ataraxionlogs | [ open ] i have this strange feeling that i'm not myself anymore

Apparently, even having half his abdomen and most of his right arm surgically reconstructed isn’t enough to convince the soldier to keep his shirt on. The signs are nearly faded now, light patches of skin dotting his side where thin, silvery branches had sprouted from ribcage to shoulder, swallowing scars that had been there as long as he can remember. (If he forgets them, it'll be like they never were. Like he'd never had a history at all.) Even the line where transplanted flesh had attached to his own is disappearing, soon to blend seamlessly with the rest of his arm. The boundary between skin that is and isn’t his is almost gone.

(Does that mean all of it’s his now, or that none of it is?)

But now that it’s healed enough, he puts the new flesh to use. He washes up, letting new fingers linger too long under the tap. In the kitchens, he shovels coarse, light mystery-meat jerky into his mouth by the fistful. He does laundry in workout pants and no socks, bare feet against the cool metal flooring and his communicator perched on the edge of a counter, letting Charles Mingus waft into the atmosphere while he folds.

Every once in a while, he takes a rock step.

It is a mistake to be here. Mitchell knows that it's a mistake, but the sound of the music had caught his attention. Not that it's familiar. He knows names, record album and bands and music halls and jazz clubs--but in a vague way. Any time he was in a dance hall he was there with Herrick, sometimes with others, but always with Herrick, and always watching the floor with hungry eyes. He could make conversation, tell a joke, make everyone laugh--sip gin with the rest of them--and all the while, he was tracking pulses, hearing the gurgle of blood in a hundred warm and living bodies, all around him.

That's what the music makes him think of. He puts the thought away, but he's already at the door--a laundry room, and it looks empty, at first glance, but a movement in the corner catches his eye. And there's the music, coming out of the mobile, like this is any old laundromat. The flash of metal when the man moves his arm; the cold flat smell of it mingles with the living flesh and blood. Different than the smell of the hallways, but it helps, to take the edge off of Mitchell's hunger. This is too much for a test, he needs to find Annie, get back to their room--he should have found her the second she blinked out of sight next to him, this fucking ship, or Annie's attention span, or whatever is to blame here--

Mitchell tightens his fists, a little. Exhales. He can do this.

"Didn't know those things had any decent music on them."

Edited 2014-09-30 20:01 (UTC)

Reflexively, the soldier's feet flatten against the floor again, like he hadn't been doing anything at all, thank you. He casts a glance over his shoulder at the newcomer.

"Just this cycle."

It's funny, he'd found Mitchell's number easily enough, especially after Kate's recent less-than-anonymous outburst, but nowhere on the entire network had he found a video broadcast. Not one slip-up. Not even from someone else's comm. So what he has is a voice. A voice, a number, and a vague awareness of having put a face to that name from a distance one of the many times he's cataloged the residents of this ship. It's not much.

There aren't many Irishmen aboard, though.

"Some guys in Comms made a program. 'Forks' or something," he continues with a nod to the player, setting his t-shirt down half-folded to cross the room— to grab a basket, surely, not to check the hall to see if they're alone. "You know it?"

"Not by name. Just by sound." Still lingering mostly in the doorway, leaned up against the frame with his arms crossed over his chest, Mitchell shrugs a little. "I'm not saying all jazz sounds the same, but it does start t' bleed together after awhile."

Or maybe that just comes of experiencing decades of pop music. The nebulous divisions of that cycle of genre creation become a little harder to sort out when you were around for a lot of it. Jazz was never his best anyways. Or maybe it's everything that went along with that time, just like he'd thought in the first place. Better not to think of it at all, and Mitchell rubs a hand over his face again, like that might help to clear his head.

"Forks." He huffs, quietly. "I must have missed that. Who comes up with this shit. Anyways, uh. Good choice. That's all."

This is good enough for a conversation, probably, one he can definitely count as-- something near to a success. Not a failure, at least.

Just by sound. There's a funny pause to his smile at that. If Mitchell were just anyone, some stranger, that might strike a certain chord with the way music catches in his mind, not on names, dates, contexts, but from sound to emotion and association, one note bleeding into another. Memory plays by its own rules.

Instead he picks up the basket with a quick, cut-off clatter of metal against plastic. "Thanks."

"You're Mitchell, right?" The soldier offers over a hand, the real flesh-and-blood one, friendly-like and just outside arm's reach from where Mitchell's standing. Come on in a little farther, the water is fine. :) "Jack Davis. I've seen you around, I think. Good taste in gloves, too."

(No, really, fingerless gloves are the best.)

