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Passengers: William and 🤗 friends 🤠 and corporate ptsd 🚫🍟
Location: Loading bay, YOUR BED???, the cabin Grace and William are gonna break into
Date: Backdated a couple days, let's say the 26th
Summary: William returns from ~~hell~~ his mission, please don't ask him about it (please do).
Warnings: No one's dead yet!

William gets back late—the Avro's lone passenger, dressed in the suit he hasn't worn since his first day. It's a relief to touch down, but at the same time he wishes he'd told the little ship to circle the Peregrine once or twice. Like making another loop around the block. His steps ring through the deserted bay as he hurries to the observation bubble in time to watch the ship's departure.

He stays there long after it's gone, staring—well, out into space. Culina had beautiful views, but they had—like practically everything on the planet—been manufactured. He leans over the railing, cranes his neck. Savors the lack of buzzing neon, the not-quite-chill.

Exhaustion hits all at once, and he briefly considers spending the night in Warden Command. Instead he almost sleepwalks to the elevator, then to the dorms, where he flops onto the nearest bunk that isn't visibly occupied but may very well belong to someone. Closes his eyes and lets out a groan before he starts kicking off his shoes.

...look, there were a lot fewer inmates when he left.

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[Nothing like coming back from a long day of botanical research to a warden in your bed.

Theo stands there for a moment, frowning. Sure, it's a bottom bunk and it was momentarily unoccupied, but that doesn't mean it's yours!]

... Okay, so. You stay there, and I'm gonna go sleep in your cabin. Deal?

[ He really is tired—thoughts clouding over as soon soon as he's surrendered to the mattress. Body slack, although his feet dangle out of the pod. He lies still a moment, eyes closed. Breathing deep.

One eye cracks open. ] This must be a nightmare. I'm being negotiated with. [ William frees the heel of one foot, flips the shoe in Theo's vague direction. ]

Who's negotiating? You took my bed so I'm takin' yours. Seems like you made the choice for me.

[Maybe he's a little nervous about a warden suddenly in his cabin and he's trying his damnedest to act like it's fine. But unless William suddenly starts flipping the mattress and everything else in the cubicle, it should be fine. This was fine. With a huff, Theo climbs up to the now empty bunk above. He preferred the higher ground anyway.

It now dawns on him that William had been gone for awhile, too. Easy to notice since he slept in the dorms with the inmates.]

You enjoy your vacation or whatever?

[ There's a pause after Theo speaks—long enough, maybe, to give the impression the other man's fallen asleep—and then a second shoe thumps to the floor. William makes a sleepy noise in the affirmative, somewhere between a hum and a sigh, and his feet vanish into the pod. ]

Mission. [ Some rustling sounds as William pulls himself into a sitting position, slumped against the back of the bunk. ] I got to see another planet. [ His cheer is faint and short-lived. ] It was depressing.

Mission? What fucking mission. I thought you were a warden.

[The movement in the bunk below worries him, so he peeks down over the edge.]

Hnn. That so. Starting to think most planets aren't as impressive as they could be. Did this one at least have a city on it?

I do what needs doing. [ Which, experience has borne out, will almost always be the thing he least wants to do.

He startles—it's slight but undeniable—at the sight of Theo's face. He's still in his suit, sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees. His hair slicked back but beginning to rebel. He drops his arms, straightens out his legs.

He rolls his eyes, but it's good-humored: there's a smile underneath. ] It was all city. A food court that devoured a planet. A bunch of companies devouring and regurgitating each other. They sold the sky for ad space. [ William runs a hand through his hair. Is it that unusual? Billboards, blimps. No—it was the scale of it all, like someone wallpapering a house with McDonald's wrappers.

Anyway: ] I'm glad to be back.

[Theo's brow furrows as he thinks about what that would look like, and then resettles himself a bit so his head isn't having as much blood rush to it.]

Sounds like Planet Times Square. [Not that it's even half as bad in Theo's time as it is in William's.] Not that I know if that makes any sense to you or not.

[He wrinkles his nose and scoffs at the idea of anyone being glad to be back on the Peregrine.]

You must be nuts. I wouldn't have come back.

I'm from Connecticut. [ There's a flat, deadpan quality to the remark, as if under other circumstances it would be funny. William nods to the foot of the bed. ] You can sit. [ On his own mattress! How generous.

He's silent a moment, thinking about Culina, wondering if New York had seemed as remote to Theo as another planet. ] I like you guys. I like—seeing people for who they could be. [ He shrugs, unabashed—too tired for it. ] You feeling homesick?

