ataraxionlogs | thirty-ninth jump;

Entry tags:

thirty-ninth jump;

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Gravity Couches and beyond.
WARNINGS: Maybe some swearing, or even some violence, and more than likely some implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Another month, another jump, another round of new faces.
NOTES: A feeling of deep dread greets you as you stumble out of the gravcouch, strong enough to hold you still for a long moment, searching your surroundings for the source of your wariness. Nothing becomes apparent, only your fellow passengers waking up. Eventually you gather the resolve to pick yourself up and start moving, the feeling fading slowly as you progress through routine.

New arrivals will find messages spraypainted across their lockers telling them not to follow their tattoo numbers, and instead to find a room on Floors 001-010.

----------------

ＹＯＵ͘ ̨ＷＡＫＥ̢ ̧ＵＰ ́ＩＮＤＡ̛ＲＫＮ̢Ｅ̕ＳＳ̶

There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're deposited on the floor of a stark, sterile medical bay.

ＹＯ́Ｕ̴ ̧Ａ̨ＲＥＮＯＴ҉ ̷ＡＬＯ̨ＮＥ҉

There are others who have come before you, others who are awakening beside you. Some may be familiar to you, perhaps even friends. Others have much less amiable plans. Some are merely alien and inexplicable, but there are always those who might mean you harm.

After you catch your breath and your vision returns, you notice a number on the inside of your forearm. Maybe it's a familiar number. Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just a number. But the number—completely unique to you—is a tattoo, and it does not come off.

If you enter the room adjacent to the medbay, you will find a small locker with your number on it, surrounded by rows upon rows of identical lockers. Inside, you will find a few of your personal items, a communications device, and a ship's uniform in your exact size. The comms device is fully powered and connects directly to the ship's network; it's your only means of communication beyond physical conversation. Upon turning the device on, a neutral, automated voice will say, "Please take the blue lift to the passenger quarters." Any other attempts at communicating with the rest of the network are met only with static.

ＴＨ̀ＩＳ͜ ̶Ｉ͠Ｓ͡ ͘Ｙ̵Ｏ͝ＵＲ ̕Ｗ͝Ｅ̛Ｌ̨Ｃ͡Ｏ͝Ｍ͏ＥＰ̛ＡＲ̴ＴＹ͜

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh my god," Johanna says, to nothing and to no one, "what's it look like I'm doing. I'm cutting my hair. Is everybody dumb?"

She turns a look back on Eponine--more of a glare than anything else, jaw set, hair shorn all uneven just under her chin. There's a moment where Eponine has to languish under that glare, and then, abruptly, sharply, Johanna turns the knife around and offers it to her, hilt first.

"Think you can do a better job?"

Johanna is not the first person to call her dumb. Nor, will she be the last. Instead of reacting, Eponine chooses to kneel on the floor next to Johanna and take the knife.

"Oui. My sister and I would do this for each other. Our scissors were blunt, we used knives." The cuts are jagged, but Eponine waits a moment, refusing to start just yet. "Sit, it will be easier if you are on the bench."

That's part of what Johanna likes about Eponine: her willingness to take it.

"Why didn't you just sharpen your scissors?" Sisters. Johanna rolls her eyes. She doesn't have any experience with sisters, but she's pretty done with them. Katniss Everdeen and her precious sister--they'd played that story up even more than her romance. Noble sacrifice. It makes her want to puke.

"I like the floor better," she tells Eponine--not necessarily a refusal, but definitely a challenge. "That's why I'm sitting here. Well?" --and she gestures, sharply, like, what are you waiting for.

Oh, she takes it, and she can toss it back just as much.

"We didn't have a whetstone." Duh, Johanna. These girls were poor as hell and spent their time delivering letters for their father, offering up themselves in exchange for sponsorship for their family. The money was gone the second they got it home.

Eponine only blinks. "And I do not like the floor- I can move easier around you, if you sit on a bench. You will also not be nearly as covered in your own hair after. We can see where your hair falls, easier, as well." She was surprisingly practical, when she needed be.

"Ugh," Johanna says, and throws up her hands, exasperated, "fine--"

But she does get to her feet and climb onto the bench, her back to Eponine. Once situated there, she points, brusquely, to her own head. "There. Happy?"--like this is some great favor that she's done for Eponine, like Epoinine isn't the one doing her a favor here. "And spare me your sad story, okay. You didn't have a whetstone, blah, blah blah... I've heard enough of those. Just tell me you like knives better than scissors, or something."

Actually--and she squints over her shoulder at Eponine, studying her-- "Do you still cut your hair with a knife? It looks pretty good." Like maybe she can trust you after all.

Eponine only smiles to celebrate her victory, changing her position to better orient herself for hair cutting. "Oui," she tells her, but accepts the caveat. "I like knives better than scissors. I have never stabbed a man with scissors." But she could have, if she needed to.

