| In The Dark |
| Summary: | In the library, the real story is hard to come by…twice. |
| Date: | Mar 06 2041 |
| Related Logs: | Related Logs (Say None if there aren't any; don't leave blank) |
| Players: |
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[ Ships Library ]-----[ Deck 9 - Battlestar Cerberus ]
Racks of books extend deep into this room, nearly darkening the overhead lights towards the back. The shelves are neatly labeled to each category with nearly everything represented here. Fiction, Sci-Fi, Romance, and everything down to comic books has been loaded up onto the shelves. A smaller research area at the back has a large table for maps to be opened-up. Nearer the door is a small library of movies that covers some of the most recent blockbusters and flows through some of the more campy movies from about two decades before. Next to the door, a Petty Officer can usually be found at a desk to help someone checkout their selections.
-=[ Condition Level: 2 - Danger Close ]=-------—-
Petroski slips in, just about on time like the other night, his gaze darted here and there as he seeks out the one he's supposed to be meeting. "Pink…" he mutters under his breath once he sits down, picking a place near the back. His voice carries fairly easily despite how low he keeps it, the relative silence of the library making it easy for him to be heard some. "He was kidding…right?"
The one he's supposed to be meeting is already here, in contrast to his lateness last time. Though the punctuality may not count. Stavrian sat down on one of the couches and promptly dozed off, a heavy book lying closed in his lap as though exhaustion had taken it off the shelf, bashed him in the back of the head, and dropped it into his lap before running off cackling into the corridors.
"Huh…" Daniel breathes out upon seeing Jesse, his expression now concerned. He entertains the idea of leaving for a moment but instead wanders closer to where he sleeps, stopping somewhere near his feet without being in kick range if the other is the sort who lashes out when woken up suddenly. "Jesse. Jess. Wake up, handsome. You said you wanted to meet me, yes?" There's a softness in his voice that is seldom heard throughout the normal course of a day, the usual semi-gruff quality nowhere to be heard.
Stavrian's head snaps up at the sound of his name, eyelids dragging open. "What?" Somebody's hurt, somebody's dead. Wait…no. Library. He clears his throat thickly and sniffs, managing to look slightly embarassed as he sits up straighter. "Shit, sorry. Hey."
Petroski motions, imploring him to remain reclined. "No, you relax. It's okay. I bet sleep has been hard to come by for you. I won't keep you long." Scooting over, he sits on the floor, making himself at home once butt meets floor. "When was the last time you managed to sleep in your own bed?" Again with the concern, it being an emotion he can't keep at bay.
"About the same time everyone else did." Despite the imploring, Stavrian sits up straighter and pushes the book aside, muffling a yawn. "Don't you want a…chair or something? That's bad for your back."
"I'm fine but thanks." A faint grin quirks the right corner of his mouth but it doesn't stick, the faint smile fading as fast as it tried to form. "What did you want to talk to me about?" Daniel's chin is left to rest on his knees after they're drawn closer to his body, making looking up at Jesse a bit difficult. "Is everything alright?"
"Yeah, it's fine." Stavrian rubs his eyes and blinks the gumminess out of them, resting his elbows down on his knees. "I talked to Diego. It's going to take a little bit yet…stuff has to go up the chain." His thumb scratches the side of his nose and then his hands settle again, his blue eyes finding Petroski's darker ones. "I just want to make real sure with you, Daniel. It's going to take up time on our end…Diego's time, time above her, and time that's going to be then spent training you if it goes through. And we're going to have to expect some dedication from you, some regular time in there. If what you want is get your hands dirty and really help…then yeah, we welcome it and I'll do everything I can to make sure it happens. But if what you want is just a day pass to stand on the catwalk and watch, this isn't the way to go. So…I just want to be sure of what you're looking for."
Straightening, Danny looks into Jesse's eyes as he speaks, his expression darkening. "I'm more than fine with that as long as you realize that it might do nothing to change my opinion of the situation. And before you chastise me, I am going to be keeping an open mind but even then, it might not…" Shrugging, his head bows and he just about whispers, "I wish you could understand my point of view like you seem to want me to understand yours, Jesse. It's so frakking frustrating."
