| Log Title |
| Summary: | A few soldiers, and one civvie, take a moment to collect themselves in the Head. |
| Date: | 2041.02.26 |
| Related Logs: | After The Blameless Tide & What Sweet Price Freedom. |
| Players: |
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| Naval Head | Deck 4 - Battlestar Cerberus |
Like any normal head on the ship, this one is painted in light grey with some blue around the top of the room. Down the center there are 16 sinks, 8 on each side backed up to each other. Along the hull areas of the room, showers and lockers are toward the back and off to the left of the sinks are closed toilets and open urinals.
There Head is mostly deserted, because almost everyone on the Battlestar has more important things to deal with, right now, other than showering. Most of the civilians are elsewhere, packed into the guest quarters, or still being herded in Engineering, where they came through the main airlock from the station. Who really knows? Some time has passed, but how much? In the back of the Head, a shower is on full blast. Steam rises from the stall in little puffs, and it's clearly been on for a while.
There's a little trail from the end of the sinks, down to the showers, one, two, five inch stiletto heeled shoes — strappy little silver numbers with delicate buckles and ties. They're discarded about four feet apart, one's tipped on its side. A few feet past that is a delicate white dress pooled on the decking in a careless tangle. A streak of red down the side. It isn't wine. The rush of the shower is the only sound.
Temperance enters the Head, following Cidra's orders. Her eyes vacant, she slips her boots off at the door, and keeps walking as she unzips her flight suit. Peeling that off like the outside of a banana, she drops that as well. Her eyes move over the shoes and the dress, and she stares at the red streak before calling out, "Hey. Hey, are you alright?" She keeps getting naked while she talks, reaching down to lift her tank top over her head, and shimmey out of her underwear.
Some people, like Sitka, have nothing to do but come in here and scrub off while waiting to be called out to the front lines again. It's an unlikely place to find the Captain of the dog and pony show, which means the wing must be pretty desperate. The heavy sound of boots hitting the deck is intermingled with a zipper being inched down and a crackle of neoprene. Fumbling hands manage to crank on one of the faucets once he reaches the sink, and water's cupped and used to drench his face, repeatedly. His head cocks toward Temperance when he spots the younger pilot drifting after the trail of high heeled shoes and bloody clothing; rather than address her, he simply watches in silence, while the tap runs.
There's no response from the back stall, just the rush of water pounding down, hot spray going down the drain, steam billowing out. The dress, if checked, has no actual damage to it, aside from the stain.
Temperance whirls around when Sitka turns on the tap, and stares at him blankly for a moment before gesturing with her head to the shower stall. Whether she'd be embarrassed at any other time about standing in front of an unknown man in her bra, it doesn't even register now. "Blood on th' dress," she says flatly. "Ain't sayin' nothin'." She shakes her head at him and stares blankly. "Might be hurt?" But she doesn't move to check, just stands there blinking at him.
If Temperance is spooked by his presence, then there's a shadow of the same in Ibrahim's blue eyes. There's also a fine tremble in his hands, still cupping a quantity of water that's growing less and less by the second as it seeps between his fingers. He remembers, finally, to douse his face with it, shakes out his hands, and cranks the tap off. "I'll take a look," is his hoarse reply. "O'Sullivan, right?" It's murmured with passing familiarity as he skirts around her and reaches over to rap on Santiago's stall door. "You all right in there?"
"Chief!" Damon's booming voice and the sound of fast-moving boots precede him into the head. "Chief Atreus in here?" he asks, poking his head in through the hatch and looking about.
Temperance nods slowly to Sitka and turns to watch him pound on the door. "Yeah, tha's me," she murmurs quietly. Damon enters and she stares at him too, before gesturing to the dress on the floor. "Was he dressed like a girl?" she says with a strained laugh. "'Cause if not, then no." She shrugs and reaches up to let her hair down from it's service ponytail. "There's a girl bleedin' in there," she adds as an afterthought.
