Jilleen Adel Simmons (absolutelysheba) wrote in bsg_avalon, @ 2011-02-22 21:05:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | jilleen simmons, sophia cato |
Clipped
WHO: Sophia Cato and Jilleen Simmons
WHERE: Battlestar Avalon
WHEN: Not too long after Jill left James, Y02/12/05
The Avalon was good for one thing, in Sophie's opinion, and that was the ability to lose one's self inside of it.
She had spent weeks drifting through the lower decks, just another gearhead among gearheads. No one thought more of her than as simply part of the furniture--to the best of her supervisors, she was a useful tool but nothing more. There was a part of her that preferred this. The funeral of weeks ago was a painful blur, not because she had attended but because she had not. She remembered nothing of those days and when the other deckhands asked, Sophie simply said she'd been drunk.
It wasn't true. She didn't have that luxury.
For some reason, the question of where she'd been again spun through her head as she walked through the hall, so absorbed that her step became stomp, the clipboard under her arm flopping around as she moved through the corridor. Her focus was not on the hall but instead on her own mind and a memory she couldn't quite recall.
Anger and Hurt must be a title of a song somewhere in the Twelve Worlds. It was what Jilleen felt after leaving James. It was like her heart was being squeezed and suffocated. It was not a physical attack, but an emotional assault on her heart being torn by anger.
She had crossed that bridge. Nine years long years of marriage coming to the end, but it had been a long time coming. It was beyond the point of no return, it was over between her and James as far as she was concern at moment, and it did not feel good at all.
Jilleen lost herself in the corridors of the battlestar with time to kill. Reporting early to meet the Admiral was not good idea in her state. What was I thinking? I’m so stupid. She closed eyes for a second, at the wrong time. Another corridor opened to her right, and it was from that side that someone bumped into her. “Hey!” She felt something hard hit her elbow. Her bag dropped to the floor along with the person’s clipboard.
"Frak-" The word shot out of Sophie's mouth as she scrambled for the papers now falling. Then her eyes caught sight of the woman who she'd run into. "I'm sorry." It was half as much for the curse as for running into her. Cato didn't know much about her superiors but what she did know was that she didn't need to be swearing at them in the corridors. She knelt down, halting in her search for the papers, and started trying to shovel the contents of the bag back in without looking at them.
Jilleen held her elbow rubbing away the pain. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you watch were you’re going?” She completely ignored her fault in the collision. She looked down and saw the female stuffing her non-military issued delicate sheer and silk lingerie into the bag along with other of her personal civilian clothing. “Hey get you dirty knuckle dragger hands off my things.” The officer quickly knelt down to snatch them away, and put her things in her bag herself. She couldn’t believe the zipper broke on her bag.
Knuckle dragger. Sophie recoiled, her fingers dropping the bag as she stared at the other woman. "I--" The truth was that she wasn't the only one at fault and her mouth tightened. Things just weren't that different than Canceron, sometimes. "I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention." The last was true, if not the first.
The officer was not about to make excuses for herself. “You should have, I had the right of way.” It was a courtesy on ships for enlisted to yield to officers. Jilleen finished gathering the articles of clothing that fell out of her bag. She tried to zipper, but it was useless. “Thanks to you, my bag is damaged. Sorry is not going to repair it.” She got back up on her feet and did not offer to help pick up the loose papers on the deck.
"I'll get it fixed," Sophie said, not quite able to keep a note of resistance out of her voice. "It's just a zipper." She'd meant for the words to come out quietly--and they had--but there was a hint of insubordination in her tone.
There was just something about this woman which made her dislike her the more she spoke. Perhaps it was the Cancerian accent and her tone. “Stand at attention,” she ordered, “and give me your name.”
"Specialist Sophia Cato, sir." Her hand snapped up, a bit too pert considering her attitude of moments earlier. Sophie could feel the bile in her own throat as it closed slightly, staring at the woman in front of her. She hated feeling inferior, yet it was the reality of life off Canceron.
“Specialist Sophia Cato,” she repeated the name so she could commit it to memory. “I’m going to decide in the next hour if I should have you on report for ignoring safety procedure and damaging personal property. Pray to whatever god or goddess you prefer that I decide to forget.” A beat later, “that’s all. Carry on.” Jilleen continued on her way leaving the specialist to clean up her mess.
Some personal property, Sophie thought, staring at the bag that the other woman had picked up. It was a luxury, she thought as she knelt to scoop up her papers and shovel them back on her clipboard, to be so concerned about something that mattered so little.
She wasn't going to argue Jill's ruling. Something in her rebelled against that harder than she would have before. Something that she couldn't quite put a finger on.
Sophie only wished that she knew what it was.