when all of your wishes are granted

[darkart]

CHARACTERS: anybody ⸜₍๑•⌔•๑ ₎⸝
LOCATION: various!
WARNINGS: creepy stuff + other warnings in thread titles.
SUMMARY: couple location starters + open!
NOTES: catch-all for after the network goes down. i don't mind other people using this/starting their own threads for different locations/tagging into this even if you don't intend to rp with severus. go for whatever!


TBA

Comments

dark hallways and spooky voices

[darkart]

xenogen lab floors.

[darkart]

The laboratory floors taken over by the Xenogen Department in absence of the proper Genetics Labs, long destroyed and vanished, have been abandoned since emergency power kicked in - what was previously inaccessible to anyone without crew nanites is in flux now. The department's staff are absent, but voices and shadows are not, and at least one mural has added a new figure.

[doggedly]

If the experience of being rerouted from one hallway to another were a bit more like discovering secret passageways, that would be nice. Sirius thinks this for perhaps the hundredth time today. Fiftieth time with the last hour alone.

"Secret passageways don't do this to you," he tells Edgeworth. On patrol together, they have found themselves suddenly very much elsewhere. As if wandering around corridors with emergency lighting wasn't irritating enough, now the hallways are doing this little party trick again. Next thing they know, the room is going to be three times its size and filled with radioactive rats. Brunhilda could have a new friend.

In actuality, the room is filled with things, but none of them are rats, and none of them are people. It's only Sirius and Edgeworth, and a lot of sciencey equipment and things that Sirius doesn't recognise. Not that that's any surprise. Sirius touches his fingertips against a glass dish that's stood on a table, and tips it toward himself, examining the contents.

"Secret passageways always lead you somewhere worthwhile. And where the hell are we? Not to mention that they're actually amusing--whereas this is just the same old, same old."

With a weird edge. Something is playing at the very peripheral of Sirius' senses, but it's much easier to be flippant and dismissive and have seen it all, when really he hasn't seen it all. He's not even seen it all in this room (dungeon? laboratory?), and he glances down along a row of tables toward the wall. The red and muddy swirls of a mural are back there, and with faint amusement, Sirius wander over to give it a once-over.

"We could just stay here and skip the rest of patrolling," he calls over his shoulder, and waits, with a grin, to hear Edgeworth's sharp protest. It will come in five, four, three, two--

for cassandra anderson.

[forgodssake]

Come with me to the labs.

[ On paper, this is a very measured request, if an odd one to receive out of nowhere, telepathically. In reality, it is chaotic, ringing almost metallic in Cassandra's head when her range is identified whilst on the move. It comes with images of someone hurt, of the general impression of emergency, and of an implicit request she come armed designed to indicate why she's being asked along, besides that Charles doesn't especially want to go alone. There is also the promise of better explanation when she finds him.

Finding each other is straight forward enough, Charles disinclined to wait at the medical bay -- he communicates which corridor, which wing, and is easily identifiable in a white lab coat that soaks up all the eerie red light, turning it bright scarlet. In his hand is a flashlight, that paints filmy white light across the floor in one giant, wobbly eye.

The corridor outside the labs is otherwise empty, and there's no minds to read beyond the closed doors, which never means they're entirely safe -- it might as well mean they're ineffective in a different way. ]

dark hallway. open.

[sophically]

After being led - rather disconcertingly - to the Morgue by the voices, Hermione is doing all she can to put space between her and that room. Her head is pounding and she wonders if a visit to the Medbay is required. However finding her way is easier said than done in the gloom. She comes to a halt in one hallway, covering her ears and talking, firmly, to herself.

"You are in control of where you go on this ship, Hermione. The next time you hear those voices, you stop your ears." she gives her head a sharp shake, doing her best to ignore the steady pounding, "Headaches are curable. Get to the Medbay..."

Steeling herself, she uncovers her ears and steps out into the middle of the hallway, lighting the tip of her wand with a wordless spell. The powerful glow dispels the greater darkness, yet it creeps along the edges of her sight like grasping fingers.

medical bay

[darkart]

for lilyyyy.

