ten_fwd | Prince in the tower? [Open]

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Prince in the tower? [Open]

Jack knew every inch of his room--he'd been pacing it for long enough--and so it struck him immediately when the wall didn't end when it should. The wall was gone, in fact, and the floor was different.

In total fact, the entire room was different. Gone was Lucinda, gone was the bed, gone were the curtains he'd begun to contemplate setting on fire (but if he had a fire source he'd have a way to escape so he settled for just fantasizing about it). It had been replaced with something like a sitting area--with terribly dated designs, something like twenty years old.

The sudden space around him, after confinement, had Jack a little disoriented and he stumbled mid-step. Also, he'd been expecting to have to stop and turn suddenly, so having the extra space to move threw him off a little. He pressed a palm against the wall, grounding himself, and flashed a vague smile at the few people who were shooting looks at him--and people, how about that.

Half sure he'd finally cracked, Jack kept walking, fingertips digging into the wall hard enough to sting, chewing on the inside of his lips and gritting his teeth. "Where in god's name am I," he muttered, ducking his head to keep anyone from noticing he was talking to himself. He stopped when the wall changed again--this time not through some second change of scenery, but because Jack had reached a window. He lifted his head and stared.

Stared at the vast expanse of space.

Drugs. He'd definitely been drugged.

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It wasn't the luxury that took getting used to. Fatima had been brought up in a mansion in a fashionable suburb of LA. She was used to luxury. And she could even handle looking out the window and seeing stars. It wasn't the first time. No, it was the fact that nothing seemed to be ready to jump out and try to kill her, that's what made her uncomfortable. She'd been on the ship a few days and, while being confined to certain areas sucked, royally, she felt freer than she'd felt in a long time. Which immediately made her suspicious. When was the other shoe going to fall?

Well, in a certain light, it already had. It seemed like she'd been completely isolated, separated from everyone she'd come to care about in Zelien. That was gnawing at her, festering like an open wound. She tried to take her mind off of the feeling as much as possible, indulging heavily in the fancy wall replicators (her purse was filled with pears), but the longing crept into her mind in the in-between places. When she was alone with her thoughts. Or moving from one activity to the next.

Perhaps it was because of that sense, that need, that she'd unconsciously been keeping an eye out for her friends. And when she spotted someone who looked like Jefferson, her heart jumped up into her throat.

"Jefferson!"

She said it before she could stop herself, taking a halting step in his direction. But then her mind caught up with her instinct.

Jefferson would never dress like that.

Jack's attention was torn by the terrifying (awe-inspiring but still terrifying) sight before him by the shout. The name had no meaning for him, but the cry was startling enough in the room of soft murmur. He was mainly looking to see if it was a shout that preceded violence or panic.

Seeing no immediate threat or cause for alarm he turned back to the stars.

After the first moments of horror it really was beautiful.

Fatima pressed her fingertips to her lips for a second. She received a few funny looks, but they barely registered. What was more significant was that she'd gotten an even better look at the man's face.

They could have been twins. It could have been Jefferson in a costume. Except for the part where he didn't recognize her.

Conspiracy theories about COMPASS danced to the forefront of her mind again. Maybe the experiment was finally starting. They prided themselves on studying fear. This would certainly be a different kind of fear. But...no. That would mean that she was at the center of it all. Fatima had never exactly been their favorite lab rat. It went against the pattern. Too much to be legit.

Maybe...

When he turned back to the window, Fatima took a few steps to the side, trying to see his reflection in the dark glass.

While Jack hadn't seen who had shouted, the part of him that paid attention to detail had registered the look on a woman's face when he'd scanned the room for signs of panic.

The same woman who was trying to catch a glimpse of him through the glass. It was subtle, it wasn't a bad idea, but Jack could see her reflection too. The past few months had worn away at Jack's patience with subtlety. He turned around and leveled a stare directly at her.

If she had a question she was welcome to come ask it.

Yeah. Jefferson wouldn't stare at her like that. He would have rushed over to ask if she was okay and if she'd seen Emma, most likely.

Well. If there had been any lingering flicker of hope, it was snuffed out now. Time to approach this as she would any other first meeting.

Fatima's mask snapped into place. She wore it when dealing with strangers and Cainites. It was one that said she'd seen it all, done it all, lived through it all. It compensated for the fact that she looked younger than she was, for the fact that she was a mere mortal.

Makeup helped. And she was wearing it about an inch thick.

Heels clicking against the oddly-carpeted floor, she made her way over to him. "At the risk of sounding like I'm about to deliver a line, you look just like someone I know."

Jack took in her outfit with a slow blink--he could appreciate the outfit, if not the form beneath it, and you could learn a lot from someone by how they choose to present the self.

And by the abrupt change of expression, from hope and focus to a cool professional.

He waited with his arms crossed, shoulders tense.
"You're right," he said, upper lip curling in a facsimile of a smile. "It does sound like a line."

She made a bit of a face, but had no additional response to the bit about lines. Fatima was great at flirting, but she was kind of like a dog chasing after cars. If she ever caught one, she didn't know what she'd do with it. Part of the reason why her relationship with Sam had been so...interesting.

