ataraxionlogs | thirty-fifth 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: You wake feeling cold and alone. There is a strange sense of emptiness, and the jump holds no surprises for you. There is nothing buffering the jump sickness and disorientation for you this month, and those still suffering the lingering effects of August's plot may find it more difficult than usual to get through the post-jump routine.

New arrivals will find messages spraypainted across their lockers telling them not to follow their tattoo numbers, and instead to find a room on Floors 001-010.

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

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

[ there's a leaf drawn on her locker door. she'd done it herself, as an easy marker amidst the scrawl. katniss scratches at the red paint with a thumbnail for a moment, smiling, thinking of sirius. but even with all the towels, the soggy underwear she wore into the pods, she still feels awkwardly naked. maybe even moreso than usual, since even after the terrible, tormented medical process, her changes haven't gone away. ]

[ she's hairless, for one thing. not just her body hair: that might have been okay, like the Capitol fashion for waxing and plucking off all her natural fuzz. but right now she's bald, too. no braid this month for katniss everdeen. instead of hair, her body has sprouted feathery skin growths, over her head and shoulders and distorted, bone-warped back. ]

[ some things are better: her talons have fallen out, and her skin stopped growing painfully into itself, and she can see again. but she still feels monstrous, emaciated and disfigured, sprouting mutations like the mutt peeta had thought she was. so it doesn't take her long to open her lovker, wanting clothes. ]

[ and clothes are what she gets. the wedding dress spills out onto the floor almost as soon as she opens the door, and she steps back from the waterfall of white material in horror. trying to stuff it hastily back into the locker just means she won't be able to get to anything she needs, so she pulls it out and tosses it aside, lets it crumple in a heap on the floor. there's a white rose tucked into the bodice, stem threaded through the ribbon, and for the first time since being spat out of the tube she feels bile clawing up her throat. ]

[ there's more. bread — which makes her think of sirius telling her what panem means. it's rue's bread, and she pushes those memories away. it's peeta's bread, too, because all bread makes her think of her baker boy. it's bread from home, and instead of being a grateful comfort it's just one more awful thing. ]

[ honestly, the liquor is a relief. it carries its own memories, of course: when she uncaps it the strong ethanol smell makes her think immediately of haymitch. there's only half a bottle, but she takes a shot, lets it burn her nose and throat, lets the tears be a reaction to the fire of it and nothing else. miserable, she takes another drink, forcing herself to swallow, face twisting in displeasure before she finally recaps it. ]

[ as if all those memories weren't enough, there at the back with her familiar boots and jumpsuit is her mockingjay uniform. the one cinna designed before he died, the one she wore in all those propos. and her handmade bow is a child's toy next to the weapon from district thirteen that she's been gifted with. if she has to fight, here, she'll need nothing more. ]

[ eventually she just puts on her tranquility jumpsuit. might now she doesn't feel like a goddess of the revolution: she feels like a broken bird, all skin and bones. she feels sick and worn down with sadness. she feels like a girl who lost too many people she cared for. numbly, she starts to separate out what she wants to take back to her room on the first floor, and what she's going to shut away in her locker, to ignore until the next jump. ]

Edited (autocorrected cinna to comma THIS IS WHY WE DONT PHONETAG KIDS) 2014-09-09 01:16 (UTC)

[ This makes it the second month that Peeta caves to the impulse to stop by Katniss's locker, the signs of a routine. It could've gone worse, last time, so there's no real deterrent based on that, and in the end he lets himself be drawn back by that same, awful familiarity that had roped him in the first time.

Each encounter that ends without bloodshed and without a fight is worth something. They stack on top of each other, slowly, cancelling out the memories that they so openly conflict with. This isn't one of those encounters.

There's something wrong with her. Logically, Peeta makes the connection to his own rough skin, the way his eyes had changed, gone black and wide and reminded him of Mitchell's. But he's fine now, and the visceral response counteracts any sympathy. His heart misses a beat, plummets and stops. There's no flash of fear in his expression, just a cold, numb curtain that drops over it.

It's almost mesmerizing, the way the feathers shift on her shoulder blades as she gets dressed. Peeta's frozen where he stands at the end of the row, watching. The rest of it barely deserves note in the face of her appearance, and even though the dress and the bread are important — something he recognizes, even if he can't feel it — they don't distract from her.

He doesn't say anything until she begins picking through the items, clearly getting ready to leave. He doesn't approach, either; still a few yards off, easily unnoticed given how preoccupying her locker's been. ]

What's wrong with you?

[ He knows. He knows exactly what's wrong with her, but the question comes out anyway, disoriented and scared in a way that just sounds like anger. ]

I got sick.

[ she snaps it, because she thinks it's obvious. everyone had been sick at some level, and there were those who had been more ill than others, but katniss knows her complete disfigurement is an unusual case, can tell just by looking around. ]

[ she closes her locker with her hip, leaving the dress where it lies, to be walked on by wet bare feet, or maybe stolen by someone, worn or used for scrap. her arms are full of a jumble of everything else, bread and bottle and bow and boots, quiver strapped to her back. ]

[ she looks at peeta blankly. it's not even hurt or angry, not at this stage. she already hurts. it's just flat, resigned to the pain. ]

[ She's right. It's obvious enough that he can't argue it. The feathers just seem too pointed, like something the Capitol would cook up.

Whatever distress it's caused fades quickly as he observes the resignation on her face. Anger and fear, they take up too much energy; he's already tired, and without easy fuel, it's simpler to just let it go. Contradictory information is the standard, anyway. This is just another thing to add to the pile. ]

But it'll heal.

[ He doesn't meet her eyes while he asks, instead noting her hair, the sharp lines of her cheekbones. She looks younger and older all at once, same as she had at the end of the 74th Games, worn out and starved.

He doesn't sound concerned, but there's no obvious hostility in his voice, either; just curiosity. ]

I hope so.

[ it's left her so weak and damaged, but already, just upon waking up, she can feel her body fixing itself — or the nanites in her body fixing it, anyway. the extraction process had been horrific and painful, but at least it had been fast: she expects further healing may be slower, take longer, as frustrating as that bullet she took. ]

[ peeta isn't looking at her properly, but katniss is looking at him. he doesn't seem to have been as affected as her, but even as isolated as he was, he had to have had some experience with the illness. everyone who went through the jumps did. maybe it's that which is helping him understand this isn't some mutt mutation. ]

[ katniss shifts what's in her arms. ]

Why are you talking to me?

[ she's wary, but she thinks in this case she has a right to be. but she wants so, so badly to have him forgive her, to have the old peeta back, that the question isn't as sharp as it could be. ]

thirty-fifth jump;

katniss everdeen; ota

ok but comma

no subject

no subject

no subject