[darkart]

Despite (or maybe in spite of) various domestic awkwardness, Severus has ended up spending most of his otherwise-working hours in Medical. It's an easy standby having taken shifts while they were understaffed, and it means he gets to hover around Lily and pretend that's not what he's doing.

"I understand the mechanics of central power," he's saying, putting another glass jar full of pale nearly-blue light up, adjusting it to try and cancel out the red, "but I still don't understand how it's meant to be effective." He glances over his shoulder at Lily. "You ever have the electricity go out?"

He doesn't say at home, barely. What's habit when speaking to her is-- old. Things that aren't true anymore.

[lightmagic]

With circumstances seeming to come down to pure spite over her complaints before, Lily strikes a tense figure overall throughout her patrols of Medical, sharp lines and coiled stress.

With Severus nearby something in her seems to relax, at least a little. She strikes a less severe silhouette as she moves, assisting in lighting up the bay so as to make it less... alarming. She isn't particularly optimistic for once: when it rains, it pours, and she'll be damned if she's caught without an umbrella this time.

"A few times," she says finally, glancing over at him thoughtfully. "Most times it was just a breaker needed flipping. Nothing ever too catastrophic."

heather/medbay/open | pm me if anything is too assume

[dogbane]

[Network crash, strange paintings, mysterious injuries coming in in frenetic reports punctuated by weird whispering voices that sound like nothing more than insanity. William is tempted to pick his ear with a pinkie fingernail but that sounds fairly disgusting, even given the antibacterial properties of earwax, so we are all spared having to read such a gross bit of prose.

Instead, he's keeping track of those who come in Medical Bay and how often the patronus (patronuses? patrona?) are sent out, digital tallies running across the CMO-locked console off to the right of the shiny vestibule, dropping a healing hand here or there, verifying that Samara, Lily, Mila, Lúthien, and Galadriel's numinous glow are rotating out as well as their inimitable surgeons between emergency entries, peering inconspicuously over Granny Weatherwax's shoulder when she isn't dedicated to her traveling treatments, checking Cora's got somewhere to sit and a coffee to drink and a blanket in case. He's been making a point not to stare at Professor Snape, but he asked about the patronus communique. He thinks about checking in with Charlotte, but forgets every time someone else happens, for awhile.

Mostly it's Natasi's job, but last he checked, she had her corneas pasted up against a console monitor in one of the back rooms with a download or something. That, too, was important.

Twenty seven hours in, he is unsurprisingly not tired, even a little. Stir-crazy, though, looking out the front doors with increasing frequency, even when he's brushing his teeth over the sink in the front or tapping on his bucket of goldfish (not a euphemism for anything) to check they're alive or going to check the banana bags in the fridge are still okay if someone comes in dehydrated from entrapment. He keeps looking. Keeps wrinkling his forehead. Worrying about somebody in a way that makes his gut twist and grey take up under his skin.]

Where the fuck is she, [he says, to no one but himself.]

ullo love

[sweetmotherofgod]

[In movies, an obvious hook like that would trigger an appearance. Depending on the kind of movie - there's certainly a genre in which blond women - particularly ones with a proclivity towards miniskirts (no matter that this has been at least temporarily suspended) have nothing to look forward to but a gruesome end, and a question like that would lead to a jump cut to sticky red death, definitely with screaming and possibly with exposed bosoms.

Here, it's hours before she bowls into medbay with dark circles under her eyes and a near-empty bottle of pills rattling in her pocket. No fond greeting; she barrels up to William's station with her communicator in hand and the picture she'd taken of his art on her prosthesis displayed onscreen.]

Do you remember this?

for lily also. sorry for all the words it's 2:30. wheneverrrr this fits into your timeline

[pushfall]

At some indeterminate time, Claire manages to wind her way back to medical, feeling through the darkened hallways and exaggerated shadows like she's lost all sense of direction completely. Following the voices into the hall had turned her around, as designed, and righted her again staring down the barrel of warped and twisted faces, some of which had already been tampered with, several more still hidden behind sheets and whatever standing partition could be constructed in the moment.