Eponine hums to herself as she looks at Johanna's hair, lifting up a part of it delicately to see where she roughly wanted it cut to. "Just the tips, when I first arrived. My hair was knotted and matted. My friends helped, with scissors, but, since then, I have intended to continue with a knife." She runs her fingers through Johanna's hair briefly, before selecting a choppy bit and slowly violining over the ends.

Grimly, Johanna smiles, her gaze fixed forward. Stabbing is a different story, she might say; you can stab with anything. Scissors for stabbing could be messy but God, there's days where she's wanted to put her axe into the face of her designer. Maybe she should have gone for the scissors instead. At least they were accessible.

Her shoulders are hitched high, conscious of the knife behind her back--just because she trusts her to do a decent job of a haircut doesn't mean that she actually trusts her--but still, Johanna lets Eponine get on with things, without offering any comment or suggestion for style or length. "You should do something decent with it. Don't just trim the ends. Maybe I'll cut it for you," she suggests, with a laugh that implies: maybe don't give her free reign of your hair. "Fair's fair, right?"

She recognizes the body language, but says nothing, nor even appears to notice it. She just keeps at her work, sawing at the strands without much to say, except when spoken to. When she was silent, she hummed tuneless songs.

"Life is not fair," Eponine reminded Johanna. "But perhaps. With scissors. And I should like a looking glass." So she could see what exactly the girl was doing to her hair. She was vain, and always had been. But having access to food and fine clothing by her standards had only augmented this trait. "But that is not a no."

She's still staring forward, but Johanna's mouth tightens down to a thin angry line. "Don't tell me that." Life isn't fair. So what. Her grip on the edge of the bench is tight, a grip of her palms and fingertips. "Keep that up and I'll break your mirror and stick it in the back of your head."

Not the best way to convince someone to let you try your hand at hairdressing, but Johanna can't help it. The well of anger had been too immediate, like being sliced across the palm. "Is that still 'not a no'?"

"Hush!" Eponine scolds her. "You do not know my life, nor do I know yours. I meant no offense to you, Johanna." Violence doesn't bother her. The man she'd most likely been going to marry had, the last time they'd spoken, held a knife to her throat, planning on slitting it. But he'd taken too long and she had called his bluff.

She shrugs. "Perhaps. I have not decided. But I do see all these beautiful women, with different hair styles. In Paris, oh, some of the ladies had the finest curls and bonnets! They looked like dolls, and I should have very much liked to have been one of them."

Don't tell me to hush is next, but Johanna bites down, hard, on her lip, quite literally biting back the remark--not out of some obedience, but more because why bother. Her arms, her chest, her shoulders--everything feels like it's been screwed down too tightly, like if she relaxes her grip, she'll just unspool. Eponine is right: they don't know each other's lives, not really, even if Eponine has told her some of her sad story.

But also, what the hell does she care. This isn't a sadness competition. It would be nice to say that none of it matters here, but it's like it matters more than ever, everything from the worlds they've left behind echoing and distorting on this ship. The same old shit, again.

Dolls. Johanna snorts. "I can do curls," she says, flatly, "curls are easy. What's so great about looking like some doll?"

"Would you curl my hair?" She bounces slightly on the balls of her feet. "I would love that! Oh, Michel will fall in love with me all over again! I will be beautiful, and we will go out together, on a proper date! Then we will truly be dating!" She's way too excited at the prospect. She would have adored being a tribute, if only for the designers.

Eponine takes a moment to think about dolls, even working on the hair in front of her. "They are beautiful. Perfect. Beautiful dresses and rosy lips."

Johanna rolls her eyes. "Yeah, he's definitely in it for the curls." Girlfriend, please. She reaches up to lay a steadying hand on top of her own head, as if worried that the force of Eponine's excitement is going to jerk her scalp out by the roots. "All right, all right already, I'll curl your hair. But only if you hold still and finish up already."

Which, to be fair: Eponine is good about getting back to work. She's only momentarily distracted by her disgusting girlish giddiness. And why shouldn't she be? It's great to look good. Truthfully, wearing nice clothes and taking a bath every day were luxuries that Johanna really does enjoy, even if she hates everything else about the Capitol. Or, well. They were luxuries, that she did enjoy. Those days were pretty much over, even before the Tranquility.

"Dolls are beautiful, and they're stupid," she corrects Eponine. "They can't talk. They can't think. You just pose their limbs and then put them down and they stand there. There's nothing great about that. You could cut eyeholes into a piece of wood and slap a wig on it and it'd still be a piece of wood."

Edited 2015-01-13 21:12 (UTC)

Curls, great sex, cuddling, his own masochism. She wasn't about to complain, as, despite previous chair-hitting antics, she had allowed herself to fall in love with this man. And was better for it.

"Oui, of course," she says, and continues at the cutting. There isn't too much left to do now, but she's meticulous at getting it all the same length.

Eponine hadn't had luxuries, either. Perhaps, when she was a child, and had indeed had dolls and dresses and kittens. But when she'd grown, they'd all been stripped from her, and she slept beneath bridges and hallucinated from hunger. Death had been the best option for her, and she had welcomed it with open arms.

Then she'd woken up here.

