open audio/action

[candothat]

Who: Pavel Chekov and you
Broadcast: Yes
Action: The Iskaulit or Bloodsport, if you like
When: Now

[voice]

I have a question to ask all of you, if I may--something that I have been thinking about.

[This thinking has nothing to do with the recent broadcast from the Interceptor Fleet. Nope. Not at all.]

What or where, to you, is home?

Is it a place? Is it people? Is it in the universe that you came from, or have you found a new home in your time away? If home is not here, would you return to it if you were granted the opportunity to do so?

What does home even mean?

I ask partially because I'm not certain of the answer for myself. I have thought of many different things as home: a country, a ship, a crew. There have been times, even, when I considered a single person home... but however I defined it, I was certain of it. I knew where it was, and I knew that it was where I belonged. That becomes difficult to maintain, you know, after several years in a place like this--the certainty of belonging, and the sense of home.

So I would like to know how you think of it. Maybe this question is too personal, but I hope that someone might humor me.


[action]

[In the mood for some in-person interaction? Pavel can be found in his usual haunts on the Iskaulit: in the library, jogging in the ship's more open areas, working (or drinking) at the Space Bar. Or come across him on the Bloodsport. That's where his quarters and his cat are, after all!]

Comments

[axi]

[To be a rebel, Kaname is finding Pavel in the ship's lounge. Probably with a drink because he's Russian. She's carrying the familiar mercat herself.]

Someone's asking deep questions today. Are you all right?

[candothat]

[Because he is feeling exceptionally Russian today, he has an entire bottle of space-vodka in the lounge with him.]

Kaname, Q-Lulu. [He raises the bottle to them in greeting.] I'm fine, yes, thank you. [He does have the self-awareness to glance at the aforementioned bottle and realize that it doesn't, perhaps, support his assertion terribly well.] ...Relatively speaking. Do you have an answer to share with me?

[axi]

[Don't think she doesn't notice that.]

Not quite yet. I'd need more time [and likely alcohol] to really put it to words. Have you thought of anything?

[She places the mercat on the arm of the chair he's sitting in and sits in another one.]

[candothat]

We have nothing but time.

[He sets the bottle aside in favor of petting Q-Lulu.]

Not yet, no. Everything that has been home seems very distant and difficult to return to.

voice;

[vartex]

...Hmm.

[How... philosophical. He's bad at that.]

Home ceased to be any one place a long time ago. I'll settle anywhere that my duty takes me.

[candothat]

[But Messer's entertaining the question! That's way more important than having a good answer.]

Ah, practical. [No surprise there.] May I ask what you consider your duty to be?

[vartex]

To protect the Walkure, of course.

[To him it's as obvious as breathing is for normal people.]

[candothat]

Of course.

[There's admiration in his voice.]

And if there was no Walkure...?

voice

[passingthrough]

It's a two story house on a pretty little street in a suburb of Chicago set behind a low white fence. The walls inside are pink, green and yellow because they let me pick the paint colors when I was six. There's a wax stain on the living room carpet from when I decided to do an experiment with a melted candle. My room is upstairs with my posters of bands and ballet companies and my stuffed animals and books and the computer I built myself out of parts I saved up for with my allowance and begged for at my birthday. And if I don't think too hard about it I remember it like that and not like I left it. [The bloodstains and later the crumbled ashes where nothing seemed to survive like too much of her world.]

It's been other places...other people, but when I lose those places [and people and she always does] that's always what I think of for home.

[candothat]

It sounds like a very nice home to remember.

[If not one that she'll ever be able to go back to, for multiple reasons.]

Do you ever think about where you belong? As a separate concept, I mean, since a home is a difficult thing to keep here.

[passingthrough]

It is. [Still nice in memory. Nicer maybe. She never thinks of the times her parents would fight when they thought she was asleep and couldn't hear them or the times she got in trouble for being late or talking back. It's just the good parts, but there were a lot of good parts.]

I'm a mutant. We're nothing if not adaptable. But sure... Sometimes. It's not usually a good line of thinking. [It landed her in some dark places back in Marina.]

What about you? Do you have a place you belong?

