ext_158853 (
renevatio.livejournal.com) wrote in
milliways_bar2005-08-16 06:08 pm
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Lincoln is a wee bit broken.
A few days ago, he was given a copy for Trainspotting so he could study Scottish accents. He has since watched Trainspotting. He cried the first time, though for the most part he stared, horrified and unable to decipher what the actors were saying.
He took it to his room and studied it. He watched it twice more with closed captioning, the second time saying the words with Renton whenever he spoke. It unnerved him when his voice and the character's onscreen meshed so exactly. He forced himself to sit through all the weirdickyscary parts, the drug addict parts and the sex parts. (He still wasn't sold on sex yet. The more he found out, the less he wanted anything to do with it.) He reasoned that if he could stand Dr. Merrick's "nice tests," he could handle this.
Now he's sitting at the Bar, staring at the untouched pint of bitters he ordered without quite knowing why. He's sure of one thing, though, and he says it aloud to hear the strangeness of the accent in his mouth all at once.
"It's shite being Scottish."
[[OOC: It's been a while since mun saw Trainspotting, so if he's fudgy on plot details, apologies.]]
A few days ago, he was given a copy for Trainspotting so he could study Scottish accents. He has since watched Trainspotting. He cried the first time, though for the most part he stared, horrified and unable to decipher what the actors were saying.
He took it to his room and studied it. He watched it twice more with closed captioning, the second time saying the words with Renton whenever he spoke. It unnerved him when his voice and the character's onscreen meshed so exactly. He forced himself to sit through all the weirdickyscary parts, the drug addict parts and the sex parts. (He still wasn't sold on sex yet. The more he found out, the less he wanted anything to do with it.) He reasoned that if he could stand Dr. Merrick's "nice tests," he could handle this.
Now he's sitting at the Bar, staring at the untouched pint of bitters he ordered without quite knowing why. He's sure of one thing, though, and he says it aloud to hear the strangeness of the accent in his mouth all at once.
"It's shite being Scottish."
[[OOC: It's been a while since mun saw Trainspotting, so if he's fudgy on plot details, apologies.]]
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Jordan sees a morose, depressed, unsmiling but familiar face. Yep, it's Lincoln. She waves goodbye to the nice bartender who's been serving her, and walks over to him.
"Lincoln, what are you doing here?" Her tone does not disguise her embarrassment; she shouldn't be here either. She is still glad to see him.
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He gapes at her for an instant. "Jordan?" It had to be her, it had to be. He hadn't seen anyone else wearing the white suits, and he hadn't seen other women who looked like her either.
In another instant, he's on his feet clutching her tight. "Oh God. I thought I'd lost you." He squeezes his eyes shut, and feels the tears trickle down the bridge of his nose. She's not dead, she found out too, she escaped--
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Then she notices he's crying. "Lincoln? What's wrong?" She hugs him back awkwardly. After a moment, she says, "Hey. You sound...different."
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"It's been happening to me ever since I got here. And I just-- I just watched this thing with someone who looks like me, only awful, and all this terrible stuff happens and they -- they sounded like I'd been--"
He can't continue, so he changes the subject. "How did you get away from them?"
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Oh no. "Oh no!" How long has she been in Milliways? They'll have come looking for her surely, and if she's not there...what if she misses her chance to go to the Island? It's nice here and all, and Lincoln's presence, though confusing, makes it all the more tempting to stay, but...
"I'm going to miss the boat," she says, mournfully, spinning around and looking for the tile she came up out of. "Oh no..." She turned and grabbed his arms. "Lincoln, you have to help me, I can't find the way I got in. I have to get back!"
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"It'll be all right," she reassures him, even though she is still amidst a panic about missing her trip. "Maybe...maybe since you're here already you could come with." It's ridiculous, and completely against the rules, but maybe...
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"It's not all right. I saw them before I came here. I found another sector, one that's all white and there aren't any censors, and I saw Starkweather and Lima. They took Lima's baby and they dragged Starkweather away, and they're both dead, Jordan! They killed them and they were going to kill you!"
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She swallows, cowed by too much stimulation and a sex-on-the-beach that she's regretting she had. Her brain is not capable of dealing with all of this, and only one thing out of all he says stays at the forefront of her mind, only one thing makes any sense.
