( open ) show me how to lie

[darkart]

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.

Comments

[darkart]

That Severus uses the traditional notes of received pronunciation fits neatly against how he carries himself. Sometimes the edges or cadence of his speech soften - partially due to how reserved he is, though some of it can be chalked up to simply having lived somewhere else for a long time. Every so often a name or word will lapse into almost-Scottish pronunciation if it's how it first entered into his regular vocabulary, giving away that 'somewhere else' easily.

(His old accent, the one that tastes like bitter memories, is buried in a grave somewhere deep inside of him. It is not the real one, because what he uses now is automatic and not imaginary. That past is simply dead now.)

His gaze ticks over again, brief, when the topic veers from location to date. He returns his attention to his cooking. "Nineteen eighty-four."

The stove is shut off. For a moment he has to stop and look for where he's put all his utensils - if no one else is around he lapses into homely habits, spoons and ladles operating themselves, dishes wandering into the wash of their own accord. With company he finds himself deciding to do things manually, a bit exhausted of the reactions at this point.

"December," he adds, soft-spoken as he sorts his food. "Perhaps, now, nineteen eighty-five."

[ryuuzaki]

December of 1984. He had been small, not quite in school yet. His mother had worked on her dissertation and had had very little time for him, but there were chocolates, and the astronomy show on the telly, and his father sometimes brought him books of puzzles, speaking to him in French. There must have been more to it, but it was easier to remember as an atmosphere -- hazy, warmer than his life would be again for some time -- than with specificity.

All of that had changed after 1985, and his sentimentality about it had only been keen for a few years, and only by his own definition. Opacity might have begun as part of his temperament, but it had developed into armor in the children's home.

"I remember it." He sounds almost jaunty, to himself, almost surprised, not making it all the way to cheerful... but of course, there's no guarantee that it was the same England, the same 1984.

What it does suggest is that this fellow, whose relative unfamiliarity also supports the idea, hasn't been on the ship for very long.

His brows (dark, delicate, hidden by his thatch of hair) draw together in a slight frown. "It was 2004 for me. I can't say how long it's been since then. The amount of time that passes in the jump seems to be erratic... thirty days once, then a year... I really have no idea how old I am anymore." His thin left hand strays up into the hair over his temple. "You get used to that," he says, finishing in the form of a vague apology.

If he had to guess, he'd say that his conversation partner is around the same age as him, maybe somewhat older. It's harder for him to place than usual, harder than it should be. He wonders if his edge is now thoroughly blunted.

[darkart]

Severus shrugs. It's not an overly expressive movement. "Time is a dimension beholden to little. We're the ones who force ordering onto it."

There is a spoiled teenager here from his past, and a repressed young man here from his future. He's used and taken apart time-turners, he's dealt in prophecy. He has no aesthetic vanity and doesn't care about how old he may or may not be, just as he doesn't care how old he may or may not look, with mileage fighting against years. This is one aspect of life aboard the Tranquility that was never going to really bother him. Of December 1984 he remembers grading papers, and banning the song Karma Chameleon, and long meetings with the Headmaster where they discussed the population of the school now that the dead have been truly tallied. And snow.

"You've been here a long time." An observation based on the way this man seems to have mentally wandered off-course from his own center, judging by that resigned chatter - but he could be wrong. It's easier for him to read people if he watches closely, and Severus is focusing primarily on his food still. An excess of legumes in absence of anything else.

[ryuuzaki]

True, but that's a strange way to put it, L thinks. He's not sure what it means that a man from 1984 and a man from 2004 can be of a similar age, and having a conversation together, many, many years in the future. From a distance, it's almost the same time. To the jump drive, or to Smiley, or to whatever is causing them to appear there, is it all the same? 50, 1490, 1984, 2000, and what he would think of as the distant future... he thinks of that, then of the way that Charlotte had stepped out of his dream, and out of events of 40 years earlier.

He gives one of his own small shrugs, one shoulder, not a particularly eloquent gesture. "Longer than I'd like, but not as long as some. Tenth jump."

The way such things are arranged here annoys him if he thinks about it too much: visible network traffic can lead interested parties right to where someone sleeps. However, a point had come when he'd concluded that slight visiblity was preferable to no visibility: because of his involvement with Comms, because so many people try to exert their influence over the network, and because it's sometimes the best way to record and disseminate detailed information. Any potential downside that might have worried him in the past hasn't panned out as a real threat, largely because the single thing that life on the Tranquility has had to recommend it is that nobody here has any deep personal interest in killing him.

Impersonal interest is enough to worry about.

A glance at the water shows that it's not boiling yet, but it's getting there.

"It can't have been very long for you," he observes.

[darkart]

"Twenty-eighth." Jump, obviously. Not long enough to be properly jaded by the place, not really, but his unflappable demeanor suggests a certain dulled by exposure nonetheless. He's too cynical for his lack of mania to be blind hope that it'll all be over soon, so he's either that good at pretending, or his life at home is bizarre enough to leave him capable of taking this in relative stride.

"Do you want any of this?" is not a warm-hearted offer, but Severus always ends up making more than he'd eat at one time. Leftovers for practicality, and he's gotten used to people showing up and staring at him with huge and pleading eyes by now. He doesn't think curried anything goes with hot chocolate but, whatever.

"The forced veganism borders on maddening."

Yeah, sure, THAT'S the most annoying part, Severus. But really, he's English and has been living in Scotland, this whole surviving off of a single garden thing is vexing. He's a little surprised all the pets have survived this long.

[ryuuzaki]

No, it hasn't been long since the twenty-eighth jump at all. For the moment, he turns his attention to the offer of dinner.

"People used to make tuna casserole almost every night. What is this? Curry," (that's obvious from the smell, which tends to overwhelm that of ingredients that aren't the spice mixture), "but what's in it?"

Vegan... probably some carrots, maybe something like lentils. Curry isn't to his taste at all, but he needs to eat, and so he tends to lean on other people's oversized portions and leftovers if he has the chance to. He eats a lot of fruit, too, but this has been a way to get used to eating all kinds of things: training in tolerance, but not tolerance for meat.

The smell is strong, but not really terrible, and it's been a while since he's had a hot meal.

There may still be canned fish or poultry around, particularly on one of the upper floors, but he doesn't mention it. If it's there, it may be needed in the future.

There are fifty-one floors of passenger quarters.

What happens at the fifty-second jump?

What will it mean if he's no longer on the Tranquility to see it?

What if there's no fifty-second jump to see?

[darkart]

He'd just say that canned meat doesn't count, anyway. Ew. "Potatoes, peas, lentils, carrots..." he lists a few other things, whatever's growing in the oxygen gardens and is sturdy enough to not dissolve immediately. It's a lot of starch, but not quite enough to be alarmingly unbalanced. The result of a man really, really sick of grilled eggplant sandwiches, mostly.

Severus isn't thinking about that far ahead in the future of the ship. He doesn't have room in his head - the future for him is a looming war that might as well be apocalyptic. He'll live on here for a while, or he'll vanish, or he'll be killed, or whatever, and at some point he or some other him will go back and manage that war and he will die doing so. The Tranquility feels transient, like stepping behind the camera of the film of reality.

Absentmindedly, he calls a second bowl over as he takes his curry off the stove and transfers it from the pan. It hovers obediently at his elbow for a moment until he picks it up and puts it down on the counter, to either be used by this other man or to be shoved in a fridge.