driftfleet | i know you, that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam

Entry tags:

i know you, that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam

[ Calibration Rooms ]
( for N-Z characters )

Before you post your toplevel comment, please:
1. Check the first letter of your character's name as its written in our tags. N-Z names comment here, and A-M names go to the other post.
2. Make a note in your comment if anything especially triggering or graphic might show up in the Calibration. If you're not sure if something's worth noting or not, we suggest listing it anyway, just to err on the side of caution.
3. Put your character's name (it can be shortened or different from the tag, this time) in the subject of your comment. This will help visitors find you easily, and help us update the list below.
4. Post your comment! It's fine if everyone's Calibrations end up looking and reading very different from one another. As long as you're having fun and following our guidelines, you're good to go. :)
5. If you have any questions or concerns during Calibrations, you are welcome to send them towards the mod team at any time, as always.

ROOMS BY CHARACTER

N - P

Nami

Natalie Goodman

Natasha Romanoff

Noctis Lucis Caelum

Nono

Okita Souji

Otono-Tachibana Makie

Pavel Chekov

Prompto

Q - S

Riona Cousland Theirin

Rip Hunter

Sokka

Sorey

T - V

Takeshi

W - Z

Yuan Ka-Fai

Zaveid

Zelda

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ -- of course. peggy doesn't turn around. instead, she glances over her shoulder. what's unfair, of course, is that she finds herself preferring his comparatively frank company to his flesh-and-blood counterpart who could barely meet her eyes when she'd walked out. but 'better' doesn't mean 'good' and she'd really rather not be here at all.

certainly, there's that investigative tilt which urges her to learn more; see more; remember more. but even peggy understands that there are lines that one shouldn't cross for fear that crossing them will somehow cheapen one's convictions. to that end, she waves dismissively at the hologram before heading immediately into the parlor. ]

Save your breath to cool your porridge. [ she counters -- happy (at least) with the irony of telling a hologram to do anything with his bloody breath. ] I don't intend to be here long.

[ which is precisely when she grabs for the same item she'd first grabbed before: the tooth. she curls it under her fingers and holds it hard against her palm, indifferent to the body-horror implicit in its existence. and when she does, she steels herself for the torture scene that's likely to unfurl.

only it never does. peggy tilts her head and holds the tooth up to the light.

bugger. ]

...You know I don't actually breathe like this.

[Is it how Gideon feels, he wonders? When some member of the team makes a smart remark about her. Perhaps he might never know.

Nor is it truly what's important at the moment. Peggy stalks into the parlor and goes straight for the tooth--again--but isn't taken anywhere this time. No memory sparks, no scene changes; it's as if the thing has lost it's spark.

So to speak.]

Funny how you think your intentions seem to matter. Shouldn't this whole endeavor be considered an exercise in things running contrary to one's will?

[Hers and his alike. Though part of him can appreciate the thought, at least, to limit what's replayed--even if Rip suspects Peggy does it more for her own sake than his.

There are other things nearby that might work better, however. Fragmented pieces of wood, an odd bit of tech made of joined cylindrical compartments or a decanter of well-aged alcohol are all easily within her reach, if she's in that much of a hurry.]

[ she bites back a retort suggesting that -- good god, yes, she knows he doesn't breath. that had been the point of the remark, hadn't it? but peggy isn't here to trade banter with some representation of rip hunter. given her recent frustration surrounding him and the predicament he poses her conscience, she's not here to do much of anything.

except, perhaps, to escape. and to that end she endeavors to ignore the hologram. it hadn't been much help, last time; why should now be any different?

but there is nevertheless a kind of reverence at play when she sets the tooth back in its place. as though maybe she's not prepared to be entirely flip about the process of being embedded in someone else's mind. and if the old options won't work, she'll have to choose something else. it doesn't matter how carefully she chooses; she knows she'll see more than she wants to, in the end.

peggy snags at the tech and its cylinders with the edge of a nail before taking it properly in hand. ]

[So her lot is cast. She knows already how this works. That she would find herself privy to Rip's thoughts and feelings as the room darkens, revealing an unfamiliar light shining down in its center.

The man ahead, however, you know quite well. Time Master Druce, of the Time Council. A teacher, a friend--

A traitor. There is nothing in you that doesn't simmer in quiet anger, fueled by the sting of newly learned betrayals. And he admits it again, casually confirms that yes, they have been helping Vandal Savage rise to the power he now holds, to afford him strength to rule the world--

But so have you, he claims. Of course you scoff, but Druce is quick to continue on. It's not by your will, but rather, through their manipulation, by means of this thing called the Oculus. The Holy of holy of the Time Masters.

