Rose Hathaway :: Vampire Academy (lildampeer) wrote in townofbreckic, @ 2015-11-28 01:11:00 |
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Heading back to her apartment hadn’t exactly been in Rose’s plan for the day. The lodge wasn’t magically transporting her home every morning anymore and she’d been reluctant to leave the old man’s side with him so sick. People weren’t getting any better, the doctors were no closer to an answer, and even if Rose put on a pretty good show of being calm as she tried to reassure others, like Taisia and Kenzi, she was really worried. Abe hadn’t been in her life for long. She hadn’t even known he was her father until after she was 18. The thought of losing him, though - it devastated her. Taisia was in with him now, though, and Rose could tell she needed a moment alone with her grandfather. Which was still weird to think about. Having a daughter here was weird to think about, even after all this time, especially when said daughter was only a couple of years younger than she was. Rose had ducked out of the room to give them a little privacy and she’d gone to check on some of the others who’s loved ones had fallen victim to this, like Freddie and Kenzi. Somewhere along the way, she’d been convinced to go home. Take a shower, get a fresh change of clothes. As much as she didn’t want to venture that far from the hospital, Rose had to admit that sounded nice. So, here she was, walking through the door of her apartment. She’d noticed Emily’s absence a couple of days ago. Maybe it had been less time or more. It was hard to keep track at this point. What she hadn’t realized was that they’d already been assigned another roommate, so she was surprised when she found herself face to face with a guy who she had definitely never seen before. It wasn’t Lucas or Roy or any of the friends they’d had over before now, so she had to assume that meant he was knew. Or a robber or something. “I really hope you’re our new roommate and not some random creep,” she said by way of greeting, smirking a little, although the humor didn’t quite reach her eyes. Rose was cracking jokes like usual, and those who didn’t know her might be fooled, but considering everything that was going on now and the events of the last few weeks, her heart wasn’t really in it. ~~~ When Kirk had first arrived, he’d been thrown for a loop. There were a lot of weird situations in his life, and more often than not, he was sure he could handle anything that anyone could throw at him. He’d handled Nero, Khan — even an angry Christine Chapel accusing him of flirting with another starfleet officer (he wasn’t, or at least — not on purpose.) He could handle anything. Still, there was an unshakable feeling that lingered. The feeling of being trapped had weighed heavy on him. He had the Galaxy free for exploring, and now he was confined into this small town town. He felt like he was going through an out of body experience when the situation was being explained to him. No crew, no leaving and no contact with Starfleet. He was in a stardate ages before the world realized they weren’t alone, with technology so old he couldn’t wrap his head around it. He felt marooned and alone. He spent a good portion of his arrival arguing with everyone he could about his situation. Prodding and pressing and trying to think of every way out while he was on the spot. He wanted to try to send a distress signal, but he didn’t have a PADD to work on. While, he didn’t assault anyone it was safe to say he was escorted back to his room rather than he was brought there. So, when he first sees Rose in the flat - Kirk is angrily clutching his welcome packet. “Guess so,” he said, lacking in his usual charisma. He decided then that he would do everything he could to get out of here. To get back to his crew. To get back to his ship. “Don’t worry, it won’t last.” There was a bite of acid in his words. He knew she wasn’t the target of this anger and probably a victim of the situation himself. So, he reflectively recoiled. “Sorry. It’s been a day.” ------ Rose rolled her eyes at the comment that it wouldn’t last. Everyone who showed up here always thought they’d be the super special snowflake to find the way home. None of them ever did, at least not intentionally. People came and went at random and few people knew that better than Rose. She’d lost close friends. She’d lost her boyfriend twice. Three times if you counted him dying and then showing back up again. Nothing about those comings and goings was in anyone’s control, least of all hers. That was harder to deal with than she wanted to admit. She wasn’t exactly at the top of her social game, herself, and when he apologized, she openly laughed. It was a bitter, hysterical kind of laugh. “You have no fucking idea,” she muttered as she got the burst of laughter under control. Rose hadn’t just been having a shitty day, she’d been having a shitty month. Hell, it had actually been kind of a crappy year, if she was being honest. The last several weeks, in particular, though, had been pretty crappy. The latest involved her father coming down with a mysterious illness that no one could seem to treat and now others who were sick with the same thing were slipping into comas. Saying she was having a day was definitely an understatement. Normally, she might have had more empathy for a new arrival. It had been almost a year and a half for her, but she could still remember what it felt like to wake up in this place. She could still remember the determination to get her and her loved ones home in those early days. Today, though, she was exhausted and frustrated and scared. She couldn’t seem to summon up any of that