( 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]

"I'd rather be somewhere else." So it's neither, actually. "But this is where the items I'm conjuring are landing, and I've still got a saucepan that hasn't shown back up."

Which means if Jax was aiming to be alone-- well. That stellar company is sticking around for at least a little while. Maybe he'll get up and grab something to drink if staring at the equation he's just jotted down fails to make sense in the next three minutes. The variables as he's measured and recorded them all total out the way it's written down, but side by side they're chaotic and shouldn't work together. But somehow it ends up functioning, albeit with broken results. Why? He glares down at the paper.

[kutte]

"So if you were to wave that stick at one of us and send a person flying, they'd drop out here? In pieces?"

It's one way to get someone from point a to point b, but it probably wasn't the most comfortable way to travel. Jax taps his thumb against the edge of his glass, doesn't lift it to take a drink.

"What else are you capable of doing?"

[darkart]

Severus pretends to ignore the stick remark. He doesn't typically use his wand if he can avoid it - Hogwarts never managed to kettle his magic like it did many others; potionmakers tend to lean that way regardless, but Severus is particular even among them, having been so adept as a child even long before he knew of the existence of focusing tools. But, he's aware of the stereotype, and that Sirius has been all over the bloody ship for two years vomiting trite 'information' and parlor trick demonstrations. He will endure. Somehow.

"They'd probably just die." Severus deadpans this, and wordlessly accios a glass to his table with an empty hand, then follows suit by conjuring some of whatever Jax has been fussing with from the bottle into said glass. "What are you capable of doing?"

[kutte]

"Shoot things."

Dryly, though he's watching Severus intently. Casual displays of magic are still something Jax finds fascinating, even if he's trying very hard to pretend otherwise. He's deflecting, doesn't want to talk about his skillset. It's limited, comparatively, but no one needs to know just how much illegal shit Jax is capable of doing.

"You think they're going to find anything out there? Shep and her band of merry men?"

[darkart]

Well, Severus can't shoot things. Not that he, you know, cares, but that's something. He recognizes Jax's evasiveness, but doesn't have the inclination to press-- that sort of thing requires investment in other people, and usually invites it being done in return. He's just as unwilling to discuss his own personal life.

(Enter jokes about not actually having one here.)

"Of course they'll find something. It's highly likely that 'something' will be week-long disorientation and headaches, but even if that's all, it's still more data to be recorded where there's currently very little or none at all."

He tries some of the synthetic alcohol and thinks it tastes like watered down cough syrup and possibly a little windex. "The more people forget, or leave, or die, the more important records of our reality will become. Shepard seems to understand that." The lack of them as it stands is already frankly alarming to Severus.

[kutte]

"The amount of people yammering about shit on the network is record enough. I think so, anyway."

Though Jax understands what Severus is driving at, he has an inherent distaste when it comes to recording every damn thing. Even if they're in space, Jax's kneejerk instinct is that the most they should be doing is resorting to Jax's preferred style of recording, things kept to themselves, and kept vague. Nothing possible of implication, that's Jax's instinct.

"You think it matters what people remember when we're all gone?"

[darkart]

"'Mattering' is relative," he admits. "It might be pointless. But if it isn't, we're bloody fucked for having not bothered."

Severus isn't passionately determined to solve the mysteries of the ship. He's an academic who loses his mind when he's bored, and being in this situation makes it worse. What else is he supposed to do with his time? Drink?

Well.

"It's the paperwork alternative to something... like storming the bridge."

[kutte]

Storming the bridge. Which Jax was a part of, had seen just how badly that had gone from the inside. His expression tightens, but he smiles anyway, leans his weight forward on the bar.

"I can get that."

Fucked for not having bothered. Jax has been motivated to less helpful courses of action for that very reason. At least this has the potential to resolve something.

"I'd offer you a hand, but I'm not your guy for all that magic shit."

[darkart]

Severus (surprisingly?) doesn't think the bridge incident was foolish. Had he been on board at the time, he still wouldn't have gone, but he's always happy to enable other people to do dangerous things he can take notes on. Even if they'd all died, he would still consider the surviving data important.

"Not even fellow mages are going to assist with any of this," he says, voice caught in a wry twist. Severus is uniquely dedicated to the things he does, which tends to drive anybody he works with insane. "Gunnery, you said? I don't think I've even seen a gun since I was a child." Severusyou're24stopit

[kutte]

"You going that far outside the box?"

Jax's perception of magic users was that there wasn't really any hard limits. But maybe there was. Or maybe Severus was just unconventional. It's hard to call, this early in the game.

"Not big on guns, or what? You ever learn to shoot?"

[darkart]

"The box is quite small."