Other than swiping her hand over several of them and dragging her shoes across the ones she'd come across splashed over the floor, she hasn't touched any of them. Having been here longer than one day, logic dictates that anything bearing any kind of resemblance whatsoever to anyone she might have passed in a hall or on her way to a post-jump shower probably shouldn't be tampered with. The voices are more persistent, too, and even though Claire is aware of the fact that they probably aren't real - or at least aren't real in a way that physics hasn't figured out yet and Claire certainly isn't smart enough to have figured out yet - there isn't any ignoring them. It's only when she realizes that she's alone in the halls that she stops to take stock of what's going on, and when she realizes where she is, it's with a sinking feeling of having no recollection of how she got there or how to get back.

Fortunately, she is near medbay, she realizes, because whatever is going on chooses that moment to smack her in the forehead hard enough that she thinks she hears her brain ringing. It's a sharp, specific pain, needle precise right behind her eyes, digging in, and that in itself is enough to freak her out without any other outside influence and wonder what mechanism brought her to medbay in the first place after delivering a blow like that. She's thinking that maybe she can find William; all prior encounters aside, he at least might be able to relate in some way, though she highly doubts it, given her circumstances.

By the time she finds a familiar face she's comfortable enough approaching in Lily, blood has finished dripping from the pierced lobe of her ear to begin drying in the pale gray of her sweater, staining the collar black in the throw of emergency lighting. The pain in her head has mostly subsided but is still there, ebbing back with every lingering throb, scary and exhilarating. "Lily?" is what she says, and then she stands there like an idiot, one hand curled into a fist, not sure where to begin.

ildeeee

[darkart]

By the time Severus is coherent and at least mostly functional again, the power's come back and the eerie red lighting is thankfully gone. The feeling of missing over an entire day to a catastrophic injury is an unsettling one, but at least he's. You know. Alive. He's not aware he's come the closest to death out of anyone when he wakes up and fucks off to the locker room showers to scrape days worth of dried and congealed blood off of himself, but he is when he's back, slightly damp, exhausted, bandaged.

He's too tired and lightheaded to leave yet, but he needs to move around before he goes insane. He finds himself in the doorway of another patient room, knuckles wrapping lightly on the frame. "Ilde?"

for milagros.

[sidewinding]

Much of his time on board the ship has been spent alone, and for the most part, Draco has practice at convincing himself that that's fine, that he prefers it that way, that it's not so different to home anyway if he gets right down to it. But now, with the network down and even the simplest of magic refusing to obey him, it's just strikingly inconvenient.

Through the darkness of the half-lit ship, Draco manages to trace his steps to the medical bay. He should have been at least able to stem the bleeding, but he hasn't, and red paints the bottom half of his face in smearing streaks. Some scrap of linen is balled in a fist and held to it, saturating it dark.

He only trusts one person here. When he enters the medical bay, he turns away from the first sound of presence, leaving behind an obscuring gust of magical darkness thickening the shadows. He only needs to find what he needs -- they'd stored potions here, hadn't they? -- and then retreat back to his room and wait until everything is fine again. This projected course of events is plotted in his mind, logical, a series of steps.

Dizzy, though. Pin-prickly cold under his clothing. When the first door he tries to pass deeper into the medical bay doesn't open for him, he has to try not to burst into tears right there.

Gym » Darkholme Women

[notmarieanymore]

Just because she was trapped on a spaceship didn't mean that Rogue didn't want to keep training. For her, that meant mostly trips to the gym. She'd swim, run, take on the punching bags, or even run a few simulations on the holo-decks that she'd managed to find close enough to your standard Danger Room session. Today had been an easy day, running, mostly, and strength training. Throughout the whole workout, she'd kept hearing voices, but the room itself was empty. Only a mural on one wall that, the more she looked at it, the more it seemed to change.