It was still strange to think of that in the past tense, but it was also necessary. And it wasn't like she'd ever really believed in a happy ending for the two of them.

"Who are you?"

Also, flirting with Jack would get her nowhere.

Unless he decided to use her to get his bearings.

"Well, that depends." He shrugged, seemingly careless. "Do I have to be me?" He could stand to be someone else for a while.

Oh, that was the kind of verbal spar a Cainite would start. Which didn't win any points with Fatima.

But, at the very least, she supposed, she knew how to deal with that kind of personality. She'd done it before. Would do it again, if she ever had the luck to go home.

"Traditionally speaking," she replied smoothly. "But there is an alternative. I could make something up. But I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like it."

"Jefferson?" He guessed. "Yeah that's a terrible name. I'm Jack."

It could be made up, it was innocuous enough and had ties to enough stories. There was a reason Jack had chosen it as his nickname instead of John.

"Who are you?" Tit for tat, lady.

"Fatima," she said, using the most Americanized pronunciation of the name that there was. It hadn't been fun going to middle school in LA in a post 9/11 world. Especially considering the fact that of the many colors tossed into her heritage, it was her Indian background, not the Iranian, that she identified with the most.

And, you know, she was from LA.

"I'm guessing," she said, moving over to the window to look out at the stars, "that you're new here?"

"Fatima," he repeated, mimicking her pronunciation. "Who do you think I am, Fatima?"

Because he knew she wouldn't be speaking to him otherwise. Not that it mattered to him, if this was all some sort of hallucination or dream or drug induced hallucination or dream he'd wake up in a few hours and nothing would be different.

She appreciated the way he pronounced her name, affording him a slight, if absent smile.

Talking about Zelien, she realized, was going to have to become a matter-of-fact endeavor. She couldn't allow herself to get emotional or choked up, thinking about people she'd never see again, people who, in all logic, she should never have known in the first place.

"My friend Jefferson," she said. "You look just like him. Different hairstyle, I guess. And he would never dress like...that. But you two could be twins."

Well it was only polite. Mispronouncing someone's name after they already pronounced it for you was like misspelling their name in a reply to an e-mail where they already wrote their name.

He looked down at himself and back up. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

Jeans and a blazer might not have gone together but at least they were clean. And he looked good in them, and the dress shirt and tie.

He was either stalling or purposefully getting off track because he didn't believe any of this was real.

She raised an eyebrow. "Did I say something was wrong with it?" She hadn't. And, although she'd been groomed to pretty much hate anyone in a tie, she had to admit, he wore it well.

But that was so not the point.

Fatima shook her head. "Jefferson's kinda fashionista," she explained. There were few guys, in fact, who were pickier about their clothes than Fatima was about hers. "And he wears a lot of pink."

A pause.

"And he has a scar. You don't have it."

"Your tone did." Like that hadn't been a significant pause between 'like' and 'that'. Sure, Jack was on the defensive. Either he'd been somehow kidnapped to possibly outer space and strange women were calling him by different names and something was going on or he was hallucinating and none of this battered.

"I don't look good in pink."

It was a final tone. Clearly Jefferson didn't look good in it either. Then again, Jack was quite pale.

He shifted, hand moving like he was going to brush his hair aside and changed his mind. "Lady, we've all got scars."

"Not like his," she said, making an absent gesture across her throat.

She actually didn't know the story of Jefferson's scar. She'd seen it a couple of times, mostly in the heat of the moment, during an experiment. And one time, when they'd gone clothes shopping (all right, clothes-stealing) together. She hadn't asked. Always sort of figured there would come a point when he would trust her enough to tell her the story.

That wasn't going to happen now.

"And you would look hot in pink," she added. Because no one could dare to question her fashion sense. "Pale pink. Like a strawberry Starburst. Not Pepto pink, though. That's too much."

Whereas Jack's only visible scar was from his kidnapping, a mark on his forehead partially obscured by his hair.

"No." Because he'd tried pink before.

And it only had a little bit to do with Silas telling him it looked too 'queer' on him.

Guys were almost always weird about pink, so Fatima didn't pursue the argument. She just basked in the knowledge that, not only was she right, but she'd actually seen it and the result was...hot.

Jefferson was definitely the hottest dad she'd ever met.

Not that she knew a lot of them.

She frowned a little bit, looking out into the stars. "This is weird."

Well Jack couldn't argue with the 'hot' part, if only because of the shared face.

He was neutral on fatherhood though.

"I'm just assuming I've finally lost my mind." He shrugged. "I'm not sure how I came up with this, though."

Fatima smirked. "Yeah, me too." Not so much because the multiverse was messing with her. She was used to that. It was just that this place was so...nice. It was beautiful. Luxurious even. Like some kind of futuristic, flying Hilton. It was a spaceship with carpeting, for crying out loud. What kind of people did that?

To say nothing of the - apparently - free lunch.

The other shoe had to drop.

"Apparently, the ones in the funny space pajamas are the natives," she said. "They call themselves 'Starfleet' or something like that." She didn't trust them. Like, at all.

