SYSTEMWIDE | INFO (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unplug) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
systemcritical2015-06-16 02:00 am
unplug) wrote in systemcritical2015-06-16 02:00 am
Entry tags:
[OPEN to civilians] mod plot | sacking of olympus: merchants' voyage
CHARACTERS ▶ Civilians aboard the Dowager
LOCATION ▶ The Gates of Olympus, at least to start with
SUMMARY ▶ Entry text features several backtag-friendly hooks that summarize 48 hours of travel and the arrival to Olympus. Feel free to start your own threads! Two more threadstarters will be added: 1) the 'sacrifice' thread, as the RNG was completed tonight (6/15/15) and Kitty was selected; and 2) the debate among crew and passengers of the Dowager about what to do before the Zion Defense Grid arrives.
WARNINGS ▶ PG-13 to R for non-graphic descriptions of violence
NOTES ▶ This is the civilian part of the Sacking of Olympus plot.
LOCATION ▶ The Gates of Olympus, at least to start with
SUMMARY ▶ Entry text features several backtag-friendly hooks that summarize 48 hours of travel and the arrival to Olympus. Feel free to start your own threads! Two more threadstarters will be added: 1) the 'sacrifice' thread, as the RNG was completed tonight (6/15/15) and Kitty was selected; and 2) the debate among crew and passengers of the Dowager about what to do before the Zion Defense Grid arrives.
WARNINGS ▶ PG-13 to R for non-graphic descriptions of violence
NOTES ▶ This is the civilian part of the Sacking of Olympus plot.
▶ Sacking of Olympus Part ITravel Time ◀[It's only a two-day journey, and these civvie hauls are very different from any Zion Defense Grid mission. To the taste of most people, it is considerably more pleasant. Sure, the Dowager is small, but you get used to close quarters in Zion. The crew is small and accustomed to their diversity of roles; passengers only have to share rooms if they're cheaping out, and it's not hard to find a bit of engine crawlspace or a crate serviceable to sit on in the supply hold, if you desperately want privacy.
For those who mind company less, Bullet sits them down to dinner both nights, pretends not to notice Old Man Willow tipping moonshine into every willing cup, asks lots of questions but not the kind that would bother most people, obviously just looking for an opportunity to tell stories. She's shipped out to Olympus seven times in the past year, thinks it's gonna make her rich. She warns Anya that Antiochian kids are going to be the real bastards for discipline, but somehow the Irkallans are the most beaten-up to look at, will fall quiet at the faintest sharpening of a word. Perhaps misunderstanding, she gets into telling Stephen all about the beautiful boys that came into Olympus last month, before inquiring savvily with Benji about the cost of a custom crew tattoo, you know, like a logo, and she's already got some good ideas, not noticing her pilot Xerxes making throat-cutty-no-no motions behind her.
Bullet doesn't prod Bloom and Driver too much, but she ends up asking Kitty how old she is and if she prefers blonds or brunettes, so. that's. weird. she doesn't even drink.
The best part is probably the food. For one thing, it's not the infamous ZDG protein slop; for another, Bullet has no objections to Willow asking Kitty for advice or a helping hand in the narrow galley. He explains that they take a quarter of their fees from produce and food supplies. The time passes quickly, and after the first day, even Xerxes, Willow, and the taciturn gearhead Quartz start to get to talking too, about the constellation of farm lights in Kosala, vegan silk, pirate gore, and of course-- Olympus.]Final Destination ◀[Most of the subterranean human civilizations of Earth are like Zion, fortified holes in the ground, like massive burrows that bear little resemblence to the cities of old.
Not Olympus. This section of sewer system had run through miles of intermingled granite and limestone, which no doubt would have been converted to a mine at some point in the impending decades. That is, you know, if humankind hadn't suddenly and spectacularly lost the war. Olympus is a city in the old style, taking advantage of the massive series of inter-linked caverns that ancient sewer engineers had created long ago. Neighborhoods consist of squat, simple, but strong buildings bricked out of coarsely hewn stones, its boulevards in concentric circles emanating from a central square. Mines and processing factories are cordoned off into neat industrial sections, like wedges of a pie between the newer residential areas. There's no farmland and every boulevard is lit as artificially as the next human settlement, but it had its austere, nostalgic loveliness.
Had.
From the city's open gates, the Dowager passengers can see that the light rising from the city is too orange for electric lamp-light. Something's very wrong. Of course, there had been signs earlier: no response to the hails on the comms. Then the wreckage. If the bulbous, black drones scattered below her front lights aren't telltale sign enough, there are also broken APUs, damaged barricade tech, an exploded transport there, and a couple human corpses so thoroughly dusted over they're almost indistinguishable from the ruined metal.
You'll have to be at a port side window, to be the first one to notice the blood-red sign REAPER painted on an upturned chassis, right before Bullet gives the order.] Turn off the goddamn lights! [She hisses, her voice already bitten back with restraint, despite that nothing functional seems to be within range of auditory detection, and these drones don't look as efficient for the hunt as Sentinels.] We're going cold, now. Xerxes, take us--
--On it, ma'am. [And at the same time the ubiquitous mumble of the engines abruptly cuts down to near-silent, the Dowager's lights go out.
Except for the eerie firelight glowing through the bridge viewport, and the faint swarm of insectoid silhouettes high above the city skyline. The pilot ducks the Dowager down behind a mound of rubble still bristling with sparking electrical wire, in hopes the guttering remains will provide cover and disguise their residual heat signature. At first, those in the bow might think the fritz of electronics outside is throwing static into Xerxes' comms console, but it's not too long before the educated tech can tell: there's something jamming their signals.]
Kitty Jones & The Atalanta
[The Californian heat is threatening to wear a sunburn through their clothes, a needling itch and burn that feels convincing enough, even though all of the men and women aboard the Atalanta know better than to believe it. The latest scouting mission has been fruitless, if also thankfully free of incident. No civilians have as much as looked funny their way, nothing atypical about the changing of traffic lights or the pattern of pigeons picking at whatever crap is in the gutters. Slow as heat exhaustion, the sun is making its way West, stretching out the shadows on the chapped tarmac. It's time to head to the hardline and call it a day.
In the Real, the operator is starting the extraction sequence-- when the console screen fritzes. Just a split-second. Code shimmers, resets, the downward flow of lime-green characters renewing on the screen. It's not a glitch, or not the glitch they were expecting.
Someone new plugged in.
In the Matrix, the leading crewmember is just about to reach for the door handle of Susanna's Crisp & Clean Laundromat, their exit/entry hardline has been. Reassuringly, there's no ringing yet. The shop has been reliably empty the whole mission thus far, the CLOSED card always turned toward the facade window despite the store hours stenciled just above it. Not so now. A scrunch of movement behind the window panes, and then a small figure stumbles past the row of the washing machines, her reflection warping over the round front-load windows.]
no subject
But she knows, soon as she steps out into this Matrix, that something's wrong. She's talked with people who've gone back in, and even with a shitty operator you typically just don't actually make it inside, or you see everything backwards, or something. Something to do with bad code. You don't feel like someone's grabbed your head and squeezed, digging their thumbs into your ears for good measure. You don't feel disoriented and wrong. You don't feel like there's someone standing right behind your shoulder, watching you.
You don't feel with inexplicable certainty that that someone is your mother.
This signal she's jacked into is a trap. It's got to be. Conveniently left open, and now with all of this, this feeling like there are programs sitting in her Matrix code, hanging from her neck, curled up on her shoulders...So she's got to do just what she'd have done if she'd been captured back home - captured by someone a little more by-the-book than Mandrake - She's got to get something advantageous to her people, and flip the fucking bird to her enemies. Let them try to use her. She'll make it tough.
