| Cidra and Pallas, Sitting in a Bunk |
| Summary: | Enter the twilight zone. Toast and Spiral share a drink, sing a song, and briefly discuss their parentage. |
| Date: | 4 Nov 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | None in particular, though it fits into the recent string of Weird Cidra Is Weird assorted goings-on. |
| Players: |
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| Pilot Berths - Naval Deck - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Post-Holocaust Day: #251 |
| The battlestar's pilots call this place home. Bunks line the walls with grey curtains to cover their sleeping areas. Lockers sit between each pair of bunks and a round metal table sits in the center, furnished with simple but comfortable steel chairs. A hatch at the rear of the room leads to a communal head. |
| Condition Level: 3 - All Clear |
Pallas sits in his bunk, his privacy curtain half-drawn, his boots hanging over the edge. Smoke periodically spills out from it, which is to be expected. What isn't, however, is the sound of music. Some sort of bluesy guitar riff from the sounds of it, though Gods only know how he got his hands on a guitar. There's a short pause in the middle of the song, and the unmistakable clinking of glass bottles. Another puff of smoke, and the music resumes.
Cidra is tucked away in her own bunk. The CAG has been a relatively rare sight around the berthings for the past month and change, apart from whirlwind appearances to shower in the Head and change at the beginning of each of her shifts. She's avoided sleeping there. Though she's made something of a return during the past week. Her privacy curtain is closed, presently, though it edges open at the sound of music. Out peeks her head. Intrigued Cidra is intrigued.
There's a sudden cacophonous clatter; a bottle drops off his bunk and falls to the floor with a sharp noise. "Frak," comes the muttered curse. More banging and clanging as Pallas gets up in the small bunk with the guitar, which he wields - fittingly - like a drunk. The bottle, which is spilling some sort of potent-smelling clear liquid on the floor, is righted. And that's when he catches sight of Cidra's head peeking out from her bunk. "The frig are you doin' in here?" he asks her.
"Good evening, Spiral," Cidra says mildly, the barest hint of a smile playing on her lips. It's a tired sort of expression, and more rueful than anything else. She exits her bunk properly, striding languidly toward him. For a long beat she says nothing. Eyeing him. Eyeing the bottle. Sniff, sniff. "What are you drinking?" The question is also mild, and curious. A pause. "May I have some?"
Pallas eyes Cidra with suspicion. Smiling, approaching him, and asking to join him in a drink? This has to be a trap of some sort. "Only because you asked so nicely," he says with a half-sneer. He shuffles over to make room for her should she want to sit down, even though the guitar's blocking off half his bunk the way it's sitting horizontally in his lap. "This…" he holds out the bottle to her. "Some kind of shine. Who cares what it is?"
Cidra does indeed sit down. In Pallas' bunk. Her feet are bare. She tucks them up so her legs are folded under her. "I have never cared much for alcohol, really. There are things that muss with the senses in ways I find much more…pleasant. But. Beggars, we cannot be choosers, yes?" A little toast to this idea before she sips. She makes a face. Swallowing with an audible gulp. But she does sip a second time before handing it back to him. "I presume this will not leave me dead or blind?" She eyes him, as if in search of signs of creeping death and/or blindness.
Pallas shrugs. "Never took a flame to it, so who knows?" He watches her closely as she drinks, curious at this turn of events. "So what has gone so catastrophically wrong that you're barefoot in the berths and drinking? With me?" he asks. He's not one for subtlety. "And better yet, did you frak up or did someone else?" The cigarette between his lips expires, and he lights up another one - and offers the pack to Cidra.
"We are all frakked up, Spiral," Cidra notes in a philosophical sort of way. "Some of us just hide it better than others. And what? Am I not human? Can I not be barefoot in my own home? Such as any of us have a home anymore." And one she hasn't been strictly occupying for the past several weeks. Not that she mentions that. She does take the offered cigarette, and she'll also bum a light if one is available. "As for the latter…you had the drink. Seemed a logical choice. What were you playing? A moment ago."
"That's a bullshit evasive answer if I ever heard one," Pallas says. He strikes a match and holds it out for Cidra to light off of. Sitting back, he lets the question hang unanswered as he idly fingers the frets without playing anything. "Blues," he says simply, snapping out of it long enough to reach out and reclaim his bottle. Three quick shots in succession are taken straight from the bottle, then he hands it back to the CAG. "The musical equivalent to booze and cigarettes."
Cidra reclaims the bottle and sip, sip, sips. She does not shoot them as professionally as Pallas. Her drinking involves a lot of gulping and some wincing. But drink she does. "Bullshit evasive, is it?" she echoes mildly. Then she laughs. A rich chuckle, though gods knows why she finds it so funny. Just an "Ah" when he elaborates on the music. "Blues. Sad music. Well. That is not unfitting. Play some more, please." And she just sits there, watching him and smoking and waiting for him to play.
"Sad music?" Pallas scoffs. "Only to those who're looking for sad music." He leaves it at that, though, and positions himself in the corner of his bunk with the guitar in his lap. Slowly, his eyes close, and his fingers crawl across the frets with practiced precision. It's a soulful music that's brought forth from that six-string, perhaps surprisingly so considering the musician. Clumps of ash fall from the tip of his cigarette, but he pays no mind - he's lost in the music, eyes still closed, his body swaying with the beat.
Cidra leans her head against the side of Pallas' bunk. Just sitting there, smoking and listening. At first, at least. Eventually, though, when she has as sense of the tune, she tries to vocalize along. Not sing. No words. Just notes, emitted in her low alto. She's not a bad singer, though her ability to run up and down the scale speaks more or vocal training than of any natural talent.
