ataraxionlogs | when all of your wishes are granted

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."

"Ours was always going out." Talking about his family, back then - it comes easy to Lily, but something about him still sounds glass-spindly, like he'll splinter and vanish if it's pressed. She's the only person he feels safe enough around to get near it. "I figured out how to redo shot wiring with an army knife and black tape."

He passes her another jar. They seem vaguely pink now, instead of washed in bloody light.

"Not the most helpful grasp on technology."

She nods, takes the jar from him, and turns to set it up where it'll be most useful. The pink is more suiting and makes her look a little less fiery: whether that's good or not is arguable since now she just looks tired.

"To be honest," she says, glancing out and away a moment like she's making sure no one's come their way for assistance. There's no one, and she turns back to the task at hand. "I don't really think the ones with all the experience possible are doing very well here." Usually. "It feels reactionary, like plugging a hole and hoping it doesn't get bigger. But it does, usually whenever anyone tries to be proactive."

"Then it just needs Bombardad," he says flatly. "Or.. a sledgehammer." That's what scientists use to wreck shit, right? Right, sure. Severus doesn't care. "Maybe the whole thing needs to be taken apart for us to get anywhere."

Severus is very patient. He can work a long time just appearing to be reactionary, because it's a matter of survival - something he's learned very well in every stage of his life. But he's also very impatient, because his patience has a point, and most of this nonsense here feels pointless.

He doesn't know which way to go, here.

"What?" --head turned over his shoulder, staring past her.

"Maybe then things would actually bloody work." It all feels pretty pointless: mimicking routine, then reacting when something goes wrong before going back to pretending. Lily is patient in many things but once her limit is hit, that's it.

Of course it is.

She's about to comment again when she starts, turns her head to follow his gaze, sees nothing but hears—her brow furrows. "That's..." She looks back to Severus for confirmation that he has the same idea before she makes a move.

In his mind's eye, Lily fades slightly - but not entirely, she can't, not for him - but he hears voices that shouldn't be there. He's familiar with the people who come and go on Medical's staff, and doesn't recognize any of his Xenogen coworkers, either. His first instinct is to think someone's mucking about, but after he takes a few steps towards the morgue doors he's not sure what he's walking after.

"Lily?" Severus feels like he's been walking for longer than he should be down this short hall, and he reaches back with one hand to make sure she's still behind him.

Lily falls behind him as easily as though they were walking somewhere together as children—though they'd have been more likely walking abreast back then, she keeps a pace just behind Severus as he moves; she doesn't recognize the voices either but the urgency calls her at first, before the instinct to just move takes over.

"I'm here," she says then, trying to keep track of their surroundings though this is turning into another too-long hall with too-little progress, instinctively closing the distance to take his hand, reassuring. She leaves it that way, intent on not getting separated, close enough to walk at his side though her gaze never strays from looking forward.

He's visible in her periphery now but a background figure—she can't tell if the voices are getting louder or no, but they don't feel any more distinct either, just that they are as urgent as lighting the medbay had felt moments ago.

Her hand in his feels completely natural, something old and familiar and correct when his brain isn't working the way it should be. Severus keeps hold of Lily's hand and continues walking, trying to find where the voices are coming from - a mission that slips over his entire consciousness with a suddenness nothing should be capable of.

When he comes back to himself they aren't anywhere near the morgue - or anywhere near the medbay. Severus stops short and half-turns around, trying to discern what hallway this is closest to, or how long they've been walking.

"Bloody hell," is all he ends up with. Darkness at either end of them.

She doesn't let go the whole time they walk, grip not demanding but familiar. She's not thinking about it just like she isn't thinking about anything but the voices, and when they stop it takes her a moment to blink out of it, disoriented by the darkness and—

—she doesn't move except to bring out her wand like it's an extension of her own hand, cast some light; "shit," is all she says just then.

"Shit. This isn't..." She turns her head, though the light is only helping marginally. There are murals, around them, but none that she recognizes having seen recently.

"You don't happen to remember how we got here?" Severus is more unnerved than he sounds - being an Occlumens, things of this nature shouldn't be possible. The ship's influenced him before, but it's always just been influence. There's something fundamentally disturbing about being led away and Confunded for Merlin-knows-how-long.

He keeps moving. Keeps Lily's hand in his. If they're stranded in the unmapped corridors, they could be pulled away from each other at any moment.

"No," Lily says, voice just slightly too sharp—not directed at him, evidenced by her grip on his hand tightening—but because she really doesn't know how they got there. "No, I don't remember."

With the last fuzziness fading though it's quickly replaced by a stabbing pain in her temples; she grits her teeth a little and swears under her breath, trying to keep moving and find something familiar in the halls.

It'd almost be funny, the second time they're lost together, but for the fact that they really need to get back before something catastrophic happens.