You resist acceptance, even as Druce lists out how your actions have indeed played so nicely into their plans. Every move and every choice made out, and yes, it all fits so neatly together in one grand picture of history.

Yet it still cannot be. You refuse to accept it still, so he invites you to test the device.

You do so. Not without hesitation, but--you can't go on without confirming this truth.

(Even as you hope it's a lie.)

Countless images stream into your mind. The past as described, memories plucked not from your mind but out of time itself, exactly as stated, as designed. Yet there's more: the future as well, culminating up to one terrible moment when you see a familiar face surrounded by fire, killed, the death of a friend as it must be.

For as Druce says, there is neither free will nor choice beyond this very place at the edge of time.

Yet you still wish to resist. You try, desperately to summon up the strength to do so, even as the facts snap into place within your mind. You don't want to believe all that he's said, that you are nothing more than a puppet. You find that fire in anger, shout at the top of your lungs.

NO ONE CONTROLS ME!

But they do. Oh, they do, and they know you so well. Anger may fuel a man, but grief can break him--and Druce so calmly lays down that final piece that you cannot fight against.

The Time Masters. The people who have raised you, taught you, gave you a purpose and a dream--

They are ones who pointed Savage in the direction of your family first. They set this course along with every other. They are the ones who ensured your wife and son would die, so you in turn would act as they pleased.

So you would fulfill the destiny they laid out for you.]

[ she's sick to her stomach even before the recollection begins. her own nausea dovetails with his anger, and peggy is half-convinced that if her being wasn't currently bolted to rip's memory of himself then she might lose her balance; tumble, spinning. there is a special kind of sting found in betrayal on such an institutional-level. she's felt it before, ironically, in someone else's memories during the last time their sorry arses had been hauled aboard the marsiva for calibrations. she'd been made privy to the day shield fell and hydra supplanted it, revealing its rot in the roots peggy and howard and others had set to grow in the ssr's empty ground. what is this oculus, but project insight writ large? across years? centuries? even their names are eerily similar, in a vein.

and yes, she knows the feeling. and yes she can feel the call to arms in her blood when rip spits and screams his defiance. but nor can she forget that opposite feeling of glee and relief upon shooting the blonde during her last sojourn here. perhaps she remembers it all the better for being once again reacquainted with the architecture of his psyche.

afterward, she toys her finger along the artifact. peggy has long since decided to ignore the hologram; just as well that she doesn't prompt it to say anything.

(it, it, it. she refuses to acknowledge what personality and heart it might have, beating beneath the dream -- sleeping and fending off intruders like her.)

peggy leaves the shelf be. last time, she'd walked by a wanted poster; that's where she returns, now, under the possibility that it might vindicate her anger toward him. three things, last time. she'd endured three things and then the ship had let her free; perhaps that's all that's needed. ]

Edited 2017-06-11 02:23 (UTC)

You won't find the answers you're after there.

[Does she pause or hesitate, or go so far as to look away? It doesn't matter. The poster she'd caught a glimpse of during her earlier trip, that might have even been there when she arrived anew, is no longer on the wall where it once hung. Perhaps he's found a better way to protect himself this time, after her first encounter with her, with who knows how many others.

Or perhaps there is a duty he has to fulfill, that this image of Rip Hunter only now begins to understand. His role in this vision is of the AI; the purpose of the AI is to protect the captain.

To always be there.]

Not to the questions you really need to answer.

[ her palm presses the wall where the poster ought to have been. the space is changing; something about the construction beneath her feet is adjusting. to what end? a knee-jerk thought accuses it of wanting her infuriated and intolerant. it's easy, in the end, to push that motive onto others and ignore the reasons why her own fuse is so short and so easily lit.

peggy turns. will she be made to work in tandem with the hologram, then? her face betrays contempt -- once, she'd been beseeching. ]

There's an old interrogation trick. Leave a pen on the table -- and see what the culprit will do with it.

[ every single item in the waverider (including the literal pen) is a tell. not only for rip hunter's memories, but for peggy's priorities in sorting through them. ]

I pick something and that reveals something else. And not only about him. [ she doesn't acknowledge the hologram as any proper part of rip hunter -- not because she believes he isn't, but because she refuses to grant the ai that consideration. ]

I want to know more about why he shot that woman.

[ forthright, then. prim. perfunctory. ]

[Her anger comes as no surprise; not after her barely contained contempt during her last visit, and certainly not what followed. Yet if it has an effect on him the hologram doesn't show it. Either he doesn't have that strong a connection to the man he represents, or he's simply unmoved.

Either way.]

More than what I might have learned in your mind? [He knows this too, that in another spaced shaped in a completely different way, Rip Hunter interacted not with a hologram but some other form. Of course there's another detail that he could point out: that upon waking, Rip hasn't remembered much of anything about his visitors, save for the fact that they were there--

But that's too much, he thinks, for this situation.