Having freshly showered, a towel wrapped around her bare neck, she heard the voices again. They were different from the ones she usually heard, in her head. "Hello?" Rogue called out, following them back into the gym. The mural had changed again, but she was too far away to really make it out. "Hello! Is anyone there?"

YAY thank you for making starter

[anybodies]

"Rogue?"

By now, Mystique's voice has become as familiar as it is unwelcome, no doubt. The sound precedes her only by a few sinuous strides, and then she's there, scaly and blue and blinking yellow-eyed in the cold light of the gym. She looks unarmed and unarmored, as usual. Probably no less dangerous than ever, though there's no hostility in her face when her stare cuts to Rogue.

Pretends to skip over the murals right there, but she noticed them. She keeps them in the periphery by now. Her perusal of the network has led her to understand that, sometimes, staring at bizarre phenomena aboard the ship has unwanted ramifications. Though speaking of comms- "The network went down for me a few minutes ago. Something's wrong."

elsewhere, and then outside the gardens. for sirius black.

[sidewinding]

[ He'd been running blind, trying to escape the voices that had only gotten louder but no more distinct, before coming to from lost time in the dark, silver-surfaced gloom of the morgue.

Frantic glance around over the end of his wand in the abrupt silence of voices vanishing steered his gaze upwards towards where black and white and red showed an image. A mutter of lumos helped display white curls and white smock and white feathers, and a recognisable face and shape about her that simmered hot resentment in his gut. And the more he stared, the more he could feel like he could

just gently, without anyone knowing

change it. White feathers seemed to wither before his eyes and blossom into violent red flames until that fire consumed her entire wing span. Nerves getting the best of him, some unknown, distant sound capturing his attention, Draco fled.

The next image he came across was more tactically experimental. He recognised her, the fairy queen who addressed him in the Gardens. This act of vandalism is less vindictive -- he gives her long, red claws, and matching fangs, and eyes that spiral red and mad and gruesome, which is just his kind of humour, really, before moving on. Other pictures are similarly touched when he dares to roam through the corridors gone dark and red, opening black voids into some as if he could make it reveal its secrets.

Correlation and causation. If it doesn't appease the voices or make them go away, it's at least idle distraction.

But it doesn't take long for him to decide to relocate his own mural, heralded by the sound of brisk foot steps down the corridor, funneling through towards the Gardens. His own had formed upon the wall of a corridor before it, and he'd barely given it time to settle before fleeing in nervy fear. Magical light spills out before him from the end of his wand, cutting through thick shadows and the occasional glow of red. ]

[doggedly]

[The thing about Draco Malfoy's humour is that as it turns out, it's pretty close to Sirius' own. This is perhaps something that Sirius himself would not want to consider, if he was totally aware of the fact. Which he isn't. He's barely aware of the presence of Draco Malfoy, was barely aware of his existence, until Remus told him. The fact that they share some measure of humour is perhaps indicative of something, but Sirius will never seriously consider just what that might be, and would absolutely punch anyone that thought to point it out to him.

But here's what Sirius is doing, when Draco turns his path to the corridor just outside the gardens: working on scratching out a moustache across the blank white face of a mural that just so happens to be Draco's. The work is not done with any real malice--just with an interest that's more to do with the familiar sight of snake and wand. He does not know that it's Draco's. If he did, it's possible that he would be more destructive, but not likely. This defacement is more for amusement, and this particular target was selected more because Sirius is still thinking of how irritated he is to have been interrupted in his work on Snape's mural. Another snake, another wand. Same difference, when you're destructive and bored, which is what Sirius is.

He finishes off whistling God Rest Ye Merry, Hippogriffs for the fifteenth time in the past few minutes, and immediately launches back into it, as he works his penknife against the mural's upper lip. A good curly moustache. Why not.]

nov 1 ● for william

[darkart]

The normal lights coming back on are startling as fuck. Severus, cloistered in a patient room and grudgingly doped up to his (injured) eyeballs in painkillers, sends a kneejerk spell at the light controls to drag it back down to a level that doesn't hurt. His repaired eye is functional but still hypersensitive; he'll have red lines on his face for another day before the last treatment is applied, and his left eye will be bloodshot in an unsettling way for who-knows-how-long. On the upside, he can talk just fine.

