She isn't the type to be sentimental enough to write a list of things she's misses about the place she came from, but pretending for a moment she is maybe this is what would be on it: her armor, the captain's cabin of the Normandy, the crew, the plazas of the presidium, the feeling of the ship being projected through a mass relay and the smack of it punching into real space on the other side. She misses her guns, her boots, and slush Alliance news. All things considered, it's a short list. Theoretically if she was going to make one, weather probably wouldn't be on it. Then the ship drops out of the sky, cracks open like a rotten egg and spills them all out into the jungle and the first thing she thinks is how much she's missed fresh air.
The first night in chest deep vegetation, they make camp around the bases of the massive trees in the shadow of the ship's monstrous skeleton. Small, frightened fires are burning and no one has the energy to make shelter. Most of the survivors of the crash, including the bizarre strangers who had stumbled out from the guts of the ship, are trying to sleep on the ground. Shepard sits on a rock, picking seeds of one of the few fruits brought along from the oxygen garden out of her teeth, and stares at the black void of the ship's guts in the darkness. The whole thing is leaning perilously out across the cliff's face, groaning and swaying in the breeze, and she can't shake the certainty that if she sleeps something will come slithering out of it after them.
Which is stupid. Probably. But hard to shake - a low creeping paranoia under her skin that has the smalls hairs at the back of her neck prickling.
Or maybe that's the ozone smell. It takes a while for her to recognize and mark it, to taste the water on the air. But then it doesn't take long for big fat drops of rain to begin pelting the cliff face, hissing against the Ataraxion's corpse and plunking off the greenery and sneaking through the dense tree tops. Without thinking, Shepard lifts her face to it. She holds a hand out to catch some of the rain in her palm, then laughs - at herself or their luck maybe.
i have literally no idea so we're cool the ax cops can't get us
If asked, Severus would say: Not stupid. That ship contained sentient hell. Something like that just doesn't dissipate into mist and leave. And it damn well doesn't die quietly. A spaceship crashing into the side of a planet compared to the shit they've dealt with qualifies as quietly. He doesn't bloody trust it, not at all.
"I hope you're enjoying yourself and not having a psychotic break."
Hi there.
Covered in all manner of debris (to say nothing of sweat and blood), Severus looks like a melting portrait of a drowned rat (painted by Picasso). It's a milestone, honestly. Worse than usual is actually somewhat impressive for a man who looks like he does on a good day. He's still wearing the dull black Tranquility uniform, but the ever-present bandage over his left forearm is missing, and he's got a thin piece of black wood gripped in his right hand. Detached from the bulk of the ship's uncanny interference and free of the looming concern about accidentally rupturing a hull, he's been less conservative with his magic. Far less. It took some doing but he managed to salvage enough supplies that he doesn't think they're in immediate danger from the more dangerous (ex)passengers, even if lunar cycle kicks up tomorrow. He hasn't slept - hasn't so much as sat down actually, since well before the crash. But that's fine.
She doesn't jump - no, even this long (how long?) on the ship is enough to have made her twitchy, but she didn't hear his approach through the rustle of the undergrowth. That's a bad sign. Maybe she really is losing it if she doesn't expect Severus Snape to come materializing out of the darkness. Shepard turns her hand, wiping it on the battered thigh of her jumpsuit.
"I haven't decided yet. Probably close to the first one, unfortunately." This shit would probably be less of a pain in the ads if she just hurried up and swabbed off the week end already. She shields her face from the drizzle - looks at him. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look like you got run over."
Is there a right way to take that? Does she look that miserable?
An eyebrow goes up and Severus looks over his shoulder at the wreckage of the Tranquility, then looks back at Shepard. Yes, well, funny story, they've all been run over by a city-sized space ship, it was on the news last night, perhaps you heard.
"That's one of the nicer things I've ever heard about how I look," actually. Severus scrubs a hand over his face (doesn't help) and pushes his hair back (same), exhales a tired sigh as he looks up into the rain. "Not corrosive to humans, which is quite pleasing."
So. There's that. Dropping his gaze back to her: "I'm setting up a shelter for you."
"Has anyone ever told you that you might need better friends?" She uses her wrists to push the frizz of her hair back from her temples, trying not to sweep too much grit from her fingers to her face, and is getting all ready to consider the possibility of standing up again when--
"You know, the Alliance had pretty good survivalist training. I can probably figure out how to keep myself dry on a potentially hostile alien planet." She looks after the stick in his hand. No. 'Wand.' "Unless you've got a spa in there. I could go for a hot soak and some cucumbers on my eyelids right about now."