"I lied," Stavrian says, right on the tail end of Daniel's little speech. The admission comes out simply, and impulsively. "About why I got mad at you that day."
Petroski's not normally surprised but it registers on his face right now, his brows shooting upwards and his eyes widening in an unfamiliar display of shock. "Lied? What did you lie about?" Reaching out, he almost touches Jesse but stops himself, the fact that the other man doesn't seem to like being touched having dawned on him after their last meeting.
"I just told you." Stavrian clears his throat. "About why I went off the handle." The blurt having caught up to him, he almost looks a little uncomfortable, folding his hands between his knees. "It wasn't about what I said it was."
Dan laughs softly, amused rather than mocking. "I got that. I was trying to get you to go on, Jesse. But you don't have to tell me why. It doesn't matter, really. I mean…frak, I wish you felt like you could be honest with me but I know you don't know me very well so…" His words come out choppy, the ease of speech shot to hell now.
"Yeah. I…" Stavrian trails that off into an exhale through his nose. His eyes turn down to his hands and he taps his thumbs together, silent for what turns into a good ten seconds. "You ever been displaced, Daniel? I guess that was the politically correct term for it. 'Internally displaced'."
Evandreus arrives from the Deck 9.
Evandreus has arrived.
There are two bodies somewhere in the room, Stavrian sitting on the couch with Daniel sitting on the floor not too far from where he has settled, the two locked in a conversation which has Danny fairly distracted currently. "Internally displaced? If you mean that in a job-wise manner, no. I can't say that I have. Now, if you mean emotionally or situationally, we all are, Jesse. In one way or another. Not just us civilians but you military-types as well." Trying to cover all the possible ways he thinks that could be taken, he stops and just looks around, lifting a shoulder in a helpless shrug.
"No, Daniel. I don't mean 'job-wise', whatever that is." Stavrian's eyes flicker up, looking at the man from under his brows. He's not being glib right now. "I mean, have you ever been forced out of your home with the clothes on your back and made to live in a dirty, crowded camp. And I don't mean Guest Quarters."
Books. Evan wanders in, just a little sweaty, just a little pale, the arms of his flight suit tied off around his waist. He doesn't seem to have showered or even to have particularly washed up after disembarking, but in avoiding testing his luck with the mess again he finds safety amid less edible fare, wandering in and walking the stacks with an air of only middling familiarity, not having spent much time in here, yet.
"No, Jesse, I can not say that I have been displaced that way." As the severe tone becomes more so, Dan finds himself having to fight the urge to draw up into himself, the self-defense mechanism not allowed to kick in now. "I get that this is a…forgive the use of the word…cause that is touching your heart, Jesse. Truly. And I also get that those families are lost souls now. I am not turning a blind eye or a deaf ear to their plight."
"No, Daniel, don't think you get it…just listen to me for a minute. Please." Stavrian's tone hasn't come near 'severe'. Slightly agitated, perhaps, but his voice stays very quiet, and that last word has a very, very faint crack in it. "If I tell you, will you please listen?" His ears haven't yet picked up the sound of another person wandering the nearby stacks.
Down an aisle. Up an aisle. Down an aisle. Halfway up the next before the sound of voices from beyond the books catches his ear, and he stops, two fingers on a book as he sort of fidgits it on out of the line.
Petroski sighs. "I'm trying to get it but you're talking in circles, Jesse. Explain, please." Danny's head cranes to the side when he thinks he hears something but the source of the sound is yet to be seen so his attention is brought back to Stavrian, his eyes narrowed marginally when he does, his expression rueful.
Elbows settled on his knees, Stavrian presses his hands palm-to-palm in front of his face, resting his nose against his fingers. Petroski gets silence in return before he says under his breath, at length, "I was thirteen. The insurgency had started, and my city was in the heart of it. We had to…" He stops, glancing up just as Daniel's head moves, and his eyes flicker to the side towards the stacks. "Hello?"
Ramon arrives from the Deck 9.
Ramon has arrived.
