| Remembering Their Names |
| Summary: | Bran and Cidra find themselves before the Memorial Wall, discussing the dead, faith, and propositions. |
| Date: | 09 Nov 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | None |
| Players: |
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| Deck 9 - Recreation - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| The floorplating along the corridors of the Cerberus are standard military. Their forged steel plates are welded seamlessly together to run nearly the entire length of each hallway. The hallways themselves are the typical load-bearing structural design of the angled quadrilateral. Oxygen scrubbers and lighting recesses are found at nearly perfect intervals throughout the angled passageways. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #256 |
Cidra is recently off patrol from the look as it, still wearing her flight suit, disheveled in that way one tends to look after four hours flying in circles in a Raptor. She's not hitting the showers just yet, however. Her course takes her to the makeshift memorial wall, where she pauses. Just looking over the photographs. She does not zero in on any in particular for the moment. She just looks.
The Memorial Wall, it's drawing Sam Bran to it like a moth to the flame. He has been standing in front of it for a while now and has not bothered to walk away just yet, merely lingering in the background. He hadn't originally noticed Major Hahn's approach. It's only until she's there that he looks up and owlishly blinks. It almost leads to immediately squaring he shoulders. He's off-duty though and simply offers a subdued, "Sir," before directing his attention back toward the wall as he steps up from the general background of things.
Cidra does not look at Bran though she does reply to the greeting with an equally subdued "Pens." Her cloudy blue gaze remains fixed on the Wall. "Do you come here often?" The standard chatting-up-in-bar question is slightly more somber in this setting, of course. A pause and she adds, "I do not."
"It helps to remind me why I'm here, one of the ways I do it, at least," but Bran doesn't offer an easy yes or no to the question. He naturally deflects. The man goes about lifting his arms in order to fold them casually over the breadth of his chest, glancing away from the board just to look in Cidra's direction at the small admittance. As he turns back to the Wall, he quietly replies in turn. "It doesn't always help when I come here."
"The ones who flew from the jaws of this ship and did not return," Cidra says. "Honors of their service. I try to remember the names. Names are important, Linus Samhain Bran." Yeah, she knows his full one. "They give a thing form from the ephemeral. It is the faces that haunt you, though…" She trails off a moment. "No. It does not always help."
Bran goes to open his mouth but he hears his first name and it makes him give pause, long enough for him to stop trying to interject and simply be quiet: stupid name. He gives an understanding nod of his head; or, at least, he figures that he understands what the Major's talking of. Testing, he asks in return, "Do you really remember all of their names - their faces?"
"I keep a list of the names in my desk. As they are added to. I try to read it often. When the Cylons hit - so soon after the ship was commissioned…I knew so few of the pilots who had died beyond a passing word as they reported for duty. One hundred forty-seven pilots and E-C-Os died that night, and I knew barely any of them," Cidra says. "The names I try to memorize. The faces…they get into your head like puzzle pieces. Do they not, Pens? Shaken in a box, all mixed, some easier to put together than others. Sharper at the corners. Sharper the more they touched you, though it is strange sometimes, the pieces you end up remembering best. What about you?"
Bran holds a breath as he turns from his question and just listens to the response, exhaling with a patient sigh. In any other scenario he would be all talk and little soberness, metaphorically speaking, but the mood is somber and the Wall is a weighted backdrop that keeps calling for his gaze. "Something like that, yeah," quietly answers the ECO. He doesn't further pipe up just yet in order to keep from detracting from her words. "I used to keep to myself. Do my duty, do my dues, accept things for what they were, but they, the pieces," he tightens the corners of his eyes as he looks upon the memorial, "They make me want to live, take risks, live life, fight for it if need be. It doesn't make me sad, or angry. The memories of them make me more."
"Do you believe in ghosts, Pens?" The question comes out of nowhere from Cidra. Or, perhaps not completely, given the setting. The CAG is, after all, Gemenese. And, though she does not wear her superstitions as openly as some, she is nothing if not a true believer. It is asked with complete seriousness, though she does not look at him. Her eyes remain on the faces, drifting across the photographs.
