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[liesdontfindyou]

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mid-september

[not_a_traitor]

Once he's out of the room with South, Gaeta has to take a few minutes to lean against the wall and force his composure back into place. The fury takes its sweet time dimming. He doesn't feel wholly present, like he's got his shoulder against Galactica's hull instead of the wall of the Visitor's Center, until his anger dies down to its usual embers.

He reassembles the conversation. CT. Gods, frak.

Gaeta pushes himself away from the wall and digs around for his sending stone. As he limps down the hallway, he says, "CT, it's Lieutenant Gaeta. Do you have a minute?"

(She'll be able to hear the tension in his voice. It's going to take a whole lot longer than a few minutes for him to be truly calm.)

[liesdontfindyou]

It's as much the choice to identify himself with rank included as it is his tone that stands out to CT and makes her wonder what's happened. Something to do with the centre seems like a safe bet, but even taking that assumption for granted it leaves... a lot of open variables.

"I'm on patrol, which basically means I'm free. I can meet you somewhere?"

[not_a_traitor]

"I think that's a good idea." He pushes open the exit door. "I'm leaving the Visitor's Center now, if you're close by."

Which probably does a lot to explain his agitation.

[liesdontfindyou]

Yep, there it is. Now she finds herself running through the names of people she can imagine that place summoning for her, none of which are particularly appealing and many of which could've caused such agitation without much issue.

"Close enough. I'll be there in a minute or two."

[not_a_traitor]

"All right. I'll be at the tables near the entrance. See you then."

He disconnects the call. Pressing the sending stone to his forehead, like he's trying to smother the last few sparks of anger, he takes a few more deep breaths before heading for the tables.

It's not CT he's angry at, after all.

Beginning of January

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis comes to CT's desk, not in uniform, not that she ever is, after having been in a meeting with Cerrit for the third time since the middle of December.

"Hey, you have a minute?"

[liesdontfindyou]

CT visibly starts acting as if she wasn't trying to listen to the meeting, even from her desk, when she hears the door open and close again, not that it's particularly convincing when you know what she's like.

She flips the file she was skimming closed and nods. "Sure. Is this an inside or an outside conversation?"

[redlightgreenlight]

"It's not a secret."

Valdis isn't bothered in the slightest that CT was trying to eavesdrop, in fact, she kind of expects it.

"I'm heading up a new division, and I want you to join me."

[liesdontfindyou]

The look of surprise on her face is genuine, despite any and all attempts to eavesdrop that was not what she was suspecting. "Oh."

She sits a little straighter in her seat, arms folding against the desk. "What's the division?"

A Pathetic Excuse for a Rendezvous.

[cyansoldier]

Of course it has to be here.

Of all the places to crash-land ( can you even call it 'crash-landing' if there's no craft? ), of course it has to be here. A place she cannot leave. An antiquated little town whose boundaries have closed for a reason no one's bothered explaining to her. This isn't a crash-landing. Isn't a marooning. This is captivity.

Throwing a fit won't get you anywhere.

She feels naked without her armor.

Take the cards you're dealt and deal with it.

Tamped under the heel of 100 black-clad—

Focus.

Agent Carolina presses cold hands to her hot face, traces of dirt and earth-grime under her fingernails. A child caught fussing in the flowerbed. But there are no flowers here. The ground is frosted over, hard, and she isn't laughing, isn't having fun. There's no one to greet her once she shakes her boots and waddles inside. This is work.

She catches her bottom lip between sharp canines. Wrenches tough twine in a knot around a small stick with too much force. It snaps like bone. She's off to find another.

[liesdontfindyou]

Routine. That's one of the things that's kept CT sane, over the course of long months not only here but hopping from place to place back when she was on the run. Find a routine and stick to it, fill your time so there's as little left as possible for you to sit alone with nothing but your own thoughts.

Every morning, before work, she runs. Weaves a familiar route through Northwest Hollow, out from her house on Meadowlark Lane and back again. Cobbles beneath her feet that turn into dirt desire paths at the ends, passing through the thicket of woodland that encroaches upon the homes out here. She never goes too deep into the trees, but it's nice to get a taste of nature before making her way back into town for the day.

(This island has more trees than she'd seen in... well, almost all her life.)

It should be just another typical morning. CT jogs, breath faintly visible in the leftovers of the winter that is only now even beginning to retreat, boots heavy against the dense ground. And then she hears someone. Other feet. Other movement through the environment. She isn't alone on this morning journey and that makes her pace stutter and stall, cautious.

