| Fear the Reaper |
| Summary: | Merrell meets up with Tisiphone in the Chapel and delivers some bizarre information. |
| Date: | 14 Apr 2041 |
| Related Logs: | None |
| Players: |
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| Chapel |
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| Whatever. Its in the set pose. We know what the Chapel looks like. Right? Right. |
| Post Holocaust Day: #45 |
Later in the evening, the day after the attacks, things are still rough in the chapel. There are people everywhere on stretchers, the wounded having overflowed here to the Chapel. During the day the normal bustle is abundant with nurses attending to different people. However this late, things have died down. A few of the nurses still move around to check vitals and administer care but its not as hectic. With the lights low, most are asleep. Robin is sitting next to a young woman who's taken some bad burns, her body leaned forward in a chair that would otherwise appear empty. The normal concern that's on her face is there, but its not directed towards anyone else right now. Just the woman in front of her. Otherwise very still, her lips move in a repeated prayer.
Most are asleep — including Tisiphone, who dragged herself in maybe an hour ago, looking two blinks from falling asleep on her feet. She trudged directly to one of the wide, stadium-stepped benches, maybe three or four rows from the front, and stretched herself out, belly-down, arms folded above her head. She's pulled this routine before — for several days just after Warday, and sporadically, since her crash-and-burn. If all else fails, the Chapel will let her sleep.
It never promised it'd let her sleep for /long/, though — after about an hour, she says, with suddenly clarity, "I said-" and snaps her head up, blinking in confusion at something that's no longer there. A few seconds come and go before she groans and pushes herself around to a seated position. The thin, whispery click of bone beads sliding against eachother can be heard, as she starts drawing out her prayer beads. She glances around absently as she winds them around her wrist, the gesture almost careless it's been done so often.
Robin looks up at the voice and hesitates. The last time they saw each other it didn't go so well. She does rise though and make a blessing motion over the burned woman. Wit ha hard swallow she takes a few slow steps in Tisi's direction. "Sir," she says quietly. Her eyes move over the wounded as her hands fold behind her back. "Just here to watch over the wounded. I don't mean to cause trouble. I promise. I'm sorry for my words last time, too, in the galley. That won't happen again." Its been more than a week since anyone has seen her.
About halfway through winding the beads around her wrist, Tisiphone pauses to grasp them in her casted fingers, just above the tassels, giving them an abrupt flick. Almost like a fly-swatter. The tassels curl around her good forearm with a thwip sound, and her teeth set, just for a moment, as they do. She mutters something under her breath, and continues winding the beads away. She's nearly done when Robin's voice reaches her; she freezes for a second, as if suddenly transformed to a mannequin, before a blink gives her away. The next blink reminds her to keep moving, which she does. Wind, wind. "I thought we were friends," she notes, quietly, without looking back at what everyone else would deem as empty air. "What's with the 'sir'?"
Robin allows the edge of a smile but it doesn't really last. "Yeah, just not sure how to approach sometimes. I figured calling you 'sir' might be a little easier to deal with." She clears her throat and looks back towards the burned woman. "I used to work with her in Engineering. Specialist Delray. I..think she can hear me." There's something uncomfortable about the way she says it, attention on Delray before looking back to Tisiphone. "I'm glad you were okay. I must have looked at every bunk trying to find you all."
"Yeah, well. You try to talk to me while there's someone there who'll think I'm bugfrak insane for doing so, things are gonna go straight to Hades real damn quick." Tisiphone looks down at her prayer beads, her ragged-gnawed nails scratching soundlessly at the worn chips of bone. "So she's dying, then?" Her voice is still low; maybe those within range think she's praying. Maybe not. "That's what you're thinking? Gods Above and Below, do we have anyone /left/ in Engineering at this point?" Her mouth presses into a thin line for a moment before she continues. "Yeah, I- haven't been there a lot. If I'm not helping clean up, I'm in Sickbay, pretty much."