Severus just tilts his head, because lol friends. In his opinion he doesn't have any (somewhere Charles Xavier suddenly feels like strangling him), and that's a silly observation. Moving along.
"I expect you have the best survivalist training of anyone here, actually," he says, "which is my point. We've got a limited window of time before people begin to panic or wander off to their deaths or both, or-- Merlin knows what wanders out of the bloody trees to eat everyone. You are going to be absolutely essential. You need a once-over from a medic, rest, and to be situated somewhere centralized."
Hopefully she didn't think he was over here out of sentimentality.
Most of the ship's passengers were people who had at some point been used to living in apartments or houses or who worked day jobs or who suffered trauma that fell slightly higher on the whole hierarchy of needs than 'food, shelter, water.' The rest of them - the ones who might know a thing or two - have been working in the ship's framework for so long that jumping to it isn't exactly instinctive.
What the hell is she doing sitting around on a rock? Tyke had general security on the ship as in hand as was possible, but did she know even the first thing about not dying in the wilderness?
For a split second, Shepard almost looks abashed. Then she stands and dusts herself off. "A better start would be to get a fire going and rig up something to keep us from getting soaked. I'll bet on some debris from the crash. I'll get a couple of guys to help me haul back any spare sheeting and we can rig something up." She's rolling up her sleeves. Congrats, Severus, you've created a monster. "Can you or anyone you know make a fire without fuel? I don't trust the smoke coming off these plants not to poison us if we start razing the jungle."
It's the monster he was angling for, so this works out just fine. There's no judgment about that fleeting look, and it's not like he'd begrudge her taking a minute to collect herself anyway. They do need to get a move on with everything, though, and he figures she'd be pissed at him in days coming if he kept working and didn't come get her up.
"Fire isn't a problem. If you'd like to acquisition the materials I can sort out a freestanding structure - I'm leery of pitching against any of the rock faces or the shell of the ship, honestly, we don't know what the jump drive's going to do in thirty days, if the 'computer' that runs it understands it's no longer in space. Power's still bloody on in there, somehow."
Edited (accidentally a word) 2017-03-29 22:13 (UTC)
There's a strong possibility that in thirty days whatever is happening with the ship is going to somehow vaporize them no matter where they are in the planet. The paranoid, reactionary part of her is almost positive that if the ship tries to jump, it'll generate some kind of black hole in its wake and what the hell are they supposed to do to avoid getting pulverized by something like that?
But all things considered, it's a small part of herself and easy enough to ignore in the moment. "It's a plan. Get that fire going, I'll see what I can haul back. Who knows how long this rain's going to last." The urge to call it a loss and just wait out the night is heavy - get a little sleep and then do what they can in the morning by light -, but who knows what the day-night cycle on this planet is. For all she knows, it'll be eighty hours before they see the sun again.
"I'll be right back." And then she's off, cutting out after a few familiar, we'll trusted silhouettes in the darkness and then out toward the groaning wreck suspended out across the cliff's edge.
It takes maybe an hour, maybe forty minutes, before she makes it back to him with a stack of twisted sheeting and a spool of cabling. The rain's coming down harder now, big fat droplets piercing through the canopy of trees to make the footing slick and unreliable even among the roots of the overgrown flora. He looks like a drowned rat, she thinks. It's not a very charitable thought, really, but most of the passengers are just as bedraggled. It's not just him.
Shepard dumps the cabling at Severus's feet, hands raw from the prickly exterior synthetic casing. "Good news - if the rain keeps up, I doubt we'll have to worry about being so close to the ship." Maybe the cliff's edge will just wash out from under it and the whole thing will be scraping off into the valley below. Wouldn't that be nice?
Nevermind that it's their only reliable source of food right now.
Anyway. Severus is by himself, and it looks deceptively like he hasn't been doing anything, at first - but the area's cleared out, and the ground's unnaturally flat. He gave up on enlisting anyone or offering heat or light sources due to certain conflicting personalities refusing to deal with him, but that's not a surprise. Let Black and the rest of the incompetent security team turn their nose up at him, they can go bloody drown standing in place as far as he's concerned.
"We'll just have to worry about a massive landslide," he deadpans.
Thanks, Severus, that's real optimistic and helpful. Anyway, he looks at the materials and then points across the clearing he's made. "I'll need a piece of the sheeting at each 'corner' of something roughly like a rectangle," he says, presumably to her gophers. Meanwhile: he picks the cable up and separates it into several small lengths, then sets them aside. For now. Once the metal plates are set up he paces around the area to look and visualize - he's not a bloody architect and trying to make a blasted tent for Princess Nuala with Teller had been a comedy of errors at best - but, alright, this will Be Fine.