[He can't fathom for a second how anyone could like this place. The mind boggles.] You are nuts.

[He hesitates for a few moments before coming down. He wasn't too keen to sit and chat with a warden, but it was Theo's space. He'd feel better keeping an eye on his own stuff.

And besides, how many people in a day bother to have a conversation with this kid? He won't answer that question directly, but the answer is obviously yes. He sits opposite of William, looking away.]

I'd never left San Francisco before coming here.

[ He glances to Theo with almost startled urgency—finds Theo's gaze already averted. There are 987 dead people more deserving of his sympathy, but something about it is tragic, dying before you have the chance to leave the city you were born. ] Is that what the books are for? Taking you places?

[ He can't help it: he yawns, though it's more contented than tired. ] A few days in storage, you're almost ready to dodge New York traffic.

[Theo seems like he'd never considered that idea, but it's a bit too romantic of a notion for him. Considering he has a strong preference for adventure novels and exciting pulp stories, though, William probably isn't far off the mark.]

I dunno. I just like reading. Most books are better than real life any day.

[Says a kid who was studying magic. It's not as exciting as books would make it out to be all the time, though. So much studying, rote memorization, research. Fiction is a nice break.

He settles himself against the wall behind him.]

You say that like SF's traffic isn't something to be contended with. Ever been?

Twas the night before a sim, and all through the ship... oh wait. This is Satan, not Santa.

Lucifer is perched on the seating, seemingly lost in thought as he ~stargazes~. He does it more often here than he ever did on Earth. The Peregrine offers a lot of time for introspection. And maybe Lucifer is just more inclined to it, these days.

"I miss real cigarettes," he comments absently when he spots William out of the corner of his eye. "Setting a good example is much harder than setting a bad one."

He sounds thoughtful, rather than sarcastic or flippant.

William's propped against the railing, forearms hanging loose over it. He's peering down, rapt—his attitude not unlike a child who's wandered too close to the edge of a pond. He spares Lucifer a glance—gauging how to take that remark. He settles on amusement, though his smile's private, between him and the vast expanse of space.

“Are you worried?” It's in the same vein—reflective.

Lucifer hums vaguely. “Yes, of course. Right now, I suppose I'm worrying about worrying. Figuring out how much to worry. When to stop. Not worrying at all would lead to carelessness. Worrying too much would lead to far too much second-guessing. Neither would be useful to anyone.”

And as flippant as he often is, he does take his role here seriously.

“What about you?”

Edited 2022-04-01 23:11 (UTC)

He tears his eyes from the endless array of stars, the line of his mouth softening. (It helps that he focuses on Lucifer's face, rather than that fucking suit.) “Yeah, it's like that most days.”

Not tonight—he's giddy and calm at once, prepared for the wave to crash over him and itching to ride it out. He never thought he'd see another breach. It feels like an undeserved gift.

“It's hard to know with inmates. You can say something and they won't hear it, but months down the line maybe they'll remember.” Or the opposite: they'll remember you laughing something off, dismissing something that once seemed trivial but has gained significance.

Edited 2022-04-02 01:31 (UTC)

"Yeah, that tracks," Lucifer agrees, thinking about himself - and maybe other people he's known.

He glances at William for a moment. "What about this simulation? You've been through similar before, right? Do they often help?"

He smiles—the question's so straightforward, and breaches are anything but—and scratches idly at the back of his head. “If you let them.” After a second or two he shrugs, dissatisfied with his own pat little answer, and turns back to the view.

Eyes fixed on the stars, voice carefully contained, he continues: “After my first one, I tried to talk to my warden. I was dying to talk to somebody. And he texted me, which”—he stumbles on the word, huffs out an exhausted laugh—“when you're from 1840 is really fucking something. Well, we talked face to face after I insisted, and he told me that wasn't him in the breach. It was his double. You get a lot of that, people who won't even look at it. Drinking, bellowing over the network.”

He shrugs again, unconvincingly—the gesture at once elaborate and brittle. As if he's trying to get a weight off his shoulders.

"People will twist themselves in knots to avoid dealing with the messy stuff," Lucifer agrees. "I can't say I won't do the same, depending on what happens."

Amanda, in the bunk beside him, goes still instantly. He is very much not the girl who usually sleeps in there. She lies in bed for what feels like forever, staring at the ceiling, counting breaths, and when she thinks he might have fallen asleep (he's stopped groaning to himself at the very least), she slips toward the edge of her space and down the ladder, bare feet silent.