Robin dips her head. "Aye, sir. Yeah, that wasn't funny. Like I said, that won't happen again. I was just trying to bring some levity to the moment. I wasn't thinking." She really is sorry about it. But there's a nod. "Yeah. The specialist probably won't make it. Engineering is taking some bad losses. I'm not entirely sure why she can see me, either. Its..I don't know." Robin clasps her hands in front of her and finally looks up to meet Tisi's eyes. "Uhm. Tis? I need to pass a few things along to you. Or someone. Soon. If you don't want to hear it, I understand. I can find someone else if you'd prefer but I depserately don't want to upset you."
"I'm way too frakking tired to get upset right now, Robin." She looks it, too. That might've been the first hour's sleep she's had, since all hell broke loose. "And I-" Tisiphone trails off, shaking her head. Her bony shoulders sink, deflating as she sighs. "I sure as frak don't want the last time I ever see you to be in anger. You're stuck for the rest of eternity with my llama. How much would it suck for it to feel begrudged? Seriously." There's a quiet snort; maybe it's meant to be a laugh. She looks up from her prayer-beads, glancing sidelong back at Robin.
Robin's face turns into a genuine smile - something she probably hasn't done in a long time. "It will be a llama-filled eternity that I will cherish forever. Next time I visit, I'll bring him, too, so you can say hi." She then wets her lips and glances to the alter. A deep breath is taken, a quick prayer said before she looks back to Tisiphone. "Ensign? I've been asked to pass along a few things to you all. Not from relatives, either." She pauses, a little uneasy. "I need to pass along a few items of importance to humanity. Things you might need to pass along for me to other people. I- Do you want to hear them or should I go to someone else?"
"You're starting to freak me out. 'Are you sure? Are you really sure? No, I mean it, are you sure?'" Tisiphone's expression is more a brittle smirk than a smile, but the dull light in her sleety eyes thaws a little. "Yeah. Just- hit me before I have a chance to reconsider. Who's this coming up — coming down? — from?" Deliberately casual. She takes memos from Zeus all the time, of course. She might look a little more casual if she didn't draw her knees up toward her chest, and loop her good arm around her shins, casted fingers caught into the edge of her prayer-beads.
"Heh, yeah. I know. Like I said, just not looking to cause problems." Robin looks uneasy, standing there in front of the alter. She settles down slowly to her knees as if in prayer and tilts her head a bit. "Who its coming from is- ah- well its important so you can probably make some conjectures, Tis." She swallows. "But look. The Gods? They walk among you here on the Cerberus. And on the Praetorian. And the Corsair. They see this." She gestures to the wounded. "They know things." Duh. "But I need to tell you that the Cylons? They fear Ananke. She's all over the logs from the anchorage. I- I don't know if that's what they were looking for there, though. I don't have a good understanding of it."
"They walk amongst us and don't weep, don't leave us to what we deserve?" Tisiphone glances up at Robin again, almost dubious. "All that's happened, Robin, and so many stand there with their backs turned. I don't know why we were spared at all. They- we don't deserve it." She rests her chin down on her knees, eyes looking through Robin to some middle distance. "Inevitability, mother of the Fates," she says. Her words get a slight sing-song list, as if rattling off something long-since ingrained in her mind. "Ananke and Khronos, forever spinning us. All of it happening before, all of it happening again, because of them. It's-" She blinks, focussing back on Robin. "Why would-? They're machines, Robin, why would they care? This is-" She stops herself with a snort. "Of course it doesn't make any sense." You're sitting here talking to a ghost giving you messages from the Lords, girl.
Robin looks to the floor between them and shakes her head. "I can't speak for them in that respect, Tis. They are who they are and they have their reasons. I imagine that they, or even Ananke, picked these people - but I don't know for sure. But for whatever its worth, I believe that you all deserve it for a reason, and I believe it's a blessing." She lifts her eyes at the last and nods. "I would have asked him that myself, but I can't find my place to question the Gods. They know I'm here. I guess I'm being used somehow. But if the Cylons fear the mother of the Gods and Fate, then that's..I don't even know how to explain it. I'm as lost as you are. I'm out of the loop but I suspect it has something to do with Parnassas. Engineering would probably have the logs. There's- a Lieutenant there named Parres? Haeleah Parres? I can go with you to talk to her if you'd like? She's seen me."
"Hayhay." Tisiphone's mouth twists around some memory that tries to be both amusing and sad at the same time. "I've met her before, yeah. Briefly. You could- just- tell her yourself, too, you know? Since you can. Or is it important it comes from me, now that you've told me? People aren't- not everyone copes so well, having someone come up to them to say they've seen you. The reporter, Ms. Averies? /Determined/ to say it's all just a bad dream."
Robin nods. "I could. But the last time I talked to her? She cried. Horribly." Its a little pained when she talks. Hoping people would be throwing hugs was probably what she was imagining. Not anymore. "I'm afraid that if I went to her directly she might not react too well. I wanted to, but you've taught me some good lessons about people, Tis. Things I wish I'd known in life." She smirks at the mention of Sawyer. "I saw her a week or so back? Right before I saw you last. She was falling asleep. Talked for a few minutes about life. She seems okay with it all as long as she believes its a dream. I -still- worry about Stavrian. Is he.. He was hurt, right? In the attack?"
Tisiphone's mouth twists again, eyes dropping down toward her boot-tips. Deep breath, hitching at the apex, then: "Yeah, he nearly bled out in the hangar." The words are carried along on the exhale, keeping anything but a sort of airless flippancy out of them. She licks her bottom lip, then worries at the cracked spot there for a time before saying, "Okay. I'll talk to her. Tell her what you told me. I don't know who else I'd try to tell. Stephen's already sure I'm cracking, after I told him to stop the Cerberus from jumping in here in the first place. Maybe he's right. I can't tell anymore. Anyway. I'll- go right now, I guess."
"I'm going to try and figure out where they came from in the next few days but..we'll see. No promises. I want to visit with the Lieutenant. But I've been trying to visit the dying. Pray for them." Robin's quiet for a moment. "I'll go, too. Watch from the shadows. If she can handle seeing me, I'll show up. Just.. Give me a moment." She takes a breath and rises from her kneel. Slow steps are taken back towards the Specialist on the table. Robin leans in close..The two looking like they might even be sharing words.
"I'll wait outside." Tisiphone brings her good hand up, scrubbing hard at the back of her head for a few seconds, before she turns to leave with tense, restless steps. She'll wait outside as promised, leaned back against the corridor's walls, eyes open only a tiny, dull sliver.
Haeleah has arrived.
Robin moves out of the chapel looking a bit misty-eyed, clearing her throat. "I'll be seeing her again soon." Its all she says before she steels herself with a long breath. "Anyway, thank you for this, Tisiphone. I'll..keep away unless she seems like she can handle me this time. It might help if she starts asking how you know all this, too." She moves with Tis on down towards Engineering and fades away around a corner when they get close..
"She's gonna wonder what the frak a pilot's doing down in Engineering, anyway," Tisiphone mutters, earning an odd look from someone else departing the chapel. Dragging her eyes back open, she pushes off the wall and heads for Engineering, her loose-laced boots scuffing heavily against the floor as she walks. It's a somewhat circuitous route to get there; she avoids the main stairwell.
Haeleah is on the later shift in Engineering. Whenever Tisiphone finds herself there. At the moment she's just beyond the main hatch in, checking over the repair logs from the last shift. She looks tired. But, then, everybody here looks rather tired. She's hardly the only one on. Engineering's like an anthill even at O'Dark Thirty at its quietest time. Always humming with the low buzz from the control consoles and the creaks and clanks from the main machines. The main area is more sparsely populated than it might be under normal circumstances, however. Most on are out on repair crews. Haeleah looks like she's preparing to join one herself soon, in fact.
It's a small blessing, that. Tisiphone's grateful for not having to flag down a snipe that has three dozen better things to do than navigate a feckless pilot around. "Lieutenant Parres?" she calls, her voice cracking halfway through the greeting. Pacing forward, looking as strung out and overtired as pretty much everyone who isn't stuck in Sickbay. Belatedly, she realizes her prayer-beads are still coiled around her left wrist; as she pauses in front of Haeleah, they're hurriedly unwound, and slipped away into her pocket.
