ataraxionlogs | thirty-first 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: There is something very easy about waking from the gravcouches this month. The sensation of being watched is absent, and so is much of the sickness - even for those characters who entered Engineering in February. Instead the jump feels comfortable, the stasis fluid warm on your skin, the medbay lights not too harsh as you emerge amongst your fellow passengers. The sensation may be unnerving in its strangeness, but there will be a deep feeling of being well-rested, calm and content, that will not be completely lost no matter how much you question it.

----------------

You wake up in darkness.

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.

You are not alone.
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.

This is your welcome party.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ despite herself, her hand's lifting to feel at some of the hair just in front of her ear. she actually can't tell the difference, so he might be full of shit, but WHATEVER, he can have this one. especially because his grin is stupidly contagious, even though she kind of has to pretend it isn't because that's totally an alternate-timeline thing and whoops she's kind of grinning anyway. ]

Oh good, at least it's all worth it somehow.

[ her eyes drop back down to the control panel, watching the numbers go by, and without quit realizing to wipe the rest of the grin off her face she's asking: ] So this place is seriously huge. [ longest elevator ride ever, and she's been to NYC so that's saying something. ]

You have no idea. [No one has any idea.] It has a habit of rearranging itself too, so try and stick to the populated areas. They're apparently more stable.

[He's off the cuff about it because he can't not be. Because if he thinks about it too hard, it gets too weird to really deal with and Aidan's life is a careful balancing act of not thinking about things just enough to keep them manageable (with mixed results, though he tries not to think about that one too hard either).]

There should be some files you can get to on your communicator that're pretty much Weird Spaceship 101. Here-- [He holds his hand out, clearly expecting her to give it over.]

[ which she does, because it's aidan. ] My ~communicator~, huh? [ it's not even a phone, it's a communicator. not helping so much, on the whole 'making this any less ridiculous' thing. ]

[He shoots her a sidelong glance as he accepts it, approximately eight shades of 'Yeah, yeah, enough sass from you missy' as he begins to tab through the files on the network. Eventually he comes up with one of Ianto's old archived information posts and hands it back to her, looking pleased with himself.]

Get up to speed, kid. You're a spacewoman now.

[He flashes her a grin, all swagger and a well-timed quirk of the eyebrow before settling back against the wall of the elevator.

It is a long ride, but once they reach the right deck, it doesn't take long for him to navigate to the kitchen. He explains the layout as they go, crossing the threshold just as:] --and pretty much every deck is just a copy of each other so if you know where one bathroom's at, you pretty much have them all. Not that you-- wait, how exactly is that-- you know what, never mind.

[ Getting away from the medbay is usually a priority after the jumps, and Josh is long gone by the time he gets the text. He's in his room, packing a duffel (space issue, super cool) when the communicator goes off, and he doesn't even bother firing off a reply before haphazardly shoving a spare shirt into the bag and taking off for the lift.

It's obvious that he ran by the way he breaks through the door frame before pulling himself up short. The impulse to keep running right up to Sally and give her a hug is cut off by common sense, because ignoring the impulse to touch her is almost instinct at this point; you can't hug a ghost. Except that other ghost was totally up in his business, so after a reasonably dramatic pause for awestruck staring— ]

Can I hug you?

[ Without falling through you and looking like an asshole, because he will totally hug her if that's an option. Stupid question, maybe, but he doesn't sound remotely embarrassed to be asking it. Also hi Aidan, etc. ]

[ as soon as she sees josh, hurried and sweaty as he is, sally busts out in a huge grin. his question has her hop-skipping over to him and throwing her arms around him - though let's be real, she would've done this even if he didn't ask. ]

You have no idea how amazing it is to see you right now. [ like, josh-josh. not whatever happened to alternate-josh, love him though she does. ]

You're you. [ Totally lame observations, but it's said with a grin and lots of enthusiasm. It makes sense in context, at least. The last time he'd hugged Sally she'd smelled a bit like a graveyard, frankly, so this is...

Actually, no, why doesn't she smell like a graveyard. He holds on a moment longer before pulling away, hands settling on her upper arms, and there's no attempt to disguise the confusion on his face as he studies hers and tries to work out what he missed.

He's about to give up and ask when there's a flash of instinct — he thinks it's her scent, at first, except when he focuses on that he doesn't find anything strange. That's just his mind trying to fill in the blanks, trying to make sense of the fact that he looks at her and he sees a wolf.

The realization's enough to make any impending questions stall out awkwardly, and instead he gives a short, disbelieving laugh. It doesn't last long, and it's easy enough to assume it's just a reaction to the whole not-a-zombie situation. ] You're alive. How are you alive?

[ Forgive the slightly suspicious edge to that question. Still super happy to see you, but the "coming back from the dead" track record is way sketchy. ] Is it the ship?

[Hi Josh, etc. But there's something that really sings over the two of them hugging. This is how this is supposed to work - the three of them in one place. He's stable, Josh isn't relying on some black magic hoodie to keep his wolf under control, and Sally is-- here. And for whatever reason she's back in a solid body, that's the one that matters.

His arms cross automatically across his chest, pulled in tight. Shoulders up - he's all grins, weight on the balls of his feet. Officially not seeing the downside to any of this right this second.]

I mean, she's not the only one to go all corporeal. Maybe it's the same deal.

Edited 2014-05-28 05:26 (UTC)

It's... actually super complicated, [ she says through her grin, and she pulls back enough to shake her head. ] Later, later. Right now I am starving. [ she glances back to aidan now, contemplating either dragging him into this hug to make josh more awkward or asking him to locate food for her face so she doesn't have to let go of josh. she settles on: ] You said there's food?

Food you can eat. [ Things he sounds unreasonably excited about, though it's actually a bit faked — trying to act normal (or weird, which constitutes normal, in his case) while he processes the wolf situation.

But there's real enthusiasm there, too. Because cooking for zombie Sally, that was nice, but there came a point where she wasn't paying much attention to whether or not what she was eating was actually any good. Anyway, in summary: ] We're having dinner. We just got a boat load of fresh ingredients from a pirate colony— never thought I'd be cooking with cheese made from the milk of space goats, but you take what you can get, right?

[ Meanwhile, Aidan can sit there and watch them eat. It'll be just like home!! ]

thirty-first jump;

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject