2.5.5 - Spam

[breakingmyheart]

[Spam for Megamind]

[Barge engine maintenance is reasonably straightforward when you know how, though the 'knowing how' can take months; like any regular task, after a while it becomes...not boring, but...routine. Clean parts, check valves, tighten screws, check readings, et cetera. It's a big job and has a lot of fiddly little tasks associated with it, but it doesn't change.

Sometimes Toshiko genuinely wonders if the engine serves any actual purpose besides giving a few more people something to do with their time, but the only way to test that would be by breaking it and seeing what happens and....no. No thank you. True, Kirk used it to take over the ship but for all she knows that could just be the Admiral propping up the illusion.

(And honestly, Kirk's brief benign dictatorship makes her feel better. Generally, the Admiral closes a path to the bridge after it's been used once. The engine room has now been officially neutralised as a way to hijack the ship.)

She looks over at Megamind from where she's sitting at the bank of monitoring screens, keeping half an eye on him and half an eye on the readings.]

How are you finding it?

[Open Spam]

[It's evening, and Tosh is sitting on a bench on the deck. Somewhere over her head there's a remote-controlled flying device (you can't really call it a model anything) moving in slow figures-of-eight around the length of the bench.

She's not holding a remote. Exactly. There's a cable plugged into the port in her neck, which is connected to a small transmitter device which was resting on her shoulder but has since slipped into her cleavage; never mind. Interfaced with the program that signals the little flying drone, it's not taking much more than a continuous awareness of its presence to keep it in a holding pattern.

She moved out here when Myfanwy started getting anxious (read: screechy) about another flying pet in her cabin.

Every so often she moves to do something else, picking up the cup of coffee next to her or turning a page in the book she's not-quite-reading, and it lurches or dips but that's fine. Practice makes perfect.]

[OOC: Because occasionally I step outside myself and remember that Tosh doesn't get out much: some time ago she had a dataport installed that allows her to interface with computer systems intuitively. And she keeps fiddling with it and probably won't stop until she's a Cyberman. And Myfanwy is a pteranodon. So that's where we are now.]

Comments

[truth_is_cold]

I think when I started happening across wizards and cats I started ceasing to be surprised.

[Hey, cats are strange, extinct things. They're kind of a big deal.] I suppose it's an advantage, even if it's unusual it's not unexpected.

[breakingmyheart]

I suppose. [A pause, and then a shot of unanticipated honesty as she looks up into the gleaming dark:] I think I miss surprises, though. Sometimes.

[Maybe 'surprise' is the wrong word, but she misses the thrill of discovery. The sense of newness every time something washed up out of the Rift that she'd never seen before. The puzzles. Now most of the time it feels like her mind is just ticking over, and the big puzzles she needs to address - Erik - aren't in any of her specialisms.]

[truth_is_cold]

Well, let's say the Barge stopped somewhere. One place where the Admiral wouldn't turn us into subterranean moles or something else preposterous, where would you like to go? [He shifts to face her a little better in the chair, dangling his arm over the back of it.]

[breakingmyheart]

[She smiles sadly, hooking her elbows over the backrest.]

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? If I knew that it wouldn't be a surprise any more.

[truth_is_cold]

You can still be surprised by things in a setting, if not the setting itself. Where would you like to go? [He tilts his head at her.]

[breakingmyheart]

[There's too many answers. She wants to go home. She wants to go wherever Harper is, or Una, or Inara or Billy. She wants to go to the end of the world, to see what happens to the human race, to know if they were worth protecting, to know if she gave her life to something worthwhile. She wants to go to the Boeshane Peninsula and rescue Gray before he can grow into the man who kills her.

She wants to run. She wants to run until she has no responsibilities and no memories, and she doesn't have to be afraid any more. But there's nowhere in the universe far enough.]

...I don't know. Just...away, I suppose. Why do you ask?

[truth_is_cold]

[Strangely enough, Una is the one that his mind still stammers over. Some part of him resents that they couldn't admit feelings for one another until she was going. It was the worst way to say good-bye.

But it seems to be the only time he can manage to do it.] I was just wondering what sort of places and things you would like to discover. I suppose that either is incredibly difficult or incredibly easy. [He's somehow predicting the latter, if she keeps coming back here.]

You don't get asked what you want very often, do you?

[breakingmyheart]

[She gives a little twitch of a smile, but it's such a sharp precise truth that it hurts.]

Well, that's just me, really. I've got everything I need.

ARGH stop that Binky...

[truth_is_cold]

It's alright to still want something. If there's only one thing that everyone has in common here, it's that. They have everything they need, and there's still something they want.

[He returns the slight smile.]

[breakingmyheart]

[She looks down at the book, now closed, and her hands folded in her lap.]

....I don't have a deal with the Admiral this time. Not yet, anyway.

[truth_is_cold]

[He knows there's an enormous difference in having a deal and wanting something. He's here, and even with a deal it doesn't relate to anything that he actually wants. If he took another one, it wouldn't either.

So he guesses that maybe what she wants is something that she can't necessarily make a deal for. And is a lot bigger than "away".] Where were you before you came here?

[breakingmyheart]

[She's quiet for a moment, arranging her thoughts.] I got my life back and I went home for a few months. I just...

[She could have gone back to Torchwood. She knew she could. The Admiral wouldn't have even needed to smooth over the rough edges in the timeline; they would have accepted 'I was dead but I'm better now' more or less at face value.

But she couldn't go back and see the hollow empty space where Owen had been. She couldn't go back to Jack, whose trips on and off the Barge had destroyed her perception of him, of her relationship with him.

The Admiral hadn't so much shown her all the wonders of the universe as exposed her to them, like something to be torn down in a howling wind. But it wasn't enough any more to see it all through the tiny lens of the Rift and wonder at what was out there.]

...it didn't feel like there was a place for me there any more.

[truth_is_cold]

It's a pity for them. You've got the mental fortitude to handle a dataport and the capability to build hover technology in a time when it's not widely used. [As he mentions it, he tilts to look at the dataport, knowing exactly what it is, before turning his attnetion back to her.]

You outgrew your shell.

[He's generally of the opinion sometimes you evolve, you outgrow something, and you need to move onto something larger. Or something better suited.]

[breakingmyheart]

[She smiles tightly.]

I don't know if I'd say that.

[It more feels like the old shell's broken and the new one's growing in crooked.]

[truth_is_cold]

There's a lot I don't think you wouldn't say. [He turns his attention out to the stars.] It's unfortunate that a lot of people don't listen for what they don't hear. But I think you can still find something worthwhile. [He starts to stand, taking that tight smile as his cue that he should go.] Good luck in repairing your device.

[breakingmyheart]

Thank you, Gaheris.

[After he's gone, she hurls the component pieces of her hovercraft over the side in a brief explosion of unplaceable anger - and watches them fall until the darkness swallows them, then sighs and goes back below decks.]