She appraises him lying face down on the mattress, and takes his shoes, tossing them carelessly over her shoulder and away into the dark.

Then, she reaches up toward his belt, intending to feel for anything in his pockets that she could take. Sure, if he's some new inmate she's never seen before he'll have nothing, but she's willing to take the risk that he just might.

He conks out fast. The mattress is thin and he's surrounded by murderers, but it's less unsettling than his monstrous suite on Culina, with its sponsored vista and toaster that would only toast one brand of bread. The good news is he hasn't bothered with the bedding; the bad news is he's still in his suit jacket, taut across his back and preventing easy access to his pockets.

He doesn't stir when she tosses his shoes aside. He's more likely to react to touch than sound, the feeling of something closing in, but if she's deft and decisive she has a second to try for the CommLink in his right trouser pocket or the lapel pin of a stylized robotic owl in his left. If she thinks to—dares to—feel the pockets of the suit jacket itself, she'll find the outline of a pistol.

Edited 2022-04-01 19:23 (UTC)

Amanda is the type of person to loudly throw a pair of shoes over her shoulder before she attempts to rob a sleeping person. Of course she tries for the gun.

Her hands are calloused, but light. She's used to the precise nature of her traps and tools, balanced weights and perfect rigging; John wouldn't have anything less. It almost feels like he's watching her try to ease the pistol out from the suit jacket, eyes narrowed in a painful squint in the half-light. His ever-present voice in her ear is soft, but firm. Reprimanding.

Amanda.

She exhales, and plucks fast with forefinger and thumb–

And accidentally lets go, when it comes free too quickly. Fuck.

Edited 2022-04-02 06:24 (UTC)

He goes rigid a moment, waking to a sensation of proximity—later it'll seem to him he could feel her breath filling the bunk, smell it even. He kicks—hard but blind and wild, only partly shifted off his stomach. Almost a bucking motion, as though prepared to throw her off him. He registers the gun's clatter a second after. The corresponding absence in his pocket.

(The gun has the look of a pistol but not the heft—it's curiously light, and were Amanda looking she might have noticed a series of Zs etched along the barrel.)

Whether the kick connects or not, William scrambles onto his back, casts a hand along the side of the bunk in search of the weapon. His movements urgent but no longer frantic.

She tries in vain to grab the gun one last time but his errant kick gets her in the hip. Glances off the bone making her shriek- an unusually high-pitched sound- as she lurches backward in the wall of the bunk, hands dropping toward where it hurts, pressing down. It will be a bruise in the morning.

He's looking at her from the other corner of the enclosure. Fuck.

Amanda, breathing hard, flashes a quick, sarcastic smile.

"Thought you were dead."

Aki's head swerves when William enters warden command, from where he's leaned back in a chair staring at the stars. There's something stiff—guarded, with an undercurrent of anger—to the way he moves, ready to stand and leave, before he sees who it is.

He slumps back into his seat. A straw sticks out of his mouth like a cigarette. Maybe he's pretending.

"You're back," he says, curt.

William, for once, walks into Warden Command without eyeing the place as though he'd like to tear it down—after Culina, even the miniature arboretum seems restrained. He's freed himself from his suit but the way he blearily pours himself a cup of coffee still screams businessman. “Last night.”

He flicks a glance over Aki, expression in check. “Was there a meeting?”

The surest source of discontent.

He makes a vague sound of acknowledgement, before he looks back at William and his coffee. Something childishly sullen crosses his face.

"No. Just the usual pairings and something about a simulation." More inmates, he doesn't say; he assumes William's seen that firsthand.

He looks about to add something else—something less deliberately impersonal—before he rolls the straw to the side and changes tracks. "Where did they send you?"

Travis looms in the entrance of William's bunk. His spiked hair is leaning to one side from sleeping on it, and his striped boxers and hoodie declaring FUCK RACISM are decidedly sleep-rumpled; if he wasn't wearing his yellow aviators, it'd be the complete just-rolled-out-of-bed look. He peers in at William with a vague frown.

William in a full suit is bizarre. William sleeping in a suit is fucking unhinged.

"You're back," he replies, somewhere between observation and surprise. Maybe it'd be just as easy for William to be gone forever –– no abandonment issues here, no sir, but how easy would it be to never come back, given the choice? "If they transport you to corporate, you know you'll probably have to use that fancy room of yours instead of slumming it with us."

He has no idea what the warden rooms look like, but he's imagining they're fucking palatial.