The only indication that Pallas even notices Cidra's singing is a slight twitch of his lips when she starts. It doesn't interrupt his playing, though, and he starts playing through each phrase twice so she can learn the progression quickly. After a couple minutes, his voice adds to the mix. Just a deep, low hum, harmonizing roughly with the anchoring notes of each phrase. He's not on pitch, but somewhere in the right vicinity, at least enough to give a good idea of what it should sound like.
"~Da-Dum-Dum…~" Cidra keeps running the notes, in more correct time with the music when Pallas joins her in it, as she has vocals to go along with. She takes it a key lower, as if following his lead in that. She can hit the notes, but probably never got any solos in whatever choir she obviously learned how to do this in. "~Va-Da-Dum…Va-Da-Dum…~" Eventually she does pause. To smoke some more. But the fingers of her off-hand continue to tap along.
The song slowly winds down, ending in a half-diminished seventh chord. Pallas hums with it all the way to the end, then opens his eyes as if waking from a dream. They take a moment to focus on Cidra. "Didn't peg you for a musical type," he says, though the comment is neutral. Ashing his cigarette onto the floor, he adds as an afterthought, "Maybe you do have a soul after all, then."
"Perhaps," Cidra replies, tone low and dry as to the matter of whether or not she has a soul. She's inscrutable on the subject. More to the point she adds, "My mother made my sisters and I sing in her Temple's choir. It was only proper, for the priestess's daughter. Josseline…the youngest…she was the one with the real talent for it. I never did surpassing well with artistic matters."
Pallas only grunts in reply to that, reaching out to reclaim the bottle. Drink, drink, pass. His gaze rests on Cidra for a moment before he puts the guitar down, letting it stand and rest against his bunk frame. "And the priestess' daughter becomes CAG," he says dryly. "You…" He shakes his head, leaving whatever sentence he was about to say unspoken. There's still a swaying to his body, so maybe it wasn't just the music but also the drink that was affecting him during their little performance.
"That is the short of it, yes," Cidra says, drinking again when the bottle is passed to her. Then passing it back. She's not wincing so much anymore when she takes her pulls. "I nearly took vows myself. To the goddess Athena." She idly stretches her left tattooed arm. The one inked with the long spear. "Joined the Fleet instead. I would have been a rather crap priestess. My mother was."
Cidra is sitting in Pallas' bunk. They are drinking and smoking.
Andrea pushes open the door, laughing as she walks in. "Ah, that was fanTASTic." She lets the room in general know as she peels out of the altered flight suit she'd worn for the HALO event. "Absolutely brilliant. We have gotta do that more often, yeah?"
"My mother was good at what she did," Pallas says, still in that dry tone of voice. "Of course, she was a whore." He glances over her tattooed arm. And since this has already been a completely odd night, what with the guitar and singing and all, maybe his next move isn't so strange as it normally might seem: he reaches out and traces the spear of her tattoo with his finger. "Pallas Athena," he remarks ironically. Then suddenly withdraws the finger like a burglar caught in the act when Andrea enters, looking over his shoulder to the door.
"Pallas Athena…" Cidra repeats, as if she'd just put that together herself. She smiles that bare hint of a smile. "Indeed." No disapproval to his touching of her. Or any reaction beyond that faint smile and a long look down at his finger. Which may be an odd reaction from her, in and of itself. Though her gaze does roll up, and over, to follow his upon Andrea's entry. She also straightens up a notch as if she were caught doing something less innocuous than drinking with one of her pilots. Which, in and of itself, is kind of weird.
Andrea hasn't been around long enough to know Cidra's being weird, but she does know Spiral, and she smiles as she approaches them. The dude was looking very much like he had been enjoying himself. No wonder he looked like a kid caught elbow deep in the cookie jar. "Spiral, Toast, we just had an AMAZING drop training, followed up by some great small arms practice. Absolutely brilliant." Suddenly her lips tweak, just a bit. "Major, allow me to introduce you to Lt. Dryson Burns of the Battlestar Pegasus, top notch intel officer."
Pallas just regards Andrea with a bland look - the kind of look that makes those unsure of themselves wither up and wonder just what it is they're doing wrong. At least it's not a full-on glare. "You're a frakking Viper pilot," is all he says, distaste dripping from his words. The bottle is left with Cidra as he stands up, grabs his guitar, and leaves the two of them behind in his own bunk.
"Ah…" is Cidra's only immediate reaction to Pallas departure. "Ah. Yes." She clears her throat. "Thank you very much for the beverage, Lieutenant Ellinon." She exits his bunk as well, leaving the bottle to occupy it by itself. She's not entirely steady on her feet, though she didn't get deep enough into whatever the frak Pallas was drinking to be bouncing off the walls. "Hosedown. Where?" She blinks, looking about for this Intel gentleman from the Pegasus.
"At least you're admitting that much, now." Andrea calls after him, then shakes his head, turning back to Cidra with an apologetic smile. "An old joke between Spiral and I, sir. I am sorry if I interrupted a nice moment."
"You did not interrupt anything nice of any kind," Cidra says. Firmly. "Good night, Hosedown." And she proceeds back to her bunk, where she just kind of falls in and pulls the privacy screen closed. Well, she'll definitely be sleeping in the berthings *tonight* at any rate.
"Well, no reason to be sorry, then." Andrea says, mostly to herself. Shaking her head with a smile, she finishes pulling out of the gear. Nice night.