints, mulling over the reply. "Yes, that's certainly one way of looking at things." She's really not one to take offense, or even tell him that he's wrong, since he's not. "Though in my experience, combination of the two has proven somewhat efficient."

Severus raises his eyebrows, but there's no real energy behind the expression. Yeah, he doesn't really give a fuck about science-- great for the guy co-heading a science department, but them's the breaks.

"What's your experience?"

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( open ) show me how to lie

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wow i lost this notif #thanksobama