[cyansoldier]

Twist, knot, pull, snap. Another bone broken. She breathes hard through her teeth, a short whistle sounding where air squeezes between the minutia-space there. Bracing her hands on her knees she pushes herself to standing and searches the thickets. Little insects scatter from their homes under dead leaves and twigs she's disturbed. Twist, knot, pull, careful. Don't mess up. It's a simple maneuver.

In an ideal world she'd have cut a notch into the thing to secure it.

In an ideal world she wouldn't be here.

In an ideal world she'd have kicked the asses of one hundred man-made shadows into a fine, black dust. Felt their hundred visors crack against her knuckles, chassis crushed under her foot, joints popped and legs swept out. And him—

The stick shutters. Sheds tiny pieces of hard brown skin and snaps.

And so repeats the cycle.

She's out of her spot again, feet beating hard against the ground in her quest into the woods. And where Carolina's spent the entirety of her time alone in this place— and meticulously so— she isn't now. The pale sun cuts a shape out of the horizon. Short-haired and shorter-legged.

Alert and crouching, Carolina squints into the distance. The silhouette stares back. Unmoving. Cautious— she sees the tension there, in the muscles. It settles its weight onto one round hip. From right, left to right again. Just like...

Carolina's face falls. Her heart spasms, races, climbs and climbs through her chest and up into her throat.

She rises out of the thickets before she can stop herself, shouldering between trees and bare bushes toward the shape.

"Connie?" Crap. The name catches. Too quiet. Her heartbeat strangles her voice like a silencer attachment.

Wind buffers loose red hair.

Louder, "Connie?"

[liesdontfindyou]

If hearing the name in dreams, spoken by voices she does not know from faces she'll never see again, felt like a knife between the ribs, this time it strikes her like a blade buried beneath the sternum from below, angled up into her chest cavity and the jaded heart within. Its beat pounds away, loud in her ears like it had in those final, agonising seconds that gave her just enough time to realise that she had no options left, just enough time to see the second tomahawk coming before it flew, just enough time to know it was over.

Red lights, reflecting off pitch black and bright cyan. As vivid in her mind now as it was almost a year ago. Instinct draws her backwards, a half-stumbling retreat of barely a half dozen footsteps.

It can't be. After all this time, why— how— what—

Her voice catches in her throat and she stares, with wide brown eyes and half-open mouth and feeling so utterly uncertain. When her voice looses itself, the confusion and shock and hesitance and fear all tangle up into something hard to define: "—Carolina."

Early March Sparring.

[2onostromo]

It's early morning when Ellen leaves home, having fed herself and her feline companion, (and after sweeping up the corpse of her potted plant from the floor; damn cat). And it's morning's like these— nice mornings where the sun hangs passively in the sky, where the air is clear and warm— that she convinces herself everything is fine. Efrain's song, his declarations of hell, they aren't real. Or— they are, but. Not now. She's fine now. The dark marks under her eyes are gone and she's fine. Really, she is.

And she's seeing Connie. That's good. A highlight to a day that's only just begun.

Ripley trots up and knocks on the gate. She's traded her sleek green dress for a worker's tank and loose trousers, her hair pulled into a bun. She hopes she's dressed right.

Honestly she's not sure what she's in for.

[liesdontfindyou]

There's a moment, this morning, where staring at her own face in the mirror for too long starts feeling like her reflection is staring back and CT wonders if she should've rescheduled. Her edges feel sharpened and the lines under her eyes are a little darker, more noticeable. She splashes herself in the face with cold water three times before she feels like she's with it and she decides: no, she's not going to let the past coming back to haunt her make her cancel something she actually wants to do. It doesn't get to do that.

So she combs her hair and gets dressed in simple clothes suitable to sweat in and eats her usual simple breakfast and heads out into the yard to do stretches while she waits.

The knock comes and she half-jogs to open it, greeting Ripley with a smile that's frayed, but genuine despite— everything. "Good morning."

[2onostromo]

"'Morning."

She looks tired, Ellen thinks. Her smile's on the fritz and her eyes are dull like she hasn't slept well. Probably hasn't. What with how their party's notes turned sour, bad memories intent on sticking around like a plague, can Ellen blame her? No, she cannot. All they're apt to do is ignore it and move on.

That's okay. Everyone's tired. Everyone could use a moment to breathe, and this can be their's.

"I hope I'm dressed for the occasion." She says, brushing past CT and through the gate. She meanders to the center yard and stands with her hands on her hips, smiling. "My wardrobe options are shit."

[liesdontfindyou]

CT shuts the gate and turns around, giving Ripley a once over that's more playing a part in a game than actual observation. She nods her head to the side. "You're dressed fine. Honestly most of the options around here for workout clothes leave a lot to be desired, we just have to make do."