She sees faces beyond the dusty glass. God, let it be ours, let it be our crew, let them have sent me true... She stumbles to the door, dizzy and disoriented, and fumbles the door open. She braces her shoulder against the doorframe, and gasps out at the people just beyond there: ]
Hey. You're the tour group, right? From...from down south? [ Clumsy code-words, obvious and broad, but if the machines are spying through her at least she's not going to give them the ZDG confessing to their allegiances in unambiguous terms. No hand-delivered confessions. ] I'm from there too. Can I...talk to your group leader?
no subject
Kate ducks between people to arrive at the front of the ground, expression stern, a tight-lipped frown that's all dark brows and wary uncertainty. Behind her back, she has a hand under her shirt, gingerly wrapping around the grip of a pistol. Just in case.
She takes Kitty in, looks her up and down, and then stares at her face for another moment. Something is off, something is familiar about her, and that's weird, because she can't place her face and she's good with faces. It sets her teeth on edge. ]
Do I know you?
[ Her fingers close around metal warm from sitting next to her skin all afternoon, just a little slick with sweat on the one side. She squeezes tighter, until the grip pattern digs into her palm, but doesn't draw yet. Instead she glances around at the rest of her crew, a brow lifted in question. Anybody got anything, here? ]
no subject
I wonder if she'll kill me. She looks like she's going for something deadly. But no; they wouldn't have made her the captain of a ship if she were the sort to shoot before asking questions. These people wouldn't be following her. Kitty hopes. ]
Yeah, I think I recognize you.
[ She tries for a smile. With the pain in her temples making her eyes narrow and the faint numbness in her face, it must look ghastly. ]
Like I said. We're from the same city. So we've probably bumped into one another before. I'm...
[ Kathleen, she almost says. Not even Kitty. Her real name instead of her schoolyard nickname. She supposes it's...that voice whispering in her ear, the one that sounds so much like her parents. ]
Lizzie. Lizzie Temple. I'm a waitress...
[ Blearily, she searches the other faces, trying to see if there's anyone who recognizes her. ]
no subject
[Fenris steps forward, as he certainly recognizes her, though he's not sure of the reverse. Not here, anyway, where he's different right down to the color of his pale hair. He lifts a hand in greeting.]
Fenris.
[I.e., the guy who helps out so he can take your wine.]
no subject
You can trust anyone who works with Fenris and hasn't managed to earn a few missing fingers, surely.
[ Ah, trust. The irony is funny. Anyway. ]
She's all right. I like a good rousing tour group discussion on the street as much as the next fellow, but maybe we ought to do this inside?
[ The closer to a landline the better, he figures. As long as no one picks it up before they can figure out what's happening. Since he's otherwise about as good at taking orders as he is making cheese he is also mostly looking to Kate for this, but obviously anyone can weigh in here. ]
no subject
Yeah. Yes. Inside is a little better. A little.
[ She doesn't even wait to see if they're following her. She turns around at once and slips back inside - and immediately half-falls, leaning hard on the table used for folding clothes. Her limbs feel...leaden. And God, her head hurts. It hurts so bad. It makes it harder to concentrate. She closes her eyes and rehearses her story as well as she can, waiting for them all to file inside.
Though she does warn them: ]
Come quick. Please.
[ Because it's got to be done carefully, but out there...Out there, people are already dying. And Kitty can feel her own strength ebbing...How much longer has she got here? What's wrong with that signal, what's wrong with it, too, that she just wants to...sit politely, and listen attentively, like she's at school? And how much will she give away when she finally crumbles under the pressure?
She focuses harder on the story she's about to tell. She fights to stop herself from thinking about Kate, and Hawke, and Fenris, and what she knows about them in the Real. (Though if they could read her thoughts, they already know what she's here for, who she's contacting, and they already know what ship to anticipate, who the defenders will be...) ]
no subject
[Only she can hear the voice, sudden through the burst of static inside of her own skull. There's a quality to the way Quartz says her name, as if this isn't the first or second time he's screamed at her across the line so far, but it's faint to her hearing under the wash of white noise sinking into her ears.]
