oo4. partially open.

[betterangels]

CHARACTERS: Charles Xavier + Rick Grimes + Caprica Six (Natasi) + Garrett Hawke; and others as they happen.
LOCATION: Everywhere and nowhere.
WARNINGS: To be added.
SUMMARY: The latest dramas wherein people learn to be telepaths with various degrees of ineptitude, save for the actual telepath.
NOTES: Monthly catch all! This is only partially open because I'm not providing a fixed narrative thing to reply to. Hence, please let me know if you'd like to do anything, and I'll be happy to set up a thread (unless you feel ambitious).

Comments

[forgodssake]

[ The confusion isn't supplemented with explanation -- she answers, all the same, and there's something oddly charming about her bias. If only because it lends her some context that isn't panicky fear, isn't just the white noise at the cusp of her mind.

Her continues to work, quietly and unknown, trying to make heads and tails of where the source is, if he's even looking for a source. ]

There's a woman onboard who comes from one of the moons of Pasiphae. I wouldn't exactly call her friendly.

[ He glances back to check his dog isn't doing anything untoward -- he isn't, hearteningly -- and looks back at Charlotte. ]

But she talked a little of what the Tranquility meant to everyone, still means to many. That it signified hope, and a second chance. Do you still believe that?

[fugax]

[Any small glow of light brought to her mind by memories of the past, of home, dims at the question. Snatches of other incidents rise, of too-crowded buildings, streets, the slums growing in the darker corners of Alexandria's cities that no one talked about. The crowds at station docking control, hundreds of people being turned away, marched into shuttles and shipped back to whatever desperate corners they'd come from. The price of fresh produce rising and rising, rumours of rationing, talk about ending up only living on nutrition paste as if most people weren't secretly using it to make things a little easier already.]

It isn't what it was meant to be. Not anymore.

[And in her mind that means an end. No more hope. The Tranquility had been unique, and even if they could build another, that didn't mean they should. All that was left was saving what lives they could, here, now.]

You should have sent those people away before it saw them.

[forgodssake]

[ Charles is quiet in the face of that little, disjointed reel of context, and quiet at the way her thoughts settle. A direct contrast to the sharper desperation and determination he feels rabbity in the minds of the DUPRR individuals.

Because they don't understand, is the easy fallback. He doesn't discount the idea that maybe they are all too close to this to make such a judgment.

But.

Mention of it is a lure he almost takes, but he navigates the conversation carefully. ]

Perhaps it wasn't ever what it was meant to be, considering what went on in the genetics labs.

[ His tone isn't accusatory, for all that it's a carefully placed barb, designed to prod reaction. His attention on her is equally mild. ]

[fugax]

[Her expressions shutters, some dark mix of grief and shame weighing her gaze down.]

We didn't know about that.

[The truth, a procession of faces in her mind, crewmates filled with hope and excitement as they were first taken around the still under-construction Tranquility, listened to van Rijn's words about carrying the future. Living on the ship, working, drinking in the bars, every second ignorant of the darkness growing down in the Science Department. Like a black wound, oozing larger and larger.]

We were here to find a future for everyone.

[forgodssake]

[ Charles bites back to the urge to say something like but you know about it now, restricting himself to observation -- he doesn't exactly understand what sets her off, but side stepping impulsively stupid questions is one way to avoid it. He watches the procession of truth in her mind. The absence of knowledge. ]

I believe that.

[ Assurance. Because that's worked so well always. ]

But someone had to know. Were you aware they were using prisoners.

[ Official capacity. Authority. ]

[fugax]

[Silence presses again for a long moment, a reluctance in her expression, guilt. Because she knows, the fact they were using prisoners would never have been protested by anyone, not even herself. The prisons were full of murderers and thieves, pirates, the worst their society had to offer draining precious resources in an increasing flood.

But what they'd done to them, here, it wasn't manual labour on the outer planets, wasn't a clean execution. It was horrific.]

The command crew.

[She eventually admits.]

The captain.

[Outside of them, the scientists and the security detail, no one else had even known the prisoners were on board.]