After fading in and out of narcotic awareness for a while, Severus sits up in the dark and tries to locate his communicator. He should see what's going on and see about getting out of here already-- though he knows full well he'll need to dodge Lily to do it.

[dogbane]

"Oi oi, professor."

William's voice comes from the door. Even though he knows that Severus' ears were not damaged in the chaos, he automatically keeps his volume restrained. The doors close behind him and he swerves slightly, a little unnecessarily, careful with the tray he's carrying in his hands. "I've got food, more water, and some tinted glasses here for you. What the fuck're you looking for?"

Whether or not Severus is still looking by now, William had recognized the telltale stutter of searching hands, pale in the darkness.

backdated late october - for ilde + friends

[humanistic]

[Freedom comes after he's been separated from Annie. A long dark corridor, and when he comes out the other side, he's not with her any longer, and his head feels like it's been fucking torn open. Mitchell stops a moment, one hand braced against the wall, trying to sort himself out from the pain. It's so different than any of his usual catalog, the full body ache that starts in his teeth and makes it feel like his fingernails are fixed on too tightly.

The smell of the morgue hits him when he looks up. Old, very old. No one brings bodies here any longer. He can't sort out a time when they might have; he smells it and he turns around again. The way that he came from looks different now, not the dark hallway that delivered him here. And where the fuck is Annie?

In the lift, the insubstantial feeling does not dissipate. Mitchell stares at the light as the floors tick past, climbing up, and up. The lift does not stop until the seventeenth floor. No one else gets on. He does not think thank God; he does not think anything at all. He goes back to the room in the middle of the corridor, but it's silent. No Annie, or George. Boneless, then, he sits down on the floor and stares listlessly toward the wall opposite. The side of his face feels damp. When he touches his fingertips to it, they come away sticky with blood.

And the mural on the wall opposite of him looks different. A slow melt, a twist. Reaching hands all smear. White teeth. Mitchell stares, and then claws himself to his feet. When he rubs his shirtsleeve against the wall, nothing changes. Nothing changes. He tries again, desperate--and again, and he chips at it with his fingernails--and he hits it, his knuckles split but he hits it again--

When he leaves, it's in a panic. There are other murals, all around him. They will change, just as that one did. Guilt and fear make him vicious, but it's a viciousness turned inwards, and he meets no one as he runs, past arms reaching, vast black holes, figures traced out in white and red.

He sees the teeth, and he stops. If his heartbeat was anything regular any longer, it would hammer at his chest. Instead he just feels that stillness, dead. This mural has teeth, gleaming sharp. His fingertips leave a smear of blood on the white of them, when he touches the wall, and his fascination turns so quickly to disgust. When he chips at this one, the white comes up easily. A little fleck of the stain, chipped away. The relief that he feels at that sight makes no sense, but nothing does right now, and so he does it again--fumbles in his pocket and gets out his lighter, one of the last things he's allowed--he does not want to break it, but uses its blunt end to chip away more of that sharp smile, until the painted teeth are scarred from his work.

And the feeling of relief is gone. Mitchell stares at the mutilated mouth of the mural, the erratic lines. He backs up a step. The inky black eyes stare back at him. And he turns, and he goes, leaves it behind.]