Liz, we're getting some unusual neuro-kinetic activity here and your BP is 145/85. Liz? Lizzie, that's pretty high--
[Somewhere in the Real, Bullet is bent over Quartz's shoulders, an instant from snatching off his headset and sharpening his questions into an order. Fear makes people hard, sometimes. Some people.]
no subject
[ The face and the name snap into place in Kate's mind that second after Fenris says he knows her; that would probably have been enough for Kate, but managing recognition on her own definitely helps. She drops her hand from behind her back but lets it linger on her hip, because while Lizzie doesn't seem to need shooting something here is still clearly not right.
Hawke's suggestion gets a quick nod and she heads quickly inside, though not quickly enough to catch Kitty when she stumbles. Hawke or Fenris is closer and Kate's lunge-step forward is more to draw their attention to the issue (no doubt unnecessary) than get in their way. ]
Come where?
[ The question is sharp, sharper than Quartz in Lizzie's head, and urgent. ]
What's going on? Is it-- [ she fumbles a moment, to get the idea clear in her head, to find the right words. Lizzie's talking around the truth for some reason and while she's generally a cut to the chase sort of person Kate will try to keep the code going a little longer if possible. ]
Is it the thing we were warned about? One two three four?
no subject
Shut up a moment.
[ She mumbles that aloud only here, but she's speaking to all three. It takes her a moment - a long moment - to disentangle her thoughts and set aside what doesn't matter. Mum gets ignored fiercely, without hesitation, just as she was in life. Quartz...No. Quartz gets ignored, too. They've sent her through; would they be able to get someone else in, even if they were able to pull her out? She's here, she's going to do this. So that leaves Kate's questions to focus on.
What a strange question, though. One two three four... Kitty's brows draw together. One two three...? What on earth is Kate going on about? It's clearly some code of her own, but - After a moment of baffled squinting, some spare bit of memory blossoms, some connection is made, and Kitty remembers the Oracle's message on the network - forgotten in the rush of preparing all the goods her cafe was sending to Olympus, in the charm and delight of speaking with the Dowager's lovely crew, in the panic of the attack and the fight to be allowed to go. Is that was this is? Of course - it came quickly, without warning shots, broke the peace brokered by Neo those years ago.
If that's the case, then...what does that make you, Kitty? In that scheme of one-two-three-four?
Her expression finally clears as she understands. And she gives a little bob of her head, a grunt of confirmation. ]
Yeah.
[ Then, awkwardly - ]
Erm - sorry for telling you to shut up.
[ Right. She takes a breath. ]
Do you know that town - Olympus? Out way to the west. I just got word - some people were trying to travel there, you know, but when they got there, they saw that things had gotten really cocked up. There'd been that war, you know, and there was supposed to have been a truce, but when they got there they saw that there was a raid going on. A really, really big one. My friends going there say that they need help - so I said I'd find some people who'd notify people in charge. Because from the sound of it, it's going to be more than just a bit of back-up needed; they're going to need a whole bloody army - Um.
[ She feels, suddenly, like she's been frozen. The faces of the people around her recede; she can feel every millimeter that her tongue moves in her mouth, every tiny rush of air past her teeth...Then the feeling recedes, and Kitty suddenly, abruptly, sits down on the floor.
Appearances, Kathleen, Dad seems to say into her ear. ]
Debate Team: Waiting For The ZDG
Quartz's face is ashen; he thinks he must have done something wrong, but anyone who's ever heard an operator work knows that he did just fine. Objectively, it paid off; Kitty got in touch with someone out there, someone from the Zion Defense Grid, even though only Quartz could hear their conversation and he hasn't said much. He's pulling the spike out of her head now, stooping down to try and lift her. Scrawny and small himself, he'll need help.
