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old but unfamiliar faces
"We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once."
The Ingress has pulled you in. Your body experiences several sensations at once: being pushed forward as if a hand is resting on your back, momentary and startling blindness, a gentle ringing in your head. You have difficulty discerning whether it is hot or cold, but where you have been prodded is noticeably warmer than the rest of you. Some may suffer from dizziness while others are perfectly fine. Once equilibrium has been reestablished, you will notice you are standing on a long platform and that the room is filled with a soft cerulean light. It's slightly humid and dark despite the glow around you, and nothing is familiar. Shortly after, you are led out and toward the medbay.
Inside this room, you are given a physical scan and offered a contract to sign that states you are now part of the crew of the Moira with a specific job. Any questions you might have would be answered in a straightforward manner as well as an explanation about how the Ingress, the thing that has pulled you onto the Moira, is broken and bringing people here unintentionally. This process also consists of a complete work-up of medical history and current health, and afterwards, you are given your MID, a device that is integrated into your hand or wrist with only the slightest pinch. From there, you are guided out of the medbay and to your living quarters.
At first, this month seems no more unusual than the previous one for those who have been aboard the Moira for any amount of time. The crew who had landed on the slaver outpost were rescued, and with everyone aboard, the ship has pushed forward into the darker parts of the Runoff. Anyone arriving through the Ingress follows the same routine—moving from the Ingress room into the Medbay for their physical and contract before being assisted by seasoned crew members and helped to their assigned decks. But all familiar things must eventually come to an end: two final travelers come through the Ingress. The first, and most noticeable difference between them and all the others, is their clothing. Both are dressed in standard Moira uniforms, though they bear the insignia of one sharing the same rank as Captains Cúrre and Thán. After a moment to take in all the people on the platform ahead of them, one of the two latest arrivals approaches one of the Ingress panels and begins to manipulate the controls. The Ingress completely shuts down. Unlike before, however, there isn’t an imbalance felt across the ship; everything remains normal and stable.
Utilizing the computer systems located in the Ingress room, they send out the following message to the crew via the MID:To all those aboard this vessel: I am Ira Phirun, assigned captain of the Moira. First Mate Egan and I will be commandeering all rights to the ship as soon as word is sent to those currently in charge. Expect a more detailed report as soon as all records and logs in Navigation have been reviewed by myself and the First Mate. All questions will be answered in a timely matter. For now, there will be no interruption of daily routine or reprimand if conduct among ranks is broken. Thanks for your time. Heading to Navigation, the Captain and First Mate, for seemingly unknown reasons, approach Navigator Manasseh and have her show them all records and logs of the Moira. Those working in Navigation when the Captain and First Mate arrive will see Mana greet them in a professional manner. Oddly, the Captain and First Mate act very familiar with the Navigator. They review all documents, but when they come upon news that the Ploiatos is on board, their mostly friendly demeanor shifts quickly. The Captain issues a sharp order, unintelligible to those who are close enough to overhear parts of their conversation, and without any warning at all, Mana loses consciousness and collapses right there on the bridge. Within minutes of this happening, the ship as a whole falls into a low power state with basic functions only. Mana’s MID alerts Medbay, and without hesitation, Captain Cúrre places her in cryo with strict orders to those who work there not to disturb the unit.