Besides, she's made her point known in the end. He pushes himself up off the console, then motions towards the platform. There are too many objects in the room, too many things she might grab and possibly trigger. The technology allows him to be a touch more specific, although the reason she's after remains complicated.

Thus, three rooms: an empty set of crew quarters, an empty glass cell, and the very parlor she'll leave to come make her choice.]

Edited 2017-06-11 16:36 (UTC)

[ -- her cooperation seems expected. the expectation shouldn't grate, but it does. it peels its way under her skin in a way that reminds her how these weeks make everyone feel that little bit more raw. it's become dangerously easy to displace some of her worst concerns about the next twenty-four hours of her life back home on the variable that is rip hunter. if he has indeed duped her as underwood had, then she feels unwilling to cooperate on principle. after all, she's still coming to terms with the news that she will (back home) spring the murderer from her ssr cell and enlist her help.

dare she make the same mistake now? heaven help her; it's no wonder she's scowling.

peggy lingers on the step between the parlor and the platform. then, shoring up her resolve, she walks towards the console as though it's her choice and not (as it's beginning to feel) a hoop that needs jumping. she could wait this one out as she did in steve's mind, but the company is far less pleasant.

(and maybe, just maybe, she's a little bit curious.)

leaning forward with her hand perched against the array of screens, peggy plays her selection off as arbitrary. in the end, it's anything but. she drags a finger across the image of the empty glass cell. ]

[If she wants answers and escape both, then yes--her cooperation is indeed expected. However she may feel about it, this path is inevitable.

And not only for her.

The touch is all it takes for the room to darken; the cell once seen from the outside is where you now reside, fearful and alone with little more than eerie green lighting to let you see anything. Yet you hardly need that much to know you've got reason to be afraid; they've thrown her in here with you, for some reason you cannot know, that you need not know to expect the worst.

After all, as you tell her--she is responsible for throwing you in there. For making you a prisoner of this place, where you've known nothing but anguish and fear.

Yet she tries to weave a different story, to claim she won't hurt you. You try to get away, pressing your back harder into the corner, scrambling to make some greater space when there is none. But she says it's a lie--that it's in your mind--

(flashes before your eyes: images you've never seen, yet somehow know.)

I don't understand you say, no longer looking at her. It's a mistake; she stands, steps closer and that fear spikes within you. She's gotten you to look away, to drop your guard, and this, this is her opening.

You lash out. Not knowing why you shove with all your might, and something forces her back as you scream. Her body flies across the cell, striking the far wall, and it's all impossible but it's happened, just like that, somehow.

She groans when she gets up, spells out what's just been done, what you can't believe. Yet for her it's a foothold, the first stone set in a foundation as she claims once more that this prison is your mind, that you control everything.

You don't believe her, and yet you aren't as afraid. You ask why she cares so much, when everything you know says she shouldn't.

She weaves a fine story indeed for you, and along the way, there are more

(memories)

flashes, images of people, events playing before your eyes, so much brighter than the prison where you're housed. The JSA, Commander Steel. Captain Rip Hunter.

Not a prisoner, but the Master of this realm.

Perhaps it can't quite be called faith, but when she puts her hand forth again, you take it. You let her strength pull you to your feet, and answer her call.

I'm Rip Hunter.

Captain of the Waverider.

Captain of the Waverider--and I'm going to open a door with my mind.

You try to believe, but the doubt threads its way into your voice--and that's enough, perhaps, to blunt the effort. Though you push against the glass it doesn't give, doesn't break or even bend. Instead you recoil, the pain ripping through your head from the failed effort.

But she is not alone, it would seem, and neither are you. A young man, another would-be captor, but alongside her--

A face you know. One you trust without reservation. Gideon.

The introductions are necessary and brief. The man opens the door, and you, without hesitation, move to embrace the one person who has offered you safety and comfort throughout all of this. But escaping the cell doesn't mean escaping the ship, and in short order your little group heads through the halls to try and find a way out.

And equally, the answers they need. You want to help them now--they allowed you to escape, after all. But you cannot give them the information about the Spear, or where Commander Heywood is hidden in time. Gideon is the one to point out that your mind remains captive; this ship still exists. But perhaps the memories of your old life can be triggered still, if only you can make it to the parlor.

A task not so easily accomplished; just as you all begin to run, you're forced to stop when confronted by mirror images of the woman and the man--of Sara and Jax.

Rip knows who he is. He's our prisoner. Isn't that right, Rip?

You look down; you don't want it to be true, and yet so much within you thinks that it is.

