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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Should've tried harder. [But she knows it wouldn't have mattered.] This fucking ship.

[She scrapes a hand back through her hair, frowning.]

You worn yours?

Sometimes, you can only do as much as you're intended to.

[Fatalist, thy name is Rey.]

Yes. I had requested to be confined for the duration of that month.

Don't believe in following other people's plans.

[She means like destiny or any kind of deity - or whatever the ship or smiley had waiting for them all.]

That bad?

Of course.

[Whether she agrees or not, Rey has her own reasons for thinking the way she does.]

Yes. Was not safe, otherwise. I tried to kill someone. [So casual.]

[She looks surprised, for a moment, then huffs something like a laugh.]

Seems like they're bringing out the best in us.

Seems so. At first I thought I was about to lose my mind-- [again]

I believe it was the jump that sorted my head out, though I don't know if it was a solution or if it only temporarily delayed the inevitable.

[She frowns, for a long moment, everything in that piercing through the alcohol and the belligerence to the parts of her that just never wanted people hurting. Looking lost.]

We can-- [No, that sounded like Taylor would be involved, and she's got no ideas of this public showing leaving her with anything like that.] People can watch out for you, here.

[Rey doesn't know what she was expecting.]

I can watch out for myself now. If I have to take responsibility for my own actions, I will do so.

[The last time she's asked someone to take her out for her when she went insane, it didn't end so well. It ended with a bullet in her own head and a lot of guilt weighed in afterwards with the gravity of what she'd done.]

That doesn't mean you have to do it on your own.

[Every part of Taylor's training had emphasised teamwork. Strengths in people making up for weaknesses in others, and vice-versa. It's shown through in everything she's done with the security department, and it's what she leans on now.]

I understand. It's -- a habit, I suppose. People never like me much.

[For some cases, teamwork is a necessary element, even when most of her teammates never cared much for her presence. She is -- was the Salamander, something that sets fire to everything but never, ever burns. But unlike them, none of that means anything to the people here.

[Perhaps it's just what's in her wiring.]

I get that.

[She'd never had friends, back at the Academy. Teammates and girls she knew, but no one she spent time with, and she'd liked it that way. Stayed rough and abrasive to keep them away. But that hadn't worked, on the Tranquility. She didn't know if it was something to be glad of or not.]

I guess things can be different, here.

Things should be different. Otherwise it gets lonely.

[It's not like her to think that, but she's spent a lot of time on her own, or when it's just her and her father helping her to pull through the worst part of her insanity.]

[Taylor frowns slightly, looking away from the camera.]

I don't know about that.

It isn't easy to know about much of anything now.

[If there was ever a time in which Rey could say "I know" when everything has always been so uncertain to her. Figures that she can't even offer any kind of consolation when she feels it may be necessary.]

[She huffs a dry kind of laugh at that.]

Nothing's ever easy. That's just how it goes.

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