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ataraxionlogs2015-06-08 12:00 am
ataraxites) wrote in ataraxionlogs2015-06-08 12:00 am
Entry tags:
- !jump,
- ai enma,
- ailanne rei,
- allison argent,
- bail organa,
- brigid tenenbaum,
- captain hook (killian jones),
- cora hale,
- daryl dixon,
- death (discworld),
- death (sandman),
- derek hale,
- eleanor lamb,
- elizabeth,
- enfys llewelyn,
- fenris,
- firo prochainezo,
- garrett hawke,
- grant ward,
- hermione granger,
- ivan,
- jackson "jax" teller,
- karone,
- laura roslin,
- lee "apollo" adama,
- leo fitz,
- leonard "bones" mccoy (xi),
- maes hughes,
- max rockatansky,
- minho,
- nami,
- robin,
- scott mccall,
- skye,
- tadashi hamada,
- takeshi,
- taylor "tyke" kee,
- thomas
forty-fourth 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: Awareness comes to you slowly in the smothering quiet of the blue fluid. In the light piercing through from the medical bay you realise there's a shadow, a figure stood at the glass of your gravcouch, a hand pressed to the surface just above your face. Fear spikes through your gut as waves of alien sensation crash into your mind, a rage that feels endless, all-consuming, furious, molten hatred that you know is for you.
When the fluid drains, door sliding open to deposit you on the medbay floor, you remember it. Remember it coming again and again, like a nightmare that plagued your sleep over and over, leaving you with no respite, no rest. Days. Perhaps even longer.
You remember that the light coming through from behind the shadow was red.
New arrivals will find messages spray-painted in red across their lockers telling them not to follow their tattoo numbers, and instead to find a room on Floors 001-010.
----------------
ＹＯＵ͘ ̨ＷＡＫＥ̢ ̧ＵＰ ́ＩＮ ＤＡ̛ＲＫＮ̢Ｅ̕ＳＳ̶
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 ̧Ａ̨ＲＥ ＮＯＴ҉ ̷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 ̕Ｗ͝Ｅ̛Ｌ̨Ｃ͡Ｏ͝Ｍ͏Ｅ Ｐ̛ＡＲ̴ＴＹ͜
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: Awareness comes to you slowly in the smothering quiet of the blue fluid. In the light piercing through from the medical bay you realise there's a shadow, a figure stood at the glass of your gravcouch, a hand pressed to the surface just above your face. Fear spikes through your gut as waves of alien sensation crash into your mind, a rage that feels endless, all-consuming, furious, molten hatred that you know is for you.
When the fluid drains, door sliding open to deposit you on the medbay floor, you remember it. Remember it coming again and again, like a nightmare that plagued your sleep over and over, leaving you with no respite, no rest. Days. Perhaps even longer.
You remember that the light coming through from behind the shadow was red.
New arrivals will find messages spray-painted in red across their lockers telling them not to follow their tattoo numbers, and instead to find a room on Floors 001-010.
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.
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.
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As the doors open, he moves forward. He takes those steps out of the elevator and glances down the hallway. It's longer than he realized and it makes him think about just how large this ship must be. Forty-four floors and if each hallway is this long - it makes for a very large ship. He knows he has a room here, on this floor, but he doesn't think they'll make it all the way down there before Fitz contacts her.
"I know who shot me, Skye." He offers, trying to see if that'll pull her focus from getting him to safety to asking questions.
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"Good," she remarked readily. "I heard this place has a security team, we can pass along a description and tell them to keep an eye out." She hustled down the hall with him, only stopping when she reached 084. She stepped up to the door and took a moment to search it over, figuring out how to unlock it. The mechanism responded to her nanites and slid open. Stepping inside, she spoke to Ward over her shoulder.
"These things are programmed to our number; we should be good for a while." She pulled out her comms device as she turned back towards him. Absently, she gestured to one of the bunks for him to take it easy, taking no time to inspect the room quite yet.
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He follows where she's gesturing, but he doesn't take a seat. He knows that the way she found out last time didn't work. He's seen how that plays out. How sharp her responses are and to the point. How there's no room for discussion. She dreads those trips down to the Vault.
