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ph_logs2025-05-08 08:53 am
cyansoldier) wrote in ph_logs2025-05-08 08:53 am
This is a Foul-Tasting Medicine | OTA
Who: Agent Carolina (cyansoldier) & You.
What: Carolina adjusts poorly to Caboose's sudden absence. Among other things.
When: Early May.
Where: Around town.
Warning(s): Brief mention of dead deer, gun usage.
I won't turn around or the penny drops.
She hasn't seen Caboose in days. Not since she'd squatted in his ramshackle porch on Crane's Ridge summit, shoulder to shoulder. When morning peeled through the trees, they walked together. Her, in silence. Him, remarking on whatever interesting thing he saw. Bugs, mostly.
She doesn't think twice about his absence—at first. Caboose, like a large and excitable dog, tracks what most interests him. Animals, people, machines if there are any. She'll find him. It's fine. Don't worry about it.
She searches for him at the Ranch. Said he'd wanted cows.
She searches for him in the woods. Plenty to distract him there.
She searches for him in town. Maybe someone's seen him. Big and tall, curly hair. Probably said something stupid.
As a last resort, Carolina stalks to Town Hall. She's on edge. She pushes through the door like it's just attacked her. Michael J. Caboose. I need to find him. Can you tell me his address? An odd look from the desk. I know him. It's important. Please.
He's gone. People come and go, ma'am.
She leaves angry and humiliated. Feels sick. It doesn't make any sense. Why would he leave? To-ge-ther, he said in his broken tones. What an idiot. She's an idiot for believing she could trust him— trust anyone to hold tender a shred of her feelings. Comfort like newly shattered glass stuck in her hands and face and chest.
She doesn't need him.
She should be training.
Won't stop now / Won't slack off. [OTA]
She moves like a shark. No moment of peace. No chance to rest.
Carolina picks through produce like a soldier in the midst of a deadly stealth mission, peering over her shoulder every fifth step for signs of danger and looks so suspicious that she's confronted about stealing.
She jogs at the outskirts of the residential areas (avoiding Connecticut while also keeping the possibility of seeing her squarely at the front of her brain). Slides in the dark nooks between buildings to catch her breath and spit. Sometimes she lingers with her arm and forehead butted up against the wall. Numb. Staring at nothing. Feeling her lungs swell and deflate with the effort she puts into moving, moving, moving.
Most days she can be found marching to the Oak & Iron with a deer slung around her shoulders, its horned head bobbing limply. She tries to feel good about it. She'll get a few pieces of Brass and the people will have venison to enjoy. She tries, and feels empty.
From her farmhouse are the usual sounds of gunshots and split wood. Maybe you find her cleaning her Colt Revolving Shotgun, perhaps the only thing she's really grown to care about in this place. Tread carefully. She's trained to shoot on sight.
This dance / Is like a weapon. [Wildcard]
( Have something else in mind? Shoot! )
cyansoldier) & You.What: Carolina adjusts poorly to Caboose's sudden absence. Among other things.
When: Early May.
Where: Around town.
Warning(s): Brief mention of dead deer, gun usage.
( Strike up the tinderbox / Why should I be good if you're not? )
I won't turn around or the penny drops.
She hasn't seen Caboose in days. Not since she'd squatted in his ramshackle porch on Crane's Ridge summit, shoulder to shoulder. When morning peeled through the trees, they walked together. Her, in silence. Him, remarking on whatever interesting thing he saw. Bugs, mostly.
She doesn't think twice about his absence—at first. Caboose, like a large and excitable dog, tracks what most interests him. Animals, people, machines if there are any. She'll find him. It's fine. Don't worry about it.
She searches for him at the Ranch. Said he'd wanted cows.
She searches for him in the woods. Plenty to distract him there.
She searches for him in town. Maybe someone's seen him. Big and tall, curly hair. Probably said something stupid.
As a last resort, Carolina stalks to Town Hall. She's on edge. She pushes through the door like it's just attacked her. Michael J. Caboose. I need to find him. Can you tell me his address? An odd look from the desk. I know him. It's important. Please.
He's gone. People come and go, ma'am.
