| Not Finished Yet |
| Summary: | The CAG comes to visit Tisiphone in Sickbay following the younger pilot's botched assassination attempt on the skinjob. They have a little chat. |
| Date: | 22 Jul 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | The Cylon Sleeps Tonight; Let Sleeping Pilots Lie |
| Players: |
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| Recovery Room - Sickbay |
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| A room where one recovers from grievous injuries (aka a TP Room). |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #146 |
Tisiphone's bed is most easily located by the MP standing guard — or, more precisely, slowly dying of boredom — across from it. The curtains are currently about halfways open, closed just enough that she doesn't have to stare directly at him, or he at her.
It's been a momentous day, good and bad. Lucid enough to ask for the IV to be removed: GOOD. Lucid enough that she's not restrained in her bed for trying to pull the IV out herself: ALSO GOOD. Lucid enough to have a good, long think about things: NOT SO GOOD.
It's the latter that might explain the shuttered, distant stare she aims over at the opposite corner of the ceiling, not yet willing to have the nurses close the curtain all the way so she can sleep.
It's getting well into O Dark Thirty when Cidra slips into Sickbay. And back to the recovery ward. To where Tisiphone is both bedded and guarded. "How is the day for you, Private?" is her oh-so-polite question to the MP on duty. The CAG's manners are not particularly prim things, no product of fine Caprican finishing schools. There is a deeper propriety to them bordering on ceremony. Ingrained. It is to the Marine she speaks first, though her cloudy blue eyes look through that curtain. To Tisiphone within. Expression oh-so-mild. Just looking. "May I sit for awhile?" The question is sort of to both of them. Though the MP is likely the only one whose answer she will particularly listen to.
"Sir." The Private shifts, almost gratefully, into a salute. At least it's something new to do. Who would have thought guarding a would-be assassin would be /so/ /boring/? "Looking forward to the end of shift, Sir," he confesses easily. "You can sit if you want. She ain't going anywhere. At least until tomorrow." He snorts.
Tisiphone, meanwhile, waits until after the MP's finished speaking to point out, "There's a. There's a chair in here. Sir." Her voice is very quiet, scratchy with disuse. The chair is where the nurses last tucked it away; if she's had any visitors, it hasn't been recently.
Cidra brings her hand up fluidly to return the private's salute. Though she's obviously very much off-duty. Arms bare in her green tank, Athena tattoos prominent. She likes to have them on display when she can. Wound around her right wrist and forearm are prayer beads. Her own she's often seen with, small oval beads of olive wood, smooth and well-worn. Twined with another strand today with metal-tipped tassels. Once the saluting is done, she pulls up a chair. Slouching down in it. Arms balanced in her lap. Just looking at the younger pilot. "Hello, Tisiphone." That is all she says for the moment. She just keeps looking in that mild way of hers.
"Sir." She's regained a bit of colour from the (near-)deathly pallor of her first few days in Sickbay, though she's still paler than she ought to be. The bruises she received, being wrestled to the floor, stand out lividly on her skin, even faded as they are. The other testaments to her takedown, the bullet-wounds, are hidden somewhere beneath the thin coverlet. Her shorn scalp has only the slightest dusting of fuzz starting to grow back, and there's a pale patch on her left wrist which she rests her right hand against, squeezing occasionally, to either remind or distract herself from the missing cuff. "I hope you're. Feeling better, Sir."
"I got your little note." Cidra's tone is very low. Low does not particularly mean 'gentle' where she is concerned. The woman very rarely yells. Her anger doesn't burn hot, but runs a cold sort of thing. A pause. Her eyes try to meet the Saggie's. "How do you feel?"
There's none of the sinking dread which, typically, would be written across Tisiphone's expression at a time like this. A (quite literally) captive audience to the CAG, post-epic-clusterfrak. Instead, it's a quiet resignation. Almost serene — until her eyelids crease with a non-physical pain, at mention of the note. When her eyes re-open, she looks back to Cidra, watching the watching, a little searchingly. "Medicators say I can. Use crutches to leave, tomorrow." To where, she doesn't say. "Or the day after. Soon as my stomach's okay. Hurts like a. A lot. But." Her shoulders move in a faint shrug. Either it doesn't matter that it hurts, or she doesn't care.
"Yes. I am sure it hurts a great deal," Cidra replies. "You should take some morpha for it. You are allowing emotionalism to overrule clear sense. Such always makes one stupid." But that is not a thing she dwells on past the comment itself. Fingers curls around the beads laced between them. Half her olive beads, half Tisiphone's metal-touched ones. "This is going to get very bad, Money Shot."
The click of the beads draw Tisiphone's eyes over to the side, then tip her head over as well, chin lifted a little as she focusses on their sour. The flat-faced resignation shifts, then, to something more intent. Relief, too. Without looking up from the coil of worn bone beads she murmurs, "There's a guard. I guess they're. Going to take me soon. Are they going to shoot me for trying to kill it, Sir?"
"There is…was…" Cidra has to pause to correct herself. "…a retreat for the Sisters of the Wise Lady in the hills of Dryope. Back on Gemenon. Up on the cliffs, all stone and marble. Old libraries and open gardens. I spent summers there during university, when I thought my path would lead me to the Sisterhood. I had friends there still. It was a place I stayed at some years ago after…" She does not finish that though, but goes on with talking as if just glossing over it. No answer to Tisiphone's question is forthcoming. She just talks. "It was…fifteen stories, maybe, at the spire's top. Straight fall to the rocks on the hillside. Longer down the cliffs if you did it just right. Fly until you fall. For two weeks, every day, I would climb up to the top of spire and just stand there for hours…"
There are few situations in which Tisiphone is not a sucker for Storytimes. No matter how devotedly she reads her books, it's never the same as being /told/ a thing. It's alive, then, with the person telling it. Her eyes finally crawl back up from the stilled beads, returning to the CAG's face. Intent upon her expression, slanting aside only to track any gestures that accompany the tale. Not that it seems to /soothe/ her. Not at all. Fly until you fall strikes a little too close to home.
Cidra's eyes actually tick away from Tisiphone as she continues to let that particular tale spiel out. Faraway. Fingers clutching at the beaded cords wrapped around her hand, pressing them tight against her skin. As if in search of comfort from them, or at least sharp sensation. "The heart of it is, I think, that if all you do is think about it but still you need someone to push you…if you need a Marine or a firing squad to finish it for you…you probably do not have it in you. You probably do not really want to go to the empty places forever. Or you would just cut the dramatics and jump. So that is not in you. So the only choice left, I thought, was to try and be something that would not shame those that love you best. Make yourself into something that could look him in the eye again. And then you remain. Such as you are. Not always good, but it is better than the alternative."
Muddy uncertainty furrows Tisiphone's sun-bleached brows as Cidra words spin out further and further. It takes her a long time before she clears her throat — blanches slightly at the hitch of pain from the jostling of her lungs — and ventures, "There's someone. Waiting for you, Sir?" At least part of that uncertainty is whether the CAG will hear her words or not.
Cidra's fingers twist even tighter on her beads, if that's possible, making a fist that's then clutched against her heart. Features remain reasonably schooled, though her cloudy eyes stay faraway. "I told you once that the oblivion has taken my heart, Tisiphone…" She closes her eyes and breathes out long. Focus back on the jig. Back on the present. "This did not work out quite how you had planned it, I do not think. Things shall get bad. I will do what I can for you, but I cannot shield you from it all."
"I kept dreaming. Whenever I tried to sleep. Crashing my Viper into the Styx. Instead of. Choking on the breathing mix, it was. Drowning in the reeds. And then it was. My sisters. And they told me they. Missed me. That I'd tried hard enough. They were never going to listen to me. Godless. Trusting abominations. Throwing us out there. Again and again. Empty glory. It was time. I thought it was. A fair trade. And then it went all wrong." Tisiphone's words come out tiredly, bullied past a diaphragm that would be much happier if she'd just shut up and concentrate on breathing shallowly, instead. "Whatever you. Have to do, Sir. I. I'll understand."
"Yes. It did go very wrong," Cidra agrees, voice low and level. She unclenches her hand, unwinding her strands of beads from it. The softer olive ones are tucked into her pocket. From which is withdrawn a wide, leather-lined soma cuff. It, and the metal-tipped beads after they are unwound, are held in her palm and held up a little toward the MP. "Can she keep these?"
"No cords, no sharp objects, no choking hazards, until she's released from Sickbay," says the Private, rattling off the list as his eyes narrow in uneasy appraisal. "That bracelet's one of those… Sagittaran things, isn't it?" Such precision. "Can't choke on your own wrist," he decides. "Go ahead, Sir."
Tisiphone's eyes, meanwhile, haven't moved from that worn leather lining and the riveted metal charms that ring it. Her throat works against a sudden knot of tightness and she closes her eyes as the MP speaks. "I can. Ask the medicators to keep the beads, Sir. They have a. Security box for possessions."
"One of those Sagittaran things, yes," is Cidra's level reply to the MP. Now *he* is *looked* at for a moment. But the bracelet is left with Tisiphone. Beads tucked back into her pockets. "I can keep them for you if you do not object. I will see that they are safely returned to you in due time. Things will get bad. But you remain, Tisiphone Apostolos. And if you think I am so easily done with you, little girl, you are sadly mistaken. We are not finished yet." Posture straightens after that. She makes ready to take her leave.
Pale fingers wrap around the wrist-cuff, running over the worn metal charms as if she isn't really sure it's there until she's touched all of them. "Yessir. Of course. Sir. Thank you for." Tisiphone tries clearing her throat again, but it doesn't prompt the rest of her words until many weary seconds after. "For. Bringing this. I'll. See you soon, Sir." Her hand finally releases the wrist-cuff long enough for her arm to drag up, somewhat limply, into a salute.
Cidra half-turns once she's standing again, arm raising to return that salute in brief. "See you soon," she affirms. And with that, off she goes.