"Skye, we need to talk about this," he offers. Trying to get her attention away from her and her comms device.
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Ward's mouth draws into a tight line, he stance stiffening. "It was Fitz, Skye," saying it doesn't make anything better. "And we don't need a plan. You need to put distance between us. There's a lot that you haven't experienced, yet, and those things change everything." He gestures to the door, "I need to leave, before whoever you just sent a message to gets here."
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"No." She refused to accept it, shaking the mere thought off. She walked closer to Ward, all that bravery and stubbornness bubbling straight to the surface. "There must be some kind of explanation. It's not him. It's Fitz! Okay, he can't even hunt the animals in Skyrim to raise his craft skill."
Even if she were to believe it was true, she wasn't about to leave Ward to deal with it alone. His attempts to protect her were admirable—precisely why she looked up to him like she did, trusted him—but misplaced. Skye would never leave him behind.
"Whatever's in the ship must be messing with him. People warned me about it in medical, there are monsters, things that mess with your head. It's one of those; it's gotta be. We need to help him."
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"Skye," he starts off, possibly in the middle of this run of words and concern over her friend. He wonders if there would have been the same sort of defensive line presented for him if someone else had told her before he'd gotten to her. He knows it doesn't exist. Not in the events he's witnessed. There was just a long con as she drew out an attempt to get him into custody.
When she's finally slowed her words and seems to be looking to him for some sort of explanation, he tries again, "If it was Fitz, I wouldn't have said that I was planning on leaving you alone." That much is true and it seems more important somehow than actually dropping the real information on her.
"It's not Fitz," he says, still with the calm assurance that she's not going to 'ICE' him. "He's capable of walking to that edge, but he's not that man." He's seen just how close he can get to the edge, too. Twice, now.
He wants to say it, to let the words come out of his mouth, but he starts to circle around her instead. Putting his back to the door - which isn't the best position to be in considering he's certain of who she just called. It's one of those moments where he doesn't want to give himself the chance to put her in the way. If they come at him, he doesn't want any chance of her getting caught in the crossfire - of them thinking that he'd use her as leverage.
"I've been kept in the Vault of the Playground for the past month. You're the only one that I've been willing to talk to and I haven't lied to you once while being held there." His hand is still raised up, trying to keep that calmness in the air, to preempt any quick outburst that might be bubbling up in her.
"I don't want to start now, Skye." He lowers his hand slowly, but keeps it out in the open. A very relaxed pose for a very serious conversation. "I was trained by Garrett and his mission was my mission. I didn't want anyone to know the truth, I didn't want to hurt you -- so I shot Nash to protect Garrett and myself."
He takes a breath and watches her features, watches as what he says starts to settle and hopefully take their place in her timeline of events. "Fitz had a right to shoot me, but having it happen here -- is complicated. He knows what I've done.... what I will do."
He wonders if he should show her the marks along his wrists, if he should let her see the weight that his choices have put onto himself, but he doesn't want to burden her with that information too.
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The implications unsettled her more than the nomenclature. A chill crept up her back slowly, like ice water spreading through her veins, starting in her spine. As it sank in, he moved, and she circled counter to him, letting him get between her in the door because she was more focused on keeping the level distance between them.
By the time their dance was complete, she stood in the center of her bunk, his back was to the door, and she felt sick, like the wind had been steadily pushed out of the room to suffocate her on the truth of it all. He never admitted it, not directly, but she put it together: Garrett. Garrett was the Clairvoyant, and Ward had been working against them the whole time. Simmons' hasty explanation of timelines fell into place, and Skye felt the air grow thick, everything surreal. A nightmare.
"You …" Her voice shook, shock battling against contempt for dominance. "Thomas Nash was innocent." Disabled and unable to speak, he was the perfect target. Doubts chattered at the back of her mind, reminders that none of them had heard him actually speak directly. Computers. Smoke and mirrors. Not powers. Access. Like Garrett had. And he wanted the truth about Coulson, so he'd planted Ward amongst them.