She leaves angry and humiliated. Feels sick. It doesn't make any sense. Why would he leave? To-ge-ther, he said in his broken tones. What an idiot. She's an idiot for believing she could trust him— trust anyone to hold tender a shred of her feelings. Comfort like newly shattered glass stuck in her hands and face and chest.
She doesn't need him.
She should be training.
Won't stop now / Won't slack off. [OTA]
She moves like a shark. No moment of peace. No chance to rest.
Carolina picks through produce like a soldier in the midst of a deadly stealth mission, peering over her shoulder every fifth step for signs of danger and looks so suspicious that she's confronted about stealing.
She jogs at the outskirts of the residential areas (avoiding Connecticut while also keeping the possibility of seeing her squarely at the front of her brain). Slides in the dark nooks between buildings to catch her breath and spit. Sometimes she lingers with her arm and forehead butted up against the wall. Numb. Staring at nothing. Feeling her lungs swell and deflate with the effort she puts into moving, moving, moving.
Most days she can be found marching to the Oak & Iron with a deer slung around her shoulders, its horned head bobbing limply. She tries to feel good about it. She'll get a few pieces of Brass and the people will have venison to enjoy. She tries, and feels empty.
From her farmhouse are the usual sounds of gunshots and split wood. Maybe you find her cleaning her Colt Revolving Shotgun, perhaps the only thing she's really grown to care about in this place. Tread carefully. She's trained to shoot on sight.
This dance / Is like a weapon. [Wildcard]
( Have something else in mind? Shoot! )
no subject
Her fist closes around the metal through the fabric of her shirt. Her brow furrows into tight wrinkles. She has to turn and move, walk, cross from the paving stones to the grass where she stalls, suddenly.
Absurdly, she feels like crying again. She can't tell if it's relief or frustration, if the revelation that it wasn't all for nothing is a blessing or a curse.
She couldn't finish the job herself. Doesn't know if she's ever going to get chance. It's a good thing that the tags made it to someone intent to do something about it, even years too late. It is.
So why does this all make her feel so dizzy?
When she speaks, her voice is thick. "...the off-site storage facilities. They didn't— didn't protect their financial and infrastructural records as tightly as they should've. They always think that stuff's unimportant."
no subject
CT teeters a little where she stands in the yard, shoulders pulled taught against ears and fingers cloying for what seems like anything. Easy to forget how overwhelming Project Freelancer's downfall must be when heard in a singular stream of confession. Carolina's head hangs between her shoulders for a moment, staring at her own feet grounded against the pavement.
"Listen... I know this is probably a lot to take in," She starts, not knowing what will come next. Whether she should offer CT time to digest it all or if doing so would be a slight against her mental fortitude.
Soldiers are always so damn stubborn.
She abandons the thought in favor of newly strengthened resolve, a plan— although a loose one— starting to create motion.
"You have good insight, CT. You could help us."
no subject
CT shakes her head, not in protest so much as in uncertainty. "We don't even know if that's an option, Carolina. For all we know we go back to two totally separate versions of our reality and if we don't, I... I don't know where I'll even be by the date you're from."
Even knowing all this, even knowing when and where Carolina reappears, how does the time between work? Does she have to lay low, not do anything that could throw the timeline off? Could she stand that? Would that even work?
She imagines it has to. One of them can't re-write the other's universe to the point the state they came from wouldn't even exist, surely. God, this makes her head hurt.
no subject
This new, unexpected element unnerves her more than anything. A roadblock she has no idea how to hurdle, if it can be cleared at all. Cannot pull from even her most illogical experiences with AI and timeline bullshit to turn the incomprehensible into digestible. To think 'we're screwed' is a weakness she won't allow herself. No, there's always a way. Always something.
Carolina is standing again. She can't recall when it happened, only how her weight drops down into her heels and ankles.
"You have connections here, can't you ask someone?"
no subject
CT splays a hand hopelessly toward the sky. "I don't think any of us know yet. There's too many variables. Until you arrived I thought I knew, I figured we just... continued on from our deaths as if they hadn't happened in the first place. And maybe that is what happens, I don't know, but if it is then you being from further ahead means... something."
She just can't be sure what that something is. Not until this plays out. She supposes she could try and talk to the goddesses but she never has felt quite at ease with the idea.
no subject
Carolina just... stares at her. Stares for longer than perhaps is warranted. If she could just make it make sense than maybe she wouldn't feel so pointlessly confused, could plan accordingly, but as it stands now—
A slow 'okay...' to set herself back on track.
"Let's say it's voluntary— when we go back, where it is we're placed. If I go to yours and there's a possibility I run into myself, I have a feeling I'd be breaking some kind of cosmic law. I could kill her and take her place, maybe, but I can't say I'm really jumping for joy at the idea of having to do that. And even if I was able to take her place, and you were in your place, do you really think we'd be able to change anything?"
She inhales.
"If you come to mine, it means you wouldn't have died at all. I don't know what consequences that will have but it would mean going up against the Director when he's weak. We wouldn't have to worry about anyone else breathing down our neck. For the most part. We can find Wash, the others and pick back up where I left off."
The more selfish of two ideas, she's aware.
Or.
"Or... We find what evidence we need while the others are still alive. You already made it that far, it'd be easy. If we could get some of them on our side..."
no subject
CT pinches the bridge of her nose and breathes, murmuring quite come ons and thinks and fucks. "Even then, the mechanics of it all... if we choose yours, when are we put back? If I get put back in the escape pod... the version of you in my time won't know the things you know now. She wouldn't be this you, she'd be— the you of however many years ago. This you would be years in my future, anything I changed would just... create another timeline. Probably."
Ugh, she hates all these unexplored avenues of science. She knows there's some principles of time dilation and its effects that have to be accounted for in Slipspace, but this is something else.
"If I get put back in your time... then I-I don't know, I suppose that would be easier. Either I'd get to skip the intervening years and get some new memories to fill in the blank or I'd just... be there with you. Like I wasn't there for those years in the first place."
no subject
"If we land in mine it'll be at the storage facility. I assume the Director will have left, which means we wouldn't have to worry about his army of Texs'. He wouldn't leave technology like that behind, even if they hadn't turned out like he wanted them to. They're still AI— I think. Although they seemed like the dumb kind. I don't know what they were. Drones. They didn't think they just attacked."
And attacked.
And attacked.
Crushed bone and broke skin.
She wonders, darkly, if her body's still there. If the Director stopped by to pay his respects to his only daughter. Probably not.
"New memories of what? I assumed we'd... I don't know... Retain our memories from here. You don't think we'll forget everything, do you? I'll just—" A humorless laugh, "—wake up to you back from the dead? What a nice surprise."
No, really. A nice surprise.
no subject
"No, no, we'd remember here. I'm almost certain of that." Can't be completely certain, but no, she's sure enough of that. There'd be no point in bringing them all here if they'd only forget it at the end. "But if the timeline changes to match both our survivals, but I only turn up in your present, there'd be... a gap, in that timeline. You know? The years I was alive but wasn't there, it'd have to fill those in. Maybe. Like I said, it's that or I just... step back into a world where I actually died and only survived the long way round."
It's a question of if it changes the entire timeline around them or just transplants the outlier back without trying to fix the discrepancy.
This is going to give her a headache.
no subject
She makes a long, gnashed-toothed ughhh! sound and feels the irresistible urge to punch something. Satiates anger by bringing the heel of her palm down hard against the bench-arm, with very little pay off. The wood splinters against the force and in a noise that sounds like a soldier's arm breaking, so too does the end of the arm. It clatters pathetically against the ground.
She flies to standing.
"So we sit here like we've been sitting here, with no idea when or how we'll get back, if it even works at all, until all the townspeople gather together to play community demon exorcism! How fun. How productive. I'm really excited for this new chapter of our lives. We could be here for years, CT. We'll be lucky if time stands still back home. And whenever this hellscape decides to spit us out where we belong, everything will have probably already ended! The Director will have holed himself away until he keels over and dies, or someone will have gotten to him first." Before me. "And who knows what will happen to Wash. Or Epsilon. They'll probably end up dead if they aren't already and I'll have no one to blame but myself.
