| Convictions |
| Summary: | Pallas pays Tisiphone a visit in the Brig. |
| Date: | 27 Jul 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | None. |
| Players: |
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| Officer's Brig - Deck 6 - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Post-Holocaust Day: #150 |
| These pair of cells are roomier than one might expect. Each one is provided individual access by a door at the front, located on the other side of the room from the hatch. Each one essentially an armored glass cage, this area is walked and guarded by Marines day and night. Privacy not being a huge concern for prisoners, inside the cell is a single bunk and toilet in full view with nothing else. All visitors must sign-in with the Marine at the desk. Cameras are located at the entrance and on the cell itself, everything recorded onto disk in the Security Hub. |
| Condition Level: 3 - All Clear |
Just how ironic is it that Junior Lieutenant Apostolos is being held in the same cell she tried to fire a clip's worth of armor-piercing rounds into, not days before?
Magic 8 Ball says: REALLY FRAKKING IRONIC.
A half-eaten tray of what is euphemistically termed 'food' is sitting on her bunk, long since cold. Tisiphone stands at the sink, the tap running, and brushes her teeth. No doubt to clear the taste of 'food' from her mouth. Whisk whisk whisk, spit. Whisk whisk, spit. Is there a SinkCam installed in the cell? She wouldn't be surprised. All foam, all the time, babies.
Magic Hate Ball says: PALLAS ALARM. His arrival is heralded by commotion before he comes in view of Tisiphone's cell. Apparently the security pat-down is a bit more difficult when you try to take away a half-drunk man's flask. In the end, they let him through with it - after all, it's not as dangerous as a bottle. And it sure as hell ain't worth the trouble. To his credit, he's not to the stumbling point yet, just not quite walking in a straight line. He comes to a rest leaning sideways against the glass and takes a drink, clinking it against the transparent wall in an ironic toast.
What's this? One of her favourite people on the Battlestar come to see her, somewhere she can't get away? Oh, he /shouldn't/ have. Tisiphone looks back over her shoulder, expression dull and shuttered. Stares for a few seconds. Pointedly looks back to the sink, and finishes her final rinse-and-spit. Finally, maybe twenty or thirty seconds later, she turns, wipes the corners of her mouth with the edge of her thumb, and starts limping heavily toward the glass. There are a pair of crutches stacked by the bunk, but they appear to be some sort of Medical-themed ornament. "You drinking hydraulic fluid again?" As curt and scratchy as dropping one's ass on a pinecone.
Pallas's eyes are strangely downcast, staring down at his boots until she speaks. Then they begin a haphazard journey to the flask, then to her. "Aquarian moonshine," he says, shaking the flask. "Been saving this." Down the hatch goes another shot. He licks the flavor clean from the inside of his mouth, scouring his teeth and gums for every last drop of the liquor. For someone who came in to visit her, he's not very talkative. On top of that, he seems to be in the grip of some dark mood - which, for him, is probably saying a lot. The silence is broken with an abrupt question: "Was it worth it?"
A black mood /before/ he's good and sauced? Something Serious(tm) is afoot. Tisiphone's eyes are reddened and glassy with pain meds — being shot in the stomach means never having to say no to morpha — which could also explain the careless bonelessness of her slouch against the glass, arms folded in front of her as a prop. She swings her injured leg back and forth, back and forth, before tapping the toe once against the glass. TONK. "What do YOU think?" she asks back. "Court-martial's in a couple days. You gonna be there? Rubbing your hands and smiling?" A flippant, acidic grin is flashed, then gone like it was never there, a second later.
"What's the charge?" Pallas asks. It's not just a passing query, either - he seems genuinely interested to know what they're trying to stick her with. He watches her through the glass out of the corner of his eye, his gaze still fixated elsewhere. "Brig seems nicer than the last one I was in," he comments offhand with a shrug. "Frak if this Fleet knows what it's doing anymore." A mouthful of moonshine washes away the disgusted twist on his lips.
"Damage to Military Property. Violation of Ship Security Procedures." Tisiphone wiggles pale fingers as she counts the charges off. The last one she pauses on, and snorts softly at. "Improper Discharge of a Firearm. No frakking /shit/, sherlocks." She unfolds one arm and slaps her palm against the glass — WHAP! — before refolding it. If the firearm had been properly discharged, she wouldn't be here in the first place. Her head tips forward and rests against the glass, foggy eyes closing. "So far. JAG suit's wishy-washy on the final details. Someone's pissed it's not Attempted Murder, I bet. There's a frakking laugh, hey?" So flippant.
Pallas gives a start when she slaps the glass. Just a twitch of the head and a blink, but it definitely surprises him. Giving her a sidelong glance, he snorts, something akin to a smile on his face. It would almost be a smile but for the dark expression in his eyes that taints it. "It's not murder when you turn off a frakking computer," he says simply. That just about sums it up right there. "I figured Disobeying a Lawful Order and Negligent Discharge. I would've fought both." He takes another swig and almost starts holding the flask out to Tisiphone before realizing, durr, glass. "What'd you've done differently?"
There's a soft snort from Tisiphone when the flask starts to come her way. "I'd say, send it through the hatch, man-" A slight roll of her head, toward the hatch her meals are passed through. "-except it'll just bring the Marines over in a re-e-eal bad mood, re-e-eal damn quick." She seems distracted for a time, watching the foot on the end of her injured leg again swing back and forth, back and forth. TONK goes her toe, back into the glass, as if it was a gavel calling her back into the conversation. "I'm not fighting the charges," she points out, before detouring abruptly to: "All I would've changed? I would've made sure the AP rounds actually were gonna /work/." Even as she says it, she shifts restlessly, frowning sullenly at some distant point. The face of someone lying, and lying poorly.