understanding, but she had plenty of attitude and she found it easy to take out her bad mood on any available target. “Welcome to the club, roomie,” she said bitterly, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring back at him. ~~~ Kirk looked around the flat. It felt foreign and odd to him, like he was stepping into an old film. They had these rules in Starfleet about primitive civilizations. It, mainly being, that you weren’t supposed to interfere. Kirk’s had up close encounters with people who’d just invented the wheel but this was stranger. This was earth’s history laid out before him. He felt like someone in the cast of one of those old movies his step dad had been a fan of. It was weird how wrong they had gotten the past, now being this far in the future. Two and a half centuries was enough time to forget. He was just glad that Rose spoke English. He wasn’t really in the mood to try to attempt to speak anything but English and standard. “Well, clue me in.” Kirk managed. “What’s the deal about this place?” He made a mental note of things he needed to do. The first was set up a communication link to Starfleet. Even one way, would be good. He was desperate for anything. It didn’t have to be the enterprise. The federation was monitoring everything, surely there was a way to get into contact. He needed to get a distress signal. Second, he needed to figure out how many people from Starfleet he could round up. There was no way he was the only one stuck here alone. The third he needed to get was a weapon. He couldn’t be defenseless on a strange parallel version of Earth. “Jim Kirk,” he offered out his hand. ~~~ Clue him in? Seriously? Again, Rose might have been more empathetic if she wasn’t having such a shitty week already, but right now all she could think was that she didn’t have time to hold some newbie’s hand. She’d agreed to come home long enough to clean up a little, but she was already anxious to get back to the hospital, back to where she could keep an eye on her dad and everyone else. Her plans definitely didn’t involve giving this guy a rundown of this place, especially since she knew full well that the BATD would have already briefed him, just like they did everyone. FIghting to keep some kind of hold on her temper, she shrugged with forced casualness, though the tension in her body was probably be obvious. “You know the deal, unless you just tuned out everything they already told you,” she said simply. Okay, if he had specific and less idiotic questions, maybe she would answer them. Mainly, though, she just wanted to get to her shower and then get the hell out of here. Still, she managed some semblance of politeness when he decided to introduce himself. Rose reached out and took his hand, shaking it firmly as she gave her own name. “Rose Hathaway.” ~~~ “I like hearing from more than one perspective,” Kirk argued. Hearing was different from believing. Plus - that couldn't have been the whole story. “You don’t transport a group of civilians into an area and just let them sit idle. What’s not on the brochure?” Kirk was determined to find out. He surveyed the apartment awkwardly. He’s never really had room mates. Not since the academy. Bones barely counted. In Iowa, he had his own place and back on the ship his quarters were his. This was certainly a step up. His captain’s quarters were shit in comparison, practically threadbare except for a nice bed and a 3d chess set. This place looked lived in and settled into. Kirk wasn’t paying rapt attention, too focused on the shock of it all. He wished he could even be half as logical as Spock could be about the situation. Right now, he just wanted someone who was responsible. “Are you from this stardate? You’re terran right?” He knew Rose appeared human, but whether or not she was from earth could have been another story. ------ Rose had often wanted someone to be responsible for it all. She’d wanted someone she could punch, someone she could demand answers from. She wanted someone to blame rather than some stupid magical hole that seemed to dictate their lives here. Who left, who stayed. What kind of weird magical shit cropped up and made their lives hell. It seemed to be getting worse lately, this stuff seemed to happen more and more often, and Rose would have given anything for something tangible to beat the hell out of. Her favorite punching bag at the gym she owned showed the proof of that. It was the best she could do. “Nothing,” she answered his first set of questions. “No one transported us here or if they did, we don’t know who. It’s just some freaky magical hole in the ground that loves to screw with us. We can’t leave unless it decides to send us home. Even if it does, you might just end up right back here and you might remember or you might not. Either way, you might as well get comfortable, because you have no fucking control over whether you stay or go and neither do any of the rest of us.” Rose’s words were angry, laced with bitterness. There had been a time when she’d been happy here in Breckenridge, but that was before losing the love of her life 3 times, before watching people like Mason get sent home to die, before everything else that stupid hole had pulled on the people here. Some of it, she had a decent sense of humor about, but with everything that had happened lately, she definitely wasn’t laughing. His next questions made her pause in her ranting, though, and she just looked at him in confusion. “Stardate? Terran? Are you even speaking English right now?” Those words didn’t make sense to her at all. She figured it was probably slang from wherever he was from, but that didn’t help her figure out what he was actually asking. |