"All those things you said." She remembered every single one—about not regretting it, about doing it for her. Lies. "You're a murderer." Every promise, every qualifier, every attempt to soften the blow crumbled in the face of the truth. How could she believe that he never meant to hurt her when he'd killed a man in cold blood to save himself, chalked it up to some protective instinct to disguise that he was a serial killer? The person they'd all counted on to protect them was the greatest monster of all. Every word, every look, every assurance, they were just lies. A web spun to maintain some cover.
Betrayal and hurt welled up in her eyes, staggering her. She blinked hard against them, unable to tear her eyes off of him but wishing she could, more than anything. He wore her S.O.'s face, the face of a Grant Ward who she could have loved, but she didn't recognize the man in front of her.
The gun, she realized, was in her locker, and Ward was cutting her off from the door. Worse still, it hit her that she'd summoned Simmons up here. No. No, it's not safe. The comms device buzzed again in her pocket, a reminder of the unread message. It filled a creeping silence. All that, and all Ward could say for himself was that it was complicated. Bile burned the back of her throat, reaching her tongue. She choked on it, a gasp that bordered a sob slipping past her mouth. One hand lifted to cover her lips and she turned her face away, eyes wide and wet.
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The buzzing sound cuts into the room again and his eyes dart down to it. He knows what that is and he wants to tell her that she needs to answer it, that he'll just leave before they get there, but he's too stubborn right now. He deserves her hate, needs her to have that chance to voice it to him because all he ever got was the cold edge of the blade after she'd come to terms with it. This is new to him, this is something he didn't get to see and the twisted part is that he can appreciate it. The way Fitz had faltered -- that unsteady panic that swells up and forces the most visceral reactions. Fitz could have killed him and he's that much of a sadist to wonder if Skye might be able to do it.
"I lied about why I was there, Skye. I did things, the weight of which I'm living with, but I didn't set-out with the intention of hurting you." The emphasis is placed there, on that word, because he's not sure she understands where she fit into it all. How important she'd become. How much doubt she had cast on what Garrett was doing and how close he'd come to just skirting to a different line of choices. He didn't make that choice, though. He knows that.
"I care about you, Skye." The words fall out of his mouth and he knows it doesn't have any weight, there's no depth that he can muster up with the threat of someone coming after him. He's better at cold and distant. It's easier to put that barrier up and he knows that it's going to make things worse. "It's why I'm telling you now myself -- instead of letting someone else do it."
His eyes go back to where her device has been pocketed and he nods toward it, "You're going to want to get that before they come here and think I've done something to you."
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For a long time, she'd hoped for something between herself and Ward. In all the reciprocation of the glowing coy looks she'd given him, she wasn't so stupid as to believe that it wasn't returned, but it was only when he dragged it up that she realized she'd assumed it party of the lie. His clarification seemed to attempt to soften the blow, lessen the severity of his betrayal by qualifying it.
If there was ever a moment where she'd hoped that it was a lie, hoped for anything that might change it, that very act of trying to qualify it with his feelings for her leveled it. He thought his affection for or dedication to her could somehow balance out the backstabbing and murder. Whoever she'd believed Grant Ward to be, it wasn't that. She blinked hard, visibly sickened by his words. In flinching away, she stepped several steps back, turning to the side but never giving him her back.
And she decided that she didn't believe him. Better to reject the very notion than to consider how fucked up it was for him to be preaching his feelings in the same breath that he admitted to being responsible for the worst of it.
His eyes fell to her jacket pocket, and she tracked them. That icy paranoia returned, prickling the hair on the back of her neck.