Any friendliness natural to Mitchell's personality has been tempered, recently, by wariness. In his hundred and eighteen years of life, he was most popular when he was a vicious killer. On the Tranquility, he has kept so much to himself that he's been nearly a non-presence--out of necessity, out of safety, both his own and the safety of his fellow passengers. And look what a fucking load of good it did for them all.

When Jack Davies says I've seen you around, there's a part of Mitchell's brain that scans that, that thinks, how does he mean that, when would he have seen him--most likely at the jump, but it's not like Mitchell's got his porter's badge clipped to his bare chest, clearly stating his name.

But that's a vampire's mind for you, always overthinking. Get out of it, he tells himself, you stupid fuck, he's being friendly, and Mitchell tries for something like a smile as he takes that step forward, to clasp Davis' hand. The metal arm he notes, with a fleeting glance, but he knows better than to stare.

"Yeah," he says, "Mitchell. And, uh, thanks. That's not what my housemates say about the gloves. At least I've got one other vote in their favour. Unless that was meant t' be sarcasm, and then you've got to work on your delivery, mate."

The soldier doesn't have any context for the nervous edge to Mitchell's smile; he doesn't even know enough about him or his type of vampire to speculate. When he sees that, all he sees is a window of opportunity closing, the first flickers of skittishness before prey darts for an escape, noted with serpentine stillness — and unlike Mitchell, he doesn't reign that quiet monster in.

"Nah, I mean it." Wow this handshake sure is going on for a while. "I don't know about your friends. I think you know one of mine, though." The sincerity drop out from behind his smile. (He thinks of forcing gloves over her greying fingers, the hiss of air between her teeth and the quick, panicked staccatto of her breaths — her high collars and long-sleeved shirts and all this shit she shouldn't have to deal with.) "Kate?"

–Is all the warning he gives, before his flesh hand closes tight and yanks forward. If that motion manages to pull the vampire off balance, not to worry, as the laundry basket drops with a snap and his metal hand comes up to catch under Mitchell's chin in the same motion, aiming to shove him back against the nearest wall by the neck.

Kate.

The name doesn't twist like a knife. It's more like a needle at the base of his neck, and the cold that he always feels gets colder. Oh, this is one of those, he thinks, with some detachment. Revenge. All those people you never think about, when you're tearing into a girl's throat--brothers and sisters, parents, cousins, friends, boyfriends, work mates. Tear a hole in all of them, never have to see their faces--but Christ, how the casualties compound.

The rest of him flies to the fight. Not quick enough; whatever movement he intends is quickly cut off by the slam of that metal hand. The force knocks him into the wall, hard, pins him there--and the manifestation happens somewhere in between, a literal blink of his eye and they've gone black, like the knock against the wall is what's done it--and his fangs show, quick, gleaming in the white light. His hiss is choked off by the weight of that hand at his neck; his hands scrabble at it, blind and angry and desperate.

"Let go." The growl of those words is warped and distorted by the metal hand--but it keeps some authority, like it's order enough to get what he wants. "Fucking let go, now--"

Edited 2014-10-22 19:43 (UTC)

Well, that's new.

But if it's revenge he's after, it's remarkably cold. Where Mitchell is all hot anger and desperation, the soldier is barely, carefully restrained. Calculated, the way his metal arm extends to its fullest, elbow buckling to a lock. His torso turns out of grasping range, the opposite arm dropping back at at a remove after that initial blow. Mitchell's taller than him, longer in the limbs and strong -- stronger than he could take at closer range, he suspects the minute he feels the vampire claw against his hold, but super strong bionic arms have their advantages. Still, he makes no move to do anything but hold him pinned. Cold chrome fingers flex and clench for purchase, but hold fast.

"Or you'll what?" he retorts, metal digging into skin hard enough to hurt but not damage. That's revenge, yes, but it's not all he's doing this for. A flat, reptilian curiosity outshines any satisfaction in his eyes. Mitchell sounds like the kind of guy who's used to being obeyed; what happens when he isn't? If all it takes is a hit to bring his fangs out, how close is he at any given moment to losing control?

(How close are either of them?)

"You gonna rip my throat out too?"

He even loosens his grip a touch to allow for an answer, like the other man's struggles don't even warrant caution.

"She's not dead." The press of the hand against his throat loosens, just enough so he can respond--Mitchell can recognise when he's being given permission to speak, to answer for himself. Something in him chafes at permission, snarls at it--but he overcomes it enough to answer-- "She's not dead, you stupid fuck-- I didn't kill her!"

