[Sickbay]: Round 21 Scans and Vaccines

[ten_fwd_npcs]

If this is your first trip to Sickbay, you may be surprised to see that it's a fairly ordinary-looking hospital. There are no terrifying devices or humming machines you might see in a sci-fi thriller. The biobeds along the walls are equipped with biofunction monitors, but look fairly standard. Instead of silver trays filled with metal tools and sawblades, there are an array of small devices that look as harmless as cell phones. As for the staff, they're all well-groomed and friendly — even the more unusual aliens.

If you're new to the ship, no doubt you've been escorted here by the security team. Nothing to worry about, the doctors just want to make sure you aren't carrying any viruses or are vulnerable to terrible space disease. Once you've been checked over — a quick scan from a tricorder and any necessary vaccines — you'll be free to go. Lollipops are optional.

"All right, step on in," one of them calls out as you enter. "Don't be afraid. It's just a scan and a hypospray, nothing to worry about."


[ooc: Sickbay is, as always, OTA and open until the next one goes up for latecomers! For new characters: tagging isn't mandatory but IC going to sickbay is. If you'd prefer to skip threading with one of our doctors, you can handwave that your character got a clean bill of health and a shot and were sent on their merry way. There will be a post up in the OOC comm shortly with more details about Sickbay and which doctors are on deck this month, if you have any questions.]

Comments

[prefers_magneto]

He stops, then looks over at her.

She makes a very good point. Because he doesn't really see not getting into trouble without her there to kick him in the face when he needs it. So where does she go in these futures? That he fucks things up between them is sort of a given in his mind. He knows he's already done it once by the time she's from.

But where does she go?

He glances at Mojo.

"Even the mutt is still here."

[anexquisitecreature]

Unless.

Unless maybe... maybe being in these places has already split their realities, and now they're in parallel universes regardless, and so this multiversal jumping is the only future they have and they're stuck with each other. And the dog.

"He's the finest of space-god-created canines," she corrects him. "Judge not lest ye be judged."

Said canine is also watching him pace-- and when he stops, a cold nose is pressed to his knee.

"Look, all I'm saying is we don't know what the future holds. We keep coming back to this, and given that in my world, that Logan guy travelled through time to stop things, we can't guarantee that anything we do here hasn't already made changes. I might go back and find that my memories aren't reality."

He might go back and find-- her where did that thought come from--

"If we go back."

[prefers_magneto]

Between what he heard from Charles on the ship and what he did to her and where they are now... going back doesn't seem like the more savoury option.

"What if we just keep going?" he asked. "Traveling like this."

[anexquisitecreature]

What if they just kept going, traveling like this?

Her blue features are less expressive, some people think, because her eyes are less readable and the scales on her face hide the nuances others are used to understanding, but she has a feeling that Erik can probably clearly see the wheels turning in her head... anticipatory, panicked, excited, worried wheels.

"You want us to build our own future?" she guesses after a moment, a plethora of conflicting emotions colouring her tone. "Here, or wherever we end up?"

[prefers_magneto]

He can see it, because her face is different, but not less. You just have to figure out what to look for. But that works on a lot of inscrutable people.

He's watching her face carefully when he nods in response.

[anexquisitecreature]

A nod is a pretty clear positive non-verbal response in just about every culture she's ever had the fortune to visit (the Xaviers were rich but absent parental figures), and his gaze is so intense that she feels almost silly for needing further clarification.

"You don't want to go home. You want us - you, me, and the dog - to just... live in whatever place the powers that be drop us, until the day they don't?"

[prefers_magneto]

Eyes still fixed on her face, he nods again.

Because why not? What's for them there? Trying to live with people who hate them for existing, where they can never be free, or battling that forever, so they can still never be free.

What kind of life is that?

[anexquisitecreature]

A shit one, to be honest.

And at least here, there are other mutants. Who apparently have a version of him as their father, but hey. She's not Other Her, either.

Mystique stares at Erik for a long, heavy moment, and if he doesn't break her gaze, he'll probably catch the acquiescence in her yellow eyes before she opens her mouth.

"...okay. Let's do that."

[prefers_magneto]

He doesn't ask 'Really?', because he sees the truth in her eyes and believes what comes out of her mouth. He nods decisively one more time then glances around before looking back at her.

"You've lived a normal life. How do we start?"

I STILL do not have a decent blue smiling face that I like.