Jax tells Gideon to take you ahead, but you don't go yet. You want to know what they're planning, what they mean to do if left on their own--and for Sara the answer comes so easily, somehow. The determination to fight, the confidence to believe they'll win.

You can't think the same. Not as you watch them both struggle, before Gideon pulls you away.]

Edited 2017-06-11 18:13 (UTC)

[ too much of this tangled web leads back to the woman with the blonde hair. encountered, this time, with a whole different slew of thoughts and feelings: trepidation and apprehension and fear. it's the fear that burrows into peggy and makes her itch; it's a feeling she tries to avoid whenever possible. she makes no time for fear. rip, or whatever sorry shade of him she inhabits now, seems so often given over to it.

is this before or after he's shot her? christ, peggy can't tell. she gets no context beside the gibberish they speak to one another and the glimpses of something else. and perhaps that's just as frustrating on its own. captain, captain, captain. the word is thrown around too much and too often. a beat is reserved for playful patter. and peggy (her own native thoughts, she's certain) lurks behind it all with an overwhelming impatience. a mind inside a mind inside a mind.

(she doesn't want him humanized. she doesn't want him pitiable or sympathetic. she's got nowhere to direct her ire if he becomes those things.)

as she's torn back to where she stands on the waverider's bridge. her knuckles have gone white on the console -- and she leans forward, composure lost in the wake of too many competing emotions.

peggy's always liked a good puzzle. but this one's got pieces missing and clues unfinished. the code-key is faulty; it's as though someone had stolen a piece of the enigma machine and, without it, she'll never find her way out. ]

I see. [ quiet; charged. ] You've been 'round this block once or twice before.

[ you, this time. not him. and here in the fleet isn't the first time someone's gone a-stepping through his mind. ]

[He's quiet at first, when she comes back--if she were ever gone at all. Regardless, he knows that only when the memory ends will she find herself back on the bridge, able to speak to him.

To confirm what it is she's just seen.]

Yeah. [Short, to the point. He's moved while she's been away, sitting now on the step one would take to get back into the parlor. He leans forward, arms braced on his thighs, as if there's substance there rather than a construct of light that isn't quite whole.]

Though I do think I have greater agency this time. [Ironically. He seems to be considering it rather intently.] I know who I'm meant to be--but I suppose I thought I knew before, too.

[ he talks about this time and he talks about before. and peggy cards her fingers through her curls -- as though some of the shine and polish has come off of her performance, and there's a crack developing in her composure. there's something beneath the anger; it doesn't quite peek through. ]

What changed?

[ -- is it simply that she's here for a second time? or has the hologram gotten some practice in the interim? what makes him so certain he's got any agency at all?

peggy spares him only a glance before her eyes fall back on the console. last time, it had only taken three before she left. but one instance does not a pattern make. hell, it barely makes for a hunch. ]

You did.

[What trust she'd managed to scrape together for a stranger had been shattered; what faith she had in Rip Hunter as he presented himself was gone. And though they hadn't known each other for very long at all, somewhere the hologram has come to realize that chance, that purpose had meant more than even Rip himself realized.]

The purpose of the Artificial Intelligence programs aboard these ships are to protect and serve their captains. [He looks up at her; shrugs his shoulders.] That is the part I'm meant to play in this--encounter. And you, Miss Carter, needed something more than escape this time.

[Or maybe Rip needed it of her. Who is he to say?]

You've answered the question in part. You can piece together why he shot her. [That Rip's mind had been corrupted, that his true self had been held captured within the lies inflicted upon him by another. She's clever enough to see it.]

I can let you out now, unless you need to know more; why he shot her.

[ a rather deeply involved bugger, isn't he? intricate -- and peggy's caught thinking (just for a moment) about the sheer mass of data and coding that must go into something like an artificial intelligence. oh, not this one; this one's rather made-up, she suspects. but nevertheless the concept exists. if winn was still in the fleet, she could have planned to ask him. he would have told her.

something more than escape. she could laugh. but she doesn't. instead, she decides to ignore the console altogether. if need be, she'll look that artificially intelligent man in his artificially intelligent eyes and she'll say what needs saying. ]

I do. God, I do. But I also think I'll ask him for myself.

[ -- hauntingly similar to the sentiment surrounding her first exit, really. and her hardheaded pronouncement that she would make him talk. as tempted as she is to take the answer by force and by conquest, she remembers enough of what happens in her own dream-space to understand the value of persuasion. ]

As you'd have it, then.

[He waves a hand towards the doors--yes, they're there again. If they weren't before, it likely doesn't matter. They open even before she approaches them, signaling her freedom to leave the space once more.]

Though maybe start off with something a little less random than demanding to see his teeth this time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i know you, that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

the empty cell

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject