Melanie King (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ghostbullet) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ph_logs2025-01-03 06:05 pm
ghostbullet) wrote in ph_logs2025-01-03 06:05 pm
[OPEN] January Catch-All
Who: Melanie King (ghostbullet), Daisy Tonner (hadnoright), Alice Dyer (closureisformovies), CT (liesdontfindyou) & you!
What: Catch-All for Blue's character
When: January, and some backdated December stuff
Where: All over! See character prompt headers.
Warnings: In specific headers where relevant.
Melanie, Daisy, Alice and CT all have open prompts in the comments. More may be added, depending on if anything gives me reason to/I think of anything else worth putting up. Closed starters are also available upon request if these prompts don't work but you want to do something!
Ruby Rose and Gwen Stacy have their own open top-levels at the links that I'm also still very open to tags on.
ghostbullet), Daisy Tonner (hadnoright), Alice Dyer (closureisformovies), CT (liesdontfindyou) & you!What: Catch-All for Blue's character
When: January, and some backdated December stuff
Where: All over! See character prompt headers.
Warnings: In specific headers where relevant.
Melanie, Daisy, Alice and CT all have open prompts in the comments. More may be added, depending on if anything gives me reason to/I think of anything else worth putting up. Closed starters are also available upon request if these prompts don't work but you want to do something!
Ruby Rose and Gwen Stacy have their own open top-levels at the links that I'm also still very open to tags on.
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"You've had your nose closer to the grindstone than usual, you know that?"
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Yeah, she knows that tone. She props her elbow on the back of her seat and her chin on her hand, knuckles smushing into the meat of her cheek.
"I have?" she asks, all faux innocence. "Really? I hadn't noticed."
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"CT, you're my friend, so I can't help but worry about you. What we all just went through, you seeing home again... I know what that feels like. You don't just shove that kind of thing down and forget about it."
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"That wasn't home," she says, dropping her hand from her cheek but leaning against the back of the chair all the same. "That was— a dream, a-a simulation of a version of home that never really existed. Once you got me to snap out of it I could see that."
That's what she's been telling herself to make it bearable, at least. It varies, how much it actually helps.
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CT sighs. "I don't even know how I'm supposed to talk about it. It was— it wasn't just a version of home where the glassing never happened, you know? My brother had never left home. He left when I was sixteen, without saying a word. I didn't find out why until he after he died with the colony. But in that— trick, he'd stayed."
It didn't just fix the glassing, the destruction, the death—it stretched far back into her teenage psyche. It changed the whole story, the whole world.
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"Now a part of you feels like you have to grieve it all over again? With some new pain on top?"
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Her mothers, alive. Keaton, who'd never left home. Her colony, thriving in a way it never had the chance to. The haze of a dream smothers the rest of the details, but she can take guesses: Rat, alive and her friend more than her brother's; Needles and Keaton together, probably; her own old friends never sent off to war... new friends, able to come by.
"...yeah," she breathes, resting her whole head on her arm, hair dangling over the back of the chair. "Except add in the fact that if I actually let myself think about it in detail for too long, I feel like— like I'm just going to lose it. And I don't— I don't have time for that now any more than I had time for it every other time I was teetering on an edge in the last few years."
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"My advice is to make sure you have someone around to hold your hand for you when you finally do. You don't have to do this alone now. You don't have to keep secrets the same way. That's my two cents."
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She remembers, knows the feeling in his eyes. They've both seen more than their fair share of demons and losses. She breathes out through her nose and drums her fingers against the back of the chair.
"I've— been trying to be a little better about that, but it's... I don't know. Since the nightmares it's been one thing after another. There's someone else from the program around, now, and that's—" she huffs a breath, a wordless 'oh, boy', then shrugs. "Anyway. I— talked to Ripley about some things we saw in our joint nightmare, at least, but I— I think you're the only person here who could've walked into that dream and realised what was wrong with it."
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"It's because I knew what was wrong that I knew I was asking a lot from you in there," he says softly. "I wanna thank you for putting you trust in me. I don't take that lightly." It took a lot of bravery for her to listen to him and turn away from the sweet fantasy. Not everyone could have.
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"Mm. Turns out we have some— overlapping history, let's say." Android trauma, most specifically. Though there's broad strokes of other things. "And we get on well. She's been... she's been great."
It's the fastest she's come to be able to trust a person—at least, as far as she can trust anyone, still—since she got here. Sometimes that feels weird. Sometimes it's just... a relief.
"And— yeah, my old squad leader, to be exact. It's... well it's a bit fraught. Running into her is the reason I was late the other day."
Fraught is putting it lightly, but she doesn't immediately get into it, instead:
"...I trust you, Crichton. I'm sure that's why the dream folded you in so easily and why I didn't just roll my eyes and leap over a railing or something the second you started pushing back against it."
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"It feels good to hear you say you trust me that way. I feel the same, and I'm sure you would have done the same if situations were reversed. But... your squad leader?" The smile turns to a concerned frown. "I was just about to mark you as dead on the roll call that day, too. Are you okay? Did that meeting get physical?"
Trust him to always have more questions.
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"I would've," she confirms. She would've done her best, at least—sometimes the self-doubt about how much good she's ever been capable of doing still gets under her skin.
The questions don't surprise her. There's something reassuring to how everyone who finds out worries enough to ask.
"I'm fine, it didn't turn into a fight. She doesn't seem to want a fight, I gave her every opening, even put a gun in her hand, but she's... I don't know, different. Things have changed since I died, apparently. All the others are dead, too. Almost all of them, anyway."
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"I'm sorry, CT, for all of it, but I'm glad your squad leader didn't want a fight because I'm not convinced you deserve that. Clearly, neither was she. I guess my next question is how do you want me to approach her?" Because he's going to. That part is certain, he's just trying to get a sense for how hot he should be coming in on it.
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"She wanted to test out the weaponry here. I figured either she'd shoot me and I'd learn something, or she wouldn't shoot me and I'd still learn something while also having offered a sort of... fucked up olive branch, I don't know."
An olive branch of wood, metal and gunpowder. Yeah. She realises how grim that is.
It was a risk. One she considers to have been properly calculated, and that showed her Carolina wasn't going to just attack her for no reason, but a risk nonetheless.
She picks at the scar across her palm as she thinks about the second answer, chewing at the corner of her lip thoughtfully. "...honestly, I don't know. There's no use in hostility, but be... cautious, I'm still not sure how much she's changed in the last few years. She was a good leader, once, I just couldn't trust her and, apparently, she followed the Director's orders until the program fell apart around her. She's turned on him now, but... I don't know."
Not knowing so many things is something that's driving her more than a little mad.
"She knows I work here and she knows I have friends, so she shouldn't be too surprised if you know who she is. She's, uh—5'11" or so, red hair, green eyes. Like, vibrantly red and green, it's hard to miss. And her codename is Carolina. The Director named us all after states."
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He's also taking the time to more seriously consider her second answer. A lot of those notes are starting to sound familiar. Was she a leader who wanted to believe in the cause so much that she only woke up to the truth once it was almost too late? Sad, but common. Not, however, unsalvageable. It's always better late than never.
"So I'm looking for a red-headed pistol. Think I'll manage that just fine. And, before you get too worried, I'll be nice. Cross my heart. I'll hear her out before I make any judgment calls." He can't promise more than that but he intends to be fair about it.
"Why states? You didn't have a Florida in your team, did you? That's where I hail from."
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She huffs the faintest laugh at the words red-headed pistol, lips quirking despite herself. "Good luck."
She's not too worried about how he'll handle it. Really, if she's worried about anyone's behaviour in that interaction, it's Carolina's, but Crichton's good at adapting on the fly. He'll figure it out.
"I'm not actually a hundred percent sure why the Director chose states, except that he's an Earthborn American himself. He lived in Texas for most of his adult life, I think?" He seemed to have a fondness for the state, anyway, possibly through his wife. "But we had every— or, no, almost every state. There was only one Carolina. So, yeah, we— had a Florida. He was... strange."
Being generous. He actually fucking terrified her, by the end, featured in her nightmares. Hard to think about him without flinching.
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"Texas," he huffs, "That'll do it. Never met a Texan that didn't love to tell me he's a Texan. Did he wear a gallon hat and all?" He's joking, but he's also not going to be surprised if the answer is actually yes.
He's not surprised his own beloved state of Florida has that kind of representation either if he's really being honest with himself. "Strange sounds about right. A certain class of guys from the ol' sunshine state used to make mixing too much sun, boats, and beer as a hobby. And I'm not even talking about the military base."
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She shakes her head with a huff of a laugh. "No, he didn't, that probably would've been too close to actually fun of him."
And he wasn't exactly about much fun outside of his own dickwaving behaviour. Which was only fun for him.
"Our Florida was... for most of my time with the program I knew him as the oddly cheerful guy who'd turn up, say something weird or ominous, then disappear again. By the end he was an active threat. He was one of the Director's right hands and he— nearly caught me, a couple times. Once was very close. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life."
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"Shit, I'm sorry. I'll quit poking fun at it in that case. No need to bring up any other bad memories for you."
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CT waves him off. "It's fine, I'd rather detooth the idea of him than let him keep— sticking in my head the way he does. One of the nightmares someone came through with me actually ended in me managing to kill the bastard, which was... cathartic, at least."
She's had that particular nightmare a little less, since. Which is one silver lining of that whole mess.
"He really did used to just be... odd. Eccentric. Once he walked in on us talking about which kinds of weapons were worse, the standard kind or the Covvie plasma kind, and said something like—" she waves a hand around vaguely, "a hole in your body's not a big deal because every body has holes in and you can always add more if needed! And we just stood there after he walked away wondering what the hell just happened."
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"I don't know, man, sounds like more than one screw was loose in the guy. Shame it turned out that way for you all. He's not doing anything to help the reputation of my fair state, I'll tell ya that. But what he said wouldn't have sounded that out of pocket for the kind of guys you'd meet down at the surf during low tide, either."
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"Maybe the Director gave him his state because he recognised the vibe," CT jokes, touch of a crooked smile on her lips. "Actually I wouldn't be surprised if he did have reasons like that for state assignments. He gave the twins North and South Dakota and, well, I was actually rather surprised they gave me Connecticut. Given their emphasis on not sharing our real names. Not that I complained."
It was convenient, getting to go by the nickname she'd gone by all her life. Until she became CT, at least.
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"Connie..." he says, a little subdued. "You ever consider going back to that or... is that something you'd rather leave buried?"
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