sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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TEST DRIVE MEME #5

1. not subtle revealings

[you wake up.

it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.

the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:

Dear Passenger(s),

As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.

At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!

See You Real Soon!

Sincerely,
Gal Friday

you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.

you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]

Welcome! I'm very glad to have you aboard!

[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.

after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]

2. a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling

[the reflections are missing. all of them. in mirrors. in television screens. on the backs of spoons. nothing looks back at you.

then, figures do show up. not your own, like you'd expect. thin, wispy apparitions, people with pleading eyes and hands, reaching out to place their palms against the surface, from their own end. faces familiar and not, beckoning, mouthing words you just can't quite make out. help me, it might be. get me out, perhaps. just until you're close enough, until your skin warms the surface of whatever it is you're peering into. and then, those same hands wrap, all too real, burning-cold against your flesh, and pull, trying to drag you through the surface, making up for their lack of strength with desperation. any flesh unlucky enough to enter the reflection comes back bone-white and cold, all sensation dead, though it will fade within a few hours.

in retrospect, it looks a bit more like they were saying something different. something more like, better you than me. or maybe it's not even words at all. they look a bit more like they're laughing.]

3. complex mementos

[but, hey. sometimes changes are good! like, today, in Playback, there's a brand-new game available for all the children to play! it's an old-fashioned sort of claw machine, the type that's so large, a particularly dedicated kindergartner could wriggle their way inside. the prizes vary, and sit loose: bags of candy, stuffed toys, firearms, painfully early-00s electronics, actually that one just looks like a dead iguana, tiny ship-branded knickknacks... like all the other games in the arcade, the game starts up automatically upon being touched; lack of quarters shouldn't keep you from having fun! pro tip: they are loaded, and they will go off if you suck at claw games and let it fall.]

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( it looks bad. it looks very, very bad but at least not in a life threatening capacity if steve's still standing and cracking shitty, survivalist-mentality dark humor jokes. and it looks like it hurts, and looks wildly different from anything she's ever approached, but where clarke lacks in comedy she makes up with stone faced determination. not an eyelash batted, not a sour downturn of her mouth, not even a wince when she leans in to get an up close and personal look at each and every wound.

the more superficial damage — flayed skin, scratches, road rash — are pretty immediately discounted. it's the deeper puncture wounds that drag her interest like a moth to a particularly red flame. she'll reach out to touch them, with a thumb on one side of the gash and forefinger on the other, stretching skin and staring into the pit of fresh bared layers of flesh and fat and skin in attempt to see if viscera was a part of the mix. it probably hurts, and quietly, distractedly, clarke offers a repetitive — ) Sorry, I'm sorry. ( — in concert with any wince or twitch from steve.

blood doesn't bother in the slightest anymore. even as the distinct copper twang hits the back of her sinuses and carries over like a layer of salt across the back of her tongue. disgusting, but familiar. and after a few minutes of inspection and contemplation, she'll withdraw and offer: )

I don't think you're going to die from these. Nothing punctured your organs, and there's no initial sign of infection or foreign body remaining in the wound. We'll need to rinse them, rebandage, and monitor — and you'll probably end up with a few really gnarly scars. But you'll be okay. Are you okay with needles if I try to give you a shot?

[ Despite having had his ass thoroughly handed to him on more than one occasion, Steve had never fully understood the phrase "seeing stars." He gets it now. As soon as Clarke starts poking around his injuries, his vision clouds with bursts of bright white from the pain and he wonders just how big a bruise to his ego it might be if he fell over in front of weeping-radiation-burn girl.

But he does not fall over. Instead he grits his teeth and, yes, he winces, and flinches, and perhaps even says a few choice words such as "goddammit" and "shit" and "it's okay, no really, you're fine."

He answers her question with a thin-lipped, tight smile. As if needles would be where he draws the line after all this. ]

Mmhmm, [ he hums his consent, sounding a bit strained. ] Yep. Needles are great. Absolutely. Go for it.

Cool.