"You...you saw Lima's baby?"
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"What's wrong? Tell me." She can't promise to believe him, but she can try. "What is this about people being killed? Did you have another nightmare? Did it have something to do with that...thing you watched?"
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"It's not a dream. It's not anything like my dreams. I came up through a tile in the floor, and I borrowed someone's blue jacket, and then I started exploring. I found a room, and Lima was in a chair, and a woman had her baby and wouldn't give it to her. And then they injected her with something, and she stopped moving. I even went in after the other people left, and I tried to wake her up but she wouldn't. She was cold and her lips were turning blue." It's a memory he hasn't revisited so vividly in weeks. He stops talking again, but he squeezes Jordan's hand a little.
"Then--" Here his voice cracks. "Then I was trying to find my way back, and I saw Starkweather running through the halls, and he was bleeding and had all sorts of things coming out of him. He was crying and people were chasing him. He kept saying 'I don't want to die, I want to go to the Island.' And then they dragged him away and I didn't see what happened to him. I ran." He searches her face for some hint of understanding. "That's what happened. I ran, and then I was here. I haven't been able to get back ever since."
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No one had seen Starkweather after two nights ago, but he'd been just fine. He'd been whole and healthy. There are elements of his other dreams, though--fear of dying, of being chased or hunted. He's never been very clear about what exactly happens in his dreams, but this isn't too different. He's upset that she's leaving for the Island. The last male to leave was Starkweather, and his dreams twisted his unhappiness into a nightmare that should have made him feel better about staying. Sometimes, she has dreams like that, where it's her who is a breeder instead of a friend, and she gets to go to the Island.
That's where her justification breaks down. Lima. He said he saw Lima and her baby. None of them have ever seen a baby. It isn't the sort of thing they joke about, even the men, because no one wants to seem ungrateful for all they have by bringing up what they haven't got. He's seen a baby. His eyes are haunted, but there's a bit of awe in them when he talks of it. He has seen a baby. How could he make that up?
"Oh my," she whimpers, and suddenly there is a burn at the back of her throat. It is not unlike the one she felt throwing down her drink, only now she suspects it may be coming back up.
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"I think I'm going to be sick."
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"Wait -- I'll be right back."
He jogs to the Bar and orders some bread, just like John Sheppard had for him. He hurries back with the basket and offers it to her. "Eating this helps."
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"Oh. Oh no," she mumbles, mouth full, forgetting her manners. This isn't right. She shouldn't be here, and he shouldn't be here, and everything that is inviting and nice about this place is wrong. But downstairs, wherever that is is more wrong.
Lincoln has preserved the distance she set up, and she is the one to violate it. She slips out of one side and throws herself against him as he did her. It's as natural as breathing.
"I want to go to the Island," she sobs.
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"It isn't there," he murmurs, the Scottish accent he's been studying for two days slipping in before he has a chance to think about it.
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But he's right. She plays her conversation with the barman, Mike, over and curses herself an idiot. They talked about the contamination, and he knew nothing about it. 'One of those future things, isn't it?' He talked about New York...he remembered it. All she remembered was a promise to get her fair share, her honest chance. All that she remembers, a lie.
"Why? What point does all this serve?"
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He lifts his head a little. "You should meet him. He said he was going to help us. His name is Christian." Good news is good news, after all.
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"What about the others?"
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"Well, nobody else has heard of the Contamination. I haven't heard anybody say anything about not being able to go outside. We're being kept from something, but it's not a dead world." He shifts in his seat so he can lean his elbows on the table. "I don't know much more than that, though."
Which is a lie. He knows about sex. He knows about policemen. He knows about running. And he knows about heroin. If Trainspotting is to be believed, there might as well be a Contamination, for all the good that's out there.
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"And out there," she looks out the window, "is the end of the universe."
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Then, for the first time in what felt like a hundred and twenty years, he smiled at her. "I'm glad you're here now." The tension had disappeared, just like that. "I'm sorry you didn't get to see the bug. It was really neat."
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She is quiet a minute, then asks, "Where can we go?" She looks around the bar as if seeing it for the first time. It's dirty and worn, but homey. Still, she doubts they'd be able to stay here. "Where have you been?"
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It is a jumble of questions, and she has to know the answers to all of them. Anything else to wonder about than the Island, home. No, not home. Never home.
