ten_fwd | [re-entrance - mission 001]

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[re-entrance - mission 001]

If Sinthia has been quiet, unobtrusive more than her usual for the last few days, there's an easy explanation: Q. She hadn't asked to go back, not in so many words, but nonetheless there's where she'd been sent. Fortunately--for a great many people who didn't know it yet--she was back, but back and changed in a very obvious way. Several very obvious ways.

The first was easy: she was adult now, far more so than even the precociousness she'd showed before; she stood after the flash of light had passed, stunned, body language tense. Her clothes are as usual, unrelieved black, though for more of a reason than it simply suits her. Black hides bloodstains well, and she's fairly covered in them at the moment.

She took a deep and faintly startled breath when the belated realization hit her that this place was utterly unrecognizable to her, eyes closed and reaching out mentally like a whisper through unprotected minds, an unspoken question rippling with who-what-where-when is this-am I?, all the questions blending into one confused feeling.

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Harry was at a nearby table, drinking a little, and staring at nothing, having discovered Sinthia missing only days after losing his girlfriend as well. It had hit him hard, losing them, and his other protege, all at once. Andrew, and Elizabeth, Sinthia, and Inari, all gone at once. It clutched at him like a claw that would not let go.

And then... and then...

...there was that flash, the one that made him instinctively look up. And there was the woman, looking familiar and yet not. Not until that whispering voice that even if he had not heard it quite right before, he knew, without a doubt. Harry surged to his feet, a smile on his face as he moved toward her.

"Sinthia!" Here there is a very glad wizard coming over to say hi!

Both eyes snap open at the exclamation of her name and Sinthia sinks down into a crouch ready to defend, all her weight back on one foot with the muscles tensed to snap her shin into his ribs when he came into range.

He was smiling, she recognized that expression as usually not hostile, but it was confusing: she didn't know his face, or anything around him, and hearing her name called with a person moving in her direction signaled a warning.

His hands went up, wide and open, and he stopped, and he breathed out. "Hell's bells. Sinthia?"

He had a sinking feeling in his gut, and he swallowed. The look on her face told the story, and he felt his entire world fill with rage. Someone had taken her memories, and he had a good goddamn idea who it had been. He schooled his body and his mind, closing his eyes for a moment to do so, risking it rather than pushing his anger on her, especially since it was not aimed at her.

Instead, the eyes that opened again to look at her were filled with compassion. "Let me guess, you don't recognize me, or this place, right?"

When he stopped she rose up to her toes, one shoulder lowering the tiniest bit as if she were preparing to ram him, but he pulled back and she was caught unprepared for that.

Without speaking, she shook her head slowly, standing up straight.

"Okay. I'm called Harry Dresden, and I knew... someone who looked like... well, a younger you. A girl named Sinthia. She was my friend when she was here before."

he blew out a breath, burying the anger and loss, and nodding to her. "I don't know if you're her, or not, but either way, welcome to the Enterprise. We are all of us brought here by a weird childish godling named Q, who apparently brings us here for amusement. So far, none of us have figured out a way to get home."

He paused. "Following so far?"

All of that, the words and the meanings behind them, only vaguely filtered through to her, and not much of that made sense in the way Sinthia could actually process at the moment. She took a breath, and rocked back on her feet, taking a shaky step back.

"No. I don't know you." She didn't know his face or his voice, and none of the people here surrounding him, and she was wary of being cornered without a weapon--she'd had a pistol in her hand before, where was it? Sinthia flexed her fingers, drying blood staining her knuckles red, and flickered twice as her mind began to race.

Harry sighed. "I think either you are an alternate universe version of the Sinthia I knew, or... someone messed with your memories." And he didn't like either idea.

He sighed and rubbed his face again.

"If this is your first time here, okay, so far as I can tell, and have been able to tell, none of us have been able to get off the ship." His eyes didn't quite meet hers, as normal, but he considered a soulgaze, to find out if she was the one he knew. But he didn't want to do that to her against her will.

She just watched him, blinking twice, and looked around them both.

"I don't know what you mean," she forced out, though the words were protractedly far apart, as if she weren't used to talking much. "This isn't a ship. The room is too big," Sinthia murmured, eyes fixed on the window. It had to be a hologram. It had to be.

Harry paused, then nibbled one lip. She was not taking this as well as he had hoped, and that meant a new tack. "Perhaps I could show you to a guest room, with a computer and replicator access, and you can rest and learn more?"

He didn't want to push her, and maybe having some time to find her own way would work.

