adventure without risk is disneyland [closed]

[commentboxtroll]

Date & Time: 4/22 through 5/3
Location: From Exsilium to southern UE territory and back again.
Characters: Caesar Silverberg, Collette, Asami Sato, Stephanie Brown, Ellie Linton, Nash Latkje, Gamora, Balder, Nathan Summers, Khisanth, guest-starring Clive.
Summary: Over the channel and through the wastes to the UE's house we go.
Warnings: Violence, spiders, swearing highly likely.
Notes: Any format goes. Feel free to start your own threads outside the subsections; those are just guidelines, not rules. Timeline and info is here if needed (or there are any further questions).

[ on a boat. ]
[ wastelands. ]
[ spiders. ]
[ onward. ]
[ civilization. ]
[ compound. ]
[ space. ]

Comments

[whatsupcroc]

She keeps working on the hiccups, holding her breath and closing her eyes against the jerk of pain that accompanied an oxygen-deprived hiccup. Leaving her hands on her face seems to help, gives her something to press into and against while she desperately searches for the center within herself that keeps her steady.

She hasn't quite found it yet. Still, the hiccups cease. She waits through one countdown, then a second. Her hands slide down over the bridge of her nose, pulling against the skin of her cheeks as they trail down and fall off the sides of her jaw.

In the end, her hands are pressed together as if in prayer. Then even that semblance falls away when they come to rest in her lap.

Shyly, softly, and in all her snotty glory, she sniffles and says: "Thanks."

[oldsoldiersneverdie]

"You're welcome." The moment, at least, has diffused some of the tension in the air surrounding them. Still there, but now he feels like he can talk around it. "Back home, I had a... friend who always teased me when ever I got hiccups. So I had to do something about it." He smiles at the memory, shakes his head a little. "It probably was funny from her point of view, but not from mine." Mostly because he does realize a big, burly soldier hiccuping is pretty incongrously ridiculous.

[whatsupcroc]

The idea makes Collette giggle, a thick, labored sound, but in the better sense of the word. Labored from trying. She desperately needs to keep laughing.

"Yeah, I bet you didn't like thinking how ridiculous you'd look," she says, nothing so interesting than losing her brain to mouth filter when she's so emotionally scattered. Bit by bit, she reaches out for those feelings, pulling them closer and stitching them back together. The patchwork quilt of her feelings would be warm enough, wrapped as tightly as she tended to wear them.

[oldsoldiersneverdie]

He shakes his head, grinning. "I didn't in the slightest. I was halfway tempted to give her hiccups for a day or two and see how much she liked it, but my better nature won out."

He can feel the change in the emotional atmosphere around them, and decides maybe it's time to broach matters closer to hand. "...You doing okay?" It's casual, but there's the slightest undercurrent of concern, there. He's seen battle-shock spiral out of control, before, and he doesn't want to see it happen here.

[whatsupcroc]

It works to her advantage to get out all of what she'd been locking in, working through it little by little with greater clarity when it wasn't dragging her down through sheer weight of what she'd been unable to say. The words still elude her now, but when she swallows, and when she shakes her head but offers Nate a small, steady smile, it's with the feeling that things really will be okay, and that she is.

More or less.

"I can't breathe through my nose," she admits, a statement mangled somewhat by the exact thing it spoke about. "I left all my tissue in my other suit. Guess I'll have to suck that up, huh?"

[oldsoldiersneverdie]

Nate manages to bite back a laugh, though his smile quirks a little. "I'm afraid I'm not much help there - you may have to settle for a sleeve or some leaves, unfortunately." A brush of her mind reveals that yes, she does seem to be calming down some, and he projects a bit of understanding-calm-reassurance back to her. Hopefully not enough for her to notice to psychic nudge, but he does what he can.

[whatsupcroc]

She doesn't notice the nudge. The feeling is absorbed and reflected on her own tendencies, embraced like a natural shift in emotion that she was already leaning toward. It's okay, he gets it. She feels he gets it, and that it's better to chill out and deal with this once she can think a little more clearly.

Which of course meant she laughs at his suggestion, rubbing the back of her hand under her nose, and then against her side. Eugh -- so much snot! "Sleeves it is, then," she confesses, shivering a little. "Good thing this suit's fully washable."

Collette swallows. "Everyone's okay, right?"

[oldsoldiersneverdie]

Nate grins. "Yeah, this sort of world isn't very friendly to dry-clean-only. I suspect given a month, almost anything'll end up mostly grey-ish or brown-ish." Ah, the minor problems of dystopian futures.

"And yeah, nothing we couldn't patch up. I think we'll all be a little sore tomorrow, but in one piece." Which, given the situation they'd found themselves in, was the best that they could really have hoped for. Nobody injured enough to put them out of commission, and they'd still avoided detection by the patrol.

[whatsupcroc]

"Oh," she breathes out, "That's good, then." She's calm enough to take stock of her situation, straightening up and fiddling with her hair. It's hanging haphazard over her face, covered with things she'd rather not think about. Some careful tugging and combing with fingers tames it enough to pull it out of her face.

"Sorry for being all... messy." It's her way of saying sorry for the tears while making it easy to dismiss. She doesn't want it to be something any of them have to think about.