This is what he's got to offer as an excuse? Paltry as shit, even he thinks that of himself, when he hears what he's saying. That's not even blaming his condition, that's offering up the grim aftermath of what happened like it's a consolation prize. Sorry I ripped her throat out, but it wasn't all the way out. Angry at himself, angry at this hold on him, this trap, Mitchell twists, gripped at the metal hand like he could tear it off. He can't. The hold is as inexorable as a shackle--but the throat is as flesh and blood as any other man's, and the rest of him, you could kill him, tear off this arm and kill him--

Mitchell chokes out another angry sound, this one directed only at himself. His eyes blink back to normal as he fights that instinct down, but his anger and fear stay tight in his chest. He can't be choked to death but, Jesus, he doesn't want it all the same.

"What d'you want? You want revenge?"

Paltry as shit is right, and yet the set of his brows wavers, although not in sympathy so much as uncomfortable recognition. She's not dead, like every living soul aboard this ship isn't dead, because he only wired the stasis pods full of explosives, he didn't blow them all to kingdom come — because someone stopped him.

(He flipped a switch in Philadelphia and killed more than a hundred people he'd never even met, and Anderson tells him he's not a monster because he was the weapon aimed and not the one aiming, but right now that feels like exactly as much bullshit.)

"Would that be easier for you?" Revenge. He's thought of it. How much clearer it would be for the families of all the people he's hurt to exact their own retribution, to give him closure instead of this aimless mess, as if they owe him anything half so fulfilling--

"No." That's not what he wants. He reigns his focus in, shaking his head. This isn't about him. Mitchell writhes, and that metal hand holds firm. These struggles are what he's after, testing the limits of the vampire's self-control, and the stubbornness of the soldier's resolve right burns back at him — but he's struck, too, by the fact that he hasn't lost control already. That half that anger is self-directed.

"I want to be clear," he says finally, tightening his grip again to avoid interruption. To make sure Mitchell's listening. "Kate's a good person. You hurt her, she'll make you sorry you were ever born, sure, but she'll hand you over to proper authorities after, 'cause she's a goddamn hero." His chin lifts to level his gaze at Mitchell. "I'm not."

So don't fuck up.

"Nod if you understand." Because he's not letting up on the choke-hold just yet.

If Mitchell does, though, he lets go. Last test.

[ she finds him in the kitchen, shirtless and shovelling food into his mouth like he's starving, and sits down opposite him with a bowl of cereal. ]

Hi.

[ she starts eating — but there's actually a reason beyond familiarity that she's sought him out, that she's sitting with him now, and so after a few bites, she continues: ] We're going to have to put our meetings on hold for a while. Not long, I hope, but I won't make the next one.

I'm sorry.

Tropical vacation? [ he guesses, between shoveling jerky into his mouth. ]

[ They're trapped on a space ship, ok, what could she possibly have going on.

He doesn't sound upset, though. She helps. She isn't obligated to. (He won't get dependent on it, the way he was on Charles.) ]

Something like that. [ her expression isn't quite a smile, but there's warmth in her tone before she sobers up: shoulders straightening, chin up. ]

Erik is leading some people into the corridors. He asked me to lead a team as well.

[ Erik prompts a little hesitation from him — they have a few things in common, but not things that inspire a spectacular amount of trust. But it's the destination that freezes his stare. ]

You know there's nothing out there, right.

No. [ is immediate, if quiet. ] I don't know that for sure.

I know that for sure.

[ And he does, with the same flat, absolute certainty he knows I serve the Party, the homeland, and the Soviet people. Not a smidgen of doubt.

He rakes a palm down his face, sharp and agitated, bag of mystery meat set aside. ]

Did they tell you what happened to us? To everybody who went in last time?

In as far as any of it is public knowledge, yes.

[ sometimes, they're made to believe things. she doesn't say that out loud. instead, her voice is quiet, calm, a counterpoint to the agitation in his movements now. ]

[ She's calm, and he is– not calm, but calmer for her steadiness. The tumult of his thoughts is subtle, straining the way his mind does against those other certainties, except he has no traction here, no cracks in the ice to give him purchase. Instead, it manifests as a low-level anxiety, a tightness to his shoulders and his teeth he can't identify. ]

And the parts that aren't public? That some of us just don't sleep anymore? Haven't gotten more than 5 hours since the nanite sickness hit, and it's— it's worse than that. You know it's worse.

