ataraxion | NINE: video

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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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[ She thinks Tyke would be fine if Irene had been there. It's a silly notion, and one that feels a bit like she's assigning more worth than she really should to their connection ( could she even call it that, really ) but it's something she thinks nonetheless. You lose things that ground you and even the best of people have the potential to fall to pieces, to find themselves in throes of something like this. Irene had thought Tyke was stronger and yet here's proof that perhaps even the strongest people on this ship are broken easily if you just know how to break them. She hums. ]

It's not your real name. [ It's a statement, not betraying that Irene knows or doesn't know Tyke's real name, but one that that just sits there. ] Tell me which one you like better.

[ And what's very simply said in there is a comment of 'I won't say I'm sorry for something beyond our control but I will for not being there in this way.' ]

[Irene wasn't the only one that had been asleep all month, but there had been plenty of others awake, too. Plenty that Taylor knew, could've sought out, talked to. But talking meant admitting, and she'd spent the entire month holding onto some stupid idea that maybe Tommy would just be back, whenever they fixed the problem with the couches. An idea that hadn't been strong enough to hold her up through every day that he wasn't next to her like he had been, every day that she checked the medbay and he wasn't there. She'd had to grab something else, and she'd turned to the same old: solitude and alcohol. And this is where it had got her.]

Does it matter?

[What she likes better. If it mattered to Irene before or if it would matter now - she was a mess. Disappointing. Out of control. Why tell Irene what name she preferred now if she was unlikely to ever use it?]

[ If Irene was honest, and if she had been in Tyke's shoes, she'd willingly ( well insomuch as she willingly admits anything ) admit that she would have done the same thing. The things that can hold a person up when they're down are varied, she knows this and who's to say you wouldn't be right in assuming that someone would be back when the couches were fixed. Perhaps he had run off upon realizing it, you could never truly know. But even if you try and even if denial is powerful, sometimes you have to be honest with yourself and—

Coping mechanisms can always be so dangerous when they're needed the most. ]

It does. [ And it truly does to Irene because why wouldn't it be something that mattered? A name, for all people will claim it doesn't mean anything always means something to someone and this time is no real exception even if Tyke is a mess and Irene had been asleep for a month and— this ship makes everything matter more in these circumstances. ]

It's your name and it's a part of you. It matters a great deal to me.

[She wants to argue more. Tell Irene it shouldn't matter, she shouldn't matter, because eventually she wouldn't anyway. Irene would figure it out - that this was the truth - and decide not to have anything to do with her. To leave her. That was how it worked.

But the words Irene uses, the part of you, it stops her (Irene's words have always managed like that, wriggled under her skin, cut through to things; more like Instructor Pinset than she realised). All the pieces of Taylor, throughout her life, that keep falling away. Being erased. Maybe Irene would go, just like the rest, but maybe for a short while, Taylor could hold on to this.]

Taylor. [It feels weird, sounds weird, every time she says it. Which just makes her want to say the rest of it.] Taylor Lianne Kee. [A pause, and she shrugs.] And everyone I tell leaves, so I guess you're next.

[ Perhaps in the future she'd leave, it's what her and her counterpart do isn't it? If they're backed up against walls they'll use a trap door and disappear and only return when it's safe, if it ever is. But that's in the future, the ranking of people she'd leave behind places both Neal and Tyke on the same level, just below Irene in people she'll turn on and leave behind. Unless her hand is forced, it won't happen soon.

Tyke may be her equal, but she's still something Irene defines as her own and she rather likes holding onto them. ]

Taylor. [ It sounds odd on Irene's lips after getting used to saying Tyke, but it works for her. Perhaps it'll roll off the tongue better after this first time. ] They'd have to drag me home kicking and screaming. Besides, I'm not everyone. I never have been. If anyone is going to defeat that rather unfortunate trend, I do believe that it would be me.

[There's a small but visible reaction to Irene saying her name: a sharp inhale, a long, slow exhale. It feels strange to hear it from someone else, but it feels like a relief, as well. Not just Tyke all the time, even behind closed doors, hidden away with Irene and all those other secrets.

But Irene can't promise to stay. No one can.]

Don't know what you're defeating.

[What brought people onto the ship. What let them go home again. Maybe it was just sheer bad luck, and wouldn't Taylor be the unluckiest thing of all?]

[ If Irene was any other person, she likes to think she wouldn't have noticed that reaction, but she never has been any other person and she notices. It's an interesting reaction, not entirely unexpected, but it still makes her just look at Taylor for a good moment with something almost akin to fondness.

She might not be able to promise, but she can try. ]

Some unknown entity that controls the ship, possibly the ship itself that keeps taking those you deem worthy enough to know your name. I'm rather confident that I know what I'm defeating.

[ There's a pause. ]

And I never have taken kindly to being ripped from places I haven't chosen to be ripped from.

[ For a moment Irene looks off to the side, pensive almost before she looks back at Taylor and exhales slowly. ]

If I asked for you to come to my room tonight, dogs included or requested to spend the night in your room, would you say no?

[There's a lot Taylor could argue with. That no one has a fucking clue what's going on on the ship, if there's even room for anything like 'defeat' (if anyone could do it, it'd be Irene, wouldn't it). That it isn't about deeming people worthy (it's about trust). But she's too tired to argue.

Still, she hesitates in answering the last, because the idea Irene even wants that now, seeing her like this, is far more than she'd expect.]

I'm staying here.

[But it's a quiet protest, and it's not a no.]

[ That's what bothers Irene the most. She knows what it's like to be too tired to argue, this ship sucks the life out of you if you're not careful to cling to the parts of you that make you lively.

Abandonment is only easy when you're not attached. Abandoning Taylor like this is a bit too hard to contemplate right now. She'll want this until an abandonment comes easier, she supposes. ]

Then I believe I shall be joining you there, Taylor.

[ It's an option to say no, but it's also perhaps a bit of a request, because she'd rather like to stay there at least for now. ]

[Taylor's just quiet, for a long moment. Like it would be easy to just let that pass, tell Irene where she was, let her come find her. But she'd come here to get away from people and she was staying her for the same reason. As much as maybe being on her own hadn't helped, she couldn't just let Irene come now.]

No. I'm not-- [She cuts herself off, shakes her head.] I shouldn't be around people right now. [A pause.] Anyone.

[And Irene will argue, won't she. Persuade Taylor around to it, make it a challenge she has to rise to meet. She looks up at the camera again, something a little steadier in her, at least for the moment.]

No.

[A beat, and then she reaches forward to cut the connection.]

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