thisavrou_log | [open] touch has a memory

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bioshock: elizabeth dewitt

[open] touch has a memory

Who: Elizabeth DeWitt & Anybody on the Moira
When: October 30th
Where: The Medbay/halls of the Moira
What: Elizabeth fell into cryo somewhere around the 16th and now she's awake. Sweet criminy, why has everybody turned into different things/ohgodpleasedon'ttouchme.
Warnings: Phobias happening in here, fear of being touched, probably some unpleasant imagery related to experimentation.

When Elizabeth opens her eyes and realizes where she is, her first thought is, of course, hoping she hadn't died in her sleep or some nonsense like that. She probably wouldn't know if she had, too, until someone told her what had happened. Given the memory holes both she and Miles apparently experienced after the process, who knows what she's forgotten this time.

But she feels less... fresh. More stiff and like she's learning to move her limbs again. Had she simply been placed in stasis, then? Well, it had to happen sometime, it usually did to most people.

Elizabeth climbs out of the pod, wincing and struggling to use her muscles and noting that there didn't appear to be a medical crew coming to help. No matter, she has to get back to work anyway, there's no time to be scanned and looked over, she's probably fine.

When she comes into the main medical bay, of course someone does approach her with their hands outstretched, ready to help. It's not as abandoned as she thought it was but-- somehow that's the opposite of comforting. Elizabeth fixes her eyes on the hands coming towards her and she knocks the staff out of the way and bolts out of the medical bay. Not that she gets very far-- she's winded and her legs won't support her for very long and she has to lean against a wall to catch her breath and take stock of what just happened. It's impossible to figure out, there's no rationale that she can find when she replays the incident. Just a very deep urge to shudder and close herself off.

"Maybe I did die..." she says to herself, trying to get a grip, trying to figure out what she has to do next as she hugs herself tightly.

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Eggsy’s on his way to medbay to see if they need a hand. He knows his training isn’t the same as what a doctor gets but it’s enough that he knows that, in a pinch, he’d be useful. He startles as Elizabeth comes running out of the medbay and he goes after, stopping a few feet away when she leans against the wall.

“Liz, everythin’ okay?”

Clearly, something’s wrong, but Eggsy can’t tell what it is from just looking at her. There’s been a lot of strange stuff happening recently and, for now, he’s going to chalk it up to that.

“It’s me, Eggsy.”

He’s got his hands up, smiling at her as he comes around so she can see his face.

“Didn’t know you could run that fast, yeah? Nearly winded me.”

After a few breaths, Elizabeth turns around. She's white as a sheet and panting from the sudden and uncontrolled sprint, but she recognizes Eggsy. Her friend, and yet... his hands are making her nervous. Quickly, she squashes the feeling down and tries to straighten up.

"Force of habit. I just..." She shakes her head, as though trying to fit something back into place. "I got disoriented coming out of the stasis, sheer... sheer damn panic, I guess." Elizabeth tries to smile back at Eggsy, but she still looks a little shaken. "I should go back to my quarters, maybe being somewhere comfortable will help."

Eggsy's used to jumpy people. His mum was a nervous woman, quick to twitch if someone moved too fast around her. It makes him wonder if Elizabeth is alright, if something happened to her.

"That might be it, yeah?"

In all the time he's been here, Eggsy's only been in cryo once and that had been to recover after he'd died. It'd been disorienting all around, so he can't really blame her for being out of sorts from it.

"Want a handsome bloke to walk ya back?" he asks, dropping his hands to his side and nodding in the direction of the other end of the hall.

"Always," Elizabeth puts on the best smile she can muster-- convincing, but a little sad. Her 'handsome bloke' is gone, and she still hasn't make her peace with it. She misses Ivan, but at least she's not wandering around terrified and alone. Someone cares.

She pushes off the wall and walks next to Eggsy, arms folded in front of her chest. "...I'm sorry about Gregor." She imagines he disappeared right around the same time as Ivan, all the Vor just... poof, right back into the Ingress.

Eggsy tenses up, folding his arms over his chest. He doesn't mean to go all tense, but it's hard not to. Honestly, Eggsy's done his best not to think of Gregor. It's wrong and he knows it, but the more he thinks about him, the worse he feels. He'd let himself fall into as much else as he could here, anyone and anything to distract him from how he felt.

But he doesn't want to lie to Elizabeth. If anyone could understand how he feels, it'd be her.

"I.." he cuts himself off, shrugging and following that with a sigh. "I miss 'im so much I can't breathe sometimes."

He wasn't supposed to get that close to anyone, to let him in. It made things complicated, harder. Yet, Gregor had thought he was strong and smart and worth the effort and time. He'll never forget that and he wants it back.

