Windrose June Mingle!

[passingthrough]

Who: SS Windrose + Visitors
Broadcast: Unlikely
Action: SS Windrose
When: June — anytime!

[Now featuring bathroom rank II for all your bathtub and and additional ten minutes of water per hour needs! We also have more and faster shuttles! Just last month we made it to actual double-sized beds for all your double-sized fun. Special features include a hanging medicinal herb garden in the cargo bay complete with bacon-flavored kelp and Officer Snuggles the resident security fox!

Please enjoy your stay. Unless you're The Stalker. There's a sandwich bag waiting for you.]

Comments

Wrath Before June 7 | OTA

[pain_train]

A: Showers

[Everyone's favorite. Wrath's extremely happy about the bathtub, since it means she can soak her back. She also takes quite a few hot showers though, for purely therapeutic reasons. But if you'd like to have a potentially awkward naked conversation with her in which she has no idea why you keep stammering, this is your moment.]

B: Kitchen

[Since she's successfully made a pink drink that tastes pretty good, and something that's almost like hot chocolate, she's come to the conclusion that she can mix drinks all right, she just can't cook worth a damn. So she's in the kitchen now and then, experimenting with various mixes of flavorings to see what she can come up with next. Some aren't bad. Some are... really bad. She accepts all guinea pigs, or people just wanting to keep her company.]

C: Movie Night

[She is shocked--SHOCKED!--that you have never seen her movie from home. It's a lot of fun, okay. There's copious amounts of both explosions and nudity. Hope you're ready for Demon Marines of Draconis-9.]


D: You pick!

[She might be working in the armory, or training Officer Snuggles, or drawing, or who knows what else. Pick something and go with it.]

D;; Visiting > Medbay

[reconstitution]

[ It's taken about a week to gather up the courage to visit Wrath, both from his own injuries and waiting for things to die down. He made sure to send a message to Vision beforehand as a precaution to see if he is still welcome. He knows he is (by some fucking miracle) but he doesn't want to assume how anyone feels about him anymore.

He wouldn't blame them if they were wary. They should be.

It doesn't take Winter long to get to the medbay, but when he does, he raps his knuckles on the door before letting himself in. He spots Wrath immediately, and that heavy weight caught in his throat immediately plummets into his stomach. ]

[ Oh god. This is why she didn't want to show him. Too late now, she's bound to have heard his approach or have seen him. He doesn't offer much by way of greeting. ]

..Hi.

D ;_;

[pain_train]

[Any visitors get a bright smile, no matter how tired or otherwise not great she's currently feeling. Because they're a welcome distraction if nothing else, and this is still a million times better than when she'd been in the hospital in Proles and no one had come to see her for weeks before North and Delta started.

There's just a moment where her expression falters, a split second where she's wondering if that's actually Winter or if it's about to be that nightmare she's been having almost constantly, where someone else is looking at her from his eyes and is here to finish breaking her to pieces.

(Would that be entirely bad? She still hasn't decided. But she can't help that survival instincts still make the thought terrifying even if the intellect is still undecided.)

But no, that is Winter, that's his dumb look on his dumb face and that means everything is okay.

(right?)

She goes from smiling to absolutely radiant at seeing him. At this point, she has no idea how bad she still looks, which is probably for the best.]

Winter!

[reconstitution]

[ He's hesitant to even approach her, like his mere presence will shatter her like glass. Winter's caught in the doorway, and it takes ages for his legs to cooperate.

When he does make his way over, his stride isn't silent as it normally is. Winter has to compensate for the dead weight of metal on one side and his still-healing leg on the other. He's a goddamn mess.

There's a chair positioned next to her bed, so he takes that, easing himself down. ]

I'm sorry.

[ He says it again, and he'll keep saying it. He never wanted this. ]

[pain_train]

[It's good to have him here. But he's so serious, it's hard to keep smiling.]

It's okay. It wasn't you. I fought. I lost. It happens.

And you're here now, and you're back. So that's what's important.

[reconstitution]

It's not okay. I'm still responsible for putting you here.

[ He's such a drag, Wrath. You should know this by now. And he's going to keep dwelling on this forever. ]

[pain_train]

[She rolls her eyes. These are some critical hurfdurf levels. She is not even in the mood to try to argue about it, so she'll cut straight to the chase.]