[candothat]

[That's the wonderful thing about memories of things (or people) that are gone: they're almost always sweeter than reality ever was. Maybe that's for the best.]

No, maybe not. I won't encourage you to think about it. [Making everyone in the Fleet more depressed than usual was not his goal, thank you.

He's hesitant to reply--he's the one who's supposed to be asking the questions here, darn it!--but the answer seems fairly obvious.] I don't think so.

video;

[twosoul]

[Greetings, it's your blue-skinned Security officer from the Bloodsport, currently broadcasting from the firing range on the Iskaulit where there are several throwing knives embedded in a target.]

Hard to say. Is home the place I sleep? The place I keep my stuff? The people I care most about? The place I feel a pull to, even when I don't know why? What I'd protect at any cost?

[candothat]

[Hello there, shipmate-he-has-definitely-met-by-now! Those sure are some knives. How does Pavel always end up on ships with security officers who have a thing for knives?]

I hope that you are asking this rhetorically and that you already know the answer. It seems that home should be more than where we sleep or keep our things, but...

[He shrugs expansively. It is a mystery.]

[twosoul]

[Knives are sure a lot easier to find in the places they visit than any other kind of decent weapon.]

Oh, not really. Cause they're all home, right? But is there one that's home-home? That's the part I'm not sure about. Are you allowed to have more than one?

[candothat]

[It's still slightly disconcerting, you know?]

There are no rules--I suppose that you could have many, provided you feel as though you belong in many places.

voice

[sweetlies]

Home is...

[Ciel still sounds a bit young, even with having left home behind almost two years before.]

I suppose home is people now. One person, anyway. It used to be a manor, just outside of London, overseeing an entire estate and the people who lived there, and the fortune that came with it. It all feels empty now, compared to the safety and happiness I feel with people I care about.

[candothat]

I like that sentiment.

[Home is people. It's a beautiful thought, and it feels more correct than calling a house or a country home, but it isn't always applicable.]

I hope that you have that person with you here, or that you will be able to return to them.

[sweetlies]

[He's never been one to be overly sentimental or poetic but that came so easily. Maybe he has grown up a bit.]

He is, thankfully. I wouldn't be nearly so tolerable if it weren't for him.

What about you? Something must have brought this up.

[cajunspice]

[Working? Drinking? Why not both? Remy tends to, more so if he's on the bar front than in the kitchen, and never enough to get tipsy and ruin food or mess up an order. However at quieter moments like this, it's easy to sit back with a drink and keep an ear out for orders as well.

Or think over that question Chekov asked everyone earlier in the day.] Ya feelin' a little home sick of late? [Honestly, it's a good question, one Remy has been considering since he heard it. It's also a tough question.]

[candothat]

[Well hey, if the boss doesn't mind a little multitasking, Pavel is perfectly capable of slipping in a drink here and there while tending bar. He takes the job too seriously to get sloppy.]

In a way, maybe. Remy, have you ever heard the Russian word toska?

[cajunspice]

Can't say I have, mon ami. [And even if he had, he still would say he hadn't. Chekov was a show man, much like Remy, and an audience is needed. A role Remy is happy to play for his friend.]

video

[the_tailor]

It's hard to say. I used to always think of home as a house in Cuba. At least, before I got launched into space for the first time. Then, home became my team. My found family. And now...well, a lot of people aren't here anymore, and... Home's a person, right now. It's that sense of belonging, that you're where you should be.

[He's quiet for a little.]

I miss Earth, and Cuba, and the rest of my team, and all of that, but going back means forgetting this place. I don't think I'd take that door willingly. Not after everything that's happened here, you know?

video

[candothat]

I understand. [Well, not the part about Cuba specifically.] It becomes more difficult, defining home, once other universes and sets of memories are involved.

What if you were granted the ability to keep your memories? Would you want to return to Earth?

[the_tailor]

If... If I could, and Keith could, then I'd feel a lot more comfortable about returning to Earth. I'd really badly miss some of the people here, though, because I'd probably never see them again.

[Biffy comes to mind, specifically. Even if he's immortal and could still be around by Lance's time, it doesn't seem as if they're from the same Earth.]