It's the same way at home. Get your wand, learn your spells, copy texts, go about life in secret and make no advancements. It's infuriating. Here, most have balked at him for daring to ask about whether or not anyone's done something as scandalous as take notes on how the ship impacts magic. Oh no. He has very little faith in any help - Wendy's been the exception, and even though her work ethic is questionable, he respects her for throwing in with anything.

But, anyway.

"They're not present in my community. Even most adult witches and wizards where I'm from probably wouldn't know what a pistol was if you showed them one." And just in case Jax is getting any hilariously Disney notions from that he adds, dry: "We don't need little machines to blow each other's heads off."

[kutte]

"The box is always small."

Because Jax is, as always, his father's son. The lines drawn by society aren't for him, and never will be for him. The Sons exist outside the normal order. The idea of stepping outside it isn't what throws him, it's the idea that wizards even had a box that needed to be stepped away from. He'd sort of figured at that point, what sort of restrictions applied?

"Some of us don't have magic wands to wave around. We had to get creative."

And destructive, but that goes without saying.

"You know how to use one?"

[darkart]

Severus gives Jax a look. Maybe it's about the waving a wand around comment, maybe it's about the box comment. It's an odd thought to find an echo of understanding coming out of someone who looks like an extra on Bonanza; maybe someday Severus will stop making snap judgments about people. (That day is not today.)

"No," he says, and thinks it's been long enough that it's not even a lie anymore. His father's failed attempts at threatening a normal boy into existence within Severus included a few unimpressive ventures with a hunting rifle which must have been an antique even in the sixties. Severus won't ever mention it, like he won't ever mention the fact that he knows how to drive a car, and a handful of other damning things that no wizard should have any vague idea about. "Presumably the end that explodes is pointed at the other person."

[kutte]

"Yeah, that's the idea. Point the end at whatever it is you wanna blow away."

Or whoever. But that's probably not something to volunteer right off the bat to someone he just met. Besides, Severus strikes Jax as a bright guy. He can probably extrapolate without Jax's help.

"You wanna expand your knowledge past point and shoot?"

[darkart]

Obviously he means whoever. What else do you shoot at? Rocks? (Maybe tires on cars, but Severus has no idea; what he does know is most people shoot at other people, no matter the scale.)

"How much more is there?" he asks instead of saying No like he wants to. Or thinks he wants to. The k-word is a dangerous one - Severus has a hard time truly brushing off learning new things, even if they seem stupid.

[kutte]

"Plenty of shit."

Though Jax looks pleased, like the question is some sort of victory. Asking how much tends to be a prelude to "how fast can I learn that" or it was with Jax when he was a kid. He doesn't think they've got all that much in common, but maybe they've got that.

"It's not as simple as point and shoot. People who think it is get themselves hurt."

Playing cowboy got a lot of people hurt bad, but referencing that in casual conversation is just off the table.

[darkart]

Severus narrows his eyes slightly at Jax. What an irritating and subtle tactical move that is, presenting it as a challenge with the implied alternative sounding a whole lot like 'but maybe you're too incompetent not to blow your own foot off, whatevs'. Well played, grungy biker guy, well played.

"If I said yes?" to this terrible idea. Severus considers refilling his glass, but decides against it. Alcohol just makes him think of home, and listening to Lucius insult peoples taste in brandy labels.

[kutte]

"If you said yes, I'll teach you personally."

This is accompanied by a winning smile, like Jax has already decided this is going to be a victory. He flicks his fingers against his own glass, shifting it a bit farther down the table.

"Everything you'd ever wanna know."

[darkart]

It certainly is a dilemma. Severus doesn't care about guns. Not as weapons, anyway - as an aspect of local culture, it's apparently important. He's reasonably functional in the muggle world, but it's been a long time since he's had to do anything besides pass in a grocery store. Firearms are far outside his scope of experience, and perhaps given his current predicament, this should be rectified.

And really, he has the hardest time backing down from things like this.

"Fine." Even if he thinks he may regret this. "Let it never be said I'm unwilling to engage in cultural exchange."

(Somewhere in another universe, a Death Eater in Azkaban has started laughing hysterically and doesn't know why.)

[kutte]

Severus, how could you ever regret this? Doesn't Jax look like the most trustworthy and helpful of individuals?

"Anyone tries, I'll vouch for you." Because clearly Jax's word is going to carry so much weight in polite company. "Come down to gunnery whenever. You can even bring your cups."

At which point Jax gets up, snags the bottle, leaves the cup.

"I'll see you around, Severus."

[darkart]

Perhaps oddly, there is something about Jax that strikes him as honest, at least, if not trustworthy (Severus doesn't trust anyone). If there were anyone on board who knew a suitable amount about the both of them, there might be cause for alarm, but fortunately those circles don't overlap! Nothin' weird about gun running biker gangs and Death Eaters, completely normal.

One hand lifts in silent, lazy farewell.

See you around.