[ She's seen in his head. That he didn't sleep for two weeks during the last jump cycle. The way his hands weren't his own. The way he still looks in the mirror some days and sees a stranger. He doesn't know — is that just him? Is that just the way his mind is falling apart? But if it is from the hallways, it's worth using to keep her from going. To keep her safe. ]

[ it's easier for her to be steady when she knows people are relying on it — even if, like with him, it's unconscious more than anything. her behaviour makes a difference, and that knowledge steadies her, makes her feel like she's on solid ground.

it's simple, really: ] If I can make a difference, or keep someone safe by going, it's worth it.

[ she doesn't think he's the only one, at least not entirely. others are experience ill-effects from having gone out. she remembers roy asking what it would take for her to want to kill herself, and the answer had been if there was no way for her to make a difference anymore in any way.

it'll be worth it; she has to try. ]

[ He pulls back, sets to pacing, fingers raking down his five o'clock shadow, because he knows that. He understands that much about her, respects it even, but— ]

And if it's all for nothing?

[ Don't die for nothing. ]

[ if it's all for nothing, so be it. it's worth the try; it's worth going if she can protect someone else or keep erik in line and stop him from thinking too much about sacrificing others for an uncertain gain.

but she doesn't say any of that in response to his words. instead, the only answer he gets is to his thoughts: ]

I'm not planning on dying. Or letting anyone else die.

[ His eyes shift askance, body language pulling inward — not at the reminder she's in his head (there is that, but he's getting used to it) but at the realization he's more invested in this (in her) than he should be. ]

Good. [ Firm, with a nod. Good. Fine. This isn't– he's not going to win this argument, he knows that much about her too, and that shouldn't bother him as much as he does. Still, ] If you wanna help people, you're going to have to survive long enough to do it.

[ there's no surprise, for her, in the realization of investment. she's known that she cares about him, for him; she hasn't let herself dwell on extent or meaning of it and doesn't, now.

she's known that he cares, too — he got angry on her behalf after arima. he'd given her steadiness, then. it's her turn these days.

with a dry twist to her lips, tone and expression making it clear that what she's saying is an echo of someone once said to her: ] Judges don't have a long life expectancy.

[ she might yet die young. a moment later, though, she sobers up, sitting a little straighter again. one of her hands reaches out to touch his lower arm. ] I'm not planning on dying. [ is repeated, reassurance and acknowledgement of his point. ]

[ Neither do spies, he thinks, even if he is apparently old enough to be somebody's grandpa. But it's good. The reminder grounds him. Life is short, especially for them.

The touch doesn't hurt either. His gaze drops to it, and he nods. ]

See that you don't. [ is said with a glance up to catch her eye, withdrawn but not without a certain warmer note, drill sergeant-esq brusqueness masking affection. (He shouldn't— but he's not always very good at doing what he's told.) ]

[ the brusqueness is familiar, and it's grounding in its own way because of that. the hall of justice is not military, but it might as well be for all that judges are trained like soldiers and for all that instructors sound like he did just now, only without the affection.

(maybe he shouldn't, maybe she should not be encouraging it — but her hand stays on his arm a moment longer before she gives it a quick squeeze and pulls her hand back.) ]

Let's spar once I'm back? I think there's still a few blocks you have to teach me. [ is a deliberate reminder that she is planning to return, and that their relationship is not a one-sided one whereby she gets into his head and he is a passive recipient. ]

Last jump cycle hadn’t been kind to his pecks either, truth be told. His usual bulk had gone lean and sinewy, weight dropping off him on the back edge of the bottomless appetite that had seized half the ship. But if the Tranquility can take that away from him, he can sure as hell bring it back.

(Whatever else he is, he is a weapon.)

He lifts until his arms are shaking, sweat-sheened and chest heaving. The next day he gets up and does it again, and again, until the barbells start feeling as light as they ought. Then he moves to the pommel horse. To the rings. To the mats. Handstands curl in slow motion to delicately held diagonals, drop inch by inch parallel to the floor, and lift again without ever making contact. It's an exercise in precision as much as strength. Control.

But he's always on the lookout for livelier opponents than gravity. His steps wind into other people's spaces on occasion, sharp eyes lingering just a beat too long in silent assessment. There aren't many people on this ship who can give him a real run for his money, but he needs practice more than a challenge, and doesn't mind offering pointers. Or judgmental looks. Whichever.

She doesn't, in all honesty, go to the gym much. Carolyn prefers to stay in the shuttle bay when she can and in her room when she can't, sometimes with visits to the bar or to other departments and the kitchens. But she doesn't have anyone to train with anymore and it's strange, punching and kicking or practicing her shooting without Casey there to watch her, without Dean making a comment. And so she goes to the gym.