"No, but, did you never pretend to be a mother to them? Or to speak to them as if they did speak back? There was much fun in that, for me as a child. Another sort of companion. It may be my childhood speaking for me, to find them so wonderful. Now, I do not know what I would do with one, save admire it."

"Break it." Johanna drums her fingers against the underside of the bench, as she swings her legs up to cross them at the ankles, a movement with a level of delicacy that is perhaps a little surprising. "Talk to it and wait for it to answer, but it's not like it's going to. Admire it. Maybe if you're really good, the ship will give you a doll as a present."

She'd ignored Eponine's first question outright, but comes back to it now. Dolls were less important than axes, and pretending less important than work. But there were toys, and games. Not dolls, and mothering, but other stuff. It's just easier not to think of it at all, to avoid rose-tinted nostalgia. Not in the least because nostalgia makes her want to puke.

"Here's some advice." Decisively, Johanna turns a sharp glance over her shoulder, interrupting Eponine's progress. "Don't waste your time thinking about your childhood. Don't let it speak for you. No one cares, and you shouldn't care either."

"Perhaps." She'd like one, but, it would be useless, now that she was older. She had her brother to take care of now. Her brother, her boyfriend, her friends. A doll, in comparison, was useless. "I'm hardly good." She hadn't been good before, and she wasn't now.

Eponine is quick enough to pull the knife back when Johanna turns around. That advice, though she's prepared to disagree, is apt. Extremely. "Oh. That is..." Even her parents hadn't cared about her past. They cared about the now. Making money. Being able to eat. It fit her own circumstances, too. Why care about the past when you didn't even know if you had tomorrow.

"You are a very smart woman, Johanna."

Johanna keeps her stare fixed on Eponine. Her mouth is half hidden by the lift of her shoulder, a tightly-drawn line. And the stare is direct, judgmental--not necessarily unkind, but too sharp to be mistaken as kind.

Eponine is dull, but she isn't stupid. There's a hard-earned wariness in her that Johanna recognizes. She doesn't like her--but she doesn't hate her, either. It's stupidity that she hates more. At least Eponine can learn.

That eventual assessment makes Johanna turn away with a little flounce, a smile twisted across her face. She likes to have her talents recognized. "You bet I am. So you better listen to me." No modesty here, false or otherwise, and Johanna waves a hand toward her hair again, regal and dismissive. "Now finish up. I don't have all day."

Eponine, on the other hand, adores Johanna. She is not intimidated by her, not in the least. She's dealt with monsters of men, and Johanna doesn't compare. It's nice to see that fire in a woman. No, Eponine is not stupid, though her family would have had you believe otherwise. She could read and write, unusual for a woman in her position. And that alone made her feel intelligent.

But when it came to social cues and graces? She fell below Marius Pontmercy himself.

"I will. And I shall finish, just a bit more here." The cut was plain, nothing amazing to write home about, simply short and trimmed. With one last bit of sawing, Eponine let go of Johanna's hair, and smiled. "Stand! I should like to see how you think it looks!"

With a sigh, dismissive and irritated, Johanna heaves herself to her feet and turns around to face Eponine. They're separated by the bench between them, but they're still fairly close, and Eponine is still holding her knife--but Johanna doesn't twitch away, and she doesn't demand the return of the knife. Not yet.

Instead, she pushes her fingers briskly through the trimmed length, fluffing it out for a second. Against all odds, it sort of suits her face, in a hacked-off kind of way. Maybe when it grows out a little, it'll look more purposeful.

"Well?"

Eponine beams proudly. "You are a beautiful woman, Johanna." She meant it, the haircut hadn't done anything to change that, one way or another.

"I do like it. Quite a lot." Carefully, she holds the knife back out to Johanna, hilt first.

"Thanks." Sweet and tart, with no humble modesty, Johanna smiles at Eponine and takes the knife back. She brushes a few stray hairs off the flat of the blade with her thumb. It's not polished enough that she could see her reflection, but so what? She doesn't really need to.

"Message me, when you decide you want your curls." Business now, she climbs over the bench and pushes past Eponine, back to her locker. "I promise I won't shave your head."

"Of course!" She says almost too quickly. Friends! That's exactly what it means. "I shall hold you to that. But I do not trust easy." But, she'd made Johanna's hair look pretty. So hopefully, she would do the same for curls.

"Good. You shouldn't." Trust in general is overrated. Trust in Johanna... double so. She gives Eponine another little glance, flat and wary and curious all at once. What a weird girl.

"Well? Go on and get out of here," she says, too dull to be cruel, "or I'll change my mind and shave it right now. Find your stupid boyfriend. I've got stuff to do."

And she turns back to her locker, pointedly rummaging through the spare contents.

Oh, no one ever said Eponine was the most sane individual. Musical writers must have been kidding themselves.

"Please do not- I will find Michel. And I will find you for more hair!" With a quick giggle, she practically trips over herself as she turns to find her boyfriend. Johanna was lovely, and Eponine believed that she herself had made another friend.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

thirty-ninth jump;

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