As promised, the Captain and First Mate soon address the crew.☄ lights down low The lighting has dimmed in all the rooms and halls, the normally crisp air that is pumped from the vents low, and all machines and tech are running at half-speed. These effects can be found throughout the ship. Water in the showers remain hot for only a few minutes before reverting to cold. Recreational equipment powers off not long after it has been turned on. The sanitation and water filtration systems require an hourly manual reboot, and all unused areas of the ship have no power allotted to them until a crew member steps inside. Even then, most functions are not optimal. It’s as if the Moira has been transformed into a dark house with only a candle flickering on the window sill. ☄ reuse & recycle The Captain and First Mate are quick to establish that this is a new regime and go about making the ship and its crew more efficient in the wake of their change in course and the low power state of the ship itself. This means they will systematically inspect each occupied barracks room and leave notes for what needs to be disposed of or stowed away. Unlike before, this is no longer a pleasure cruise, and each member of the crew is a guest on board; they will not tolerate useless clutter. Anything seen as unnecessary will be either placed into storage in the Cargo Bay or disposed of through the airlock. This new need for efficiency also extends to the need to conserve resources until they reach their destination. The showers are set to an automatic timer to minimize water waste. Those few minutes of hot water are all a crew member is now given. Meals are smaller, bordering on ration sizes, and luxuries are done away with entirely in order to preserve supplies so that the ship can go longer before needing to dock at a planet. ☄ new jobs, same faces The Captain and his First Mate, as expressed in their addressing of the Moira, explain that work efficiency is a priority. Applications for a head of the following departments will be accepted for a short period: Navigation, the Tower, Medbay, Defense, the Hold, Sanitation, Ingress work, and the Galley/Mess Hall. (Here.) After reviewing what they receive, one head of department will be chosen and tasked with helping crew find positions relevant to those departments and their own skillsets. They will be allowed to retain any positions that they held before that aren’t ship-functional jobs, but they will have to be done in leisure time. In two weeks time, they’ll be accepting department position applications which will be approved, and all those that do not apply will be assigned in accordance with their initial work application. They will also choose three individuals to act as guards of Ploiatos to ensure that there is a rotation available at all times. Will you choose to follow this new decision and promote yourself into a position of responsibility? Or will you simply wait for a reassignment?
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hownkai) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisavrou_log2016-08-01 12:13 am
no subject
She doesn't answer, though her grip on her comb tightens, especially when he continues.]
Fine. [Short, crisp, and a bald-faced lie. She's felt impotently angry ever since she returned, like the surface of her body could crack at any moment, like cheap porcelain, and show all the fury under it. She's holding up as much as it takes to get through a day, and then she falls asleep with anger churning her stomach.] What about you?
no subject
Fine? Nothing about this is fine.
[Time and place? What is that?]
no subject
[Which she is. In a matter of speaking.
As long as she ignores the way she sleeps with her blaster even closer than usual, how Han treats her like braaken glass, every nightmare she's had since she returned--she's fine. She gets through the day and does her work and doesn't cry, and that's all that needs to be said about the matter.]
Do you want to hear that it isn't?
no subject
[The frustrated sigh that follows only continues to highlight how awkward and strained this is. The conversation and its circumstances. He's tired, something he's started to measure in ways other than sleep. In milimeters, in how long it takes to drag out of bed, how slow everything seems to move, in the bruises that stubbornly creep into the corners of his eye sockets, a nagging hurt that sits just beneath the surface of real injury. He...]
I don't want any of this. What I want is for this to not have happened at all. No one deserves this. But this is not something "fine" hides.
no subject
But Anakin wants what he wants, and apparently that means ignoring what's obviously a polite closing of the subject. It feels like he's baiting her, and she knows she shouldn't take it, but the baths are empty aside from them, and she's been carrying this fury around alone ever since it happened. Han knows, but he knows through implication and euphemism. She hasn't said the actual words to anybody, but telling Anakin means hurting him, and it means telling someone who understands.
She shouldn't. She does.]
I beat a man to death after he put his hand somewhere he shouldn't have. All right? And if I hadn't, he'd have done worse, and nobody on that damned outpost would have cared, because he paid for me, fair and square. [Her knuckles are white, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she thinks, I need to stop doing this to him. For my sake or his? I don't know. I need to stop doing this. Luke wouldn't--] And I'm still here. Which means I'm fine, and you're not going to tell me otherwise.
no subject
It stings, but in those hollow, wide eyes, there's more than simple indignation. His heart bottoms out in a single moment, quicker than blinking, and he stops breathing entirely, lest that upset end up on the floor in some fashion. The bile he swallows back might as well be volcanic ash for as much as it burns all the way down his throat.
Of all people, of all things--he'd have taken a thousand more lashes over this, enough additional tasers to leave his eyes permanently at him in the back of his head. All those attempts to save anyone--everyone--and it's simply failure, after failure, after failure.
None of them feels worse than this. Nothing he'd personally suffered in that sithpit could ever compare in this lifetime or any other. Give him another decade of living life as if he's a piece of machinery with no other function, and the question of agency still is never, ever the same. How can he be so unsurprised and so horrified all at once?
He can't even find words to fill that silence. There's no proper apology that sits here, no consolation (at least not one she'll ever take).