The sound of her name makes Haeleah turns her head. "Yeah, what's up?" Dark eyes narrow at the sight of Tisiphone. Puzzled. "Ensign…Apostolos? Uh. Hi." A glance at the prayer beads as they're put away and a wry, "Chapel's a few decks down."
"Sorry, Sir." A little contrite, that — Tisiphone finishes slipping the beads away, slouching her hand down into the pocket overtop them, as if they might crawl out on their own. It lasts for all of about five seconds before her hand's drawn out again, fingers hooked around the back of her neck. Restless. "You, uh. Have a minute to talk? Private…ish? There's something I need to tell you." She glances around before turning the tired, skittish stare back on Haeleah.
"I'm supposed to be up in Sickbay in twenty minutes," Haeleah replies. "So you've got fifteen. Want to walk?" She starts to, motioning to Tisiphone along with her. "So what's up? Don't really see the flyboys and girls down here too often."
"Uh- no, actually," Tisiphone replies, hastily. It's not quite /panic/, but there's a sudden glimmer of alarm in her gaze. "Here's better?" She turns a bit as Haeleah starts to move, but doesn't take a step forward. "You've been working on the files from Parnassus Anchorage, yeah?" Said quickly, as if the words might belay the other woman's departure.
Haeleah stops in her tracks. Which is easy enough to do in work boots. They've got traction and weight. One hand on her hip, she eyes Tisiphone. "Yeah. I've been trying to make sense of some of the code we took off their computers. It's…well, it's not terribly sensible. Why?"
"I've, uh." Restless again. Tisiphone looks like she's either lying about something, or spilling some secret she shouldn't be. "I've got some more information on it, for you." A somewhat imploring tilt of her head, back toward the computer Haeleah so recently departed from.
"Okay…" Haeleah mutters, slipping back behind the computer. Still watching Tisiphone narrowly. "This better be good, Ensign. We're working our asses off trying to get this ship back in intact order and if I'm late to meet my PO crew chief I want to give him a good reason."
"There's something that's been missed in the logs," Tisiphone says, stepping forward to the other side of the table that Haeleah settles down at, folding her arms wearily across the top, chin coming down atop her casted arm. "Ananke. a-n-a-n-k-e," she spells it out. She's helpful like that. She's also avoiding Haeleah's eyes. "The Cylons were at Parnassus Anchorage because of her."
"A-n-a-n-k-e…" Haeleah repeats the spelling. "It's…it's from the data we pulled. Part of what looks like order logs. How did you…?" Her dark eyes are growing wider with a certain amount of both vague alarm and growing curiosity. "If you know what it means, Ensign, spit it out."
"Lieutenant Parres, sir." Its the voice of Robin from just around a corner from where Tisi appeared from. Slowly, she turns the corner with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her green coveralls. Slow steps take her forward and she gives a weak smile to the Ensign, stopping a few feet from the desk. "She knows because I asked her to come here. I was afraid that if I came to you personally that it might cause a reaction like last time." Her voice is quiet, subdued - just like everything about her for the moment. "Neither of us really know what it means yet, sir. But Ananke is..she's an important part of religion. Tis? Want to explain?"
No explaining, not yet. Tisiphone just looks back from whatever middle distance she was staring at, at the sound of Robin's voice, and focusses back on Haeleah. It's a tired, almost blase, appraisal. Her shoulders tense a little, maybe, in the slightest preparation of a freak-out, but she doesn't raise from her slouch.
Haeleah blinks. Eyes flicking up and around. Toward Robin's voice. "The frak…" It's said shakily, but she does not faint dead away at the sight of the ghost. This can't be her first time. "You're back…" Deep breath. "I…umm…I'm not much on Scripture…starting to think I missed some interesting stuff…"
Robin looks to Tis with an easy, familiar smile. Her gaze then slides back to Haeleah and she dips her head slightly. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry if I gave you a startle last time. I was hoping to get back before this but things have, ah..well, Ananke is important." And a ghost showing up isn't? She keeps her distance from the pair, standing off to the side and waiting for Tis.