"I'm not sure that you won't." The words were brutal, unfiltered. The softness she'd hovered over him with snapped straight out of her expression, replaced by heartache—open wounds turned to righteous fury. She shook her head. "Or is that not how you work? You don't get your hands dirty, you send someone else to pull the trigger." She spat the words, gaining momentum. "Someone like Ian Quinn. So you can just sit there and watch while I—"
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"I won't," he insists. He would never hurt her. He can't help the things that have already happened, but he knows that he wouldn't do that. "When the truth about Garrett is discovered, my cover retains in tact. Victoria Hand comes to take him into custody and I join her on the transport. When she offers me a chance to kill Garrett - to kill the real Clairvoyant, I kill her and the SHIELD Agents escorting us. Garrett wants... wanted the information on what saved Coulson. What saved you. So I have to return to the Sandbox to get you, because the hard drive with all that intel is encrypted and you're the only one that can get that information."
His voice is still steady, still trying to explain something of what's been held back from her by a simple matter of time not passing.
"I take you," he cuts to the brutal truth, because even if she plays along and goes willingly at first it doesn't stop the truth of him actually taking her. "Deathlok forces your hand and the information is given to Garrett."
He doesn't tell her how her hand is forced, doesn't want to let her know that it's still in her to not let him die. He knows right now that she might not see that clearly, might not want to hear it.
"But FitzSimmons... they're a risk. Garrett wanted me to eliminate them, but I couldn't do that either." Garrett would have killed Ward to get his truth, to get his answers and it had driven a wider gap in between what Garrett wanted and what Ward thought was right.
"They ran. Backed into a medical pod on the Bus. I ejected the pod over the ocean and it sank. I thought it would give them a chance... a better chance than me letting them live and have Deathlok handle it." It's a lot and he's already shattered so many of her beliefs in him. He's not sure how else to continue, if she's even going to let him.
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He killed Victoria Hand. Killed SHIELD agents. Killed the innocent bystander, Thomas Nash, and who knows how many others. Even now, she couldn't see it, didn't understand where this darkness came from. He had protected them. Saved them. He was the one they trusted and relied on for that, and somehow, she had to find a way to reconcile that with the fact that the man standing in front of her was a serial killer.
She stayed perfectly still, letting him talk. Letting him wax on about how hard it was for him to betray them, feeling sick all the while but knowing it was what Coulson would need her to do. Get all the information he would share. Information fed spies, and he was giving it to her: she wouldn't question why or interrupt. But nothing could temper the cold distrust and loathing that set her mouth as if in stone. Despite it all, her eyes remained soft, wounded, a limping and dying animal searching for mercy that would not come.
He dropped Fitzsimmons out of a plan. Sank them to the bottom of the ocean.
It hit her then.
"Fitz," She repeated, panic piercing her efforts to remain detached. It rumbled beneath the surface, churned into anger as she realized that she wasn't saving Ward, pulling him out of that elevator. She was helping the man who'd hurt her team, and he'd probably done the same today. "Where is he? What did you do to him?!" It was a trick. All of it, it had to be a trick, and if it was, then all this time, Fitz ...
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He's patient.
"Fitz and I had a conversation that he didn't like. He approached me. He drew the ICER on me. I was unarmed and that didn't stop him from shooting me. I don't know where he went after that. Presumably to go warn someone else."
There's a beat, before he adds, "Not you, clearly."
There's a touch of a smugness there, knowing that his words had that snap of bitter distrust of the very people he'd been lying to. It's not because she's naive, but because unlike Ward -- who still wants to protect her -- Fitz sought to protect himself. Presumably.
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She moved for him then, done hearing his defenses, and more than willing to fight her way out. Curling one hand into a fist, she threw a punch for his jaw—on top of being slower than anyone who hoped to beat a specialist in a fistfight should hope to be, it was predictable. Deja vu, even.
"Liar!"
In her pocket, Simmons' messages were waiting to reaffirm that she hadn't yet heard of Ward's arrival either, that Fitz hadn't merely forgotten Skye in his panic after dropping their traitorous teammate.
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"Skye, I'm not lying. I won't lie to you." Ward restates it, trying to make her understand, despite the cloud of anger that he knows she's surrounded in.
"I'm not going to hurt you, either."
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He promised he wouldn't lie, wouldn't hurt her, but he already had. The damage was done, and those promises felt like nothing more than husks in the wake of it. After a moment, she huffed out a breath, slow enough to make it clear she was left to think with her head now that her body had proven useless.