"Let's go." She nods, decisively. "I want to see your movies."
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At her suggestion they watch his movie, though, his face drains. "Uh, maybe some other time with that." He squirms visibly before leaping to his feet. "You need your room now."
He leads her over to the Bar and taps it. "Hi, I -- well, my friend Jordan, she needs a room and... and things." He hesitates. "Can you put it near mine?" A key with a number on it appears on the surface. Lincoln grins. "There you go. That's yours."
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"I want to watch a movie." There's a pause where nothing happens, so she tries something more specific. "I want to watch a movie with Christian in it." There is a menu, a list of titles with actors named Christian in it. She closes her eyes and picks one out at random. It's in her hands a moment later, she's frowning at the picture on the box.
"Velvet Goldmine. Hey," she shows the box to Lincoln. "That guy kind of looks like you, too." His expression is worth three of those sex-on-the-beaches.
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She takes his hand and takes one resolute step away from the bar, then stops.
"Um, which way is it?"
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Nobody's paying attention to them. No Proximity warnings, no forced separation by censors... it's fucking fantastic, is what it is! (That was a word he hadn't heard before Trainspotting, but it was used liberally, so it was probably pretty common.) Lincoln leads her up the stairs and down the hall until they reach her door, which is directly across from his. He sticks his hands in his pockets. "Well, here it is." He points over his shoulder. "That's my room."
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Then again, these aren't really her quarters. It's more an impersonal space that she is temporarily occupying. She keys open her door.
"Come inside, Lincoln." She pouts her lip, exaggerating what is already an authentic pathetic look. "Please? I don't want to be alone."
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"Okay," he says cheerfully, and strolls in.
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The room is dirty, lived in, and about a third the size of her quarters back at the Institute. She tries not to dwell on that--pretty trappings hide something dangerous; she's comfortable with an environment that doesn't try to be other than what it is.
She closes the door and look for a vid screen. It takes less time to find it than to figure out where to put the strange disc that is inside the box into the machine. After a few minutes puzzling, she works it out, and goes to sit on the end of the bed. It's the closest seat to the vid screen. She pats the mattress on her side, curious about the strange, choked look on his face.
"Come on, sit."
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Still. It's something she doesn't know about and he doesn't want to do. This is a very safe situation. He lowers himself onto the edge of the mattress, just enough so he's not falling off. The movie starts. (It's sure to be a safe movie, too. After all, it's about rocks.) He points at the screen. "Hey look, stars! They're prettier than I thought they'd be."
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"Do you want to talk about...about what you saw?" She will help if she can. Maybe together they can work it out. The video is tempting, very pretty and very distracting, but then so, too, are his wary eyes.
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"Sit down, okay? I promise I won't make you uncomfortable. Here," she backs up along the bed to sit at the headboard. "I'll be here, okay?"
[ooc: That icon made me crack up. Good job.]
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It sure has. He's pacing as he says it.
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"If you want." She hugs her knees. Without him to distract her, and her interest in the vid screen having waned from the start of his pacing about, she can only think of what he told her downstairs.
In a small voice, she asks, "Are we safe here?"
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He crouched down and took her hands. "I think so. Yes. That's one thing I'm sure of. Nobody's allowed to hurt anybody here. We're safe."
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"Thank you," she whispers, "for everything." She releases one of his hands and reaches for her abused napkin. It is her only possession, the first thing she has ever had that is unique to her alone, and it's already so beaten it might not last another day. But its hers, and its hers to do with as she wants. Doing what she wants. That will take some getting used to, but again, she has him to thank for that privilege.
"Here. Take this with you. It's not much of a present, but I want you to have it."
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He is not changing his mind about staying, he is not, he is not.
He offers her a smile, a real one. "Sweet dreams." Before anything else can happen, he walks out. The napkin is pressed to his chest.
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Exhausted, Jordan reluctantly pulls herself, still-dressed, under the covers. She lays back, staring up at the ceiling. She thinks of turtles, occasionally looking at the still playing screen, then hastily looking away again--she wasn't sure what the person who looked strangely like Lincoln was doing, but she sure wasn't ready in this state of mind.
I'm alive. Lincoln is here. I'm going to see turtles. She repeats this until she falls asleep, hoping to keep the nightmares at bay.