Bullet's face has gone hard too. She's already regretting having let that girl go in. It doesn't matter what the Machines care or don't care about; she was too young, and Bullet cares. The short straw shouldn't have mattered.]
You all need to head back to your rooms, [Bullet says. Behind her, in the viewport, Olympus is still burning. The REAPER drones are drifting toward the cavern ceiling in an erratic but distinct pattern, termites waiting for their queen. From Xerxes' pilot seat, they're still getting choppy feed from the city. Distress calls. Fires spreading, mineshaft pressurization problems, people trapped with drones waiting just outside, some of them in emergency bunkers; others merely in their homes.] The Zion Defense Grid is gonna be on its way.
We're gonna sit tight, keep an ear to the ground, and be the first faces they see.
[Her crew doesn't disagree, but they wouldn't. You work together long enough, and you fall into that rank and file.]
no subject
Benji is tuned towards the staticky distress signals guttering out from the communications console, where she'd been pulling shifts, even if her technical know-how is basically following instructions and sneaking glances at manuals just as a reminder, it's fine and it's not coincidence or ineptitude that she hasn't hit the mute button.
One of the crew shifts to relieve her of her station so as to follow instructions, and she passes the headset over. But not to leave. ]
It's a two day journey, [ she points out, gently, only just audible over the sounds of people, engines, the crackle of the radio, but audible enough. Her narrow face is paler than usual, and her hair is waved by stressful fingers running through it. She picks at a thread in her sleeve with blunt fingernails. ] We can't just-- [ She swallows her words, tries again. ] Isn't there something we can do?
no subject
We bring supplies. Able bodies. Are we not still able?
( a glance at benji. eyes front, towards bullet, a certain stubbornness about her set jaw. olympus is burning and it isn't in her to just sit here and wait for someone else to do something. she and her overdeveloped sense of responsibility toward humanity - the real has beaten some humility into her, but it hasn't taken that away - are not particularly susceptible to the bystander effect, and she isn't interested in learning how to be. )
Maybe we should be the first faces Olympus sees. No?
no subject
If it's possible to get through without being seen, I feel like we should try. If.
[It doesn't come off as sharp or clever as what Benji and Anya have said, even if their words were phrased as questions. Still, it's as much as he can muster before he starts sidling off again, wiping his hands on his pants, and leaving Bullet to glance after him only briefly before she returns her attention to the women. Frowning.] Scanners are all screwed up, [she points out, slipping into a word choice that sounds awfully like negotiation, despite herself.] We can't know what we know, or what they know, unless we're looking at it out of a Goddamn window.
Dowager has risk assessment and predictive algorithms that we use for the sewers. But without real sensor feed? We have an error margin of something like forty percent. This jamming tech isn't like anything we've ever seen. [She throws her hands up, frustrated by the pointless burn of guilt in her belly. She had to wind up with a manifest full of handsome young heroes. Plus Stephen. Whatever, Stephen.]
ғɪɴᴀʟ ᴅᴇsᴛɪɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴ → ᴏᴛᴀ
--but then the lights go out, and the cultivated softness of her goes with them as she stills and then moves for the port window. )
final destination. closed to driver.
But until one minute from now, this is still the expedition to Olympus for agricultural support. Something to do. Something to see. The Dowager is ample-laden, generous in dimension, but still cramped and confined to make best use of all available space, and Benji mouses down the skinny corridor to where Driver was last seen bunking.
Fingertips press light against the door, dance there a second, before she knocks. ]
Are you awake? [ she inquiries, in that semi-quiet tone where like she doesn't actually want to intrude to be heard even if the whole point of speaking up is. To be heard.
She's holding two tin mugs of something in her other hand, clenched at the handles. Not tea, the deep red brew of her dwindling Kosalan supply, but something honeyed and warm and similarly caffeinated, recommended by Bullet as a good pick-me-up. ]
no subject
i don't not like it?