Winter, shut the fuck up and hold my hand.

[reconstitution]

[ He shouldn't be surprised at Wrath's attitude, but he is, just a bit. Nothing bad, she's just.. unpredictable. This is pretty much best case scenario to how he imagined this visit would go.

With a nod, he reaches out and puts his right hand palm up next to hers. ]

[pain_train]

[She curls her fingers around his firmly. Though there's a little weakness to her grip, a twitch of the muscles because of her nerve fibers being not properly coordinated.

Quietly:] Please stop hurting yourself. You're already hurt enough.

[reconstitution]

I'm not.

[ He tightens his grip on her hand. It's not forceful, just there. ]

[pain_train]

[She squeezes his fingers.] There's no amount of pain you can feel that's going to absolve you. You know that. That's not how it works.

[She knows that too.]

[reconstitution]

..I know. [ He's going to die with his ledger bleeding red. ]

[pain_train]

[Another little squeeze of his fingers.] All you can do is keep moving forward and act positively, right?

You can't move forward too well when you're limping around and bleeding. [She gives him a crooked smile.] Sorry about that.

[reconstitution]

They're physical injuries. They'll heal.

[ They're just taking their sweet time. Then again, he doesn't really know how long it should normally take. ]

[pain_train]

You know what I mean.

[Don't be obtuse.]

It's easier to hurt than it is to be here, huh.

[reconstitution]

Easier for who?

[ None of this is fucking easy, and he wants more than anything to trade places with her. ]

[pain_train]

For you. Watching you hurt yourself isn't easy for me. [Another hand squeeze.] Because you're really important to me.

[reconstitution]

You're important to me, too.

[ It absolutely kills him to know that he's the one that did this. He broke one of his best friends like a twig. ]

[pain_train]

Thanks. It feels... really good to hear you say that. [She closes her eyes for a moment.] I have nightmares, sometimes. [She probably shouldn't tell him this, but it's hard to think.]

[reconstitution]

[ She's one of the most important people to him here. He doesn't say it, but she must know, right? She's seen a side of him he doesn't like many people seeing, and she saw him at his worst.

His mouth tightens to a thin line, jaw tensing. He has a notion as to what her nightmares are. ]

Me too.. When I can sleep.

[pain_train]

[Wrath is very good at reading people, far better than she realizes. But there are certain blind spots she has. It's difficult for her to think around the embedded fact of you are nothing. Why would anyone care about a non-person who isn't even an effective soldier any more?

Nightmares seem to come with being what they are. A particular sort of powerless nightmare, being a passenger in one's own body.]

I sleep all the fucking time right now and I hate it. Because of the chems.

[She even drops off in the middle of conversations, sometimes.]

Can I help, though?

[reconstitution]

Sleeping is important to recovery, isn't it?

[ It's why she's sleeping so much and why he's tired all the time. Sleep is something he's trying to ignore, but it's getting increasingly more difficult when he can't use exercise as an excuse.

It must be ten times worse for Wrath, who can't even get out of bed.

He shakes his head to the question. ]

Not really a way to help it.

[pain_train]

That's what I keep hearing. [She gives Winter's hand a little tug.] And you have to recover, too.

[She's not going to argue with that, because sometimes, there isn't a way to help. It's fucking awful, and all you can do is try to keep going and endure. She's done that march before, too.]

Will you stay with me for a while? If I fall asleep? [And maybe that will finally convince her stupid brain that Winter is all right. That this is him, not the construct wearing his face that tried to smash her head into the wall.]

[reconstitution]

Working on it. You get better, first.

[ He knows that Wrath's healing is a little different than his. How long is she going to be bedridden? He wants to ask, but he's pretty damn sure whoever is seeing to her wouldn't want to talk to him.

Now that he's here, he's not planning on leaving until someone makes him. ]

I won't leave.

[pain_train]

Don't be dumb. You're gonna get better before me. My back was already super fucked up, and that wasn't your fault. [Maybe she won't get better at all. That still might be for the best.]

[She grips his hands a bit harder. Gratitude. It's a relief to hear that he'll say, that he can stand being around her after what happened and she doesn't make him feel too bad.]

Thank you.