Edited (for better answer.) 2016-03-06 22:06 (UTC)

Sinthia watched him like a raptor, and she was inclined to believe he was lying--many people did, most in fact.

"I don't know what that is. A computer, yes...but I don't know what a replicator is."

Edited 2016-03-06 22:32 (UTC)

"I can show you, right over here."

He waved a hand to one side of the room, where a computer panel-looking thing was on the wall. "What's your favorite food?"

That she could answer, she had a reasonable reply, but it wasn't entirely forthcoming.

"I don't have one."

"Okay. Let's do something simple." He waved at the panel. "It creates food out of energy, using advanced pattern technology."

He turned to the panel and spoke clearly. "Computer, make water, chilled."

And a glass appeared in a slow shimmering of light. Harry lifted it up and extended it to Sinthia, staying a few feet back. "With some limitations, it can create any food, any small objects."

Glancing from Harry to the glass, Sinthia extended a hand towards the glass and flexed her fingers, drawing the glass smoothly to her, levitating as if held up by an invisible hand.

"Is it real?" she asked.

"Nicely done." Her display of power made him grin.

"It is. 100% H2O. The computer does it in a way I don't begin to understand, really, but it finds a way to make matter out of patters and energy." He waved at the panel. "There's one like it in each of the rooms, and the computer can help you work on it more, if you want."

He nodded. "I'll help too, if you want."

She doesn't even try to fathom that process Harry describes, and only looks back at the glass of water, tipping it just enough so that a drop of water spills out and lands on her outstretched hand, sliding between her fingers.

Until that mention of him helping her. She remembers, faintly and fuzzily as if through old film, someone offering to help her; it was followed by a searingly cold wave and the horrible pins-and-needles pain of waking up. "I don't know you. I don't trust you."

Harry watched her think, and sighed at her answer, then nodded anyway.

"That's alright. I can escort you to a room, if that's okay? And I'll be available if you change your mind?" He offered her his hand.

"Maybe," she murmurs, though her muscles are still tight and ready to bolt or to vanish, or to stand and fight back if necessary. She didn't know what to think yet, how even really that she should. It was too much to absorb at once.

Harry nodded and gestured toward the doorway to the hall. "I'll lead, if you are ready?"

He didn't want to desert her, but he felt she maybe would have a better chance alone to absorb things. Sinthia the younger had been like that, too. Harry felt a surge of bitterness hit him, and rage toward Q, but he stifled it deep. She didn't need that to deal with, too.

She picked up on the traces of it, the flash and surge of emotion that most people couldn't hide from their thoughts, not when someone was listening--and she was, she just hadn't bothered to tell him that. She normally didn't tell anyone.

Her only answer was a measured breath out and a short nod, making her severely-cut hair swing around her jaw. She'd follow at a large enough distance he couldn't swing around and hit her without some sort of telegraphing.

Harry led the way out, and down the hall, pausing at the turbolift, where he opened it, strode in and waited at the far side of the small chamber.

"This is a form of elevator, the only real way to get around the ship."

"What happens when they don't work?" she asks.

He waited for her in it as he explained.

"There are ladders in the space the turbolifts travel, and i think there are other passages as well, crawling size junctions for maintenance. And in a pinch, we could use the transporters."

"Mm." She seemed hesitant, and for a good reason; she'd never had a good experience from being ushered into a small place like that, not even for 'transportation'.

"I can move around myself." She'd start, most likely, just walking through whatever was in the way, but teleportation came in handy.

He backed up against the far wall and raised an eyebrow. "Still, the guest quarters are several decks away. You don't have to come, but it would be easier, i think, on you."

Her brows furrow and for a protracted moment she doesn't argue--she's not programmed to argue--as she steps in, but keeps herself at the best middle distance she can manage in case she needs the room to react should he attack. (It's always on her mind, the odds of needing to defend or attack.)

"Why do you keep doing that?" she asks, neglecting to specify what exactly it is she's talking about: Harry talking to her or suggesting things to make her stay easier are the frontrunners, but one never knows.

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Computer, Guest quarters, please."

As the lift started downward, he turned his attention to her.

"Keep doing what?" Now you've confused him. Not a hard thing, but nothing good ever comes from confused Harrys.

"Keep saying what will make things easier."

"Because I like to help people, and so I think on what might make things easier for them. I can never be sure, of course, but I try."

Harry smiled as the lift soared between decks.

When it opened, he nodded out. "Here we are, temporary guest quarters."

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[re-entrance - mission 001]

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