"Ananke, Inevitability. Mother of the Fates. Consort to Khronos. Creator and Creatrix. Their dance sets our world- the universe to spinning. Pulling us around and aroud, over and over again." Tisiphone straightens slightly as she rattles this off, rubbing her cheek against her casted arm. "Your guess is as good as mine. As good as Robin's. Why would the Cylons fear this? You said the name's in the logs- maybe there's a practical reason, maybe it's- metaphorical."
"Well…you're dead, Chief. I guess I can forgive," Haeleah says. Trying to joke. And failing. She's still half-freaked about this, but is managing to avoid melting into a pile of blubbering this time. So far. "Metaphorical…it could be." A blink to Tisiphone. "It's weird though. It's in the middle of a bunch of practical terms. Corporate names. Military officers. It's all just…" Eyeshift. "Weird…Frak. Everything's weird these days."
Robin listens to the explanation quietly, waiting until Tis finishes. Haeleah gets a quick chuckle, though. "That I am, sir. I appreciate the forgiveness. Now, you're right. It could be metaphorical but.." She wets her lips. "It very well could be literal. There's no way to know, sirs. Ananke is necessity in the most basic and complex meanings. The Gods are bound to her by the Fates. Some of the less literal believers believe that she is more of a driving force of fate rather than an actual being or deity." Her eyes move away carefully and she glaces to a pressure gauge on the wall almost reflexively. "But if she's in the middle of corporate names? And officers? Wh- why would businesses and the military be interested in Ananke? I'd think you hit 'weird' on the head, Lieutenant."
"Codename, maybe." It's all Tisiphone can think of, and it's offered up on a tense, restless shrug. "Project Ananke. Or a password to unlock- something?" Another shrug. "I've got no frakking clue. I'm just the messenger." She blows out a sigh though her nose before starting to rub at the base of her skull. "Can we smoke in here?" she asks.
"Maybe. And…no. Please. Not around the machines right now." Haeleah's not as strident on the subject of smoking as usual, however. Her mind's still clearly all over the place. "Look…I have to go. Repairs and…things…" Not involving the dead. "I…umm…thanks. I should…we should mention this to the Cheng. And Command. I mean…the name. What it means. Not…" The crazy ghost. Yeah. Not that.
"Project?" Robin lofts her brow a bit. "Possible. Though the reference isn't exactly obscure. I wish someone hadn't torched the upper decks of the anchorage. I was looking around up there and its just ash and dust." She sighs and nods to Haeleah. "No problem, sir. Just get it pushed around if you could? It came from someplace important." Not just her. "But I'll get out of your hair, Lieutenant. I'll see you again soon." She sorta stands to the side to let the woman leave without having to get too close.
"/You/ can mention it without it sounding like, oh, say, a cracked Sagittaran starting at shadows and foul portents in their tea-leaves," Tisiphone points out, looking back up at Haeleah. "You're working on the project, you're looking at the code. I- I gotta get- going, too. Back to Sickbay."
Tisiphone suddenly adds, looking a touch resigned at the confession, "I know someone up in Command. I can- try to put the word in his ear. Again."
"Yeah. Back to…work. Whatever." Haeleah's keeping it together decently outwardly, but she still looks wild-eyed. And eager to flee Engineering just now. Though she does pause before bolting and says to Tisiphone, "Umm, look. Thanks. For…well. We'll see, I guess. I…we can talk to them together if you want."
Robin watches the two women and breathes a little sigh of relief. A mission handled. "Thank you both. Especially you, Tis." She smiles. "Handle it how you can. Go with the Gods." The former Chief lifts her eyes back up a few decks. "I have to see some people as well." She moves off for a different exit and disappears around a corner, the sound of her boots not even making it that far.
"Let's- figure it out- later. Soon. But later." While Tisiphone isn't wild-eyed, she's definitely rattled. "I'll catch you in the Sickbay, I'm sure, or- I'll check for you down here. It's… it's no problem." She doesn't seem to feel like she should be thanked for anything. "I'm here to serve." With that, she's off.