( and honestly, as many props to him for not keeling over and passing out as were given for bursting into the muster drill trying to use a lifejacket as a weapon. respect is earned in small ways, but clarke still gestures towards the paper coated examination table in a silent instruction to get comfy.

a brief aside to her assembled makeshift trauma kit, where she's filling a syringe that looks straight out of world war 2 with no more than a finger of milky white liquid, then procuring a rolling stool from over by a desk and drawing level with steve's bloodied, maimed abdomen. if poking at sensitive, torn flesh with just fingers had been unpleasant, this wasn't about to be much better. though after the first few shallow injections, hopefully some warm sensation of relief and numbness should be working its way through his system — enough that when plunging the needle deeper into layers of muscle, he shouldn't suffer more than uncomfortable pressure and the knowledge that, yeah, someone's def poking inside those wounds now. )

So tell me about yourself. What year are you from? Read any good books lately?

( ...okay, so her small talk needs work. )

[ The small talk helps. Really. It's enough to keep him occupied as she does whatever she's doing with that horrible needle. If he keeps his eyes on the ceiling and concentrates on her questions he can almost ignore that unnerving sense of pressure where he's been numbed. ]

Pretty sure the last thing I read was the back of a cereal box. And, uh. 1986? [ That's gotta be one of those questions medical people just ask, right? She's not about to drop another bomb about dates or something... right? He sighs, and it's inarguably the most world-weary sigh ever heaved by a 19-year-old in the history of all sighs. ] Why would you ask about the year?

( timeline airraid sirens are going off, because yes she is about to drop some date bombs while first-knuckles deep in his abdomen. )

A lot of us are from different points in time. 1950's, 1994, 2008... I'm from 2149.

( factual and efficiently communicated, with no fluff or fanfare. and, for a change from her usual pace, clarke tries her best to leave as little room as possible in the conversation for steve to freak out about that. pushes straight into — )

Anyway, I've been reading Cormac McCarthy's apocalypse novel, it's pretty sad. And a series about children living out of a boxcar. What'd the back of the cereal say?

[ It's an effective tactic, because he's spared approximately 15 seconds of wondering if A. time travel real? or B. bat bites inject hallucinogenic venom and none of this real? before the conversation moves forward. As such, the whole different points in time thing is filed away in a neat little drawer in his brain, to be freaked out about at a later date. ]

Oh, you know. Part of a balanced breakfast. Probably something about a free toy. The usual. [ He pauses. ] Do people do a lot of reading here or is that just you?

( genuinely hope you picked a HUGE drawer for your compartmentalization files, steve, you're gonna need it. )

A lot of us read, especially after we figured out the Captain was sending us places based on fiction. Sort of like doing extra credit homework, in case it turns up on the test later. Take a deep breath —

( because she's needle poking deeper into that gross bat bite, don't squirm, don't squirm. )

Movies too, when we can get them. Do you have a favorite?

[ Places based on fiction... okay that's a big one. Before he can ask for more details, though, she's telling him to take a deep breath (which he does) and he's focusing on his new favorite spot on the ceiling as the pressure from the needle gets not-exactly-uncomfortable-not-exactly-not-uncomfortable.

And then she's asking him about movies, and fictional places are going right into the drawer next to time travel. ]

I dunno, [ he admits, because for someone who works at a movie rental store he's remarkably bad at watching movies. ] Rocky's pretty good. Have you seen it?

( steve coming in with the potential superpower that could save them all next time an event like battle royale pops up, yet can't access it because he slacked at the staple consumption of his job. oh well, at least there's a future connoisseur of ice cream next time scoops decides to get a little weird. )

Never even heard of it. ( poke prod poke. then a pause as clarke looks up from her work and gives him a (forced) light, encouraging smile. tight around the lips, doesn't quite reach the depths of her eyes, and he isn't even looking at her but. bedside manner attempt. ) Tell me about it some time?

[ Yeah sorry he completely misses that commendable effort in her bedside manner. He's still staring at the ceiling. ]

Oh yeah, definitely.

[ Steve once called Star Wars: Return of the Jedi "the one with the teddy bears" so yeah, Clarke. He will tell you about Rocky and it will be the most accurate recollection of a movie anyone has ever shared. For sure. ]

What about you? What's your favorite?

