ataraxion | NINE: video

[The room Taylor's sat in is dark, unidentifiable from the wall behind her, but soft, blue-tinged light from another source washes over her face intermittently. It highlights how drawn she looks, pale, tired. She's a mess, really. Even by Tranquility standards.]

It's January, right? Been counting on the jumps since I got here. [She isn't slurring as she speaks, but the lack of focus in her expression and sluggishness to her movements makes it clear she's inebriated to anyone who knows what to look for.] Guess it doesn't matter though. Just start calling them by numbers. I was meant to turn twenty in December. Be an instructor back at the Academy. [She frowns for a moment, taking a drink out of an unlabelled bottle.] Or maybe they'd have terminated me.

[Another pause, and she shifts off to the side for a moment, putting the bottle down. When she comes back into view she’s holding something else – a mask. Her mask, an mongrel canine face, beaten, bruised and bloody. She holds it up, hanging off the fingers of one hand.]

Turns out these show you ghosts. Hallucinations. Whatever. If that isn't fucked up enough to get you thinking don't touch them, you're a fucking idiot. [Very evidently angry, suddenly, half a snarl on her mouth. She looks at the mask again, then drops it to one side.] Didn't want to see my old man the little he was around, sure as fuck didn't want to see him here. Thing I've been thinking, though - what do you see, you wear someone else's?

[She doesn't hold the second mask up for the camera, but it's there in her hands, looks like a modern military gas mask. She's quiet for a long while, like she maybe forgot she even had the comms running, all of the anger and energy drained out of her again.]

Tommy's gone. Gone last jump. Told him he would, cause everyone goes. [A thin smile, strained, sad, and then gone again.] Guess I didn't wanna be right.

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[Taylor glares at her comm for a moment, at his face, but then she just shrugs.]

I was gonna fuck up sometime. It's what freaks like me do, right?

Still putting words into my mouth.

You're Head of Security. It's a job we've both done, in our own ways, and I have a great deal of respect for you, no matter that we don't agree too much on paper.

I know you put the security of this ship above your own pride.

[She frowns, shakes her head. Doesn't want to talk about respect or pride.]

Not your words. Just the truth. I'm a fuck-up, so here I am. [She spreads her arms out, indicating the room, the booze and the masks, her and her goddamn dreadful appearance.] Fucking up.

A heartbreaking tale of self-flagellation. What does it prove? Who does it help?

[ A long pause, and then he speaks again. ]

Back after my brother exploded, I blamed myself for what happened. Peter vanished, you know. I had no idea whether he was alive or dead. I spent four months in the hospital barely alive, and then some kind of miracle, and I wake up good as new.

Got drunk. Blew my career, my marriage, lost my kids, destroyed my relationship with my mother. You want a fuck up? Well that was me.

Now you--I don't know what it's gonna take, how you're gonna do it, but you have to pull yourself out from that same sorta place, and the first thing you gotta do is accept help from the people who love you. Start there.

[It doesn't prove or help anything, and that's the point. But then he's talking again, and as much as she might have argued with him before (disliked him), she listens. She doesn't want to, doesn't want to hear what he's got to say, really doesn't want it to make any sense. But it does.

She looks away from the camera, turning to grab the bottle again, response belligerent and quiet.]

Who says they're gonna help, huh? Maybe they'll just leave.

That's a fact of life. People leave. The real issue here isn't them leaving, it's whether or not you're strong enough to handle it without letting your whole world fall apart.

I used to think I was better than that too.

[ A pause. ]

You think you're gonna find your answers at the bottom of that bottle?

No.

[She shakes the bottle a bit, a small, dry smile, then takes a drink.]

But I don't have a whole lot of world, so maybe I've got my answers already.

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