oh the weight it must be light wherever you are.

[amethysts]

CHARACTERS: Libby and YOU (OTA)
LOCATION: Room 008 >> 189, floor 8 kitchens and living areas
WARNINGS: Substance abuse, cursing
SUMMARY: Libby is not taking certain losses well
NOTES: Bump into her any day whenever, profit from drunken honesty



Day One

Nikolai and Syg are gone.

Shrike checks on her people every day. She knows almost to the second when they've...just been gone. Like Kurt's Blaine. And she'll live, she tells herself. It'll be fine.

Nikolai was her one hope for opting out. Syg was her one girl friend. She is not going to be fine.

Shrike cuts out the blue in her hair and dumps all her piercings in the trash. That's when she starts drinking in her room. This isn't fair. This isn't--this isn't fair, she's losing everyone, and she doesn't know what to do.

Day Two

She wakes up shaking and sick with Nikolai's remaining cigarettes by her bed. She doesn't remember taking them. On the way to the kitchen to get more alcohol she tries lighting one up--

She pukes into her cupped hands, then the kitchen sink. She could clean up, sure. But she doesn't. Instead she curls up on a couch with a bottle of nearly vodka and teaches herself to smoke. She throws up three times and doesn't care. Somebody else can deal with it.

Day Three

They fucking abandoned her.

This is what she has to tell herself to get angry, lying on a table in the common room and wishing anyone else was gone. They left her and she doesn't give a fuck about them. Whatev, right? Nikolai was an asshole and Syg was stupid and she doesn't care except oh, fuck, she cares so much. She cares all the time and it's fucking horrible.

She needs to cut them out as efficiently as her blue streak, but she's keeping that in a box too. Sentimental. The colour of her hair and the colour of her heart were blue, blue, blue, and she misses them all--

That's what gets her going. She's given people prison tattoos before. She knows what she's doing. So after some more alcohol to ease the pain she traces two things: a reaper over her heart and spikes on her right wrist. Then she starts filling them in with ink she makes in her little lab in Engineering, biting down on a rag. So there she sits, naked from the waist up except for her bra, because she cares too much. Her heart is too big and it's choking her and she hates it, dully.

(She knows she'll lose everything, eventually.)

Comments

day 3 in which Rickon learns about tattoos

[rickon]

A little boy and a big wolf come into the common room. They are explorers. They aren't restricting their explorations to floor 9. What kind of exploring has limits?

The wolf paces beside the boy, his forequarters even with the boy's legs. Though unleashed, it's clear this wolf Belongs To Someone, and that Someone is the boy.

"Aren't you cold?" the boy wants to know.

[amethysts]

He's a kid. And she's drunk and who cares anymore if she looks weak? So she smiles warmly and wipes the blood from her wrist with the cloth frlm her mouth, damp with spit.

(The dog--wolf?--usually would worry her. Dogs hate her. It's something about how she smells. But fuck it. If it wants to maul her, let it.)

"A little bit," she admits. "But whatev. As soon as these are done I'll suit up. I'm--"

Who is she, today?

"I'm Shrike."

[rickon]

Shrikes aren't native to the places Rickon has lived; he doesn't make the connection between the name and the feathers on her arms.

"I'm Rickon," he says, "and this is Shaggydog. Are you a bird girl? We saw a bird girl yesterday, with wings."

[amethysts]

"Nill, yeah?" That's the only other bird girl Shrike knows. It makes her sick, but--Nill is beautiful and sweet and she'd kill anyone who hurt her. So it's fine.

"Hey--you're the badass you threatened everyone on the net." It made her smile even as she added him to the people she has to protect, and oh, fuck, he's so little. It hurts. It hurts looking at him and remembering another little kid who died in her lap--that's never happening again. She slides off her table. "Yeah, I'm a bird girl. Uh--I was just about to make something to eat. You and Shaggy hungry?"

[rickon]

There is rarely a time when Shaggy isn't hungry, and Rickon is something of an opportunist where food is concerned. "Can we make a fire to cook it?" He really wants to make a fire. Ygritte's post inspired him.

