[open semi-mingle] All we want for Christmas is...

[gainedlove]

Who: A popsicle and you!
When: Through to January 10th.
Where: Cryo Bay
What: CORPSE PARTY CORPSE PARTY (a.k.a. mingle for all the losers chilling with Shepard)
Warnings: None forseen, will update as necessary

Within the confusion of the fog blurring past, present, and future, one could be forgiven by missing the presence of one of Avagi's number. But to a select few Jane Shepard's absence is immediately felt. The residents of Sadcat Manor, the tiny family that had woven together by chance, move through their daily lives as best they can...but as life starts to settle into normalcy once again, she has not yet woken from her sudden slumber.

So a few make small detours. Settling for a few minutes or even an hour or two at a time near the cryo chambers, they keep her company. Some simply seeking some form of comfort by proximity, others of a more defensive mind seeking to be sure nothing will disturb her until he wakens once more...whenever that may be. And with so many visiting...well, it's inevitable that eventually some schedules might overlap.


(( ooc: Treat this as a mingle log for hanging around Shep's cold not-corpse! Top-level comments below will be posted for different scenarios for ease of organization, but otherwise go wild and have fun! ))

Comments

DAYLIGHT

[gainedlove]

'Daylight' is a specious term on Avagi, but the crew's waking hours stll leave some hustle and bustle through this section of the medical wing. Doctors checking that equipment is in working order, routine examinations of patients coming in and out. But there are places for a visitor to settle in for a time, should they so wish.

only sort of here. feel free to react if you want idk it's the thought that counts.

[inconsequence]

[Someone has very expertly woven a circular chain of golden blooms, carefully dried to as not to be crumbling, and settled them around the cryo-pod's top, very much like one might deposit a flower crown atop someone else's head.]

[Not that we're naming names, but it was probably Frisk. They're way better at owning this soppy, sappy sentimental bullhonkey.]

[gainedlove]

[Frisk was, in fact, not the one that put it there.]

[They do notice it, though, when they come through for one of their daily checks that Shepard hasn't vanished or fallen ill with some weird cryo disease or...whatever else might happen to her. The spot of color atop the cold metal and glass gives them pause, and they stare at the crown for a moment before they smile, just a little.]

[Pointing it out would be rude, but adding a 'Get Well' card with butterflies drawn on isn't so bad, right?]

Any random day

[pleasereset]

[Asriel hasn't gotten to know Shepard as closely as Chara and Frisk have, but knowing how important she is to both of them, and how kind she's been him, he keeps visiting her cryo chamber to check up on her. He starts off with talking to her, telling her what's currently going on in their household and how everyone is doing.

As days pass, talking to her turns more into a habit. Whenever he thinks no one else is listening, he'll start to talk about how much he misses Thisavrou, how he wishes he could find a home where nothing bad can happen to them, anything that's on his mind or troubling him.]

-And that's why I was thinking about painting the Velocity Raptor green, like a real velociraptor. Wouldn't that be cool? I wonder if I'll get a chance to fly it again.

[yorisearching]

[Yori's too busy to spend all that much time near cryo, but she does wander through the medical facilities two or three times in a given week. There are plenty of questions to ask, things to learn. Shepard's status is on the list.]

That would be cool.

[She didn't expect to find Asriel here. It's nice to see him talking cheerfully to Shepard about painting his ship green. Yori offers a quick smile.]

If you're busy, I won't bother you. But I'm sure we'll find somewhere to fly before too long.

[Especially now that the portals seem likely to open to a different planet soon enough.]

NIGHTTIME

[gainedlove]

At night the activity slows to a near standstill. Monitors beep in quiet patterns, and the only light is that shed by monitors. It is far quieter at these hours, and in theory more private. Though maybe be careful you don't fall asleep leaning against the cryo pod, or else you might need the services of the fine doctors in the morning for catching a chill.

[aka_pistachio]

[ It's super late at night. Or what passes for "night" on a space station, anyway. But Kelly Ann has studying to do, and Peter has Pino for the night, and she's not really ready to hang out in her room alone. So she goes to where Shepard is just... in stasis.

Somehow even in stasis she seems like she knows what she's doing. Kelly Ann takes the book she's supposed to be reading for her lit course/independent study/whatever thing with Professor Xavier and sits next to the cryo chamber. It's cold, which makes her shoulders ache. But better than being by herself with her own morbid thoughts when she's not going to be sleeping anyway. ]

All right. So I think we had just started the first battle. [ She flips to the page she had stopped reading at last time.
"THEN from the moorland, by misty crags, / with God’s wrath laden, Grendel came. / The monster was minded of mankind now / sundry to seize in the stately house."