Elizabeth watches Eggsy close off, watches him debate on whether to lie to her. She's happy when he doesn't though. As happy as she can be, at least, talking about something that was affecting them both. Had affected the whole ship, really, when she hadn't been able to contain her own grief. It had been a different way to hold her breath.

"Sometimes I forget Ivan's gone. And when I remember, I feel empty. Like the color's drained out of the world, and I won't ever be happy again."

She casts a sideways glance at Eggsy and smiles faintly. "Dramatic, isn't it? For someone who wasn't one to commit to anyone. But I didn't care about that, he just... he showed me things about myself I couldn't see."

"Nah, it ain't dramatic, Liz. Nobody's perfect, yeah? Can't really help who we fall for."

For Eggsy, he'd thought it would be hard but it wasn't. When it came down to it, with all his hang ups and all of Gregor's, they'd still been so good together.

"Would've gone with him, you know? Even if I would've had to be a secret. Could've been happy with that." Eggsy glances at Elizabeth, then steps closer to brush their arms together. A non-verbal way of saying that he gets it. "He'd be ashamed of me now. Throwin' myself at anyone who'll have me. Pretendin' like it didn't happen so I don't feel as bad."

"We can't," she agrees. "I just never knew whether or not he cared about me as much as I cared about him. I was too afraid to ask. But even if he was just... having fun with me, I still feel empty." Maybe because she never knew if he loved her the way she loved him. And Elizabeth doesn't know if she ever will know.

She nods and tries to smile in a supportive way, nodding a little-- she would have gone with Ivan too if he'd asked, even if she imagines it would've had to be a secret too. Then she sees Eggsy leaning towards her out of her peripheral vision, and she dodges jerkily away before he can touch her. It's a reflex, she does it automatically because her chest tightens up and alerts her to danger before she can remember it's Eggsy. She's slept in his bed, kissed him--

Elizabeth has stopped walking and looks at him like he'd tried to taze her. "I'm sorry... I don't, I don't know why I did that."

"Don't know he couldn't have, you know?"

He figures his words are kind of empty. Eggsy doesn't know how Ivan felt and Elizabeth might not ever know, but he has trouble thinking that he didn't care about her.

Eggsy's mouth snaps shut, and for a moment, he stops in the middle of the hall. She'd jerked away from him, and he can't bring himself to look in her direction. Something's going on, it always is, but he can't think of anything except for how she didn't want him to touch her.

"It's.. It's okay, yeah? Sorry."

"No, Eggsy--!" Elizabeth reaches for his elbow and diverts to his sleeve, pinching the fabric between her fingers. She is so close to him, her heart is starting to pound.

"There's something wrong with me, I feel like I'm about to pass out right now. Or vomit." Describe symptoms-- maybe he'll know what's going on, maybe something's been happening around the ship. "But I'm not going to let go because whatever this is-- whatever this ship is doing to me this time-- I'm not losing another person to it."

Even if her heart is going to explode if she doesn't back off soon.

Maybe avoiding Elizabeth completely wasn't the best method of coping with what he saw through the tear but Jack couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye after he watched some kind of ghost of himself kill her in cold blood. So he made sure to avoid the places he knew she tended to be, the library especially. It was enough for a while, being careful of where he went. Except when he finally worked himself up to talk to her about what he had seen, Elizabeth had ended up in cryo. No way to ask her why a ghost of himself murdered her.

(There was a niggling feeling in the back of his mind that there was something else wrong with that scene but every time he came close the thought would move out of reach. Something about what she said...)

So when he runs into her in the hall he ends up stopping in his tracks, struggling to find something to say to her. In the end he manages an incredibly weak: "So they finally let you out of that tube, huh?"

"Jack--" Elizabeth looks startled by his appearance, but still glad to see him. She at least knows she can trust him with just about anything.

"Not sure I want to be out of it-- I feel like my heart's about to beat out of my chest. What's happened while I was out?"

"Some weird shit, honestly," He rubs his wrist absently, fingers playing over the chain tattoo on his wrist. "People have been changing physically. It's unsettling as all get out."

But it's hard to focus on his discomfort when Elizabeth looks like death walking. He takes a step forward. "You need some help getting to your room? I can lend a hand." If there was anything he was good at, it was hauling things around.

"No kidding..." Elizabeth can't imagine how insane things are if people are physically changing-- and maybe more is changing than is immediately apparent, which explains why she feels so off. Whatever's going on is affecting her, it has to be. Somehow.

"Yeah, I need to get back to my cabin, sleep this off-- Unless I'm changing, too and that's why I feel so..." She can't figure it out.

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[open] touch has a memory

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this is SO LATE I'm sorry =A=;;;

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