NINE: video

[puppydogeyes]

[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.

Comments

voice| private encryption

[firstofficer]

[ this is the place, he notes vaguely, where he is sure that he should argue. that any other would. to insist that no one is meant to be alone, and one is not made 'better' by it. but then- he must also accept that this is not always true. that there are times he has known when the universe itself is so vast, so large, that it's weight only crushes. that retreat and nothing else can salvage what remains.

his hand moves to the feed, ready to cut it at her expression of gratitude. but his hand stills, and spock's gaze lowers. he does not know if it is better, or worse, to lose someone aboard the tranquility. if it is weak to accept the unknown for what it is. he does not know if nyota has survived. he does not know if tommy has.

they have only what they choose to believe-
and one another.

spock's voice is quiet, a murmur between them. ]

Nothing is infinite.
Not even loss.

voice| private encryption

[puppydogeyes]

I know.

[Everything ends. She knows that too well, in some cases. But loss hovers on her, always has done. She can't forget people. They leave, but she never really stops holding on, thinking she could've been better, could've fought harder.]

Just don't know where the end is.

[It wasn't in the masks, wasn't at the bottom of a bottle. Time, probably, but she wasn't always the most patient.]

voice| private encryption

[firstofficer]

[ tyke, as he has known her, has always had frighteningly acute aim. her words say everything that could possibly be said. in the isolation of his quarters, spock's gaze flickers across his desk. he does not turn, to his closet- where the few reminders of his former life, of his family remain. and he is not sure what that means. ]

Perhaps we will find it together.