The repetition of kindness has inured him to visits like this one. The first was so awkward, so uncomfortable, he would have turned inside out if it meant escaping the pressure of being sociable—but Benji persists, bless her, and now red tea will sometimes seep into his thoughts. Like how he used to get a taste in his mouth for diner coffee. He still does, sometimes, but the tea is winning.
The door isn't locked, nor latched—hell, it's not even closed once Benji's knuckles touch it. Visible through the narrow gap between door and frame is the bunk, empty, bedding tucked tight and pillow untouched, a shadow thrown across it from the other side of the little room, the skewed shape of a body bent in lamplight. Shoulder and arm moving. The voice at the door will wait—the tiny spring he's twisting into place needs another few seconds.
He's just looking over his shoulder, ready to answer on a delay, instead looking surprised, then soft. Sitting on a low crate, using the other bed as a working surface, small mechanical parts spread out on the blanket, utility lamp clamped to a pipe on the wall. His hair's sticking up in the back. When his gaze falls on the mugs, then lifts to make contact, it looks like he's thinking he should smile but hasn't quite made it there yet.
May this minute last an hour.]
no subject
She separates one mug from the other, careful with the brimming warm in what feels like warmer metal, offering it out. ]
I wasn't sure if you were awake yet, [ she says. Is moved to explain, with a head tip; ] We'll be reaching Olympus soon. Actually soon, not 'just one more day' soon.
[ These kinds of pilgrimages are still new. ]
no subject
You excited?
[Still seated down there on the crate, he watches Benji from below while touching his lips to the cup's rim, eyebrows raised like a flag in declaration of deadpan ribbing. How could you not be excited, this was your idea, I am basically human luggage on this voyage. Look, I'm excited. So excited.]
no subject
[ Aware of teasing, the word is placed down delicately but insistently, a smile cutting a little broader as she goes to find a place to sit as well, bony knees together. ]
Bullet's done a very good job in talking it up.
[ She smiles more with her eyes over at him as she takes a sip of the warm drink. ]
Maybe excitement is surpassed by my relief to be seeing some new scenery, I really couldn't say. Do you hate it?
no subject
[This he says after some reflection, waiting for his tea to go down, leaving the crease of his lips wet. He doesn't lick it away; it glints when he talks.]
This's the first time I've... you know. Gone on a field trip. Scenery looks pretty similar so far, though.
[The inside of a cabin. So exotic. Driver's own imagination can go spiralling off in as many directions as it wants, but it all comes back to the same sucking place in his thoughts: everywhere probably looks the same now. The dark, hot, filthy-scrubbed feeling of so many people living in a finite space, no pleasant way to escape each other except by sticking a big spike in their brains and pretending to leave.
For some reason, he keeps wondering how Olympus will smell. Whether the air will feel fresh. Maybe there's water there, natural cave lakes, strange depths still waiting to be discovered beneath the scabs of their poor burned-out planet. New architecture, shapes he hasn't seen in Zion. Terraces and train tracks. Maybe a road.
But really, in all the ways that count, he expects it to look the same.
He looks down into his cup.]
Do you do this a lot?
no subject
Benji is not an expert on cities, let it be noted. ]
I did. I do, I guess, still.
[ She waves a hand, indicating what is happening in this very moment -- she is, indeed, on a field trip as they speak. ]
Staying in one place, it's like reading the same book over and over. A good book, and it's familiar and comfortable but, you know. I didn't, um, back in the Matrix, I didn't get to travel a lot, but I knew people that did. Pilgrimages to Canada, or out into the Midwest. It wasn't my-- I guess it wasn't my job. And now it can be.
Not that I'm quitting the Dock any time soon.
no subject
You can quit? And I've been workin there this whole time? Man...
[Humour's good for opening like an umbrella against sincerity. Not that he minds sincerity too much—he just doesn't always know what to do with it. But anyway, they're talking. Hopefully Benji's laughing—or looking like she's laughing inside, the way they do, that's fine too.