Evandreus begins swiftly to realize this is not the conversation he wants to be on the other side of the bookshelves from, a word here and there cluing him into the fact. He snags up a bright yellow copy of Medea from where he'd been toying with it, and, holding it to his chest, he comes 'round and peeks about the corner of the shelving unit, "Hi, uh. Sorry. I'm interrupting." He looks aside, "Sorry I ran out, earlier, Jess, I just… suddenly came over all funny." he shakes his head, and steps out from behind the bookshelf, going to the counter to sign out the book he'd found.
Daphne arrives from the Deck 9.
Daphne has arrived.
Petroski moves, turning without getting up so he can lean against the couch, back against the lower half of the furniture, legs left to stretch out and cross at either ankle. When Jesse stops and calls out to their mystery guest and Evan greets them he smiles, not commenting on what Stavrian has said so far out of respect for his friend. "Ah. Evan. It's good to see you again. How have you been?"
Mouth closed, Stavrian gently clears his throat. His tense shoulders are forced to relax and he drags his arms further up on his legs, sitting up. "Don't worry about it, Evan. Think that's forgiveable these days." His tone's only off for the first few words, as he adjusts to the sudden shift in mental train tracks.
Ramon actually enters the library with a book already held under one arm, moving towards the desk and waiting in line silently. Of course, the nearby conversations cause him to lift his eyes slightly to look and listen but he's in no position to interject just yet.
Evandreus keeps his eyes on the book, flipping to the front and then to the back to find the library serial code to copy down, letter by letter and number by number. "Thanks, Jess," he murmurs, as if to the sign-up sheet rather than the guy. He peeks up to Danny, then, and shrugs one shoulder. "I owe Stiffy twenty cubits," he offers, still a little blanched, "And I think the string beans in the mess are out to get me."
Daphne walks into the library like a dog coming in from the rain. Intrinsically tired-looking, her trajectory through the library itself takes the form of a lazy arc towards some bookshelf or another. She pulls a scrap of paper from her pocket, glances to the bookshelves, and then moves to the right one and drags her fingertip along the spines. The process takes a few seconds at best, but she pries a book from the shelf after a minimal amount of internal debate and peers around the room with strained, weary eyes.
"Hey, Evan. I think I need more enlightenment, soon," Petroski comments once he sees that the conversation he was having with Jesse has been put on hold, the commentary made something that Jesse and he will get and not very many others outside of the trio. "How have you been? Hopefully better than you look because you look frakking horrible, my dear." Leaning his head to the side quickly, he taps the side of his head against the outside of Jesse's nearest knee, just once if he's allowed, it being a quick gesture of comfort (or so he hopes that is how it'll be taken) if it is. "We'll talk later."
Stavrian's knee moves away from the touch, whether he notices himself doing it or not. He grunts a sound in his throat and scratches his fingers through the back of his hair, curls flattened from the five-minute nap he fell into earlier. "Yeah, they're bastards," he tells Evan. Suddenly aware of more movement around, he glances at Daphne and then Ramon, recognizing neither.
"Wish I had any to give, dude," Evan tells Danny, finally scrawling out a signature and closing up the book again. "I'm pretty much in the dark, here, myself. But this much I can tell you. Whoever bombed Picon and Virgon— it wasn't Tauron," he murmurs back over his shoulder to the pair of them. Recon's evidently still been running. A deep breath, and an even dimmer tone, "Or Libran." If anyone ever thought they'd have been behind it.
Ramon catches the glance in his direction and offers a polite nod in return, turning his attention towards Evan when he hears the comment. He clears his throat, leaning over slightly, "Sorry to interrupt - and do not think I'm doubting you for a moment - but what leads you to that conclusion, if I may ask?"
Daphne notices Stavrian first, probably due to being noticed by him in the first place, and quickly spots a few other faces. She walks towards the group and clearly forces a smile, as though whatever number of facial muscles needed for one are on strike or otherwise more interested in pushing her lips the opposite direction, but it's a smile, regardless, "Hey, guys. Evan. Hope we're not all brooding over, you know… stuff."
"What?" Stavrian's attention is yanked back to Evan. His blue eyes are that much sharper, as though the Raptor pilot had just injected his veins with ice water. "How do you know?" The question mirrors the arrived Ramon's, if more bluntly. And he's certainly picked up on that dim tone.