[ She rubs her forehead and sighs. ]

None of this makes any sense. [ She mutters. "This" referring to the story, the station, her own state of mind. Whatever. ]

[araignee_du_soir]

Why are you reading Beowulf?

[Shortly after the question was voiced, Widowmaker's form came into the light being emitted by the surrounding equipment. She wasn't looking at the girl with the book, but focusing on Shepard as the woman chilled in the pod.]

[aka_pistachio]

[ Kelly Ann startles and looks up, blinking at the unfamiliar woman for a moment before responding. ]

Oh. Because Professor Xavier assigned it. It's like, a seminal work in Western literature or some shit. [ She shrugs. ] Figured Shepard might like the company.

[ She looks over the stasis pod, still not quite sure how any of it works or why, but she did look up what all the meters are supposed to say and everything is in the acceptable range. ]

[araignee_du_soir]

[Widowmaker looked from the girl to Sherpard before raising her eyebrows.]

Shepard is unaware of her surroundings; she has no idea you are present much less reading her Beowulf.

[Despite the harshness of the words, there was no malice in Widowmaker's voice. It was just a simple stating of fact. Oh, she knew the girl was there for her own comfort, not Shepard's, but she wondered if the girl was aware of it or simply lying to herself.]

[aka_pistachio]

[ Kelly Ann puts her bookmark back in the book and closes her notebook before leaning back in her chair, feeling small and useless. Not that it's a new or unusual feeling for her. ]

I have to read it anyway. [ She shrugs. ] Who knows, maybe it's like how plants like it if you play music for them. Like I know she doesn't hear the words and won't remember, but maybe somehow it helps if she knows she's not forgotten.

[ She glances at Shepard's face through the window. Where she can, anyway. It's covered in chalk drawings from all the kids who come by during the day. ]

every night. every single night from 12/22 to 1/10. ota.

[inconsequence]

[It's ritualistic. It makes it easier, once they fall into a reasonable rhythm of it - carefully settling down, cross-legged, beside Jane Shepard's cryo pod, and opening a slim, much-loved, well-thumbed volume. They clear their throat, each night, and venture without expectation for an answer:]

I'll be picking up where we left off, if there are no objections.

[There are, of course, no objections.]

[Easy, certain, spoken with the calm recitation of someone who has uttered these words many, many times before, Chara begins to read aloud to the sleeping Shepard. Perhaps she cannot hear, but if there is even the remotest possibility that some small piece of this may come through to her in the form of a dream or a half-formed memory, then it is worth it.]

[One is, after all, never too old for a bedtime story.]

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me...

12/27

[gainedlove]

[They don't mean to intrude, really. It was another night of little sleep and too much restless energy, and finding someplace in the apartment to curl up with a blanket to wait out the night wasn't as appealing as usual--perhaps thanks to the increased number of people experiencing the same. They hadn't expected anyone to make their way to the cryo bay at this time, and just before they cross the threshold they hear a familiar voice begin a tale.]

[They stop halfway across the threshold, frozen with indecision. Much as they want to stay, to speak up and ask permission...it would just ruin their mood, wouldn't it? For Frisk to come in, to take yet another thing away from them...]

[inconsequence]

[They shouldn't feel so out of place; this was, after all, Frisk's idea, was it not? And it was a good one. There's still a careful array of flowers atop Shepard's cryo-pod, along with a few other odds and ends. They can place a rather telling Get Well card with some familiar handwriting, not that they'll be calling attention to it.]

[They speak with barely a deviation in their level tone.]

Are you staying, or passing though?

[gainedlove]

[Frisk swallows hard, and it takes a few moments before their voice decides to work again.]

...was jus'...for a little while.

[They pull their blanket a little closer around themself, as if to shield themself from...judgement, rejection? They aren't really sure.]

I can...I can go, if you don't want...'f it's private.

[inconsequence]

Oh, yes. Private.

It is so incredibly private, Frisk. It is so very private that I am reading it aloud, in a public space, in front of a person who is very asleep and cannot hear a single word I am saying.

That's how private it is.

12/30ish

[notglitching]

[Jane_Shepard isn't in danger. If the recent environmental faults were any sign, she might even be safer from the local hazards than the rest of them. Whenever she might restart (and in what condition), there's absolutely nothing Rinzler can do.