He should probably say something else.]
I did some travelling. You know, before.
no subject
And he does. Minimally.
It's enough, anyway, a nudge open of an avenue of conversation that Benji opens her mouth to pursue when the lights go out. Instead of words, there's an intake of breath, soft and sharp, and stillness from her. The engines have hushed to the bare minimum thrum. Like someone tripped over a very important power cord. ]
We're dark.
[ And she means that in a more military, precise sense. To say it 'could be anything' is not all the way correct -- it is almost always machines. ]
no subject
All he can offer in reply is the soft sound of fabric moving, the sense of his body's shape rising calmly before her, and remaining there in tense readiness.]
no subject
There's the soft, if clumsy sound of her placing down tea wherever seems convenient and available. Her breathing isn't quicker, but it is a little louder, the only give away that she's stood at all.
They wait there, waiting for god knows what.
Then, the sound of boot falls. Two sets. Crew moving, headed the same direction. ]
The bridge?
no subject
[Probably, he means, but an economy of syllables feels wise, even if it isn't entirely necessary. Is it like a submarine, like in a movie, where one cough could kill them all? Probably not, or people wouldn't be moving around the hallway. Maybe there's some auxiliary glow out there, but it's dark as hell in here—he'd better mind his feet so he doesn't go tripping over another, less important, power cord.
He turns his head toward where he thinks Benji is, aware of the minute muscular confusion as his eyes try to focus on anything, find nothing.]
Let's go.
Closed to Benji | Final Destination!
Yet somehow he's managing to keep count of the rotations he's making around the woman's arm. Bullet had said twenty-seven. So he's on thirteen, fourteen, counting carefully as he goes, trying not to think too hard about how horribly pale the Olympian woman is growing, as she stares blankly into the chaos of the cargo hold now. Crates of supplies converted to beds for the wounded, smaller stacks roped and tarped together for stability-- and sterility-- and made now into surfaces for medical supplies, a water distribution station. The Dowager is past capacity.
He's trying not to picture the next bad swerve the ship makes. What'll happen if this woman falls over, maybe falls onto the piece of metal poking out of her arm, what if it. moves. cuts into an artery or--
"As makeshift furniture goes," he's trying for humor now, "you've got the best crate of the lot. One of my mates brought a sexy blond onto this ship and she's been up to all sorts of monkey business, I'm pretty fucking sure, so honestly-- we lucked out."
William is rewarded with a vague twitch of her shoulder.
no subject
She appears at the end of the woman's makeshift bed, her hands touching gentle onto her ankles. Gently, shoes are removed, but placed carefully at her side. A blanket, rolled and folded, is tucked beneath her feet, all done gently and unobtrusively, as if Benji is trying to get away with small kindnesses like a worker elf at midnight.
The second blanket, tucked under an arm, covers bare feet and up to the victim's waist, keeping out of the way of William's work.
She settles on the other side, undoing a beaded bracelet around the woman's wrist.
"And what lovely bedside manner," she says, on the tail end of William's words.
no subject
He almost loses track of his bandage wrap count, but picks up. Gets in a few extra to be sure, knowing it's better too many than to few in this case. Assured that the jagged protrusion of metal is packed tight, as immobilized as possible, he then wrangles the tape. He's pretty good at it now; the physician who'd swung onboard an hour ago, she'd had to redo some of his work earlier, but now he's got it.
"Do you know when the nurse lady's going to get over here?" he asks Benji. It's probably not the best question to ask. There will be no hurrying the real doctor, not with the encroachment of death as slow as this; there's someone moaning with much more urgency on the end.