Despite the number of people on the ship, she never expects to see someone else sharing her space. He was there first, though, and Carolyn pauses when he gets too close. She takes a breath, adjusts the wraps on her hands. Assesses right back.

(There's still a bit of sharpness to her teeth and she lets her tongue slide over one. Just in case.)

He hasn’t seen her around here much, but he’s seen her on the network enough times, and on the training videos. Stalwart, no-nonsense, and now, meeting him eye for eye with the kind of steeled nerves he appreciates.

"I don’t bite," he says, rough but good-humored. She might, but he doesn’t seem to be very much bothered by that prospect. A few more evenly paced strides take him in an expanding orbit, opening up a respectful distance between them again. Acknowledging.

"You do alright with the punching bag," he adds as he settles to a stop, weight shifting to his heels. "How about something that hits back?"

Two years and some change have given her the chance to change herself. In reality though, she was like this before -- that planet, the eclipse, had shaped her from nervous docking pilot to captain. She might be dead there, but what matters here is that she can help prevent other people from meeting a similar fate -- not to mention keep herself from it a second time.

And so, the gym.

"It's been a while," she admits after a moment, turning over his words in her head and trying to figure out how much of a bad idea it might be. "I wouldn't mind trying it again."

It isn't for exercise that the soldier finds his way to the pools, although the mistake would be easy to make. He's there a few times a week, more when his muscles start regaining their former strength. Different days, different times of day, purposefully disrupting any meaningful pattern. In black trunks and disappearing scar tissue, he cuts sharp lines through the water. Five laps, ten.

(There's something uniquely empty, he thinks, about being suspended in water. Slipping into the cold and numb, feeling nothing but the gentle tug of gravity against the body's natural tendency to subvert it, and not as a survival mechanism but out of a simple pull toward equilibrium, balance at the expense of everything else. He tells himself if he keeps moving he won't sink, if he has limbs to move he won't disappear, if any of his limbs are still his by the time this place is through -- and if he learns to associate clear thought and precise action with the desperate crush-gasping of his lungs, then--)

--Twelve, when a metal hand scrapes against tile out of sequence. Steel rakes four white lines into the surface with a chalkboard screech as the soldier pulls himself up and out with all the grace of a wet dog escaping the bath, hydraulics scream-whirring against the strain. He takes half the pool out with him. Water floods across the deck.

"Goddamn--" is his eloquent contribution to the situation, muttered between gritted teeth as he forces cloying, chemical-tinged air into his lungs again. He gropes for a towel, still squinting through the rivulets of water coming off his hair.

It's fine. He's just, y'know. an idiot.

She had arrived around lap eight, and thought to leave, to find a level that was abandoned.

Instead, she watched.

By the time the soldier has pulled himself out, Natasi has taken a seat on one of the long benches that extend the width of the pool. Her feet are bare, having taken them out of the prim heels she now has set aside, and one long leg is folded over the other one. The way the gloomy light throws shadows off the water reach as far as where she is placed, rippling across her bare shins, shoulders, the chlorinic blue of the atmosphere filling in the white of her blonde hair.

She is otherwise dress in figure hugging red, which looks gory in the midst of silver and darkness. Her brow twinges concern when the man hauls himself up onto the tile like he's trying to escape, only several feet away from here. She doesn't move.

He hadn't noticed her. On a scale of one to total disaster, that knocks this experiment up a few more pegs. He hadn't noticed her, but he does now, brown eyes peeking over the top edge of the towel he's brought to his face, gaze drawn to the line of red as his vision steadies.

Ragged breathing evens. Metal fingers curl into terrycloth.

"Water down the wrong tube," he manages eventually, by way of explanation. Despite not even coughing a little bit. Water rolls off his calves as he brings a foot out from under him, shifting upright. "It was Natasi, right?"

She looks different with fewer teeth.

She looks prettier with fewer teeth. A softness that can be manufactured, around her mouth, around her eyes, trying to bleed some of the inherent hardness of a handsome jaw, the proud swoop of cheekbones, brow. She doesn't believe that he was drowning. Most human women probably can't sneak up on him.

Abstract secrets shimmer in the silence.

"Right," she agrees, after a moment. "I don't think I got your name."

She pushes herself to stand. The dress is nice, too well constructed to be worn to a casual trip to the pool, but there aren't a hell of a lot of occasions to wear a pretty dress anyway. High heels are left to sit where they are. "I didn't mean to intrude. I usually come for the quiet, too."

It occurs to him gradually, over the course of her standing, of the unfolding of red fabric, that not having noticed her approach may have less to do with him and more with her. Assessment settles into his gaze as the laboring of his breath levels.