[hedoniste]

( ilde hasn't seen her own mural. if she did-- maybe it would be comforting, in the strangest way. you have to be a monster, sometimes, to survive. she doesn't come from a world where she can get away with shying away from her own capacity; it has to be embraced, lived fully, and anything less can be the difference between survival and extinction. because that is what they're looking at, and it's stupid. it's so stupid that the world is ending but they might end first. when ilde looks in a mirror and sees teeth, she sees the last line of defense if they come for her children. she sees what she can offer when things are falling apart. and, if she's honest-- she sees something lovely. what's not beautiful about her people? what's not to emulate in aelfraed's elegance?

she isn't emulating it particularly well when she loses her footing in the shuttle bay, going down hard-- conscious of past history on the ship where something going tits up elsewhere meant someone having a go down here, she'd made her way down to work (checking her network device repeatedly as she went, but it's no good and she didn't really think it would be), doing a round, making sure all tools are where they're supposed to be. all shuttles locked into place. everything has a place and everything in it and she's up double-checking wiring and machinery for signs of tampering when she does an inelegant header that sees her collide face-first with something really not intended to do that.

everything goes mercifully black, for a while; she comes to blearily, choking on her own blood and broken teeth, and the dark stain of it around her jaw is unsettling, in the shadows, for anyone who might see her grimly and unsteadily clawing her way in the direction she optimistically thinks is probably medical, finally ignoring the murmuring of the ship as she focuses on trying to think and move past the searing pain.

it almost looks as if she has no mouth. )

the british are coming! the british are coming!

[milagros]

To ensure both space for an expansive evening (or whatever time of day it currently is, as Mila still resents being unable to tell) and a lack of interruptions, the designated meeting place is the bar on abandoned level thirty; high enough that no one is going there from the lower floors, low enough that none of the stubborn recent arrivals will be likely to stumble across them, either. Mila is there first, perusing what there is of an existing shitty liquor selection without much real interest - Charles is bringing the scotch and she hasn't ruled out the possibility that herbal tea could be a euphemism. Or she could be extraordinarily British and put the scotch in the tea, that's fine, too.

It just feels a bit well-deserved.

except for charles who is from new york and pretending.

[darkart]

Herbal tea isn't a euphemism. Severus really has been working on teas. But at the mention of scotch, he knows better, and picks out the apple ginger tin to bring with him. And pot with rolling paper. What. Leave him alone. Anyway, he shows up, having the good decency not to look entertained, but not seeming particularly grave, either. He's still got a bloodshot eye and some faint marks around the right side of his face - he doesn't need the help of a scowl to increase his 'even worse than the usual worst' aesthetic.

"I forget how quiet these abandoned ones are," he muses as he approaches, sounding faintly appreciative.

FOR IVAN - massively backdated, immediately post encounter with Ilde

[humanistic]

[The hallways aren't put to rights. The lights are still wrong; there is still the vague sound of whispering, even more than Mitchell usually hears. If he shuts his eyes, it gets somehow worse.

Alone, in the room where's been for months now, Mitchell stares with fixed concentration at the floor. The ropes feel tighter around his arms than they did before, just as they do after every round of freedom. And Annie is gone. He can't feel the chill of her, near or far, and he knows that he should, that she should be here. He can't remember where she said that she was going, if she told him, or if he's thinking of some other time.

But, slowly, everything is beginning to settle again. His lighter, in his pocket--there are still flecks of paint on the end of it, but they will flake off. The lights will come back. Everything, everything will be normal. If Mitchell had a consistent heart rate, it would be slower now than it was when he'd first found Annie again. Nothing happened, he had told her. And nothing had.

When he shuts his eyes, he hears the voices. The sharp teeth of the mural in the corridor, white sharp. He lets his breath out through his teeth, sagged forward.

And then he smells blood. Familiar--not too familiar, but familiar in its exoticism, in the way that he does not know it or really recognise it. It sharpens. He hears footsteps. Tied to the chair, Mitchell lifts his head, blearily, and the door opens.]

[deservesadaisy]

[None of the blood is on Ivan's mouth, which is perhaps not what someone who knows him would be expecting. It's on his shirt, mainly - chest and arms, smeared and still drying.

He had made it, and he had held himself together and he needed to talk to the single person on the ship who he at least felt he knew. Ivan and Mitchell have their differences, but they also have a history longer than many people on the ship have been alive.

He knocks, once, and tries the door before there's time for anyone to answer.]

Mitchell? ...Christ. [He adds the last as he sees the bonds that hold him.]