Besides, how does: I'm sorry, I know, I should have murdered every slaver on that Outpost do anything but reinforce everything she believes him to be? No matter how much it feels truer and truer the further they put the place behind them physically?
He finally inhales sharply as the stare falls, bewilderment and shock replaced with a concoction of bitterness, sorrow, and anger that rises from his ribs where the dragon curled around his heart sleeps.]
Fine.
[It's more pointed than he intends, and he immediately winces.]
Deal this how you want, but lying to yourself--and that's all "I'm fine" ever does--isn't going to make this better. [He'd know. It's his token answer to Obi-Wan over everything he's never wanted to talk about.] I'm not going to lie and say this ever goes away. It doesn't. It won't. And I'm sorry for that. If I could go back and change it all, I would.
[And it wouldn't be any mercy mission, this time.]
But surviving isn't fine. It just is.
You've never been anything but honest with me. [Too honest by most counts, but that can't matter right now, this isn't about him, and it isn't about that.] But I think you owe yourself the same thing.
no subject
I told you what I want you to know. I never said it was what I tell myself.
[He married a politician, a queen in her own right. Surely he understands the difference there.
That it's no difference at all, that she's told herself the same thing--I'm fine, I've gotten through the day and I'm going to be fine--ever since Kobra Kid found her, is immaterial. He doesn't have to know that.
The whole point is made moot, she realizes after a moment, by the fact that she ended up telling him everything anyway. But it had to be said to someone, somehow. It might have exploded out of her otherwise.]
Do you have any other unwanted advice while we're here? I'm all ears.
[Lashing out at him is easier, safer, than letting herself soften in his presence.
Like father, like daughter.]no subject
It's not often he'll unequivocally claim Yoda had been right, but...
He turns to leave, unclear where else this could possibly go but get him yelled at again and leave them both even angrier. But it eats at him, and it hurts, and he can't help the aside as he pushes through the door:]
At least I'm trying.
no subject
But he just has to get another smart comment in.]
You think I'm not trying?
[She's met Yoda, and she knows he was wrong about her. Dismissing her outright, looking at her with a mix of pity and condescension--sure that she was lost to the darkness already, so embittered by her experiences that she wasn't worth teaching. He couldn't understand that anger is what keeps her going when everything else would leave her a mess of tears. You turn it on, you turn it off, and things get done.
The trick is turning it off, especially when Anakin Skywalker is in the room with you.
She wishes Luke were here. She'd give anything to be able to hear his thoughts.]
I'm talking to you, aren't I? You think that isn't trying?
[It is, in every sense of the word.]
no subject
[Kriff it, Skywalker, just leave. He wants to. Desperately. All these conversations do is leave him mired in that stagnant not-yet-guilt, frustration, and loss. There had been a time, before the Moira, longer ago now than he wants to admit, that he'd thought only Master Yoda or Windu could reduce him to this kind of speechless chagrin.
All his daughter has to do is narrow her eyes, and he's that same child, out of his depth and desperate to prove...something.]
I didn't know your father that well, and maybe I won't, but I knew his politics. I know enough to know that he wasn't the kind of person who held people at blaster-point over slights they never committed. How does this sense of justice make you any better than the man you think I am?
[He doesn't care how short-lived the vindication will feel. This won't fix anything. But nothing else seems to either. Not silence, not sympathy, not reason. All they have in common is this anger. This indignation. And for all the regret he already feels, the anger burning, heat rising obvious and visible in his face, he finally pushes through the door.]
no subject
[Leia's gobsmacked. Of all the answers he could give her--never mind bringing up Bail Organa, that name doesn't deserve to be spoken in this context, and she's not going to acknowledge it--his answer is to compare her to Darth Vader? He has the nerve to suggest her anger is the same as galaxy-destroying violence?
He hasn't learned anything from what she's said to him--nothing! nothing at all--except who she blames for the horrors she's seen. It certainly hasn't sunk in why, if this outburst is any indication.]
I've never approved of genocide, for one! When you want the rest, you know where to find me.
[In the meantime, she's not going to follow him out. She's not using his damned water. Leia going to take the coldest shower she can, and then she's going down to the cargo bay and locking up in the heart of a ship Anakin Skywalker has no access to.]