forty-fourth jump;

[ataraxites]

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.


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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.

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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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Comments

[goodgodman]

Noticing she's moved closer, Leonard looks over and catches her watching. He huffs out a small chuckle and cocks an eyebrow at her, "Leonard McCoy, pleased to meet you Skye."

Defeated in his search for an undershirt of some kind Leonard gives up, finally zipping most of the way up his chest. It's then that he realizes it's oddly missing half a sleeve. Because it's the arm with his tattoo. God help them all. Sighing he scratches at the tattoo in annoyance and refocuses on Skye. "Now, since we're playing 'Get to Know Your Fellow Kidnappee' n' all, where're you from? You look like a college kid to me."

[hacker]

His assumption has her back straighten, and Skye arches her eyebrows, almost surprised by the assumption. Quickly, she realizes that it says more of him than of her. College kids, she accepts, have all kinds of looks: Leonard here has probably seen a lot of them in his time. Definitely college-educated himself.

"Never went," she admits with a matter-of-fact purse of her lips. She's not bothered by it; if anything, she's more bothered by never going through SHIELD academy, and hacking her way into her career path instead. "On account of all the homelessness and never finishing high school."

Before he can respond, she holds up her hands, quick and disarming. "That's not self-pity, I swear," she preempts the assumption. "I actually really like where I wound up." Realizing that SHIELD is a bigger (and probably not her call) explanation, she drops her hands and comes up with a cover. "L.A." Technically not a lie. "What about you?"

[goodgodman]

Leonard opens his mouth, genuinely shocked, but she holds her hands up before he can manage more than a muttered, "My god-," He's giving her all his focus now, eyebrows hunched, arms crossed and his mouth tight with displeasure.

Homeless. That just doesn't happen anymore, the very idea that she was prevented a basic education because of it is boggling. Now that he knows he can't let it go and he veers the conversation back to her past. "Now hang on, sorry but, homeless? Now if you don't wanna talk about it I get that, you can tell me to mind my own god damn business but, where in gods name did you grow up? It can't've been a Federation Colony."

[hacker]

In the course of her adult life, Skye had explained to plenty of people that she lived out of her van for a good portion of it. Homeless might not always have been the word she used, but vagrancy was easily assumed. Reactions ranged everywhere from the poor dear accompanying an uneasy gaze to empathy to nonchalance—the last one was a particular of the Rising Tide. This was something else.

Rather than keep the focus on the way that Leonard seemed outright scandalized by her conditions—wow. Talk about lucky guy, if he couldn't even imagine it happening. Lucky, or just totally sheltered—she flipped it to the part of his shock that made the least sense to her. "The federation of what?"

[goodgodman]

Pausing Leonard tilts his head, narrowing his eyes in confusion. "The Federation of Planets," he says slowly, an uneasy feeling starting to set in. "You did say you were living in L.A. as in, Los Angeles on the planet Earth right?" She can't possibly not know, though, not unless she'd never even heard of Earth before or-- well, maybe it's about the time and not the place.

Wiping a hand over his face he pinches the bridge of his nose, "Well, how about this. I'm from Georgia. The year 2259."

[hacker]

"Twenty-two—" Skye repeats the start of the date, choking on the rest. The rest doesn't matter. That's two hundred fifty years. Her jaw drops, eyes widening with disbelief. As they should. That amount of time is purely inconceivable, and so are all the implications that come with it.

Leaning back against the row of lockers, she tears her gaze away from him. One hand drags over her mouth, as if striving to pull the fishlike gape off of her face. She succeeds, lips pressed together, eyes still wide and processing. Federation of Planets meant space travel, exactly like they're doing right now.

"Oh my god." It takes a minute to settle in, and when it does— "That's amazing. So you know all about spaceships already." She looks back up at him, quirky in how she makes the leap to intrigue. "Have you been on one like this? Wait. Georgia still exists? The country or the state?"

[goodgodman]

Leonard watches her carefully as it sinks in. Crossing his arms he leans against a locker nearer to her, eyebrows hunched and concern written all over his face. He's fully prepared for some kind of outburst of distress on her part, god knows it's a lot to take in. Time travel is a hell of a thing. And given that the issue of timelines adds an extra layer of insanity to the whole mess, well. Leonard wouldn't blame her. He kinda wants to lose it right now, if he's being honest with himself.

This? Not exactly what he expected. Leonard's eyebrows go up and and his mouth opens, though it takes him a second to respond. "The state. And yes they both still exist." Blinking a few times he musters up, "I've been on several spaceships, I work on one actually. But, no, not like this."

The corner of his lip curls up and he's still looking at her curiously, amused. "Damn. You ain't phased by much are you?"

[hacker]

"You think I'm not fazed?" At that, she blinks in a way that manages to look somewhat surprised, but it's the fleeting sort, hardly proportional to what would be required to counter Bones' observation. Clearly, it hadn't occurred to her how calm the surface appears.

"We're trapped in a spaceship with some kind of monster, no idea what it is, what it wants, or how to stop it, no idea where or when we are, nowhere to run, and no idea how to even begin looking for a way home. The most helpful thing anyone's told me so far was to get comfortable because he's been here twenty jumps, but I don't even know how long a jump is." After a meaningful beat to let that all sink in, Skye confirms in an even tone, "I'm terrified."

But she knows that terrified isn't going to be what gets them out of here. A part of it comes from wanting to measure up, to prove that she's the SHIELD agent that Coulson made her, but it's more than that. She's playing the observer to keep from letting that fear in; she's well-versed in holding herself at a distance to keep from getting affected because she's had to do it plenty in her life, for the good and the bad.

"If it helped, I'd be losing it right now. But it doesn't." Perspective permits that a loose, lopsided smile settle over her lips, and she shrugs. "You seem to be taking it pretty well yourself."

*winces forever at typos that can''t be fixed*

[goodgodman]

Her words are enough to make Leonard sober considerably and he shifts against the locker in discomfort. Yeah, he'd been doing his best to ignore a lot of that, too. Nodding slowly at her he presses his lips together in thought before speaking.

"I don't know if you heard the commotion back there by the pods a bit ago but the loud and belligerent man kicking up a fuss, that was me." The quirk of his lips is self-deprecating. "So believe me when I say, I'm only acting like I'm doing alright."

"Being on a starship in deep space we saw a lot of wild, unimaginable things. Terrifying things." Leonard licks his lips and glances away, memories of the past clouding his expression. "And I can't speak for the rest of the crew but there wasn't a point where I suddenly stopped being afraid. But knowing I had friends there, knowing we were scared but at least we were scared together. It helped. It helped to not be alone."

"What I'm trying to say is that you're not alone." Eyebrow arching, the seriousness fades and he offers a wry smile at her, "For whatever the hell that's worth."

LOCKS IT IN AND MEMORIALIZES IT FOR ETERNITY. EVIL LAUGHS.

[hacker]

Pieces solving a puzzle, she thought. That's all it was, at the end of the day. If all of them could come together, they were bound to get some kind of results. Seeing that someone else thought so too encouraged her.

"More than you think," Skye affirmed, an assured smile set firmly on her lips. To break the tension, she closed one hand into a fist and reached forward to punch lightly at his arm, biting down on her lower lip all the while. She popped one shoulder in a shrug. "Anyway, it's not all doom and gloom. Space is still a novelty to some of us." Her exaggerated dismissal carried a teasing air in it.