[ He can play "let's talk about the most mundane things imaginable in the face of (vague hand gesture) this whole thing" too. In fact, he almost prefers it at the moment. He likes his traumatic wound treatment and existential crises served separately, thank you. ]

I can tell you my least favorite was Killer Klowns from Outer Space. ( stuck on a literal death boat and the only new fear acquired was one of clowns. any other circumstances she'd give a comical shudder, but clarke's honed in and focused on medicating one wound after another.

she sits back now though, fairly certain she's numbed steve as much as she can, and tries to keep the ghastly needle below table level so he doesn't have to look at if should he choose to glance down. a quick dip back into business to say — )

We can clean and leave some of the smaller ones open, but I'd feel better if we tried stitches with the bigger ones.

( at least in this department, the infirmary is stocked with more modern-day material. which clarke summarily turns to pick up. )

It'll heal faster, you'll just want to have me or someone else check them in about ten days. And my favorite thing I ever watched was a rerun of a soccer match with my dad.

[ Sadly (or perhaps fortunately?) Steve predates Killer Klowns by a couple of years so he can only but imagine what kind of movie it must be. Probably not the kind he'd enjoy, either.

He does finally drag his gaze away from his Favorite Ceiling Spot (perhaps never to find it again, alas), and spares Clarke a glance. Maybe it's a bad idea to leave his fate in the hands of a girl that can't be any older than he is but. He doesn't see much other choice, and she seems to know what she's doing. They've already come this far.

He shrugs. ]

Do whatever you need to. I can handle it, it's cool, [ he says, and sweeps his eyes back up to the ceiling. The old Favorite Spot is definitely lost, but he finds a new one just as quick. ]

Are you a big soccer fan?

( it's fortunate, steve. it's. fortunate. if no other measure of trust is established in letting her sew up your abdominal wounds, please just follow her guidance on this point. (clarke's biased, killer klowns awoke a previously unknown phobia.)

she takes his agreement to heart, gives one solid nod of acknowledgement, then eye contact is broken in favor of setting about the dirty, grimy work of minor surgery. he'll likely feel the weird sensation of tugging when each stitch is drawn and tied off, but hopefully nothing else. she starts in the deeper levels of the wound, dragging pieces of muscle and fat back together before skin. )

I like what I've seen of it.

( that's a super great way to express i've seen one game, it was a 100 year old recording, i watched it a lot on my post apocalyptic space station without triggering that timeline/time travel existential crisis, right? )

Kids used to play it in the halls with whatever they could find that'd serve as a ball, but I was way better at chess than soccer. You ever play? ( the 80's was a peaceful time, right? mutant evil flesh eating bats not withstanding. )

[ He will trust u, Clarke's narrative. No Killer Klowns anytime soon.

He'll keep his eyes trained on the ceiling, just as before, resisting the urge to glance down at what she's doing. The tugging of the stitches isn't uncomfortable per se, and certainly not painful, but it's bizarre and he kind of hates it.

So, uh. Soccer! He'll focus on that instead. ]

Yeah, I have before. Nothing serious. My school didn't have a soccer team. [ If it had he almost definitely would have been on it. ] I was always more into basketball, anyway. I played a lot. Have you ever watched a game?

No, I haven't.

( that's a lot simpler way of saying the sport hadn't expressly survived the apocalypse. after 100 years, they'd barely had nubs of pencils left, let alone excess paper to make palm sized balls and lob them into wastebaskets. though humanity is perpetually fidgety, and will make games out of nothing so she probably still has some leftover terminology floating around in her brain. someone, somewhere in clarke's seventeen years of space undoubtedly sank a chunk of something into a makeshift hoop and said: he shoots, he scores!

and, oh right! serena eterna exposure. )

There's a hoop up on the seventh deck, though. When you're feeling better, I'd bet you could put together a pickup game.

No shit? I'll have to check it out, [ he says, knowing full well he won't be here long enough to worry about checking it out or if he's feeling up to putting together a game. Psh. Please, Clarke. He's gonna be back home in time for dinner.

Though. Now that he thinks about it (and he doesn't want to think about it), he can't help but wonder how long Clarke's been on the ship.

