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

[rebelled]

[he takes a knee at windsor's approach, giving him a quick scratch behind the ears. if he had his way, all of them would be in gardens now; somewhere far more comfortable than this, with space for the dogs to at least move around in. but he won't move tyke or her dogs without her permission, and right now, he already knows he's pushing his luck by simply being there.]

You're hidden away from everybody.

[which is the biggest problem. nobody else can find her right now to help.]

You still have those masks.

[puppydogeyes]

[She watches him with Windsor, but doesn't make any move to stop the dog or reprimand him (doesn't like how her feelings are affecting the dogs, even if she won't do anything about it). Which is enough to have a couple of the others coming over to join him, nosing after Castiel's hands, looking for some of the reassurance Taylor isn't currently capable of giving them.

Instead, she's settling back in her seat, snagging up the bottle of unnamed space booze again.]

Yeah, Cas. [Dry, because he's stating the obvious and he should just leave already.] I wanted to be alone and I wanted the masks.

[rebelled]

[the other dogs are given a scratch in turn as castiel instead takes a seat. it makes it easier to give them each their fair share of his attention. even if the majority of it is still fixed on tyke.]

They're dangerous. [the masks, of course. wearing his had brought back more than just a few ghosts from his past. but he'd already been used to speaking with lucifer long before the masks came in to play. and lucifer had at least talked back. the others- well, he doesn't think anybody here deserves to have to deal with their own ghosts in quite such a literal manner.]

I don't want you to get hurt. Nobody here does. But if you stay here, people are going to keep worrying about you.

[puppydogeyes]

[He's settling, sitting down instead of leaving the way she wants, and she takes a long drink out of the bottle, almost in defiance of it. The alcohol's rough, burns, but she's used to it.]

I'm meant to do dangerous. Get hurt. It's what I was trained for. [If the Academy had left her with any of the injuries she'd experienced, there'd be enough sign of that. But the only scars she currently carried were from the maze. She shrugs.] Maybe you and everyone else should just get used to it.

[Better her than anyone else, she figures.]

[rebelled]

Just because you were trained for it, it doesn't mean you deserve to get hurt.

[it's a thought he fully believes in when it comes to other people. it doesn't matter who tyke is, on this ship or back in her world. all he knows is that he trusts her for a reason, and it isn't because of her training. it's because he knows a good person when he sees one.]

Instead, I think it means that this is exactly where I should be right now.

[puppydogeyes]

[There's a part of her that thinks she does deserve it. Everything that happens to her. Because that was the only thing that would explain it, that it was her fault, something wrong with her. A freak.

She doesn't say any of that. Just lifts her chin, belligerent, defiant.]

Why? I don't need your help.

[rebelled]

You don't need it, or want it. But that doesn't mean you don't have it anyway.

[in his eyes it's that simple. tyke may not want his help, but he's going to continue to offer it regardless, because that's what friends do. it's a lesson he learned from dean the hard way, and he isn't about to let it go to waste.]