PHD #142: Empty
Empty
Summary: "Maybe- you die well enough, and the Lords and Ladies look past the rites. Maybe all it takes is someone else taking their obolus down for them-" Like it was a bread-run to the corner store, and didn't involve dying. "-and it's forgiven." Her head rests against the side of the bunk-frame. "Maybe they're all out there adrift until we all start over again."
Date: 18 Jul 2041 AE
Related Logs: Bye Bye Birdie - Air Wing; Sacrifices
Players:
Tisiphone Cidra Devlin 
Pilot Berths - Naval Deck - Battlestar Cerberus
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.
Post-Holocaust Day: #142

Tisiphone's been a busy little Junior Lieutenant since their narrow escape from Audumbla Anchorage. Condition Two means overlapping CAPs — she signed up for the first one she could after signing off on her bashed bird, and then swapped in for a second, only four hours after landing from the previous one. A little questionable, that, but when the CAG's looking one way, and the LSO is juggling All Hands On Deck, and someone steps up, all stim-bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, it gets harder to say 'no'.

It's been fourty-eight hours or so since then, and she's looking like they all did in those Bad Old Days just after Warday — scraped out and left to dry like a pilot-shaped gourd. She'll make a fine drum, if it keeps up much longer. She sits at the table nearest her bunk, face propped in her hand, staring vacantly at the bunks opposite from her, her cigarette burning down to a cylinder of ash.

Cidra has not exactly logged a lot of time in the berthings over the past two days. Between the intensive CAP schedule, the ongoing communication issues that require attention from their Raptors, and the general clusterfrak of work available to keep her occupied. Not being able to stop moving can be a blessing. She swung back in for a few hours sleep and a shower, and it emerging from the Head now. Headed over to her locker to change with all deliberate speed. She can't pause now. Any break any motion disrupts the inertia.

The sound of the hatch opening startles Tisiphone — she looks over with a nerve-jangly snap that fractures the ash from her cigarette across the table. Tired shoulders straighten a little as she pushes up from her slouch. "Sir," she greets, scratchy-soft. A long silence follows, uncertain and awkward. "You're- How are you-" Gods, what a question to ask. She actually cringes faintly that she's trying to say it at all. In the end, she stalls for time, dragging on her cigarette, instead. Watching.

Towel dropped once her locker's open and Cidra gets to getting her blues on. Eyes fixed on her things within, paying rather more attention to smooth out wrinkles and neatly do up buttons than she usually does. She does the buttons up, and down, and up again a full three times. She can't seem to get them straight. Fingertips not quite wanting to do what she wills them to. "Apostolos." There is no answer to her question, though her ragged tone could suffice as one.

"Have you had a chance to sleep yet, Sir?" Tisiphone eases back with a wince in her chair, working her shoulders as if she'd been slouching forward a long while and her muscles had stiffened. "Too many shifts on the stims and it gets rough, you know?" Pale eyes twitch uncertainly over the CAG's frame before she adds, "How's your face? Did he hurt you?"

Cidra finally manages to get her jacket done up in some semblance of a straight-buttoned manner. Fully dressed now, she reaches for a comb to start fixing her hair in its standard on-duty bun. "I am cognizant to fly if necessary," is her reply to that. It's the only answer Tisiphone is going to get. She runs the comb through her damp hair, eyes intent on her face in the small mirror. It keeps both her hands occupied, which seems to be something she's very much trying to do right now. Though Tisiphone's question makes her stop. Right hand reaching down to run her fingertips along her jawline. "I am not…" She trails off to revise her reply. "…I am not injured. He did not…" Her voice is on point of breaking. So she just has to take a moment to stare at her mirror. Avoiding looking anywhere outside her locker. Fingertips still resting on her jaw. "How is he?"

"Caught him for a couple minutes in the galley just after we all came in. Haven't seen him since. He's in the other group of CAPs." Tagging in when she's tagging out. Tisiphone's voice is a little remote. "Sure he's cooled down by now. It's…" Again, she falters away to silence broken only by a drag on her cigarette. "Can I help with something, Sir?" It's a little frustrated, as if she's anticipating an answer already. "We can't afford to lose you."

Cidra makes a fist, as if forcing herself to get her fingers back in working order. Then forces her hand back to affixing her hair. "Just keep flying, Money Shot. That is what we do." There is a bitterness underlying her tone now that she makes no effort whatsoever to mask. Locker is slammed shut. It may be more jarring, given how composed and careful she generally is. "That is what we have done without fail for this ship."

"It's what we do until we fly apart at the seams, yeah," Tisiphone points out, her voice a little more heated with frustration. Her chair squawks against the floor as she pushes it out, leaves her cigarette behind, and stalks over. Arms folded across chest, one shoulder leaned into a nearby bunk. Frowning. "Sir." Words. There should be words, here. She lowers her head, scrubs agitatedly at her stubby hair, looks up again. "You can't flay yourself to bits over this." So saieth she. She's a mighty Jig, now. She has authoritay.