Pallas narrows his eyes at her, watching her shift and frown. "Don't frakking bullshit me, Godsdamn it!" he shouts, slamming his fist into the glass. The change is sudden and unpredictable: one moment, he's a calm and mostly lucid Pallas; the next, he's a wild spinning Spiral. "Is that all this ship is made of? Everyone frakking says one thing but their actions say the opposite." Facing fully toward her now, he leans toward the glass with both forearms resting against it, bringing his face as close to it as possible. "If you're a frakking coward who wishes she'd never even tried instead of at least failing, you better own it."
WHAM! goes Spiral's fist, loud but utterly pointless, against the bulletproof glass, and Tisiphone's head snaps up from whatever bit of sulkiness she'd wallowed down into. The pale, glassy eyes narrow, gone from flippant to resentful in as much time as it took the older pilot to perform his own Jeckyll and Hyde. "Bite me, Spiral," she replies to him, enunciated coldly and clearly. "Frakking. BITE. ME." She pushes back angrily from the glass, palms slapping loudly at it, and remembers on that first step back that her leg /really/ wishes she'd stop walking on it. It turns the smooth motion into a sudden, stumbling lurch before she regains her balance. "Did I say I wish I'd never tried? NO. Did I realize what a frakking clusterfrak I was going to leave behind? /NO/." Her teeth set, there, for a second, before she continues. "Am I trying to-" An angry slash of her hands that sends her wobbling again, teeth flashing in some feral twist. "-trying to own it, clusterfrak and all? YES. Don't you /dare/ frakking tell me I'm a frakking coward."
"Bullshit," Pallas snarls. "It's written clear as frakking day on your face that you're lying. I thought that you, of all people, would - " He breaks off abruptly from that sentence, pushing himself back from the glass with his arms. Back to the cell, he finishes off what's left in his flask and throws it to the floor so hard that it dents. "Hell, you're probably happy that Toast has completely lost her frakking mind and folded the reservists into the Black Knights. Is this the Fleet or a Gods-be-damned daycare?" With a display of surprising speed, the old man is right back to the glass. "This is a frakking time of war, Apostolos. Don't you frakking show any remorse for shooting the damned enemy!" Whether or not she actually expressed any is far beside the point right now for him.
"I, of all people, would frakking what? /What?/" Tisiphone shouts back at his snarled words, crossing the distance back to the glass with one stomping stride. She'll feel that in the morning until her breakfast painkiller arrives. SLAP! go her palms against the glass, as she glares out at him. "You're right, okay? You're frakking right. I'm lying. If I did it over again, I'd just frakking go and /do it/, because all trying to make it easier on anyone did was blow right the frak up in my frakking face." For a moment, she looks close to tears — eyes very bright, that nearly-imperceptible quiver to the bloodless line of her mouth — before it's shoved away somewhere deep with the baring of her teeth. "You're so frakking desperate to spit on me for what I did, make it something I actually did. Wishing I hadn't tried to kill that frakking thing isn't one of them."
"Spit on you?" Pallas laughs. "I came to frakking - " What did he come for? From the look on his face, he's not all too sure himself. Or at least, he can't exactly put it into words. Through a haze of alcohol, he tries to make sense of his own thoughts, the labor of it evident on his visage - but to no end. "You of all people should have the spine to see through what you've started," he finally slurs, but he isn't really satisfied with that. It's the best he can do. "Because there're few enough people who'll frakking stand up for what they believe in anymore. Because everybody's frakking compromising or cowering for fear of rank, and that's what'll kill us all in the end."
Tisiphone stands there, leaning up against the glass, her mouth twitching as her teeth set, shift against eachother, then set again. Twitchy little breaths through flared nostrils. Covetous looks sneaked at the poor dented flask. She'll never be able to joke about being willing to kill for a drink again, will she? Finally, with a scowl, she says, "Love of the gods, but you're frakking confusing." /That's/ honest, at least.
"I'm the simplest frakking person on the ship," Pallas replies. "I say what I mean. What I say, I mean. How frakking confusing is that?" He says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "It's all these dripping lizardcunts that say one thing and hide their own agendas that're the problem. It's frakking hard enough when the enemy is in your midst, but when you can't even trust others in uniform to do… to be… ah, frak it." He turns to leave, but stops for a moment in the hatchway. "Have a drink waiting for you when you bust out of this shithole."
"I lie for shit, man," Tisiphone mutters. "Only frakking alternative is to lay everything out there, you know?" Bony shoulders jostle in a shrug, the tense anger still written across her narrow frame. She looks away from the departing Pallas, scrubbing a hand over her shorn scalp, then blows out a sigh as she looks back to him. "As long as it's not that frakking fermented tar again? You're on." She shakes her head, somewhere between bemused and defeated, and turns to hobble back toward her bunk.
Pallas bends down to pick up his flask and stows it in his pocket. "I keep the good shit for people who actually manage to kill the enemy," he says, glancing back over his shoulder. "You might get an A for effort, Cumshot, but in my books that only gets you the dregs from the stash. Try harder next time." With that, he's off to Gods-know-where. Probably to refill the flask.