"Every day I spent here feels like a wasted opportunity! I don't know how you do it, but I can't!"
Then throws herself back down into sitting.
"I— I can't."
Carolina glances down at the busted piece of wood, only now realizing what she's done.
"I'm sorry."
no subject
The crack snaps CT's spine rod-straight and jolts her back a step more than even Carolina's sudden motion, heart pounding reflexively until she exhales and forces herself to calm down. It's just the bench. It's just the stupid fucking bench.
"I don't— I don't care about the bench, Carolina, that thing's been on death's door since I got the house," she says, waving it off before rubbing her face again. Headache. Definitely a headache. "I don't like being stuck here not able to do anything either, you know? Maybe I've learned to deal with it after being here a— year, at this point—"
God, it really has been a year.
"—but I've been itching to finish this since I got here! I spend every spare minute looking over my damn notes on the barrier problem trying to see what I'm missing! And sometimes I still feel stir crazy! But it's this, or giving up, and I'm not giving up!" She throws her hands out, gestures wildly. "And we can't, we can't, fix any of this on our own! It never works. Going it alone never works, we've both learned that the hard way and we still— we still keep trying. We still keep trying."
She sinks down to the grass, head in her hands.
no subject
A year.
Her stomach drops. The idea leaves her horror stricken. She manages to keep it off her face, but can't chase it out of her mind until it's done a dozen laps, trampling all her sense.
A year. Jesus Christ.
She's right. What good has going in alone done for her? Killed her, for one. And Connie, too. That alone should be enough to scratch it off her mind's drawing board and although she tries she can't imagine a world where she relies on anyone except herself. Like thick mud drawing her in, enough that she's stopped struggling altogether despite knowing she'll suffocate.
We still keep trying.
Connecticut sinks down into the grass. She has a feeling she's suffocating too. And has for a long time.
She hauls herself up and treads silently across the yard to CT.
"We must be pretty stupid, then."
no subject
"Yeah," CT says, without lifting her head. "Pretty fucking stupid."
She's been trying, she has. In some ways she's even succeeded. There are people around here that she trusts, people she talks to when things go wrong. Yet her instincts are still trained to solitude. To ask people to help is to risk both their life and her own heart.
Either she gets them hurt or they hurt her, that's how it always went before. Maybe not now, maybe the people she has won't have her trust forged into a blade to be plunged into one of their chests, but it's hard to abandon the instinct entirely.
Wrap soon?
She's quiet for a while, looking out into the yard discretely. Better to give space in times like these than try to command the exhaustion out of someone. To force them into lifting their head when they're already so weighted.
And it worked, this silence. Most of the time. She'd perch bench-side with South, listening to her invent expletives for ten, sometimes twenty minutes at a time, but there regardless. And after the fire extinguished, she'd stand, unflinching. 'Done?' And South would follow.
And Maine, silence already so integrated into his existence. He was easiest to learn. To know. Her favorite, apart from York— although she'll deny picking favorites at all. She'd become familiar enough with these silences that their nuance revealed themselves; grunts, sniffs and head movements his own unique sentence structure. And whereas others deterred to voicing his thoughts aloud for him, she sat quietly. Sometimes for hours.
Connie was always a little harder. Always a distance away.
"My address is 475 Strawberry Fields Straight. You said you wanted to know. Maybe you already do, since you're so good at that." There's no malice in the remark. "If you think of any more questions, or if you want to talk— about anything— you can find me there."
A pause.
"We don't have to keep doing this to ourselves."
yes!
One of the strangest things about those years in the program, when Connie became CT and living on the ship started to feel like standing on a bear trap waiting for it to close, was how even in a room bustling with people the world felt quiet.
More than just feeling alone in a crowded room. Chatter that felt empty, words that meant nothing, voices she could barely hear even though they were right there. Silence amidst noise. Even the emptiness of the observation deck during long, lonely nights felt louder, filled with questions and expectations and work to be done. But a locker room full of her friends, bantering and arguing and talking, utterly and wilfully oblivious to the noose waiting to cinch around their throats, that was the quietest place of all.
Her hands fall. Her head lifts part-way.
"...mm, maybe we don't," is all she manages to say.