How she misses the ease of a simple t-shirt, sports bras, leggings, joggers... literally anything that actually feels made for this. In hindsight, maybe that's the sort of thing she should have bought at the casino's surprisingly modern stores. But, for now, loose linen clothing just has to be the next best thing.

"Right," she claps her hands together, "the last time I did this I kiiiind of threw them in at the deep end and just went right into a few test rounds. See what we're working with."

She doesn't want to think about Rat right now, so she doesn't. Doesn't think about how eager they were to train. Doesn't think about how quickly they learned. Doesn't think about how little good it ultimately did them, when Carolina and the others tore through the shipyards like a reckoning.

"Though you should probably stretch a little first, at least."

mid-november, at like 3am [self-thread]

[ownperson]

"I fucking hate you, you know."

South makes the call too many drinks into the early hours, knowing damn well the person at the other end will be awake too. She always was. Late nights, early mornings, always working. Always thought she was so slick, too. (Maybe she was. It's not like South ever realised what she really doing.) By the end, you could've told her CT hadn't slept in a year and South would've believed you. She saw no evidence to the contrary.

The other end of the line is silent. It stays like that long enough South almost rears back to throw her stone into the damn wall, then—

[liesdontfindyou]

"I don't think that's true, but if you say so."

It's late. CT is sat at her desk, nursing a brewing headache after trying to let her new abilities guide her toward the right books to find some fresh answers (to little success). Ripley's not here in the house, tonight, and she's more aware of that absence than even she can write off as entirely normal.

She knew this was coming, eventually. Not because the Eye's taken to informing her of all the possible sources of distrust aimed at her from all across town (which it has, of course it has) but because she knows South. It was always just a matter of time.

[ownperson]

"Oh fuck you—"

Tearing to her feet to pace the narrow space of North's front room, the urge to throw her stone at the wall grows more and more by the second, but she doesn't. Imagines the release.Imagines the satisfying crack of stone against wood. But blutches it, instead, in a white-knuckle grip.

"—the fuck do you think you know how I feel better than I fucking do?! You left us. You abandoned us to figure out how fucked everything was on our own!"

[liesdontfindyou]

"I didn't have another choice," CT says, and even though she knows it's true, it doesn't feel any less of a lie to say. There are so many choices she still looks back at and wonders, so many things she wishes she could take back. It’s not productive, she knows damn well it’s not productive, but she’s only human (was only human). Regret comes with the territory. "Command were catching on. If I didn’t leave when I did—"

(If Needles didn’t force her hand, if she’d been able to get hold out for just a little longer—)

early november

[not_a_traitor]

Sensing the weave of connections scattered over the island means Gaeta can tell something's changed about CT, in much the same way "something" has changed about him. Threads that go to unexpected places; sudden links that weren't there before. She's not the Web's, but she sure as frak ascended to serve one of the other Fears. He's certain of it.

So when CT walks into her office one afternoon, Gaeta's already there, leaning a hip against her desk as he absently flips through a book. "Hey."

(Is he trying to jumpscare her on purpose? Look, he's hungry and he's trying really hard not to feed off Mulcahy, better to get a snack off another Avatar than his not-quite boyfriend.)

[liesdontfindyou]

The Eye's a fickle bitch, as it turns out.

It tells her a lot of things, of course, and sometimes those things are even helpful information—and then the rest of the time, it's like having a piece of malware in her system designed entirely to fire off random fun facts that drown out anything useful behind the noise. She's in the process of getting a live update on the state of the O&I's alcohol supplies (spurred, she thinks, by an idle thought about if she can get away with liquor in her coffee) when she opens the door to her office and jumps out of her damn skin.

"Jesus fucking christ, Gaeta!"

[not_a_traitor]

Somewhere, the Web snickers. (Gaeta presses his lips together to stifle a tiny laugh of his own.) He looks up from the book, and --

Huh. Okay. Definitely easier to sense the connections when he's closer to someone. Good to know.

"Wait a minute," he says, and snaps the book closed, "how did you not see me coming?"

[liesdontfindyou]

CT catches her breath and shuts the door behind her, leaning back against it in time with the click of the latch. "Well, you see, that'd require my new patron to actually choose to be useful. Which it only does when it feels like it."

It's probably not the most accurate way to describe whatever 'thoughts' an entity like the Eye, operating at a baseline of true sapience lower than the Mother of Puppets, actually has, but it's how it feels.

That's about when her brain catches up with her subconscious observations.

"Jesus you are covered in webs." The marks are a new kind of visual noise to have to get used to, too, even if she does have to focus to make them really pop.