As if they're connected by more than just hands, Severus's head starts hurting in a singularly awful way at the same moment Lily's does. He flinches slightly, free hand raised to press against his forehead for a moment. It's almost dizzying. Pain is something he's used to enduring, though, and he steadies his reaction against it well enough. Still, it can't end fast enough. Fucking hell.

"The last time I tried Apparating when the ship was in flux it spit me out in the wrong area," he says. Trying to Occlude against the headache just makes it hurt worse; he leaves it alone, for now. Instead he conjures a bubble of light to match hers, hovering alongside them, their stark shadows mixing with sprawling hands and eyes stretched on the walls. They walk in silence for a while - Severus tries to remain keenly aware of the time, hoping they aren't really out in the bowels of the ship - until he stops, looking at a doorway illuminated by red emergency lights. "Look." Quietly, tapping the room number. "We're on the first passenger floor."

Lily feels a little bit like her eyes are trying to pry themselves out of their sockets but she compartmentalizes the pain as best she can, which means that it refuses to budge and she has to take a moment to think when Severus speaks to her. It's a relief at least to know where they are—not lost in the bloody halls forever, at least.

"Then we'll be near..." Security, she doesn't finish, because as she looks just down the hall she can see a blanket hanging, covering a large portion of the wall. It stands out as being even more out of place than the murals they've passed. "What the hell," she intones, glancing over to Severus to make sure she isn't just seeing things.

He gets his comms device out to take a picture of the walls behind them, not needing to fuss with the flash setting thanks to their magical light sources. Forcing himself to remember to take notes for work is a great distraction from the stabbing pain in his head. He looks at Lily, and then over where she's nearest.

"Somebody's mural," he guesses, verbal shrug in his voice. He'd watched the one on the walls of the labs morph into him, and he'd stared at it for a while, uncomfortable. But it's locked away in the labs; no point bothering with it when they've closed the entire thing.

(Ha, ha.)

She nods in recognition, then regrets it because it makes her head hurt more—she keeps it very still afterward instead and moves closer. Curiosity gets the better of her and she lifts her wand hand; the blanket lifts at her bidding but she stops, staring at the contents of it blankly.

"Jesus Christ."

This is the most...intense mural she's seen so far, and while she doesn't recognize the main figure of it, there's plenty to look at otherwise.

Believe it or not, Severus is not hugely interested in picking apart peoples murals. His own is vague enough (besides the bloody deer which he just hopes Lily never has cause to see) that he hasn't tried to think too hard about the other ones he's seen, though he's taken still photographs of all of them. So when the blanket lifts he's-- actually pretty shocked, let's not even mince words.

Silence stretches.

"I know that bloke," Severus says after a while, casually, nodding to the one in the center. "He tried to kill me."

He lifts his comms device and takes a picture.

"He what?" There's a bubble of anger in her throat that's making her head hurt more, and she looks at him with her eyes narrowed.

Once Severus has taken a picture of the mural Lily snaps her hand down again, letting the blanket fall back into place. "Clearly there are some issues that need to be addressed." The anger hasn't dissipated but it's a low boil in the back of her mind and he can probably sense it in her.

She continues to let Severus document the murals as they continue, keeping an eye out for anything in particular that needs to be watched for. Nothing strikes her as much as the one they've just seen, however.

It'll stick with her for a while.

Of course, they have no way of knowing that at this exact moment, Edgeworth and Black are staring at his mural, and that it's a near-perfect mirror. Severus takes one last look at the picture of what has to be the self-proclaimed lawyer at a younger age, surrounded by corpses, and then moves on. He's not even sure how they're in the Security offices, and frankly doesn't want to be here - maybe it's just the ship fucking with him. Actually there's probably no maybe about it, this is definitely the ship fucking with him.

"I'll tell you later." And he will. But Severus doesn't think very much of the other man and honestly doesn't want to waste more energy on him. If it were Black's he might be tempted to screw with it, but even then, probably only tempted. He's not quite the monster some people think him to be. Instead he keeps up with Lily, hand still clasped with hers, until they can find their way to the lifts.

"Maybe we can work on a magical solution to walking in a vacuum," he says absently, pushing the lift button to get them the hell out of here and back to the medbay.

Funnily enough, that makes the both of them that don't feel like fucking around with other people's murals.

"All right." Lily squeezes his hand again, just the once, as they walk. Even with their heads cleared it doesn't feel alien, it just feels like it should. She'll still her anger long enough to get through this at least, and be quietly furious when Severus tells her the story.

That said, when they still in front of lift she nods, a little. "It's worth looking into." Wry, and when the door does finally open she steps into the lift, pulling him along with her and pushing the appropriate button with her closed wand hand. "I hope nothing's happened while we were gone."

"Enough people are there." Between proper Medical staff and floating Xenogen personnel, anybody with a medical emergency is well covered, today. But they're transported to where they're meant to go with little enough fanfare that it suggests to Severus things have proceeded as normal. "We should keep an eye out for anyone wandering off like that, though. You heard the voices too, didn't you?"