Fortunately, their patient seems largely indifferent to the intimations of personal distress on William's end. She stares at them a little, but her feet move in flaccid accordance with Benji's hands and there's no protest against the pull on her wrist, despite the vague crease of expression trying her mouth when she looks at her wrist. Still too pale, but at least-- cooperative.
no subject
Maybe her floaty dystopic drapery of clothing has pockets. Except it's all blood spattered and torn, or sliced to expose her arm and much of her torso, so it might get thrown out. Benji's execute decision involves kidnapping one of William's hands for the purposes of pressing the beads into his palm for safekeeping. "Make sure she has these back when she's awake," she says, a slight hesitation bracketing the word 'awake' -- she is, awake, but not awake.
"I'll see if I can find someone to hook her into an IV. Is there anything else I can get? You?"
no subject
"Oh I'll come with you," William adds, realizing. "I need to wash my hands." They've been on about that. Minimizing risk of infection. It seems like an awfully long-term concern right now, and it slides out of his thoughts every time the ship gives a little jump or rattle (as it does now) (constantly) (and there she goes again) but the doctor had been adamant.
William gets up. Casts around briefly to figure out what to do with his bandage roll, and winds up looking hopefully toward her flowy dystopian drapery. He has the more regular, boring dystopian pants-and-shirt, and his pockets, fairly numerous though they are, are full by now. Absurdly, it's this riddle of where to install the remaining medical supplies?? that finally brings out the question: "Have you thought we should have stayed the fuck home."
no subject
There's a sharpness in glance towards that question, a crooked half-smile, wry and rueful both. "Do you know the terrible thing?" she responds, voice pitched a little quieter. "This is the first time in a long time I've felt like I am home.
"Not that I want bad things to happen, just that, you know, bad things always do. And I'm used to being among them."
no subject
"It is bloody terrible," he says, after a long moment. "But I think it means you're the right w--person for the job.
"Fucking disaster zone born and bred, eh?" William's cocks a brow, even as he stops just short of body-checking a man bringing in a child with blood smudged all over her forehead. He can't tell if the blood is hers or not. "Was it as big as this, the last cluster you got out of from your Matrix?"
no subject
"Not every day. But I remember triage, like this, the first time I was old enough to help. They'd draw red crosses on the foreheads of the people who couldn't be saved."
They were still alive when it happened, if hanging on by a thread. Benji had wondered if they'd understood. "When I left, things were quiet. Not in a good way. We weren't winning."
no subject
But all in all, William allows himself to be steered with no protest. The opposite of protest. He's easily steered, even though he knows the way, to the narrow lavator with its greenish-hued lights and its incomprehensibly long garbage chute and peculiarly large sink. Now he knows why the garbage chute and the size of the sink big, he supposes. It hasn't clogged in all of this, and people have been pouring down everything from bits of skin to accidental jewelry, burnt-off hair, whatever residue's been collecting at the bottoms of the sinks.
He thinks to ask: "Who was 'we?'"
William turns on the faucet before realizing he doesn't know where to get cups or anything.
no subject
Benji is thinking the same, and she touches William's back -- brb -- to go solve that problem while he washes gore off his hands. It's absurdly difficult, but eventually, she finds where someone's dragged out much of the kitchenware store from the Dowager's supplies, and returns with two canteens, which seems sensible. She goes about filling one, trying not to think about the run off that's washed down this sink before.
Talks about home, instead. "Or, you know. People generally, like me. Who were like me. We had superpowers," she finally clarifies, without euphemism, which always sounds silly, anymore, like she believed a stupider dream than most people. "The design of things made it less and less legal for us to exist freely. There were battles, sometimes."
no subject
He smiles at her gratefully before accepting his cup. It's a throwback to a culture long dead, that he bobs his head and lifts it slightly in thanks, before turning to hold it under the running faucet. It fills quickly enough, and then he's moving out of her way. "We had people like you in my world," he answers. "Uh, I mean. Well all the kinds of people you are, I guess. People helping refugees, and people who've got powers.
"People who fought." A beat. "I guess you're only two for three now." He takes a measured sip of water, like he doesn't really want to, but he's the one who came up with this bright idea anyway so he must.