Silent, he points his wand towards the middle of the laid-out metal sheets. They warp, stretch, connect, and form into one large piece with even edges. He twitches his hand and the whole thing rises up in the air to about eye-level, and Severus tilts his head, considering, as the thing shifts and ripples, lines and grooves appearing and re-appearing at different angles, until he gets something that water won't pool on. The whole of it is roughly the span of a house (or, idk, more than a house, it's not small, mumblemumble howevermuch material was scavenged, it's stretched out and expanded magically). Not large enough to shelter everyone at once with comfortable elbow room, but it'll be tolerable for current emergency purposes. Satisfied with that he lets it float upward at a reasonable ceiling-height, and then wordlessly summons the pieces of cable. Taking those, he walks the perimeter and drops each piece on the ground in measured places. Once he's done he stares at one and mutters something unintelligible until it cooperates and shifts, expands, rises, becoming a kind of organic-metal pillar that stretches up and attaches to the floating roof. That spell devised, he enchants the rest of them. And lo: a structure.
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Wrote this and realized i barely know what happened in ax after the ship crash
The first night in chest deep vegetation, they make camp around the bases of the massive trees in the shadow of the ship's monstrous skeleton. Small, frightened fires are burning and no one has the energy to make shelter. Most of the survivors of the crash, including the bizarre strangers who had stumbled out from the guts of the ship, are trying to sleep on the ground. Shepard sits on a rock, picking seeds of one of the few fruits brought along from the oxygen garden out of her teeth, and stares at the black void of the ship's guts in the darkness. The whole thing is leaning perilously out across the cliff's face, groaning and swaying in the breeze, and she can't shake the certainty that if she sleeps something will come slithering out of it after them.
Which is stupid. Probably. But hard to shake - a low creeping paranoia under her skin that has the smalls hairs at the back of her neck prickling.
Or maybe that's the ozone smell. It takes a while for her to recognize and mark it, to taste the water on the air. But then it doesn't take long for big fat drops of rain to begin pelting the cliff face, hissing against the Ataraxion's corpse and plunking off the greenery and sneaking through the dense tree tops. Without thinking, Shepard lifts her face to it. She holds a hand out to catch some of the rain in her palm, then laughs - at herself or their luck maybe.
i have literally no idea so we're cool the ax cops can't get us
"I hope you're enjoying yourself and not having a psychotic break."
Hi there.
Covered in all manner of debris (to say nothing of sweat and blood), Severus looks like a melting portrait of a drowned rat (painted by Picasso). It's a milestone, honestly. Worse than usual is actually somewhat impressive for a man who looks like he does on a good day. He's still wearing the dull black Tranquility uniform, but the ever-present bandage over his left forearm is missing, and he's got a thin piece of black wood gripped in his right hand. Detached from the bulk of the ship's uncanny interference and free of the looming concern about accidentally rupturing a hull, he's been less conservative with his magic. Far less. It took some doing but he managed to salvage enough supplies that he doesn't think they're in immediate danger from the more dangerous (ex)passengers, even if lunar cycle kicks up tomorrow. He hasn't slept - hasn't so much as sat down actually, since well before the crash. But that's fine.
what a relief
"I haven't decided yet. Probably close to the first one, unfortunately." This shit would probably be less of a pain in the ads if she just hurried up and swabbed off the week end already. She shields her face from the drizzle - looks at him. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look like you got run over."
Is there a right way to take that? Does she look that miserable?
no subject
"That's one of the nicer things I've ever heard about how I look," actually. Severus scrubs a hand over his face (doesn't help) and pushes his hair back (same), exhales a tired sigh as he looks up into the rain. "Not corrosive to humans, which is quite pleasing."
So. There's that. Dropping his gaze back to her: "I'm setting up a shelter for you."
no subject
"You know, the Alliance had pretty good survivalist training. I can probably figure out how to keep myself dry on a potentially hostile alien planet." She looks after the stick in his hand. No. 'Wand.' "Unless you've got a spa in there. I could go for a hot soak and some cucumbers on my eyelids right about now."
no subject
"I expect you have the best survivalist training of anyone here, actually," he says, "which is my point. We've got a limited window of time before people begin to panic or wander off to their deaths or both, or-- Merlin knows what wanders out of the bloody trees to eat everyone. You are going to be absolutely essential. You need a once-over from a medic, rest, and to be situated somewhere centralized."