"Fight and fly and die." Cidra bites the words off with that same bitterness. Like she's throwing them back in her own teeth. She's not too big on words at the moment, either. She leans heavy on her locker. Still not looking at Tisiphone. The woman is all about eye contact, generally. Not so much at the moment, however. She's quiet for a long stretch of moments. When she finally does speak again, it's off on a different sort of tangent entirely. "You ever wonder what happens to a soul cast to the oblivion, Money Shot? No rites. No hereafter. I wonder of that a lot. What it is like to be…empty. Forever."

Devlin arrives from the Deck 4.

"All the time." Is it unnerving or odd that Tisiphone has such a prompt agreement to that question? Maybe it's just yet another Quaint Saggie Trait. "Can't sleep for it, some nights. Chapel doesn't help." She shrugs faintly as she says that, as if it's obvious that the gods have no answers forthcoming about those beyond their divine line of sight. "Maybe- you die well enough, and the Lords and Ladies look past the rites. Maybe all it takes is someone else taking their obolus down for them-" Like it was a bread-run to the corner store, and didn't involve dying. "-and it's forgiven." Her head rests against the side of the bunk-frame. "Maybe they're all out there adrift until we all start over again." It's not much of an answer at all.

Devlin slips in through the hatch, not looking like he's sneaking, exactly, but just vaguely ill at ease, like he knows he doesn't quite belong there. But curious, too. It's a combination that sees his pace across the room a little bit stop-and-start, but it doesn't take a long look around for him to apparently guess which bunk he's seeking out. He moves towards the very, very pink top bunk the other pilots already know (and he has guessed) belongs to Psyche. It takes him a minute to spot Cidra at the locker, and then another minute to decide whether he ought to interrupt long enough to salute. He opts for formality, knocking off a salute that doesn't seem automatic yet and offering, "Major," a glance around at Tisiphone, "Lieutenant." Just in case he's wrong he adds, "Sirs. Evening."

If it's a quaint trait, it's one their colonies share. The similarities come up in funny places. And just as quickly take sharp turns to complete alien difference in other matters. "Perhaps…" Cidra does not agree particularly with any one part of that. But she clings to the 'perhaps' for all of it. "I do not expect forgiveness. It gave my mother fits when I joined flight training. She thought I had done just to dig at her. You know what? Perhaps that was part of it. It never seemed real until…and then everything that mattered was gone. But I would have done it myself, Money Shot. I would have done it in a heartbeat. Scattered myself to the stars. Because I *believed* I served something greater than myself. Something that *mattered*. And when you are a part of something like that it…it fills you up in the empty places…" She trails off. Just continuing to lean. The sound of Devlin's voice makes her turn. For a second she just stares at him, and his salute. "Midshipman Alexis Devlin." A pause. "Hello."

"If the Lords and Ladies don't- understand-" It's not /quite/ the word Tisiphone wants, but she can't seem to find a better one. "-sacrifice in a time of war, Sir, we've all got bigger problems on our hands." The look she offers the CAG isn't comforting in the least, full of her own tar-black mirth. If the Jig was a gambling girl, there wouldn't be anything better than even odds on her theory. "All we can…" she begins, trailing off as well when Devlin speaks. She looks over. Blinks. Looks Devlin over a second time, as if seeing him with a fresh pair of eyes. "Midshipman." As if she didn't hear correctly. "You were on maintenant two weeks ago."

Devlin winces very faintly as Cidra says his full name, apparently (and who could blame him) not altogether fond of the suffix to his first name being spoken aloud. "Hello," he replies after a pause of his own. He follows it up with an easy, friendly smile, brows lifting as he asks, "Am I interrupting? I'm sorr—" the apology is cut off by Tisiphone speaking, and he nods, replying, "Yeah, I was. I enlisted last week after the major," he nods at Cidra, "Mentioned my time with freighters was enough to make me useful."

"I expect not pity from the Lords and Ladies, Apostolos." It is not comfort Cidra is seeking. She's just talking. "You do not have to salute me in the berthings, Midshipman. Such would make getting dressed and such rather awkward." It is deadpanned in a dry sort of way, though it lacks any kind of real humor. She keeps just looking at him. Blue eyes not at all inscrutable at the moment. Mostly, she just looks very sorry. "You can back out, you know. I would not call you a coward. We can see it done today if such is your wish."

Tisiphone's sun-bleached brows shoot up slightly on her pale forehead, then furrow together as they lower. Her uncertain, awkward expression shutters up as she holds her hands out, fingers spread, palms toward the CAG, as if to say whoa or I surrender. "Wasn't suggesting you wanted to be pitied, Sir." She pushes up off the bunk-frame and turns, making her way back to the table she left behind. Her boots scuff against the floor. Picking up her cigarette from the ashtray she left it in, she finds it dead, cold ash. With a sigh, she digs into her pocket, pale eyes slanting over to Devlin.

Devlin blinks at that offer, though he otherwise meets Cidra's gaze. He isn't typically inscrutable, and certainly isn't now, that steady look backing up his shake of his head. "Thank you, major," he says, voice more even, more assured, than that hesitant, apologetic greeting. His smile has faded. "But no. I appreciate the offer, but I knew what I was getting into when I agreed. I made my choice, and I have no intention of going back on it."

"Knew what you were getting into, did you?" Cidra just keeps looking steadily at Devlin. "Well. You are one up better on me, then. I shall leave you to it. Good hunting, Money Shot." And with that, off she goes. Out of the berthings and off to some particular duty or other.

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