Maybe it's selfish, holing up in the cabin he's never used. Sitting on the comfortable bed he's never slept in. Switching off the network and filling his CommLink with everything he can remember—the Shimmer first, flowers like grasping fingers, frogs croaking out a nightly death rattle, the snake whose scales seemed a glittering mirror. His knife, and all it had split open. Robbie entombed at the center of everything.

He doesn't change his clothes. He showers to remind himself of rain, tweaking the temperature until it's just right. He recalls sterile conference rooms, grasps at facts about Florida's endangered wildlife, the rate of the Shimmer's expansion. The numbers vanish faster than anything else. Near the end, his focus starts to break—he wonders if he'd ever wanted a child in that life. Wonders where Misty had been.

After two days, he deigns to exist in the Peregrine's reality. He does a shit job of it, fighting back nausea in the mess hall. Studying his hands. But he checks the dorms and the network, and late that night knocks on his neighbor's door. He looks ghostly himself—long shadows under his eyes, clothes hanging off him—but alert.

There's a few moments before Grace answers the door; from the timing, it's likely she just crawled out of bed. That, and she looks like she hasn't left her bed in days. Her hair is lanky and unclean, her face unwashed, smudges of days-old eyeliner still visible in the creases under her eyes-- and the darkness there is deeper and more pronounced than usual. She's in her pajamas. A long-sleeved thermal shirt and shorts, a blanket haphazardly gathered around herself, as if to protect whoever's at the door from having to witness her in her current state of undone-ness.

And from the way her expression changes when she answers it, it's clear that whoever she was expecting that knock to have come from, it wasn't William.

"Oh," she breathes, lightly, disappointment tinged with genuine relief coloring her voice. Her dark eyes blink, once, as if confirming this is all real. It is. She doesn't seem entirely convinced. "Are you okay?"

That's the first thing everyone's getting asked, after what they've all been through.

He's shocked to find her like this, miserable and small. For a fleeting moment, seen through the eyes of the old man he'd been, she looks unbearably young. He stands in the doorway, locked up in competing impulses—touch her and don't, look at her, look away.

“Ish,” he says to her question, mustering a halfhearted smile. “I'm sorry, I—the first days back are...” A shake of his head, compulsive. He hadn't had a thought for her or anyone—even with it gone he'd been caught up in Area X, mourning the way he'd felt there.

His gaze settles on her again, the hollows of her eyes. “I'm so sorry.”

"I died again," she tells him, matter-of-factly. "I felt it this time."

The first time, the real(?) time, it happened so quick. Headlights coming towards her, then black. Fuzzy, pain-blurred pictures of recovery came after, for a long while. Nothing of dying. Nothing of being dead. This time she felt the pain, the overwhelming terror, the panic. The blood leaving her body through a torn-away hole. This time, she knew she was dying. And it took a long, long time.

If it's possible for her dark eyes to look more hollow, that'd be what William sees in Grace right now. And it'd be why she now uses the bathroom in the dark-- so she doesn't have to see whatever the mirror would show her. Her head tilts slightly to the side.

"You think that was helpful." It's not a question. More an accusation.

He's silent a moment—a moment that seems to stretch. One thing to love breaches, that fleeting brush with a boundless universe. To abandon yourself to what could be for a day or two and dwell in possibility. Another to look someone in the eye and tell her her death was useful.

William takes a step forward, braced for her to flinch or duck away. Hesitantly he reaches—not for her but for the rumpled blanket, taking an end in each hand. Gripping it a second before draping it over her shoulders. “Why'd you go in there?” he asks, his voice worn down to a sliver. His eyes stubbornly locked on hers. “I bet it wasn't for nothing.”

She doesn't bother to move-- remains eerily still, in fact, as he attempts to comfort her. As if that's a thing that can be done, in this moment. Maybe because she didn't experience much in the way of affection from her own family, it's harder to instinctually recognize in the gestures of others. But intellectually, she knows he means well.

People usually do, whether or not it goes that way. Still.

"I followed my brother," she replies, voice croaky but without variation in tone, like she's reading a grocery list, not recalling the memories of someone else's life that remained fuzzy in her head like a dream. "I raised him. I failed him. He was the only thing in my life that mattered, and he went in. I followed so he wouldn't die alone. Then we did anyway. I'd call that nothing."

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wildcarding it up here... HOPEFULLY HED BE IN THE OBSERVATION RM or I can change it

YOU'RE GOOD he loves observin

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for grace and her big dick (post-sim)

how ACTUALLY dare u.

hehehehehe

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