"Then what?" Skye threw her arms out beside her, then dropped them flatly to her sides. "What do you want? The hard drive? I don't have it." A lie. The black rectangle weighed heavily in her jacket pocket now that he'd mentioned it, but he couldn't guess that it had come in her locker, could he?
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Ward's jaw tenses, clenching in frustration that his efforts hadn't earned him that right. "My only value, though, is the intel. Nothing more. Coulson arranged for me to be traded to my brother, Christian. I was being prepped to leave SHIELD custody." It's easy for her to listen for the bitterness in his words, the way he would fight against anything to be placed back into the hands of that man. He has plans for his brother, but they were meant to happen after other things too place. After. Not before.
"Then I was here."
The breath exhaled is quick, barely anything at all. "You saved me, Skye. I need you to know that I'm telling you the truth. That I won't hold anything back, because when they come," his head cants, nodding slightly, "and they will - they'll tell you the same things I did. I won't lie to you and I know that somewhere, deep down, you'll trust that."
The choice of his phrase is specific. It's not that she'll trust him, but trust that he won't lie to her. In his mind it's a very different thing, but at the same time he knows it's murky enough to be confusing.
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She approached him then. Easy steps, nothing to raise his hackles. In a soft, level voice, so that he knew she was calm, Skye explained, "I will never trust anything that comes out of your mouth ever again." She shook her head, resolving herself to his enmity. As her gaze cooled, it hardened into steel. "But you're right about one thing. They will come." Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out her comm device and held it aloft. "Simmons already knows where we are. Wanna take bets how long it'll be before security's here?"
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Even as she steps closer he has a mild delusion that she's going to show him some sort of reprieve, but instead she makes a vow to herself. He knows that he could tell her about her father. He knows that it could give her something to think about, but he also has learned the hard way that when she's made up her mind it isn't wise to try and trick her into changing that choice.
"What have I done that the security on board this ship would care about, Skye?"
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"Depends how much Fitz has told them," She answered as if her bravado hadn't flagged. "But with airlocks on the table, I wouldn't want to stick around to find out."
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Ward is certain that if there had been a chance for his detainment, for a trial or punishment of any kind that Fitz would have acted differently. He glances over her shoulder, to a nearby chair. Part of him wants to be bold enough to go take a seat, but if she wants to kick him out - she's going to have to do that.
"I'd sooner get this over with," he replies. That's the truth, too. If he's going to have to face any sort of security, at any point, he really wants to see what he has to go against. However, he's more certain that it's just going to be FitzSimmons.
That he can handle just by walking past them.
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"I'd sooner see you freeze-dried in the vacuum of space." She spat harsh words so that she wouldn't allow herself the weakness, uncertainty, and sympathy that threatened. This was Ward. He trained her. She cared about him. She didn't know how to adapt her image of him, so she had to flip it like a switch. Force it all to come out as loathing or she'd slip, lose herself.
She already felt one hair's breadth away from crying.
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As she barks out her insults, as small as they are, he tries to disconnect this shattered broken version of Skye with the one he knows she can be. The one that's collected and calm in the face of him and his truth. The one that sets down the rules and follows them.
He knows she's in there and he's willing to wait, because when she's come to the conclusion that she's ready to face him - he's going to be ready.
"That's a myth," he replies. "Freezing in space. That's not what would happen." You know, just saying. She won't ever see that - because that wouldn't happen.
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Right now she feels more fear than anger, and she rushes ahead without waiting for the instruction that she's already reached out for, the actual weapon if she needs it. Jemma would love nothing more than a reason to need it, but not like this. She doesn't stop until she practically slams into the door, impatient for it to open. She's just praying that there's someone on the other side. The ship is massive, and if he's moved her...
"Skye!"
But instead the first person she sees is Grant Fucking Ward. Yes, that is how she thinks of him now. Don't tell her mum.
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"Jemma!"
Relief colored Skye's voice, even if Ward stood between them. Any hopes of alleviating her panic dwindled quickly, though, when she realized that a security team was not securely at her back.
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