Shaggydog makes an inquisitive sound, tilting his great dark head. A wrong-smell, not animal and not person. There are many wrong smells in this place, and this one is far from the most disturbing. What he acts upon, almost always, is a person's intent toward Rickon, and he senses no wrong intent from this wrong-smelling one.

"You sit, Shaggy," Rickon tells him, not unkindly but with the imperious nature of a child to his pet. "You can't put your nose in the food until it's done." To Shrike, then: "Were you drawing on yourself? Are we going into a battle?"

[amethysts]

No, no wrong intent. Shrike plays at being hard, but give her a kid and she's broken. Like now, with a sweet, gentle smile.

"Kind of a battle." She can tell him. He's just little, he won't fuck her over. She starts walking to the kitchens. (That's her vomit dried on the floor.) "I--two people I knew are gone. So I miss them. And it's called a tattoo. It's permanent. You know, forever?"

She finished Nikolai's reaper already. Syg's spikes will take maybe another hour. She thinks after this she should add--no, not anyone else. That's like admitting they could leave her too. "It's like a battle 'cause I won't let this ship have them. I want them back. She can't keep them, fuck her, right?"

day three because tattoos. but after the tiniest walnut crusher is gone.

[deprecate]

Walk in and there's a girl half-naked — okay, he can't see her tits, which he's this side of grateful for, but it's still a sudden amount of skin. And really, he should turn right around and walk back out, but the intensity of the way she pricks herself with the needle stirs something in him.

Cillian clears his throat, because sneaking up on people is shitty and he's been known to punch people who do it to him. "That entirely sanitary?"

Which probably shouldn't be his first question. Sure, a year of dating a tattoo artist and a lifetime of insulin shots means he thinks more about that than most people, but Noah wouldn't ask her something like that. Not when her pain is so visible in her posture, the blood on her skin and those open eyes. Cillian scrubs a hand through his already messy hair, biting the inside of his cheek. Noah would ask her what's wrong.

Maybe he should just go and fucking get Noah.

But he doesn't, keeps circling the table warily, looking at the familiar sight of pale skin gone ruddy, ink and blood.

[amethysts]

"Nah." She grins, all raw and vulnerable and wasted. Syg's spikes are coming along clumsily, but she has her tracing. As long as she stays in the lines she drew half-sober it's all fine.

It's not her jumpsuit hanging around her waist that makes her feel naked. It's the empty holes in her face and the space in her blonde hair that's missing blue. But she has to cope, right? She has to learn to be Shrike and not Libby, because Libby is stupid and useless and probably somehow did something to make her lose Nikolai and Syg.

"Whatev. I'm fucked up anyway." She is bandaged a lot--wrapped around her left arm, hidden on her ear under her hair, right hand splinted awkwardly. There are bruises on her pale skin and feathers missing from her arms and back. It hasn't been a good couple of weeks. "Why, you want me to do you too?"

[deprecate]

It's hilarious (in the ways that it's not) how easily Cillian can tell when someone's been drinking. There is something universal about it, the way the voice goes, the eyes, the way her hands almost-not-quite fumble what they're doing for a moment before they find their place again.

Her offer makes his eyebrows jump, though not in a shocked way, and he shakes his head. "I prefer my inkings sterile, but cheers." A step closer, though if he's looking at her, it's a brief eyeflick cataloguing those injuries before it's back to the wrist again.

"You know those're permanent, yeah?"

[amethysts]

"Duh." She rolls her eyes. (Who is she today? Would Shrike do this? No. This is Libby, all the way down, the real girl under the candy shell she's trying to make. Libby clung to Nikolai, Libby played stupid fucked up games with Syg.

She tries and tries and tries and it's not sticking, it doesn't fit, she can't do this. But she's going to die if she can't make this work. She has to keep trying.) Then she digs the needle she stole from medbay hard into her wrist, far enough to scrape bone, and hisses.

"It's gonna be the only thing left of them, it better fucking be permanent." She turns around and fumbles for the bottle she left behind her back, takes a swig. While she's not looking at him she adds: "The ship took my people. The bitch."

[deprecate]

Bitch indeed. That hurts him worse than watching her hurt herself, though it doesn't stop him coming a little closer and trying to pinch the needle while she's distracted.

"Jesus." A beat, mouth gone hard. People don't stay forever. People die. People go home. The ship took my people. But he knew it could go that way already, didn't he? So it's not about him. "I don't know you from Adam, girlie, but that's rough. People leaving is shit."

People leaving. Is shit. Maybe he'll get that tattooed next.

[amethysts]

Cillian can have the needle. Libby (Libby, defiant in her pain, LibbyLibbyLibby and even she can't take that from herself, not really) is no Nikolai or Syg, after all, she can't move quick enough to stop him. (It is important to remain a human being and the way Syg grinned when Libby took her in and she can't--)

She can finish the tattoo later. She rubs her face with one hand, very, very obviously trying not to cry with her thinned mouth and rapidly blinking eyes.

"I'm--I'm Shrike. Or Liberty. Libby. I--just whatev, I don't even care." She drags her knees up and hugs them, biting her lip now. "I just--what the fuck, yeah? Like--I could've protected them from anything else, but this fucking whore takes them away when I'm not even--I'm not even there."

"I didn't even get to say bye." ...no, she is crying, because she's shitfaced and exhausted and doesn't care at all. "Fuck, I--I just got them, and now they're fucking gone, I can't--I'm gonna fucking kill them. Ward and Resnik. I'm gonna rip their fucking hearts out, I swear."

Day 3 because it's a party

[mstitel]

He's been searching for Torunn ever since the jump. Since he saw her and like the idiot he was, he'd just sent her on ahead to her room, to recover and figure things out. Figure this ship out. But when he'd gotten to the room she was supposed to be in, she'd never made it there. It was untouched. Still. The air was stale with disuse and she was gone.

James has been searching ever since. Ignorant of his surroundings, his need for rest and food and anything other than the mind-crushing, heart-wrenching pain of gaining and losing someone so quickly. And in the end? He's tired. He's pained. He feels like lying down and giving up, just waiting and counting the days until the next jump, until he can try again.

And that's how he comes to find Libby, sitting shirtless and stabbing herself with a needle, leaving blood and a weird marking in her skin. He can smell the tang of something... unpleasant in the air, the wash of old sickness that has his nose screwing up slightly, but who is he to judge? No, instead, his eyes are focused in on the needles she's pushing into her skin, the feathers on her arms and back not even registering as something he should notice.

"What are you doing?"

[amethysts]

Rad. Now James is here. Someone she actually knows, and what the hell is Libby (not Shrike, not today, she can't fucking play pretend when they're gone and it is important to remain a human being is in her mind over and over, it is important to remain--but she's not even human, not even a real person, so what is it important for her to remain?) doing? It's a good question. She has no idea.

"I'm giving myself tattoos. What, this like cursing, you don't have these in your fucked up universe?" She sets the needle down, leaning back on her hands and in turn not registering that maybe she should cover up. James is chill like that, he doesn't care.

But James is...not chill, she realizes, even out of a muddled haze of intoxication. He looks like she feels, like she must look, and--she cares, all right? She gives a fuck about this stupid ginger kid and he's not gone like they are. He's right here.

"...you look shitty. Hey--c'mere." She reaches behind her and retrieves her homemade space moonshine, and turns back to extend it to him. "Drink some of this. You'll feel better. What's up?"

[mstitel]

"I know what tattoos are," he's rolling his eyes, hesitating just a moment before stepping forward, shrugging out of the arm straps of the shield, placing it carefully down nearby, within grabbing distance, before he sits down. He can't look away from where Libby's marking her skin, even as he reaches out to take what's offered to him.

It's not a judging look, not even a pitying one. He's just curious. He's heard about tattoos, about how people used to go and get their skin marked. How it was always so meaningful to them, something they'd carry around with them for the rest of their lives. But he'd never thought about what had to be done to get the marking on the skin. He'd never really stopped to think about the pain that went hand in hand with it. Honestly? It just made the whole process a little more... important, almost. If someone would sit through pain like that in order to get one...

"You look just as bad," finally, his gaze shifts up to Libby's face, taking in the look on it, the faint glassiness to her eyes. "It's- it's nothing, just..." he shrugs a shoulder, looks down at the drink in his hands, and decides what the hell? It smells weird, looks weird, but he might as well take a sip. He trusts Libby. So, he tilts it back, takes a gulp--

And promptly chokes, coughs, his eyes watering and cheeks flushing at the burn of it, the almost gagging reaction.

"What--" nope, still coughing. "What is that?"

[amethysts]

"Ohhh my fucking--" Despite herself, despite all this shit, Libby laughs, sliding off the table to pound on his back. "It's space moonshine. Alcohol? I made a still in my room. Wicked strong, huh? Fuck. I should get you a mixer or something."

She goes to the refrigerator, glad to have something to do. Anything that's more than sitting around hating everything. She'll get James fucked up and they can hang out, just...exist. She likes Miles and Jesse, a lot, but they're always so weird about her age. Like she's a child when she's been through more than most of the adult women on this ship, and she's survived. She picks out some juice--cranberry, it's good for cutting the sharpness--and two cups, then comes back. She still hasn't bother to put her jumpsuit on properly again.

"'Nothing' my fucking ass, it's something. You tell me yours, I'll tell you mine?" She tucks her hair back behind her ear (and, strangely, wonders if he likes the new look--less make-up, less artifice, and it's not actually important what he likes but...she wonders) and fixes up two drinks, equally strong.

[mstitel]

He's making a face at her, setting the glass down and actually rubbing at his throat, coughing and making faces at the taste, exaggerating a bit, sure, but still. It was gross. Really, really gross and he honestly doesn't know why she'd willingly drink the stuff. But still, he trusts her, enough to sit back and watch as she moves to the refrigerator, getting the juice and cups.

Age doesn't mean anything to him. Whether you're old or young, that doesn't make a difference in what you can do, how you can act. He's just barely sixteen, his youngest brother is still twelve, his dad's old, with lines in his face and pure white hair. But he still saved the world, his brother still fought with them, and Tony put on the suit again to save their lives. Age is a number. What really matters is what you've seen, been taught, had to deal with.

"My sister's gone," is what he says immediately after she sits down, a look of muted surprise at the actual pain in his voice as he blurts that out. "She... she showed up, at the jump. I told her to find her room, figure out the communicator because... I had to tell Tony she was here. And when I went to check on her, she... she never made it to her room."

Libby doesn't even have to prompt him, this time. She's making the drinks for a reason, he can smell the same scent lingering on her that he can in the drink in his hand, now. There and being swallowed before he can really think about it. He still makes a face, his eyes and nose and throat still sting, but he's not coughing this time. "I can't find her."

day 2

[statsraaden]

Stats is going to the kitchen for a snack when he sees Libby puking all over the place. She must be sick.

"Hey, are you all right? I can take you to medbay, if you like." He comes to her, careful not to walk in puke or whatever else.

[amethysts]

At first, all she does is keep vomiting. She barely registers his presence. It's a voice she knows but...its not the clipped low rasp of Nikolai or Syg's foul mouth. Not Jesse's soft worry or Miles' disapproval mixed with protectiveness.

Still. He owes her, by her calculations. Must be why he offers.

"I'm fine. Just--don't worry about it."

[statsraaden]

"You don't look much like it, though." Then Stats notices the bottle. She's been drinking, hence the vomit everywhere, most likely because she feels bad. She doesn't need the medbay, she need counselling. Stats carefully removes the bottle from her hands and asks.

"What happened? What's wrong?"

day two!

[chaineddog]

Heine was doing another food run. Not because he was hungry (he had never needed to eat) but because Nill had insisted. The young girl had already expressed in her own way, her worry about his health on numerous occasions and although both were aware that his health was the least of his worries, he still compiled because it seemed to make her happy to be able to care for him.

So that's what he was doing in the kitchens in the first place. Heine rarely strayed very far from their room - only when she was napping or out visiting other friends - and besides which, he kept away from crowded places out of habit. He didn't think that anyone else would be in the kitchens, let alone puking their guts out. He doesn't recoil because of the puke though (that alone probably would have garnered a wrinkled nose) but because of Libby's gender. He freezes. Contemplates leaving and going to another kitchen but his words are already out of his mouth before he can stop himself.

"If you can't hold your own alcohol don't puke your fucking guts out all over the place where other people have to smell it."

[amethysts]

At first, she just keeps throwing up, but she casts a fuzzy glare in his direction anyway. There's no recognition there, not at first, even though she watches the network obsessively. It's not like she has anything better to do.

"Well fuck you too--" she wipes her mouth with the back of her mouth, about to launch into--who even fucking knows, she doesn't, some bullshit speech she is so sick of, defiance she spits on reflex even though it weighs her down and just feels like Nikolai would smack her again and that's the thing, right? That maybe if she's stupid enough he comes back just to say how stupid she is.

She made the motherfucker a lighter and he fucking disappears.

But then she recognizes him, vaguely, because he's attached to Nill, and Nill is a good kid. One of those she's assigned herself to watching, except she saw this guy and decided that was one less thing to worry about. Nill will be fine.

"You're Nill's guy," she says, and then glances at the mess in the sink. How much does she like that kid? She decides--enough. She likes her enough. "I'll clean it up. 'M sorry. Want me to fuck off after so you can--whatev?"

[chaineddog]

He's so ready to bite right back at her for saying something to begin with. It's an innate reaction that he's so used to doing. Thankfully nothing major had happened before except for a few minor accidental brushes. He had plastered himself to the farthest wall he could find and had been given a couple of strange looks but it wasn't like he cared what anyone here thought about him.

The only thing that holds him back is the slight surprise when he hears her refer to him as 'Nill's guy'. Nill had been here longer than he had, and he knew that she didn't go places without a few interested looks considering how she looked. Heine knew that the majority of the people he had spoken to since arriving knew Nill in some way and because they knew that the two were connected and were close, put up with him and he turn had had to bite back on his temper and usual mannerisms.

Which was the only explanation he could come up with for the girl's sudden change in behaviour. He waved a hand, brushing away the offer as he strode past her towards the fridge although there was a considerable reach of space. "It's a free fucking space, isn't it? If I were gonna stay here in any longer I'd say do it but since you're already offering..."

[amethysts]

There is no way in which she minds the wide berth. It's comforting. She may be able to get pretty close to Miles and Jesse now, sit next to Loki quietly, but Heine screams danger signals she can't miss. She doesn't want to get close; she's glad Nill has a protector (her Nikolai, and that's fucking painful) but she's not stupid enough to think that automatically extends to her or any other stupid kid. Nill is special. Nill is sweet and loved and she sort of hates that she can't have any of that. No one looks at her and sees anything good, not really. Just stupid and loud.

Maybe Nill's muteness is the trick. If she just severed her vocal chords people might love her too.

"Gee, thanks." She feels like shit, shaking and full of aches and her skin feels gritty and tight, but she laughs with an edge anyway--not unfriendly, exactly, but guarded and wary. "Hey, I gotta know. You dress her up like that? 'Cause she's cute, but a little...too cute, you get what I'm saying? Believe me, I fucking know."

She spits in the sink. "Whatev. As long as you're not fucking her at least somebody gets how fucking unsafe this fucked up place is for someone like her. Too fucking trusting."

[chaineddog]

To be completely honest, he had been hoping that when she had offered to clean up the sink that that would be the end of their conversation. Heine wasn't good at small talk. He forced it with Nill when he felt like he had been neglecting her or if he needed to convey something that silence and actions alone wouldn't do and then she was the only one on this ship that he didn't mind doing it for. Everyone else received short responses that they hopefully understood was all they were getting from him.

He had assumed that at least this girl would kind of be like that too. The not one for small talk that is. But alcohol was clearly playing a part tonight. Heine was already unsettled with her gender and the fact that she had clearly been paying enough attention to the fucking broadcasts to recognize him. Opening the fridge, he took a moment, ruffling around before grabbing some fruit.

"She hates being dressed up like that," he replied bluntly knowing that this couldn't be a jab to make him react. His nerves were still on edge but he was doing his best and at least he could give himself a pat on the back for not flipping out. But the part about him fucking Nill...even if she hadn't said he was, the idea made his stomach churn. He kicked the fridge door closed with a snort. "That why you're drinking?"