No, she didn't get his name. Maybe in a minute. She stands, though, and he shifts in turn, an off-kilter sort of politeness or perhaps just stubbornness in the idea that he should at least pick himself up off the floor.

"But not to swim?" A nod to the dress, which is— eye-catching, he noticed, but very much not a swim suit.

He makes an excellent point. Speaking of eye catching, her own attention had wandered for his silver arm, eyes tracking towards where it seams, metal meeting flesh, wondering exactly how far it goes beneath his skin, whether it knits into the bones of his torso, how it has to off-set its own weight, and can he feel? But her gaze ticks back to his face in time for a half-smile.

Her hands duck down, taking the hem of her dress beneath her fingers, and with one sinuous movement, she drags it up, shedding it up over her head with a flap of red fabric. The garment is dangled out, a subtle implication he ought to be a gentleman and take it from her; if not, it'll puddle onto the damp tile as she steps up to the edge of the pool. Water patterns reflected up her long body is all she's wearing.

"I swim."

Edited 2014-11-17 12:03 (UTC)

Well.

The succession of actions, fabric over her head, his hand pushing off from the tile, limbs uncurling and spine straightening in time to reach for the dress, distracts him for a moment from the projected course, from the anticipated outcome, until he's standing there holding a smooth cascade of red, eyes sliding from lush color to light dancing across skin.

His bare feet settle against the tile. "I stand corrected," comes out softened, be it by her easy boldness or the sudden statuesque strangeness of her. He's known bodies to be equal parts weapon as art, but whether her is neither or both, she has his attention. A more gentlemanly gentleman might not look at all, but he isn't that guy. She isn't shy, so he isn't either. His eyes linger with a certain respectful discretion, though, only here and there, on the long lines of her arms, the curve of her calf. "Hell, you're probably a better at it than me."

She tilts a look over at him, chin over shoulder, and a smile blooms to full, white teeth, subtle laugh lines. There is something easy, smoothly reptilian in subtle motion and settle of muscle and bone, flexible in tilt of hips, twist of spine.

"Well. There's only one way to find out."

Her toes grip pool edge in the second before she launches herself into the blue; stretching arms, curved back, and then arrowed into the water with a finishing kick of feet. She resurfaces some several feet away, momentum lost in twisting to look back at him, white-blonde hair plastered to her skull as neatly as seal fur.

And then she swims, long strokes for the other side, but she isn't particularly olympic in her stride. It ducks deep for the tiled bottom, pulling herself along, appreciating weightlessness and cold as much as she does the athletic burn.

The image is, he imagines, something like watching an anaconda take to water, strange in its sinuousness and yet-- Has he ever even been in the jungle? He knows heat and heavy air and that the sight of her brings this image to mind, that's all. He knows, too, that this water is not warm, nor shallow, that his skin still prickles from its near escape from its depths. Toes clench white against the deck.

But not for long. His head bobs to the side in a sort of shrug, towel tossed to the bench and red satin folded somewhat more gracefully beside it. What the hell. She's right, after all. There's only one way to find out.

Stubbornly, then, he fills his lungs with air again and dives after. Water streams across smooth muscle and sinew, breaks on scar tissue and imperfect crests of metal. His strokes are strong by necessity to offset its weight, but his breaths between fall heavy, if even. It occurs to him she could simply be trying drown him, just like it occurs to him every interaction he undertakes could be a trap, and this one intricate as a certain spider's web at that. But what kind of weapon would he be, if he can be so easily drowned?

Instead, he cuts through the water in a silver-tipped spear, heralded by the echoing click-click-click of steel fingers reaching after her receding ankle.

[ Their meetings are a delicate balancing act, in their way. He agrees to let her help, but this way and not that. He's here voluntarily, but volunteers very little else. He comes to her for guidance, but the pieces of his history he's allowed her to navigate aren't the ones he most needs help with. They tread paths together he knows are safe, elaborate on memories chosen for their lack of consequence, and it isn't nothing, but it isn't what it could be.

(Once or twice, they'd veered close to something more, and the otherwise-quiet machinations of his mind had gently crescendoed to persistence -- three feet from him to her, one and a half from his palm to his knife, one point zero seven seconds to her jugular, one point zero six from his thought to her block the last time they'd sparred -- and he'd steered them away again.)

This cycle, the balance is more precarious than the last. In whatever room they've holed up, the press of his fingers around the cut edge of the underside of his chair reminds him of pain that didn't feel like his -- although it feels like his now, even though it isn't, even though now even fewer of these fingers belong to him. He could always define himself in muscle and sinew; what can he trust now?