Note to self: Don't follow any voices. He's reminded of when people were drawn into the hallways, and is glad that at least nothing he heard sounded familiar - not that he can remember anything past the first moment.

The lift doors open and Severus gives Lily's hand one last squeeze before letting go, since they should probably disentangle before rejoining mixed company. Their story is a difficult one to explain, and he doesn't want to tell anyone, honestly. It's not their business. Severus watches a few people mill about as they get closer to the glass doors, red light still illuminating the area eerily. It makes him not want to trust his eyes.

"Of course, but I still worry." Soft, conspiratorially like no one knows how dedicated she is to her post. "I did. They weren't like before, but it felt like... we had to go." She'll definitely be keeping an eye out—it's bad enough they got lost at the whims of the ship but they're two capable wizards; they could have just gotten lucky.

When Severus squeezes her hand she looks at him and gives him a small, private smile as they walk to the doors. The atmosphere isn't lost to her and while the clinical nature of Medical isn't usually comforting, at least it isn't usually drenched in quite so much red.

"Looks like you were right again," she says, as they pass through the glass doors.

"I try to be." Dryly.

With the atmosphere remaining fine but unavoidably tense - emergency lights and the network being down aren't coaxing anyone into comfort - Severus doesn't feel like he can go find anything else to do. Even prowling hallways trying to prevent anyone from experiencing what they just did seems ill-advised; who's to say he won't end up snared in it instead?

Back where he and Lily were working before, Severus sees about continuing the mission of de-red-ing the light. It's supremely unhelpful in a medical bay; red lights over injuries, how is anyone supposed to distinguish blood from everything else. It's utterly moronic. Why do the emergency lights even need a color, for Merlin's sake.

He charms another jar and sends it to sit on top of cabinet when he hears a sharp cracking noise from behind him. Severus turns just in time to catch sight of a supply box in the opposite room careen from its resting place into the glass window separating them. It doesn't seem like it'll do anything besides bounce against the window - logically there's no way it's got enough force to do anything else. But it does. The whole thing slams through, sending broken glass and the contents of the box flying with unnatural velocity. It happens start to finish in the span of a second, and Severus barely has enough time to react at all--

--his vision goes in a whirlwind of pain, glass like stiletto knives needling into his face, jabbing through one eye, his cheekbone, his throat. He reflexively hits back with a spell to turn the rest of the debris to floating leaves, but it's not quick enough to save what's already hit him.

Lily gets back to work quickly; she's not cheerful but she's calm enough, at ease with making the place a bit more usable.

She's about to make a comment on something, maybe a joke about fixing things up, but she hears it and then things happen too fast for her to do anything but whirl to stare at what's happened with a breathless scream.

"Severus!" Lily is not, generally speaking, prone to panic but there's an almost shrill edge to her voice and then she's at his side, one hand gripping at his arm and the other reaching out to the air behind her as she quickly tries to assess the damage.

(A bottle of dittany slams into her hand with so much force that she almost doesn't grip it before it falls, but she puts it on the nearest surface while trying to urge Severus to sit so that she can treat him.)

"What," William's voice erupts crossly from down the hall, underscored by footfalls, "the fucking fuck--"

No answers are necessary, really, as soon as his running step takes him into range. He lets go of the pistol holstered to his back, under his coat. Manticores were a surprise he might have anticipated. Severus' face spontaneously shredding under an eruption of high-tensile industrial glass is something else, especially in absence of surprise manticores.

"Professor, we've got you." This assurance comes before William starts to try and touch the wizard, but Lily's there already. Shit lighting or no, anybody would be ready to account for the possibility that Severus is disoriented if not utterly. The medical officer goes for Severus' elbow; the one on his seeing side. Leaves crunch underfoot, unminded, as William angles Lily an inquiring look. By 'inquiring,' one must not mistake this for a mild or inobtrusive curiosity.

William's inquiring look falls somewhere between a military request for sitrep and a repeat of his earlier question spoken aloud, with as many fucks.

It's a good thing that Severus has a very high pain tolerance. It's a good thing that he was only partially facing the glass when it blew outward. It's a good thing his spell took when it did. Little factors knitted into a skein of what the fuck is happening. He hears Lily scream and William's voice; sound is both oversharp and distorted, muffled as though underwater. He wonders how it manages that duality.

Severus tries to explain but realizes too late that he's not in any fit state to do so. He coughs up blood

then starts choking on it.

As soon as he recognizes the suffocating, seizing feeling of liquid moving uncontrollably into his lungs he forces himself to stop breathing, exhaling through his nose then pressing his teeth together. Is someone making him sit down? He can't tell. If they're going to put him somewhere, great, he'll go, but he's not in full awareness of his faculties. Severus seems to go blank, one hand grabbing-- whomever is nearest, congratulations one of you-- the other against his chest.

Edited (a word) 2014-10-31 06:52 (UTC)

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

cw: blood/gore

no subject

moving in line

no subject