#nursc:asks

[owedfavors]

⤷ ✧ @nursc said, ❝ I want to complain but I don’t have the energy. ❞

❛ I'll add a vague protest to my report on your behalf. ❜ when this day ends, that is. when the misunderstanding is cleared up and they are set free and are once more on their merry way. voicing christine's displeasure will give her something to say about this particular incident besides her own complaints about sitting for what verged now towards ten hours surrounded by bare grey walls and interrupted only by periodic — but too frequent to allow for any rest — visits by those administrators still trying to clear things up.

all they should have to do is to contact starfleet, who should surely be quick to reassure them that, yes, they are who they say they are and would you please let them go they are needed to help with an emergency. and yet...

under other circumstances, una might well have written the report, to date, in her head while they sit here, waiting, to be stored in the back of her mind until she could properly commit it to writing. as it is, she shares christine's exhaustion, and the words refuse to come to mind. neither of them have slept in over forty-eight hours, and una thinks she herself is running closer to seventy-two. she's lost count, but it feels like seventy-two-hour exhaustion.

❛ for what it is worth, if I have not said it yet, ❜ — and she cannot remember, making seventy-two hours all more likely the number, if not more, pushing the bounds of even her illyrian resilience — ❛ I am sorry. when I said I could get us back, and in time, I did not consider the likelihood of unforeseen emergencies shortening that timeframe. ❜ but, really, perhaps she should have.

certainly, she should really have told chris where they were going, and she should really have had an emergency plan should enterprise need to find them swiftly. that she will take upon herself.

[owedfavors]

⤷ ✧ @nursc said, ❝ we're taking a big gamble. ❞

una quirks an eyebrow as she turns around just long enough to let christine see the expression. when she turns her attention back to the empty, broken street before her, she twists the padd in her hands, and not for the first time, as if displaying a different angle will somehow make the map — a digitized copy of one nearly two millennia old that resides in the capital's main museum — make more sense against the modern topography of what until a few decades ago had been a city.

❛ is that the gamble that there is anything here to be seen, or the gamble that enterprise will leave without us when we fail to return on account of getting lost in an alien ghost town by following a map two thousand years out of date? ❜

of the former, una could make no assurances. yet, though the planet's unique atmospheric make-up renders both transporters and communicators ineffective, she mains unconcerned about their successful return. she may not be quite certain where they are — at least as far as the map is concerned — but she is confident she can return them safely.

❛ that statue doesn't look like this drawing, does it? ❜ she passes the padd to her friend, tapping upon its surface to indicate where the small icon upon the map as she nods ahead of them. the answer is distinctly no; the statue in question is scarcely deserving of that name, so decayed and worn down was the stone. whatever it had once been a depiction of, that knowledge was long lost to the ages.

[antarcticadown]

⤷ ✧ @nursc said, ❝ i can borrow a dog whenever i want. ❞

so could he, technically, though it would require travel to earth and back, and thus posed a distinctly inefficient solution... in this moment, however, what mattered was less the availability of a dog and more the fact that a dog had been part of her proposed plan to begin with. ❛ yeah, believe it or not? that wasn't my problem. just how's a dog supposed to help fix this? ❜ cameron has a hunch that were his own source of potential borrowed dogs present, casey would insist that a dog could fix anything, but never mind that.

though, now that she mentions it, he does want to know just where she's planning on getting a dog at this particular moment. it's all he can do to refrain and stay focused.

[pathlit]

⤷ ✧ @nursc said, ❝ an animal caught in a trap will gnaw off its own leg to escape. ❞

marie ignores, with training learned from war, the shiver that runs down her spine at christine's words, and with it the ominous thoughts that sought to follow. ❛ you're an optimistic one, ❜ she remarks, though it comes across drily, without the humor she had hoped to find. ❛ let's get out of here without becoming the metaphorical leg in that particular adage, agreed? ❜

or worse, the animal.

if nothing else, they need to inform command to slap another don't go there label on this particular planet. marie thinks that nothing else might be perfectly acceptable, as far as she's concerned: she cannot quite find it in herself to care who the hunter is, curiosity expunged by the discovery that there's something else trapped down here with them.

[pathlit]

⤷ ✧ @nursc said, ❝ are you going to kill me? ❞ for nine.

❛ kill you? ❜ he repeats, voice far too loud for the circumstances. ❛ really? me? ❜ don't get him wrong it's not the first time, and yet... he turns away in his frustration, takes three strides, fully intending to keep going, before he finds himself turning back. ❛ I come all this way to get you little humans out of trouble, and every time — every time — you think I'm the trouble. ❜

granted, while he doesn't draw trouble along in his wake, he tends to follow trouble... it's not wholly unreasonable to conflate the two. then again, he's not particularly feeling generous.

[pathlit]

⤷ ✧ @nursc said, ❝ may i have this dance? ❞

with leg tucked up under her on the couch, she picks idly at the strings of the instrument. or, from external appearances, it might seem idle, though in truth she strives, and fails, to match the music she plays over the speakers, recorded while on rarelta a month back. for a month, the instrument has stubbornly refused to cooperate; the locals had been happy enough to place it into her hands, but teaching her... apparently that just wasn't done. something about how, if you learned to play, it must be because the instrument surrendered its secrets to you.

it certainly didn't seem keen on surrendering any secrets to her, and ellie insisted, futilely, that she wasn't offended.

she must have sighed, or otherwise expressed the frustration she definitely doesn't feel. something to draw her friend from where she lounges, because suddenly christine is there before her, hands outstretched and question upon her lips. ❛ it's not exactly dancing music, ❜ ellie points out, more out of the principle of the thing than in any true protest.

after all, she still puts aside the instrument and takes christine's hands as she rises.

[timeracing]

⤷ ✧ @nursc said, ❝ It's so ugly… I love it. ❞

he does not foresee the turn her remark makes, and he has sharp words of defense in favor of the design choices involved upon his tongue before he's even really processed the words I love it.

humans.

impending glower gives way before the momentary bewilderment that contorts his features. ❛ don't tear it — that's one of a kind, that is. can't just go swing by and pick up another. woven from catraxian silk by the empress herself as a bridal gift for her niece. ❜ best not ask how he came into possession of it.

[cptnbatel]

⤷ ✧ @nursc said, ❝ I... want to lie here. ❞

❛ I guess there's not much point in me asking 'why here.' ❜ her tone is dry. here, a few meters to either side... a kilometer down the hill... what's one place or another? terrain remains decidedly stark, lacking in semblance of comfort. marie would go for a spot of greenery, a dose of shade. the temperature had only climbed through the day, and she’s sick of it, feels the same lethargy that plagues the others.

that, and nothing else, is the reason she is still upon her feet. she knows that if she sits down, even for a moment, it will take more energy than she possesses to rise to her feet once more.

extending a hand in offer of assistance, she musters her own resolve and continues, ❛ but I’m gonna need you on your feet, nurse. come on. I think for all our sakes we’d best be on our way. ❜

not that walking appeals.