"Well," he's deflecting again but at least it looks like Bran is willing to fully respond again. He unfolds his arms long enough for his right hand to come up and rub at the length of his jaw thoughtfully before he goes about speaking up at length. He also needs to shave. That thought is pushed aside for the time being. "Yes, it's partly why I fully respect the dead and offer my own two hands in burying the lost with an appropriate funeral. Still, I do not… well, I don't think I'll ever find a real answer from the Lords any time soon when it comes to the Underworld."
"I believe in them," Cidra answers without hesitation, with absolute conviction, though her tone is soft. "I have never felt communion with the spirits of the dead, however. I practices the rites, the rituals, perfectly. Yet I have never been…touched. At least, I had not before. I think I did feel them. In the caves of the Hades cult, when we were upon Sagittaron. Just touches, brushes. I did not…understand what they were trying to tell me. They did not speak to me." There's the sound of muted frustration in her tone. "But that was the first time I felt anything at all from them. And now, that slip of an engineer. Crewman Wolfe? She says there are spirits here, too. On the ship. In the Head, of all places." Yet it does not really sound as if the location surprises her. The ways of ghosts she claims not to understand. "Have you encountered them, Pens? I have been half-afraid to commune with them. Try to. If they are trying to tell me something…part of me fears to contemplate what it might be."
"They sound perverted," offers Bran offhandedly, making sure to point that out when it comes to ghosts lounging about in the Head. It's mentioned quietly though and politely, respectfully declining the opportunity to further spoil what she has said to him. Her question makes him partially turn in place. It's a slow and eased pivot that has him better facing both Toast and Memorial all at once. "On one hand, I like to think they will never have anything of worth to say. On the other hand, frak it, I could use the conversation if ever they have the time and find me worthy enough. But no, not with me - I can always hear something, see something, be compelled to do one thing over something else, but I don't think I'll be letting my search for answers control me any time soon…" He trails off abruptly there, and he raises an eyebrow. "They've gone to places above and beyond our comprehension. It doesn't hurt to be afraid of that."
Cidra gets a laugh out of that, a low chuckle. Though there's a rueful, almost self-mocking note in it. "I am quite sure many spirits are extremely perverted. Particularly ones who would haunt a Head. It would make certain things make much more sense…" For the first time she turns away from the wall, to meet his eyes properly. Her features are usually carefully schooled to inscrutability, but there's a searching quality in them today. "It is not the beyond that frightens me, Pens. Even if I am banished soul and body to the oblivion, I can face that I do think. It is the unknowns in the waking world which scare me far more."
Bran slowly nods as Cidra explains herself and that leads into his looking aside to the flooring, to nothing in particular beyond away from her gaze. It gives him a chance to think of an appropriate response but then there's another nod and deepened inhale while he comes back to meeting her gaze. He offers a wry smile in trying to be reassuring, but it doesn't quite reach the rest of his face. "Even with all of this happening, Cylons, war, death, famine, the whole works when it comes to the apocalypse, I think we have all the time in the worlds to figure those out. We're still alive, after all. Gods be damned if they plan to the contrary."
"We remain, yes," Cidra concurs with that last. "And these have, I pray, found some peace." Gaze back on the wall. She does not sound sure that her prayers will be answered true. "Live for them. Perhaps. I also pray I do proper service to their memories. I would not disappoint them." That sounds like another matter she fears.
Bran affirms in turn, "We can always hope, at least." He looks away from Cidra and turns to the wall while going back to idly folding his arms over his chest after rubbing over the bridge of his nose. "If it's of any consolation to hear this, I think you have the Wing's complete faith in things, no matter what." After pointing that out, the man leans somewhat forward. "Can I mention something without being demoted, hit, stabbed, or otherwise kicked down?"
His observation makes Cidra smile, ever-so-faintly, though there remains a note of uncertainty in it. And, perhaps, a hint of guilt in her expression. Perhaps. Though his question earns only a soft chuckle. "Permission to speak freely, if that is what you are seeking. I have never cut…anyone in my life. Yet." On that vaguely amused and ominous note, she waits for whatever he's going to ask. Watching him.