(What he was, maybe. What he's always been. She could help him find that. He could let her.)

(He feels like he could crawl out of his skin.) ]

Keep your sidearm close, [ is what he says instead, his eyes muffled bright and watchful. ] When we do this, I mean. Don't get too comfortable.

[ With him, he means. ]

[ their meetings are a delicate balancing act, and she has let him tip the scales in his direction — but she is beginning to think that will need to change because he might have good reasons for choosing certain paths and not letting her look elsewhere, but it isn't helping him, or isn't helping him as much as it could.

( she knows when he is thinking about killing her. )

that he thinks to warn her to keep her primary weapon close, that he warns her is just another piece of evidence leading her to believe that whatever programming might exist in his head: he doesn't want to hurt her.

she'd told charles that she can take care of herself, and that is true, but she has never been the type to put bravery or idealism before a realistic assessment of the situation. if the soldier wanted her dead, it would take luck in addition to the skills she has to keep her alive.

she pulls her primary weapon from its holster. her finger is not on the trigger, and she's holding his gaze for as long as he'll let her. ] Does it make you more comfortable when I'm armed?

[ does it make him more comfortable when she has the means to defend herself, or does it make him more comfortable when she is in a position of power over him? one of the two or both? she isn't certain yet.

her weapon is in her right hand, she reaches out with the left — not touching him, but inviting him to touch her. touch has helped him a few times, so far, and she sees no reason not to make use of that. it might be a security risk, but the psychological benefits would outweigh it if he chooses to take her hand.

a beat, and then quietly, steady because this is something she's grown increasingly certain of: ] I know you don't want to hurt me. I also know that you might, if we get too close to something you're not meant to touch. You're letting that hold you back.

Edited (i forgot to pick an icon :c) 2014-09-27 09:49 (UTC)

[ He doesn't answer her first question in words, but in an exhaled release of some of the tension from his shoulders. A nod. Whatever the reason, the gun in her hand helps quiet his thoughts.

This part was easier with Xavier, in a way. Charles changed something — severed the line of thought that had led from information breach to wiring medbay full of explosives, from seeing the other man to trying to snap his neck. The soldier hasn't tried to kill Charles since then because he can't. He knows that because he's followed that impulse to its natural conclusion, because he's felt it go slack — and he tested that boundary without fear because he knew Charles could stop him. (Because he hadn't felt anything for Charles, when they started.) This is different.

But it's been months since he last lost control. (Months since he was last triggered, too.) What Charles did might hold. He looks at the offered hand, but doesn't take it yet. ]

I don't want to hurt you, [ is both agreement and answer. He is letting it hold him back. ] Not sure it's worth the risk.

[ He's not sure that it isn't, either.

(There was a girl with green ribbons in her hair, and he saw her once in muddled fragments in his mind before this ship twisted her image, but maybe that's all the certainty he gets.) ]

[ her hand remains where it is, outstretched for him to take or to ignore. it's his choice, in the end. he has to want this for it to work; she isn't going to force anything on him because she figures in the end, that would only make things worse or lead to other problems. ]

I know. [ he doesn't want to hurt her, and the gun in her hand makes something in his mind ease and relax. maybe it's the knowledge that she's ready to defend herself, visualised, and the way it tips the odds in a fight between them in her favour if she has a gun at the ready.

she can't do what charles did, change things in his brain. she can't do that because her mutation doesn't work like that, and she wouldn't want to even though she understands why charles did it and that it had been necessary at the time. ] I know you don't want to, and you haven't yet. [ a beat, and she smiles a little. ] You've helped me. [ after arima, his hand over hers, guiding her fingers to her back. it had taken some trust to let him do it, especially so soon after morgoth had held her down, but he hadn't abused that trust.

her point is that she trusts him because he's so worried about hurting her. ( trust doesn't mean she won't take precautions, because there's him, and then there's his programming and the two are still intertwined, connected. ) ] And I'd like to help you.

[ he's holding himself back, letting fear of hurting her hold him back and it's unnecessary. if nothing else, she has a gun in her hand now.

her other hand is held out for him to reach for, and she's looking at him, steadily. there's a little girl in his mind, and he wants to know who she is. anderson isn't going to go looking without him, though. ]

Day and night don’t have much meaning in a place without a sun, but there’s a certain routine that people follow. He doesn’t — not ever, really, but especially not now. He sleeps more than he did the jump cycle before, but still not much, and while there are a number of ways to fill those unoccupied hours on this ship, on more than a few such nights he finds his way to Medbay.