"… No," comes a reply, though it's belated, and quite soft. Possibly only heard by Sitka, as he's the one nearest the door to the stall. There's no response to the welfare question, unless that was the response to the welfare question. It could have been a reply to the Tempe's words. Times like these, specificity goes out the window.
Temperance's joke earns a small, thin smile - more of an acknowledgement that Damon knows it was a joke than an actual humored response. "I can't frakkin' find him anywhere," he says, his voice hoarse and tired. Slow steps take him over to the sink, where he runs the tap and puts his hands under the hot water. He's surprised to find blood on his palms - when did he get cut? Or maybe the blood isn't even his. A muffled groan escapes his throat as he leans forward, resting on his elbows against the sink, hands sweeping back through his hair. "How you holdin' up?" he asks Temperance - he either didn't hear the part about the bleeding girl, or he's just not responding to it.
Sitka had started to knock again, but stills his hand when he hears that muted voice pipe up under the roar of a shower going full blast. The shoes aren't familiar, and neither is the dress, but that voice just might be. He hesitates a second, then pulls away. Two steps, crouch, fetch the bloodied dress. Three more to the left shoe, and another to the right. They're hooked over his fingers, startlingly delicate in contrast to a man who's anything but. Easing back to his feet again with a wince, he heads back for the bank of sinks. "Shower up," he tells Temperance. "We could be called back out there any minute." His voice is scratchy, and it's entirely possible he's hiding the worst of his nerves at the moment. "Haven't seen hide nor hair of him, PO," he murmurs to Damon in passing.
There's finally movement from within the stall, the sound of bare feet patting through puddled water on the decking's floor. It's subtle, probably missed over the sound of the shower's spray, and the conversation taking place outside the showers.
Temperance stares at Damon for a second, and then turns around, reaching behind her to unclasp and then remove her bra. Her back to them now, she walks forward and turns on a shower, sliding to the floor once the water's running, facing away from them to stare at the wall as the water streams down over her. "Yer bleedin'," she calls back to Damon a moment later.
Damon forgets to blink for nearly a minute straight as Temperance turns and takes off her bra, his entire body tense and rigid until she disappears into the shower. "Thanks," Damon finally mumbles in response to Sitka, shaking his head. Getting himself back to rights, he washes down his face a few times. Having not brought a towel, he just strips off his shirt and wipes himself off with it and starts heading back to the hatch. "I guess I'll keep on lookin'."
Sitka has set the shoes down on the sink meanwhile, cranked the tap back on, and is busying himself rinsing the blood out of that thousand cubit dress. "Might try paging him over the intercom," the Captain suggests, looking briefly sidelong to the deck technician.
Damon nods to Sitka, but says nothing more as he leaves to continue his search.
The water in the back stall shuts off, with a little squeak of the pipe as the faucet is turned. There's silence from inside for a long moment, just the occasional drip-drip-drip of the water as the very last of it drains. The sound of feet on the floor sounds again, and the stall door unlocks, and just cracks open a little.
Sitka soaks, wrings, rinses, and repeats. There's really no getting blood stains out of a white dress, but it's probably more to keep his hands busy than anything else. Temperance, though not strictly one of 'his', is watched after with his brows slightly furrowed in concern. Then the tap's cranked off, and a towel's snagged from the bin of clean ones beside the bank of sinks. He starts back for Santiago's stall, and tosses the heels down beside the door. "Not sure if you can get your hands on some soda water, but it might help.." With the blood. He slings the dress over the side of the stall, and hands her the towel wordlessly.
There's just a sliver of her face, and one eye visible, that little crack the door is open. Platinum blonde hair is slicked down to her head, water still dripping just past her eyes, lashes wet and clumped. She glances up as the dress is sling, the material smacking wetly against the door, then her gaze returns to the pilot outside the small space. There's no comment on the stain, on soda water. Fingers slide out to take hold of the door, the white tipped manicure of her nails is still, through it all, perfect. The door creaks slightly as it's opened more, and her arm snakes out to take hold of the towel, the tattoo up the inside of her left forearm heavy and black. There's only a slight tremor in her hand when she takes the towel, and a soft murmur of, "Mahalo." Her fingers wrap in the cloth, fisting tightly around the towel.