Bran tips his chin respectfully at her words, slow to nod but that is what he had been seeking: to speak freely. He presses his lips together thoughtfully though and is almost taken aback. "I think it's the yet-part that scares me right about now," but though he could very well be honest and frank in admitting that the Taurian is smiling right about now as well. It naturally fades though and leads into his speaking up. "With all the talk of living and death, and well, I-," he pauses and clears his throat in looking for the correct words, "Can the yet not involve me no matter what?"
Cidra chuckles one of those low, muted laughs again. Continuing to watch Bran in that very mild way she has of watching things. "I swear on my honor I shall not cut you, Pens. Or consign you to some other terrible fate. Not in this moment in this corridor over this matter, at least." Curious CAG is curious now.
Bran looks on cautiously for a time and a half, and then he gives Cidra a once over curiously, debating on if he really should say what he has been meaning to. He brings his hands together with a quieted, gentle clap and clears his throat. "Well then, I can trust in that," he comments quietly before lifting his voice, conversationally so. "Me and Jugs might be seeing each other, and more than friends, and ignoring frat rules, and, uh, really, I'm just avoiding the part where you might cut me if I continue talking." By the time he is done speaking up, his hands have been dropped down to his sides as he stands there under the watchful gaze of the memorial and CAG.
Cidra's eyes narrow at Bran as he works himself up. Though what he actually says just prompts a soft "Ah" and arch of her brows. For a long beat she just continues to eye him. She then says, "You are…aware you are not actually breaking any fraternization rules, yes?" Barest hint of a smile. Amused CAG is amused. "Have you been torturing with this for long? What a very unnecessary expenditure of energy. Pens. Jugs is no longer the squadron leader of the harriers. She may outrank you but she has no, day-to-day, command authority over you. I do not claim relationships between air personnel cannot be…messy. But the only people the rules frown upon you 'seeing' in an intimate manner are Bootstrap or myself." Another pause. Faintest upturn of her amused smile. "Unless this is going to turn into a much stranger proposition, I am unclear why I should cut you."
"I wish it was torturing, but, she used to be, and where I'm from, on the Stussy, air don't mix with air anyway." Bran ends up shrugging though and then reaching up with his right hand in order to rub at the back of his head. It may or may not have actually been torturing him and he looks skywards for a time. "I… don't think I was propositioning you for anything, sir, or Boots, and I'm used to women threatening me with cutting." This is the man that is friends with both Sweet Pea and Poppy, at least. They're abusive. The hand drops down and he focuses back in on the CAG. "The lack of clarity is reassuring, really. It is."
Cidra is not by nature abusive. Openly, at least. Her games are generally of the mental nature. "I pick my battles, Lieutenant. And whatever…seeing your are doing of the LSO is not one I particularly care to pick. There is nothing in the regs against it unless one is being *extremely* broad. And I frankly have larger problems to deal with. Please do not proposition me, however. Or Boots."
Bran opens his mouth to speak up, ready to question what sorts of battles it is she wages, but then he closes back up and gives a subdued nod of his head. He listens. "Not everything was glorious and exciting when it came to hunting pirates in the black of space," adds the ECO. He gives a low whistle though now that he is back to being relatively relaxed and at ease. "Or I'll get hurt. Right, I can easily do that," he stiffly nods, somewhat amused, and gives a glance sidelong in the direction of the memorial, "I'm quite happy as is. And Lords willing, those problems don't increase this wall."
"Lords willing," Cidra says, though it's more a prayer than anything said with particular confidence on that note. "Well. I have had my fill of ghosts tonight, I do think. Clear eyes and steady hands, Pens." That said, she prepares to take her leave. She still has to hit the showers.
Lords willing, Bran won't end up on a memorial wall any time soon. He politely clears his throat and buries his hands into front pockets, nodding. "Aye-aye," he looks over to the wall once more though and then nods to them, respectfully, before shifting his weight uncomfortably so from one boot to the other. "I… think I'll hit the berths myself." He'll wander off himself.