The gravity couches aren’t a comfort, exactly. His associations with them will never be one thing or the other, only panic overtaking him or cold, sweet oblivion. But the rafters above are where so many things began, for him, and so he pads across the open floor under the room's low blue glow, takes a few quick strides between heavy breaths, and vaults up the wall into the dark.

If the spot he settles into happens to have a direct line of sight to the pod belonging to a certain red-head who didn’t come out of stasis this month, well, somebody’s got to look out for her.

And then, in the low-lit false-night when most people are sleeping, comes the steady sound of tearing fabric from one of the long rows of lockers.

Katniss tried abandoning the dress, considered paying someone to take it away. But in the end she's the sort of person who likes to do things herself, and she doesn't like the idea of wasting all that endless yards of white silk and tulle, those valuable pearls and diamonds embroidered into the fabric. Plenty of times, she'd seen her mother take apart some old clothes they'd been donated or grown out of, to use for rags or stitch into a quilt or cut out to become part of some new item, like underpants or gloves for reaping day. Poorness makes her spendthrift, and so after letting it worry at the back of her mind for too long, she decides not to wait until the next jump to take care of it.

But it's still a strangely personal act. Which is why she's come down when she thinks things will be quiet. She knows from all the time she spent in medbay recovering from her mutations well after most people had been discharged that shifts can be light. They're short-staffed, after all. Isn't everyone?

And so Katniss sits at the little bench at the end of her row of lockers with her hunting knife and a monstrous meringue of a wedding dress, carefully picking free the stitching, digging the knife through the material and tearing it down in long strips. It's strangely cathartic, and she finds she enjoys having something cleanly vicious to focus on just like she enjoys cleaning a fish or a bird once she's killed it.

For a while, he just watches her instead. White fabric pulls away in strips, and he thinks of bandages, of makeshift restraints. Of other empty rooms and methodical destructions. Of whether they'd given the widow a wedding dress when they'd sent her off to become a hero's wife. His chin tilts. He wonders.

Eventually, rubber soles meet textured metal, the gentle drop of boots muted by distance and out of sight. His approach is equally, eerily hushed. It isn't until he's rounding the row of lockers behind her that he– pauses, and thinks to scuff a shoe, in case she hadn't noticed — although he hopes, distantly, that she'd noticed.

"Yours?" he asks from a discreet distance. (She came here to be alone, so he tries to be no one.) Is it hers, or someone else's? She'd struck him as more determined than vengeful, but he only knows the surface of her.

Katniss doesn't startle, but she goes tense as soon as she knows she's being watched. Her demeanor shifts slightly, a kind of natural guardedness making the learnt performance of constantly being on camera a shield. Still, she remembers him, from Security. Doesn't sense an altercation in the air.

"It was going to be," she admits. Katniss knows it must look odd, coming in the night to tear up a dress. So she adds an explanation: for the time and location, not the marriage. "I didn't want anyone asking questions."

She's been candid about her engagement, but not the circumstances, or Peeta's involvement. Mentioning it casually generally gives people no reason to pry. Viciously attacking a dress just might.

Down below, Loki has come to visit a certain pod, where a certain someone hangs in suspended silence, her skin pale as china, all her lines and colours made soft by the liquid atmosphere. Next to the sight of her, even the god's young face looks rough-hewn. For a time, he stands at a respectful distance, hands behind his back. Only watching. It would be easy to imagine a museum rope strung across the way between them, and easier still to imagine Loki would step right through such a rope, were it really there. The pod's eerie glow glints blue in his cold, bright eyes, lights the curls of his oil-black hair, stresses all the severity of his profile, even as his fingertips meet the glass of the Black Widow's living tomb with a sensitive touch.

"Whosoever fears the point of my spear shall never pass through the fire," he says, just aloud enough to be heard above.

Silence lingers, passes on. His hand slips away.

"I wonder... does she dream?"

Silence is where he lives. In the static, open air above the stasis pods, the soldier stills. Watches, unstirring. Intangible ropes are trespassed, and the faint exhale of hydraulics is swallowed up in the gravity couches' bass hum. Long fingers meet glass, and above, slivers of blue thread across chrome and glove leather, pulling a long knife's edge line in the dark.

And stop, soundless, when the alien god speaks right to him.

Goddammit.

Silence is his answer, too. Stubborn, but not indefinite. "You'd have to ask her."

[ open ] i have this strange feeling that i'm not myself anymore

level 5

laundry room in case that's not obvious oops

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

gym

no subject

no subject

no subject

pools; closed to natasi

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

closed to anderson

no subject

no subject

no subject

medbay

somewhere between now and the jump.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject