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

[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."

[deprecate]

The needle goes into Cillian's back pocket, and his hand stays jammed there awkwardly for a moment, because he doesn't fucking get all touchy with people he doesn't even know. He barely gets touchy with people he does know. But she's pulling herself smaller and miserable and his heart goes out to her, seeing so much of himself in the way she tries to make herself hard and harsh — tattooing herself, for fuck's sake — but the cracks are all still there, and widening fast.

Very, very slowly, he touches her — just a palm flat against her knee, where there's fabric and it's safe. He rubs there gently, eyes on her face. "Hey now."

Where does he even begin? Where does anyone start with this? He doesn't have Noah's gift for gently patching up strays, is all angles and edges himself. This girl with three names, he wants to make her feel better. "Hey. Girlie. C'mon now. Your friends — they were your friends, yeah? They'd not be wanting you to cry about them, I bet." Another hand, long-fingered and cold-chapped, brushes butterfly-light over her cheek, wiping at some tears. "D'you like tea?"

[amethysts]

That makes her smile, pale but still real. She hates being touched by strangers, usually, hates it with jittering horror, but right now she just doesn't have it in her to snap at him. She closes her eyes and tilts her head against his head, shivering.

"Nikolai would say I was being a dumbass. Syg would probably just--punch me out or something." The fact she feels either of these losses so much surprises her. Nikolai and Syg weren't supposed to be friends. They were allies. Tools. But Nikolai was gentler with her than he had any right to be, even if his gentle was harsh, and Syg was amazingly happy just to belong. And they were hers, for a while, and now what she mourns is all that potential. All that they could have, should have been.

"Yeah. You know how to make green tea? A lot of people--they just fuck it up." Because she gets what he's offering.

[deprecate]

"Yeah, actually." The quirk of a smile in return; he gets picky about Japanese shit being an ~authentic experience~. "I'm short a tatami mat, but we'll make do."

He tucks some of that wispy blonde hair back behind one of her ears. "We'll have some tea, right, proper-like, and then if you want I'll introduce you to my tattoo artist. If you're gonna put a memorial on your skin, might as well be making it fuckin' perfect, yeah?"

And that's about at gentle as Cillian gets with strangers. He backs off a little, gives her a chance to adjust her clothes as he starts rustling about for tea things, which were why he came wandering in the first place.

[amethysts]

The reaper could use touching up, she knows. The shape is right, under the scab, but the colour will be blotchy and uneven. The spikes are sharp and jagged, and they'll be the same. So she shrugs. (This doesn't fit the image she's trying to build, a cream and peaches doll, but fuck the image. She doesn't even know if she wants to bother anymore.)

"Yeah. That'd be rad." She shrugs her jumpsuit back on and zips it up to her neck, neat and orderly. She wears it like the uniform it is, like the ENG >> 008 >> 189 on her wrist, because it used to make her feel like she could be part of something that mattered. Well, that's gone, as sure as half of her ragged band of monsters--fuck, she told Nikolai about Frankenstein, and now he's gone and probably dead and that's lost forever.

"I--sorry." She rubs her tears away. She hates this face, hates this hair. Hates the way her skin feels. She has to rip out her lockpick soon, smooth her arm over, and she's just--already sick of this. "For that. The crying. I'm not--usually such a little bitch."

[deprecate]

"That's like apologizing for needing to take a shit," Cillian tells her, half over his shoulder, as he rummages in a cupboard, pulls out things one at a time and sets them on the counter. "Everyone cries. Anyone who tells you different en't to be trusted."

Cillian isn't wearing the uniform at all, because fuck that. He only pretended to like authority to piss off his parents. Still, he's swathed in a giant black hoodie, and he pushes the sleeves up to his wrists as he makes the tea because otherwise the ragged edges come down over his hands.

The hot water dispenser splashes and catches his hand, and he winces but otherwise ignores it. Once everything's ready he lets it all just sit for a moment, the tea steeping in the little pot, and turns around to lean his skinny arse up against the edge of the counter, folds his arms. "Besides, sometimes it feels good to throw a little pity party and hate everything. Long as you know when to end it."

[amethysts]

"I'm gonna end it when I rip those lying fuckers in half." It'd be nice if that was just talk from this tiny girl. But she means it. If she ever has a chance, ever has a back-up plan, she's killing the only people she knows how to blame for this. She'd rip the ship apart if it wouldn't kill them all.

"But the crying stops--yesterday. Fuck, Nikolai would be just--so pissed." She pauses, sliding off the table so she can lean on it, mimicking his posture unconsciously.

"He's--he was a Russian enforcer. Very, you know, stoic." Was, because he's dead and so is Syg, and she better get used to that. No one else is going to care, but she will. She'll remember them. They would have done it for her. "You're that guy--from the net. Who needs a computer. Right? 'Cause--I build computers. Y'know. It's my job. And you don't want the ones the ship gives us, they're fucking bullshit."

Better to focus outwards, not in.

[deprecate]

The scent of the tea is slowly, subtly starting to permeate the room, and Cillian, closest, takes in when he pulls in a deep breath, as though it's him that's been crying. He lets it out slowly. She promises violence, and he believes her, because Christ knows it's something he could hear himself saying. He would tear the ship to pieces and fuck the lot of them, if it came down to it.

"I'm that guy, yeah. Whoever dragged us here wasn't polite enough to provide me my tech." It's said with a roll of the eyes, because he's still resentful of that, such a conspicuous emptiness in his locker, his back pocket oddly light without the modded tablet weighing it down. "But sure. If I'm being honest with you, I just want something to play with." A beat. "You know, machine-wise."

He turns again, this time to swirl and pour the tea, mugs warming in his hands as he lifts them, brings one over the scant space of the room between them to offer to her.

[amethysts]

Libby gets that. She does. Her computer is part of her--she doesn't know what she'd be without it, this vital component that defines everything she is. Without it, she's just a mouthy whore. With it, she's a mouthy whore with an edge. She takes the tea and sips it, gratefully, although her stomach is twitching with nausea.

"You gave me tea. I can give you a computer." It'd be nice to have something to do--progress on her other projects is frustratingly slow, and as long as she's working she's not thinking about the conspicuous silence of Nikolai and Syg's comms. (She called, over and over, until she was screaming at her comm pick up pick up pick up.)

"What you wanna do with it? So I can figure specs." She brushes at her hair again, absently. She's used to having it twisted up and secured with wire or studded with shards of metal. She should get a ponytail holder or something.

I'M SORRY FOR GOING AWOL life just ate me for a week.

[deprecate]

"Fuck me, this ship really is run on barter, then." Cillian rolls his eyes, but there's a chuckle to his tone. Besides, his time it's in his favour; tea he's scavenged from a cupboard isn't exactly on par with a computer. 'Course, maybe having someone to talk to was good enough, but he found it difficult to see it like that.

He rubs his chin absently, feeling out his five o'clock shadow, the stubble rough and comfortingly familiar under his fingertips. What does he want to do with it? "Dunno. Everything. Whatever. Mostly back home I worked in armaments, not PCs."