Petroski looks surprised himself and, like Ramon and Jesse, he too questions Evan's certainty although his own is posed via a grunt instead of actual words. Daphne and Ramon are looked at, then and he gives a quick nod, each individual smiled at briefly but then the mood sobers him, leaving him with no sign of smile or hospitality.
Evandreus's head swings about as he's suddenly accosted from the other side, book clutched to his chest as if for protection, sharp breath through flared nostrils for a moment before he calms, or tries to, looking over to Jess and then back to the elderly stranger. "I'm just in from the former, and Fryxus from recon to the latter. We didn't have orders to go in too close. Just… close enough. Get some readings, get back again." More than that, he can only shake his head. Another effort to add something, and it's left off for another shake of his head, just slightly bowed.
"They've been attacked as well?" Ramon jumps to a conclusion, brow furrowing though his expression remains eerily calm and his voice measured and even. He glances at the others asking similar questions.
Stavrian stares at Evan for a few seconds. His expression's hard to read, but his jaw's tightened and so have his shoulders. As Ramon asks that question his eyes just stay pinned on the man who seems to have all the answers.
"No offense, Evan, but I'm not sure how good of an indication of innocence that is." Danny's not of the mind to be logical right now, it seems. "I mean…wait. Did they?" He takes to staring as well, looking from Evan to Daphne to Ramon, trying to put two and two together with little success right now. Not getting an answer on his own, he turns to look at Jesse, straining his neck and shoulders so he can do so without turning around to face him fully. "That doesn't mean anything, does it?"
"Sure looks like that," Evan tells the guy, shoulders rising just a little as the old man's eerie placidity creeps him just a little, makes him feel a little cornered. "We sent all our readings up to CIC for full analysis. But," he's left back with his original statement, which he doesn't re-iterate.
"I am not an expert on such matters," Ramon continues with the same even tones, running a finger across the spine of the book he holds in an absent-minded gesture, "But I cannot think of a single group or force with the resources to destroy four Colonies. Though I would be remiss if I did not say I can see the patern here … "
"And they…are planning on informing us, aren't they?" Stavrian asks, incredulously. He stands up from the couch, folding his arms over his chest. "What about the rest of them?" Petroski, unfortunately goes unheard. There may be plenty of two-and-two to be done, but it's lost in the face of having the fate of his own home dangled in front of him. "Sagittaron?"
"So they did a mass wipe." Daniel stands up slowly and then starts to pace, his head bowed slightly as he regards the situation. It was bad enough when it was assumed that just one planet had been hit but the news is enough to deaden him inside, some. "Wonder if the Quorum knows." Peeking up, he regards everyone here before he moves away, slowly starting to move around shelves and people to get to the hatch. "Excuse me, please."
"I dunno, Jess. Recon teams went out… everywhere. But as for the rest, I dunno who got assigned to where, and I haven't heard anything back. I can only assume that when all the data is compiled from all the missions, we'll get some sort of update from upstairs," Evan relates to the medic, pressing both palms to the corner of the counter and bracing against it a little.
Ramon continues to watch Evandreus in silence, making mental notes by the look of it but otherwise remaining still and quiet. He takes a long moment before he decides to speak again, "Have you heard anything regarding rescue missions? Possible rendezvous with the other elements of the military?"
"Compiled?" Stavrian's tone is far from accusatory; he just sounds stunned. "You just walked up and told us two were gone before they 'compiled'…they can't just tell us? My children are there." His mouth opens as if to say something else, and just stays that way. "I-…I'll. Find who went. I'm sorry, excuse me. Ensign. Sir." The last two niceties are given with the calmest politeness he can muster. He steps around the edge of the couch and starts for the door.
Evandreus isn't going to try to stop Jess, by any means, only looking to him with a grim look of muted pain and a nod, lifting up his voice again, "Try asking around in Provider berthings, I know some of them were jumping out, they might be back by now," he offers what little help he can, for the time being. to Ramon, then, "We're going back to Virgon to look for survivors as soon as all the recon missions are in, I think."