There isn't even any sarcastic commentary about her not having broken a nail. The towel's handed over wordlessly, and the pilot's eyes flicker along the length of exposed forearm for a second before shifting away again. "Not a problem," he murmurs, rough-voiced. There's an ache in his blue eyes that he does an admirable job of keeping fairly well smothered. "You'll want to report to guest quarters, I imagine, once you get out of here." And then, after a long hesitation, he turns and pulls away from the woman. His flight suit's hauled off his arms and shoulders as he moves, revealing a sweat-soaked tee shirt glued to his upper body beneath.
There's a pause, and the visible eye follows the pilot for just a moment as the towel disappears back into the stall, arm snaking back in. There's the sound of a towel being wrapped about a her body, tucked tight, then the dress being dragged off of the door, a whisper of wet fabric over metal. The stall door creaks open again, and Santiago steps out. She reaches up, runs her fingers back through her hair once, wipes her hand on the towel. Her hair stands in spikes in places, she doesn't seem to notice or care. Santi bends to sweep up the heels, which are worth almost as much as the dress, though hardly substantial enough to be called shoes. The strappy numbers dangle from her fingers, and her still-wet feet leave a trail of water-darkened footprints in her wake as she walks slowly toward the sinks. She does not appear to be bleeding. The silence persists — what to say? Finally, as she passes the sweat soaked pilot, the civilian whispers, "It was beautiful until they exploded."
Sitka is shivering very slightly, which Santiago may notice as she passes him on her route toward the sinks. Could just be the chill setting into sweat-soaked clothing and aching muscles not quite accustomed to work like this. Or it could be something else. He looks up briefly at her words, fixes his eyes on hers for a count of four or five, then continues toward the unoccupied shower at the end. The flight suit's shoved the rest of the way down, kicked into a corner, and his tee shirt's dragged off his head. He too doesn't seem to care if it musses up his hair. "It'll be all right," is mumbled softly before he ducks inside the stall. His shoulder contacts the wall heavily, some moments after the door's banged shut.
Santiago stops walking. She stands there, long, white dress dragging the floor, held barely over her arm. Shoes dangle from two fingers from a hand at her side, the toe of one resting against her bare knee, delicate silver fabric soaking up a few drops of water. She leans against the bulkhead, her forehead tipping against it for a moment. "Pau." She murmurs. A deep breath is taken. Then she blinks, and pushes off of the wall. She puts the dress down over the edge of the sink, and makes her way to the towel bin. She bends, extracts a fresh one, and silently pads back to the last stall, back to where the pilot has sequestered himself. She puts the shoes down, right into a little puddle of water, then reaches up, stretching on the tips of her toes to tuck the towel over the stall door, and side it silently halfway over. Her fingers crest over the top, smoothing it down so that its safely folded there.
By the time Santiago returns with the towel, the pilot's shed his remaining clothing to the floor of the shower, and switched on the faucet full blast. Steam rolls over the top, and the flimsy wall bulges just slightly where the full brunt of his one hundred eighty pounds still rests. And is likely to remain for some time.
Santiago's hand presses briefly against the door. Her fingernails drag down it, then she bends to retrieve her shoes. As she just spent the last … however long in there, sitting on the floor, she doesn't begrudge the man a heavy lean. No sarcastic comments follow. No jabs. She takes a breath, and murmurs. "Didn't like these shoes, anyway." She turns, and makes her way down the way, away from the showers again. Thunk, the heels go into the trash as she passes by it, on her way out of the Head. The Enlisted berthing isn't far, and so Santi goes, wearing a towel.