#ask meme a

[thisdeadvessel-blog]

Alexis

I want better for them. I know this is not possible, but anything that I say about them must be prefaced with that fact. I want to rip the world apart at the seams to change what has happened and what must yet happen, to give them what they could never have had. 

They understand me in a way that no one else can. It breaks my heart.

If I can do anything to help them, in whatever way I can, I will.

[talos1engineer-blog]

contamination

▼

The diagnosis sounds like a death sentence, when she finally understands it. At first, she thinks it’s a simple illness, a virus. She got contaminated at school, or by something one of the twins brought home. She’s fourteen, hair still long and in pigtails draping over her shoulders, eyes still bright and youthful and full of determined hope. For nearly a year now she’s been unable to rid herself of the patches of vision obscured as if watching the world through snow, the progressive numbing of her limbs, the way her body has grown so tight and jerky that her mother has to watch her in the shower to be sure she doesn’t seize up and fall and hit her head.

(How will they afford these doctor’s visits? She doesn’t know. Father hasn’t been home in so long.)

And then, the death knell. Paraplexis. Very rare. No cure. Lifelong management. 

She knows what it is, by name at least. One of the few disorders that can keep a person from ever stepping foot on a spaceship. The potential for the paralysis to flare at any moment and cause extreme damage is too high.

Mikhaila smiles at the doctor and thanks him, hollow, as she watches her dreams disappear become nothing more than ash.

▲

“You’ve contaminated the oil line,” Mikhaila says, sighing. “We’re going to have to stop the entire line, wash it out, and put all of that fuel in the waste line. No- I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care. This is going in the log. You’d better think hard about how you’re going to convince them not to jettison you on the next stock run to earth.”

The tech turns and flees, trying not to cry, and Mikhaila feels guilty for only a second before she remembers what a mess they’ve made. She turns back to the line, surveying the damage, thinking about all the work ahead of her to fix this disaster before it starts negatively affecting other systems on the station.

The skin at the back of her neck crawls, and she whips around, eyes narrowing on a figure leaning over the railing of one of the higher floors.

Is that... Morgan Yu?

She stares up at them for several moments, then flushes and turns back around to get to work. Hopefully they didn’t think she was slacking off, or she might be on the next stock run back to Earth.

The day is long and difficult, and when she gets back to her berth, she collapses into her bed without looking at it, only to groan and roll over at the crinkling of paper. Pulling the single page out from underneath her, she squints at it blearily, the words not making sense for a moment.

When they finally do, she almost faints.

Dinner, tomorrow, 7pm, my office. - M. Yu

[graspingatnothing-blog]

alexis

I... I don’t know. They. They don’t say much- most people who do talk, talk a lot. They seem like they’re always listening, and when they talk they always catch me off guard.

They make me feel. Raw. Vulnerable. It’s scary.

I keep finding them at night- not always on purpose, but sometimes. They let me touch them, and they hold me, and they braid my hair and let me lean on them for as long as I need. I’ve never had someone make my head go quiet like that before. It’s... nice.

Scary and nice. I hope... I’m not bothering them.

[thisdeadvessel-blog]

debate

▼

The chatter at the long meeting table is absolutely infuriating. Her head was already throbbing before she sat down, the long sleepless night before taking its’ toll on her, but now she feels as though her skull is splitting open again and again in waves, and she sits ramrod straight in her chair, white-knuckling the polished wooden arms. Behind her, Corvo shifts, and she can tell he wants to put a hand on her shoulder, but she shakes her head minutely. It would only undermine her, right now.

She has just turned 21, and not for a single day of her reign yet has anyone at this damned table listened to her.

Finally, she slams her hand down on the table- undignified, perhaps, but everyone shuts up in a very satisfying wave. Her eyes glint, and her voice is low and dangerous as she leans forward, now.

“I said. We will not be raising taxes for a province that already cannot pay the ones we levy. In fact, We will lower their taxes until such a time as they can pay them without taking food out of the mouths of their children.” A man down the table, portly and pleasant-looking, opens his mouth, and she says, louder, “This is not open to debate. Are We understood?”

And as the council stares at her and one by one nods their agreement, she understands that she has just made enemies of her own nobles.

▲

< cut for NSFW >

Frankly, she doesn’t even remember what they were debating. He starts arguments as easily as he breathes, and she finds herself drawn into them with little effort- they lift her heart as she tries to follow the twist and turns he takes, tries to take some of her own. Inevitably, if they are secluded enough and alone, she bowls him over and silences him with her lips, her hands, her body.

Enough, she says tartly, muffled into his skin, and he laughs delightedly. Of course, it isn’t enough, for him, and it never will be, but that’s alright. Her fingers inside him and her mouth on him will distract him, soon enough, until he too forgets what the topic was.

And if, while they lay together with her head upon his chest and fingers tracing idle lines across his skin, he remembers, well, she’ll simply have to do it all again.

[talos1engineer-blog]

ϟ [lightning], ⚔ [duel], ☠ [death]

ϟ - LIGHTNING - something they thought they’d left in the past, returned

Morgan Yu. Though she thought they were dead and gone, clearly they’re not- not here, at least. She’s conflicted over it, especially with the new arrival on the Ark. She’s glad they’re here, but...

⚔ - DUEL - a meeting or relationship that was important to them

The day her sisters were born, there was a snowstorm. Mikhaila was too young to drive, and their was no connection to call an ambulance. Her mother gave birth in the tub, with Mikhaila’s help, and Mikhaila’s arms were the first that held each of her sisters. There will never again be a sensation like the one of their tiny fingers curling around hers- there will never again be a love like the love she feels for them.

☠ - DEATH - the closest it’s come to touching their life

Death has touched her life many times and in many ways. The closest it has come to her personally, though, has been when she lay paralyzed on Talos 1, feeling her lungs starting to seize up and knowing there was no help coming... until she heard Morgan’s voice over the comms. Even then, she knew she would die, without her shots- she was just glad that maybe she wouldn’t be alone when it happened.

[thisdeadvessel-blog]

Mr. Contrarian

Oh.

Oh.

He is... he is aggressively uncertain and cheerfully changeable and I haven’t the faintest idea what he’ll do next. And yet he’s kind, and patient, and generous with me. He asks me to be nothing except exactly what I am, and what I am is not a disappointment to him, as he has nothing of my previous nature to judge my current being against. The intimacy of a shared bed is pleasant, but it is nothing to the acceptance I feel when I am with him.

I suppose... I might be beginning to love him, a little.

[thisdeadvessel-blog]

≠♥⊗؟♪

≠  “I want more than this for you.”

♥  They don’t ask anything of her that she can’t give.

⊗ They won’t ask anything of her that she could.

؟   She would have liked to have been able to give them what they needed, back when it could have helped. She still would. She wishes she could protect them from what’s already happened.

♪ How the Tide Rushes In - Anne Dudley (Cover: Eleanor Tomlinson)

For what e'er drifts from one placeIs with the tide to another broughtAnd there's naught lost beyond recallWhich cannot be foundIf sought