Hopefully she didn't think he was over here out of sentimentality.
no subject
Most of the ship's passengers were people who had at some point been used to living in apartments or houses or who worked day jobs or who suffered trauma that fell slightly higher on the whole hierarchy of needs than 'food, shelter, water.' The rest of them - the ones who might know a thing or two - have been working in the ship's framework for so long that jumping to it isn't exactly instinctive.
What the hell is she doing sitting around on a rock? Tyke had general security on the ship as in hand as was possible, but did she know even the first thing about not dying in the wilderness?
For a split second, Shepard almost looks abashed. Then she stands and dusts herself off. "A better start would be to get a fire going and rig up something to keep us from getting soaked. I'll bet on some debris from the crash. I'll get a couple of guys to help me haul back any spare sheeting and we can rig something up." She's rolling up her sleeves. Congrats, Severus, you've created a monster. "Can you or anyone you know make a fire without fuel? I don't trust the smoke coming off these plants not to poison us if we start razing the jungle."
no subject
"Fire isn't a problem. If you'd like to acquisition the materials I can sort out a freestanding structure - I'm leery of pitching against any of the rock faces or the shell of the ship, honestly, we don't know what the jump drive's going to do in thirty days, if the 'computer' that runs it understands it's no longer in space. Power's still bloody on in there, somehow."
no subject
But all things considered, it's a small part of herself and easy enough to ignore in the moment. "It's a plan. Get that fire going, I'll see what I can haul back. Who knows how long this rain's going to last." The urge to call it a loss and just wait out the night is heavy - get a little sleep and then do what they can in the morning by light -, but who knows what the day-night cycle on this planet is. For all she knows, it'll be eighty hours before they see the sun again.
"I'll be right back." And then she's off, cutting out after a few familiar, we'll trusted silhouettes in the darkness and then out toward the groaning wreck suspended out across the cliff's edge.
It takes maybe an hour, maybe forty minutes, before she makes it back to him with a stack of twisted sheeting and a spool of cabling. The rain's coming down harder now, big fat droplets piercing through the canopy of trees to make the footing slick and unreliable even among the roots of the overgrown flora. He looks like a drowned rat, she thinks. It's not a very charitable thought, really, but most of the passengers are just as bedraggled. It's not just him.
Shepard dumps the cabling at Severus's feet, hands raw from the prickly exterior synthetic casing. "Good news - if the rain keeps up, I doubt we'll have to worry about being so close to the ship." Maybe the cliff's edge will just wash out from under it and the whole thing will be scraping off into the valley below. Wouldn't that be nice?
Nevermind that it's their only reliable source of food right now.
no subject
Anyway. Severus is by himself, and it looks deceptively like he hasn't been doing anything, at first - but the area's cleared out, and the ground's unnaturally flat. He gave up on enlisting anyone or offering heat or light sources due to certain conflicting personalities refusing to deal with him, but that's not a surprise. Let Black and the rest of the incompetent security team turn their nose up at him, they can go bloody drown standing in place as far as he's concerned.
"We'll just have to worry about a massive landslide," he deadpans.
Thanks, Severus, that's real optimistic and helpful. Anyway, he looks at the materials and then points across the clearing he's made. "I'll need a piece of the sheeting at each 'corner' of something roughly like a rectangle," he says, presumably to her gophers. Meanwhile: he picks the cable up and separates it into several small lengths, then sets them aside. For now. Once the metal plates are set up he paces around the area to look and visualize - he's not a bloody architect and trying to make a blasted tent for Princess Nuala with Teller had been a comedy of errors at best - but, alright, this will Be Fine.
Silent, he points his wand towards the middle of the laid-out metal sheets. They warp, stretch, connect, and form into one large piece with even edges. He twitches his hand and the whole thing rises up in the air to about eye-level, and Severus tilts his head, considering, as the thing shifts and ripples, lines and grooves appearing and re-appearing at different angles, until he gets something that water won't pool on. The whole of it is roughly the span of a house (or, idk, more than a house, it's not small, mumblemumble howevermuch material was scavenged, it's stretched out and expanded magically). Not large enough to shelter everyone at once with comfortable elbow room, but it'll be tolerable for current emergency purposes. Satisfied with that he lets it float upward at a reasonable ceiling-height, and then wordlessly summons the pieces of cable. Taking those, he walks the perimeter and drops each piece on the ground in measured places. Once he's done he stares at one and mutters something unintelligible until it cooperates and shifts, expands, rises, becoming a kind of organic-metal pillar that stretches up and attaches to the floating roof. That spell devised, he enchants the rest of them. And lo: a structure.