That doesn't stop him from adding the medbay to his patrols. Or, once the chaos of the system glitch is done, stopping by a little earlier than usual. He isn't surprised to hear another visitor inside.

Still, he hadn't expected to hear Chara read.

The enforcer won't interrupt. But when Chara pauses for a breath, they might hear the soft rumble ticking from the doorway. Rinzler tilts his helmet, quietly curious when they look back.]

[inconsequence]

[They pause when they catch sight of someone else nearby. Evidently, the sound of a child reading aloud is of sufficient interest to plenty passersby. This is fortunately one they recognize; the immediate tensing of shoulders and back, the straightening of spine, the short intake of breath, all soon relax once they determine the source of the sound.]

[Rinzler has not struck them as someone interested in stories. Though in all fairness, the subject simply never came up before. They never asked.]

[...]

[They ought to have asked.]

...interested?

[notglitching]

[A brief lag, and the black mask dips. He is. Albeit as much in the fact of Chara's reading as the content. Rinzler steps inside, a lingering glance assessing Shepard's pod. Readouts steady. No change.]

Can she—hear?

[It takes a moment to piece the phrase together, but not as long as it would have a few months back. Practice helps.]

[inconsequence]

[Can she hear?]

[A full sentence, with pronouns and verbs and everything. To mock him for that achievement would be a cruelty; not everyone can speak easily, and learn to assert their personhood with ease. Nonetheless, something in their expression seems to ease, a slackening of the guardedness that they veil over themself by default.]

I very much doubt it. But if she can...

[If there is even the mildest, slightest, silliest chance that she can, then it is worth the daily effort.]

[beautifulspaceraptor]

[ The soft click of taloned boots slows to a stop somewhere behind Chara. It's probably a familiar noise by now, even as they didn't often tend to cross paths. They'd have heard it in the wee hours of the established waking cycles, under the sound of soft, groggy conversation.

Now, with Shepard in cryo, Nihlus had all but disappeared from the commune. There's still traces of him here and there: prepared food on the table with a note to microwave it whenever the children should wake up. The laundry is always folded and left in baskets for them to sort out a couple of times a week. The house is always spotless no matter what state it'd been left in the day before.

He doesn't say anything to Chara.

There's the sound of a chair being pulled up next to them, however, the creak of metal straining under the weight of a full-grown Turian. And then silence, the quiet of someone content with just listening. ]

[inconsequence]

[They are familiar with him by association, it is true, though neither of them have made undue effort to interact beyond the bare minimum. He is mostly present in all the ways certain things in their living space are not present: in the lack of mess and the way structure manages to creep it’s way over their disorganized sprawl of too many overlapping and uncoordinated schedules, despite all else.]

[For one reason or another, he stops and he sits, and there just be a reason for it, if only they could be intuitive enough to discern what it might be.]

...I’d not pegged you for one with an interest in bedtime stories.

[Starting things off right. As you do.]

[beautifulspaceraptor]

[ That earns Chara a soft and tired little laugh. It trails off, back into nothingness for a moment, silence filled with the occasional, thoughtful 'clink' of silverware against the inside of a mug. ]

What kind of stories did you peg me as being interested in?

[ Honest curiosity lines the flanged tones, Nihlus' green eyes glimmering with humor under the exhaustion. This was far from the worst of introductions. ]

PARTY [January 10th]

[gainedlove]

How this exactly started is hard to pinpoint. FIrst someone happened to have brought a bottle of liquor, then another came with snacks, and eventually the gathering grew to something resembling a tiny celebration. The woman of the hour is, of course, entirely unaware of the commotion, but those left awake can take comfort in the presence of others feeling their same loss. Or maybe you're just annoyed there's a bunch of rowdy idiots getting in your way--it is a bit of an awkward location for a party.

Yori | OTA

[yorisearching]

Snacks? Well, maybe.

Yori's concerned with the recent eating habits of her allies, and she's realized where she's likely to find at least one if no one shows up to meals.

Most of what she's willing to risk carrying out of the safety of the apartment is unappetizing cube, freshly sliced into thin strips to appeal to small Users.

She also has several small bags of nuts and dried berries from Kaittos and a few old bottles refilled with water. Act fast, or you'll be left with nothing but sliced cube.

"Shouldn't you eat?" she asks in honest worry. She knows what you haven't been eating. Of course the entire digestion process is terrible, but everyone says Users can't survive long without food.