He's thinking about it more.

And more.

And, godammit, it's not going to get out of his head until he asks, is it? ]

So, uh. How long have you been stuck here?

[ PLEAse for the love of god say, like, two hours or something. ]

( there's a slight (lengthy) and casual (super pregnant) pause here. clarke's hands still after pulling a stitch tight, and she's again looking up at his face — thought more accurately at this angle, the underside of his chin. wary, and more than a little sympathetic; cautious in delivery, then incredibly quick on the second part because she expects a mild, if not major, panic: )

...Six months — don't try to get up, okay? Stay still, it's not as bad as it —

( actually it is as bad as it sounds, and she thinks she would have been liable to shove the first person who'd told her they were going to be stuck here for this long. at least this long. thankfully (unhelpfully) clarke had been in the very first group to wake up this round, and hadn't (at the time) considered throwing haymakers at gal friday. )

What?

[ Steve very nearly does try to get up, and his abdomen tenses as he starts to push himself up on his elbows. Fortunately the not-painful-but-definitely-uncomfortable tug he feels in the general bat-bite area reminds him that, oh yeah, he's fucking hurt and Clarke is right, he should stay still. He relaxes as much as he can and settles for shooting her an alarmed look. Here we have the beginning of the spiral that will eventually lead to him sitting pathetically in Scoops, bemoaning his existence here. ]

Wait. Six months, that's — Jesus. That's crazy.

[ He goes to run his hands through his hair but malfunctions halfway through and just stops, hands on his head, staring at the ceiling. ]

That can't be right.

Sorry, ( she says with a wince. apparently in addition to sticking him with a needle, clarke's very aggressively popping the bubble of dissociative disillusionment right out from under him. it's unintentional, but also unavoidable and while sympathetic, she's only apologetic on the surface.

once it at least seems likely steve isn't about to ratchet up on the makeshift operating table, she sets back to doing up the last few stitches on this wound. clips the thread, reaches for some gauze and medical grade tape. )

I know it sounds crazy, but. It isn't. You'll see.

[ The filing cabinets of compartmentalization are teetering in his brain, threatening to spill out all those neatly stored-away pieces of information he's been so willfully ignoring. Six months is bad. Really bad.

And here's a fun thing about Steve: he's prone to yelling in these situations, so the more he says the louder he gets. ]

It sounds crazy because it's crazy! This is crazy! [ he hasn't managed to unglue his hands from his head just yet. ] Who knows, maybe we're all crazy! I mean you don't just wake up on a damn cruise ship and— and— and I don't know! Let some girl from the future sew up your, what, mutant bat bites?

[ maybe he's been crazy all along! his hands slide down from his hair to his face and stay there, muffling his voice as he goes on with: ]

Goddammit. I have to wake up.

[ because, okay, that's what it has to be, right? he's hallucinating or he passed out from blood loss or something and this is all a dream. ]

( every so often, clarke doesn't know what to say in a given situation. not when there's two outcomes she desires but that directly conflict with each other in the moment. normally she pulls no punches and dishes out the realities of their sordid situation regardless of if they effectively sweep the rug out from beneath people or leave them in denial. but right now she needs steve to stay calm and still and let her finish the second half of those wounds; after which she'll need, like any good doctor needs for their patient, for him to relax. not to push himself, not to throw himself too hard at the bridge door or over the side of the railing on the main deck.

it feels like a fine line to tread when he's already so adamantly against the idea. briefly she looks around, but doesn't immediately catch sight of chloroform so just knocking him out and dealing with this later isn't an option. neither is staying silent, though it's tempting. )

Listen. ( so instead an aside. she's fumbling all the bandage gear into one hand so the other can reach for one of his elbows and tug his hand away from his head. scoots up the bedside as well, so she's more looming over steve's face and can demand eye contact. ) Take a deep breath. All of this is crazy, but we're not. And you can have your breakdown about it once the girl from the future is done sewing up your mutant bat bites. Got it?

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TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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and now cw: needles. just. blanket cw for the whole thread tbh

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pov: me squinting trying to remember when steve got here sdfghjkl

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