[anexquisitecreature]

She grins.

"The same way I start just about anything."

Food. She's pretty sure he knows that, but just in case, she waits to see.

[prefers_magneto]

His lips twitch into a hint of a smile and he inclines his head towards the replicator.

"I hear it can make anything."

[anexquisitecreature]

Ha. He does know her.

"If it made that lasagne earlier, then I have some small faith in it."

It was good. Really good.

She stands again and moves over to the fancy machine in the wall, and beckons him over with a tilt of her head.

"What do you want?"

[prefers_magneto]

He considers it, then, standing necessarily close to her but leaning towards the machine. He orders in German, Rinderrouladen with Spätzle.

A seasoned stuffed beef roll with gravy and egg noodles appears. He glances at her and shrugs, taking it from the machine. He steps to the table and picks up a fork, slicing off a piece, stabbing a few Spätzle and pops it in his mouth.

"Pretty authentic, to be honest."

[anexquisitecreature]

Necessarily close is an obvious requirement of the space allotted for the machine, but the change in timbre of his voice when he switches to German right by her ear is unexpected. He sounds... not like someone else, but like a softer, truer version of himself. He Who Was. She can't name the feeling that evokes.

Nor can she name a food so clearly from her own native childhood; what memories she holds of her earliest years are less than reliable and not overly happy.

His smells really good, and she eyes it for a moment before asking for a proper Chicago deep dish four cheese pizza - and some biscuits for Mojo. He ate a big lunch.

[prefers_magneto]

They wouldn't want the mutt getting fat.

He doesn't even think about the linguistic shift. He uses languages as they're convenient or expedient. There was a time, after the war, when he was afraid of being heard speaking German. Fear taught him English. But he hasn't thought about it in a while. He sits at the table again, taking another couple of bites before pushing his plate towards her.

"Do you want to try it?"

[anexquisitecreature]

There's coddling your dog and being irresponsible. She intends only to be guilty of the former. And, you know, not dwell on her childhood.

At his offer, she raises an eyebrow, and has to finish her mouthful of (pretty damn good) gooey, cheesy pizza before replying.

"Thanks." There's a hint of uncertainty; this isn't something he cooked for them (when did that become a thing). "It smells pretty great."

Her expression of delight when she tries it probably says everything

[prefers_magneto]

It does.

"Familiar food is new to our space travel experience," he noted. The Egime was all whatever nonperishables they could scavenge from planets they stopped at and whatever that blue goo was. "This is an upgrade." In a lot of ways.

d'awww some of my tag went missing. :(

[anexquisitecreature]

She's half-tempted to take another bite, but it's his meal, not hers; even though the replicator is right there, it's still pretty rude. So she pushes his plate back, and hers with it, the offer implied.

"I can only think of one way to make it better," she says, getting up to see if the replicator will give them beer.

NOOO TAG NO.

[prefers_magneto]

He would have been happy for her to have another bite. Or four. He takes a slice of pizza when it's offered and watches her go back to the replicator.

"Oh? What's that?"

[anexquisitecreature]

He says that now, but she'd have taken those four and made it 'Erik, get yourself another Spatzleburger', so really, this is better.

Poking experimentally, she finds an interactive menu, and returns triumphantly with two beers in brown glass bottles. Or close enough to it.

"You making it yourself."

She assumes he knows how.

[prefers_magneto]

And then sometimes she'll flatter him and it makes his heart skip a little and he tamps it down. He reaches for the beer with a bit of a smile.

"Looks like they don't do kitchens here. It's always something, isn't it?"

He takes a sip of the beer.

[anexquisitecreature]

She'd say oops, but she probably wouldn't mean it, and anyway, he's eaten his cooking. It's good cooking.

"The replicator gives me raw meat for Mojo," she points out after a mouthful of cheesy gloriousness. "I bet we could ask for ingredients and implements, if we phrased it right."

Assuming he wants to cook. He might not want to.

[prefers_magneto]

"That's an idea," he notes.

He wants to for the way she looks at him when he does it.

"Implements including a heating implement."

[anexquisitecreature]

"And an apron."

She grins.

"You need to wear an apron."

Part of her - a part that hasn't thought so in a long time - wants him to wear just the apron, and she's blaming the way he's smiling.

[prefers_magneto]

He doesn't assume that, but the comment only increases that smile's breadth and the way amusement is dancing in his eyes.

"An apron. Like a Hausfrau."