Well it made some sense to Jack--once humans made their way into space, of course they'd put some effort into making it comfortable for themselves. Which implied they'd been in space for quite some time.

"I think it's called a 'uniform'," he said, casting a glance to said members of Starfleet out of the corner of his eye. "Military?"

Call them what you wanted. They looked like pajamas. But Fatima always had been, and always would be, a complete snob when it came to fashion. She'd forgiven the shabbiness of most of the Zelien prisoners because they were prisoners. And Sam because...well...she had a thing for him. But the uniforms were just plain silly.

"That's implied in the 'fleet' part of 'Starfleet,' I guess," she said. "Although they claim to be explorers."

The two weren't mutually exclusive. But it felt like a pretty weird combination.

Peggy still wasn't used to Barnes' moods although she was getting better at judging them. She'd learned the subtle cues of when he was having good days and when the past was overwhelming him. She still didn't know how to respond to the bad days - did anyone really know how to deal with the sorts of horrors Bucky had been through? - but she was trying.

When she saw Barnes staring out at the stars, her first instinct was to call Steve since he seemed to be the one that Barnes responded best to. But it seemed foolish to contact Steve simply because Barnes was watching the scenery.

As she drew closer, she noticed slight differences in Barnes' appearance. Ones that had her wondering if Q had done something to him as one of his 'jokes'. Barnes but not quite. This reminded her of how he had been on Halloween, physically seeming almost as he had been during the war.

Keeping a careful distance, she studied the stars before glancing over at Barnes, trying to get a sense of his mood. "It is lovely once you get used to it."

Breathing. He had to remember to keep breathing, one slow inhale and slow exhale after another.

He noticed when a woman came up to him, saw her out of the corner of his eye and tensed his shoulders ever so slightly until he was sure she wasn't coming closer than she was. He wasn't big on the physical lately, wasn't sure what was about to happen. He didn't acknowledge he until she spoke, when he tilted his head just so to show he heard.

"It's a lot," he muttered, still not looking directly at her. "It's....big."

"That it is." As she spoke, she cataloged more details. His posture was different, even compared to those times when Q had done things that had made Barnes seem the way he had been during the war. His voice as well. Glancing sideways, she checked his arm, eyes widening slightly when she realized it wasn't metal.

Not the Barnes that she had been introduced to when she arrived and not the one she had known during the war. Someone else then who looked like him and had no idea where they were just as Peggy had been when she arrived. "My name's Peggy Carter. I know this is strange and overwhelming, but it is safe here. No one will hurt you."

He looked at the woman askance, still facing the windows. "I've been promised that before." There was implicit safety in being who Jack had been--danger, as well, but there had always been someone to keep him safe. And Silas...you're not supposed to cause your children that much pain, Jack was sure of it.

Still, this woman seemed to know what was going on. Jack finally turned sideways, leaning a little against the wall. "Where is 'here'?"

"But have you been promised that by those who value those promises above everything else?" If she couldn't keep that promise, then Peggy knew that there were others aboard the ship that would keep it. The crew and those who had been stolen from other worlds. There were too many soldiers and heroes here for that promise not to be honored.

"Here is rather unbelievable." Although the view of the stars should make it less so. "I know this will probably sound crazy - it sounded crazy when I first heard it - but we're on a space ship."

"No," he admitted with a shrug, crossing his arms across his chest. "But with every intent of keeping it." It wasn't as though he'd been lied to maliciously. Most of the time.

Jack nodded sagely when the crazy lady spoke about being on a space ship.
"No, I figured. It's nice to confirm I've been drugged."

"Here there are people who value those promises. And some have unique ways of keeping them." People with those abilities weren't the most important subject.

Peggy knew how it sounded and she had had a brief moment when she arrived that she had considered the same sort of explanation, but it hadn't held up to logic once she realized how solid things were. "Are you normally drugged and placed in settings like this?"

That...sounded a bit loaded, so Jack just shrugged, arms still crossed.

He frowned a moment and then shook his head. "Oh--no, I mean, I'm clearly hallucinating due to whatever latest drugs my father put in my dinner. Or, had put, I'm sure he wouldn't do it himself. Dirty work and all that."

Unless Silas' increasing paranoia had him doing his own dark deeds. But this was obviously a hallucination, right?

Bucky turns down the corridor, and comes face to face with his double. He stops short and stares. "Hello." This is almost as weird as finding himself on a spaceship. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised, he's met a female version of Steve on board, why not meet someone who looks exactly like himself?

"Name?"

Jack starts at the too-familiar face in front of him.

Not identical--the other face is a little older, slightly sharper, but it's him.

This is not making his theory any less likely.
"You don't know it?" He asks, grinning like a shark. "Wow, I must be fucked up if I'm hallucinating me's that don't even know who I am." He's drugged. He's so drugged.

A few months ago that would have been a loaded question but Bucky knows who he is (more or less). He has to believe this is some strange coincidence or he is going to go mad.

"It isn't that simple, you aren't hallucinating. I'm Bucky. If you were drugged your heart rate would have increased. Check your pulse."

"But I'm hallucinating so that's not going to matter," Jack counters. He doesn't know Bucky's history with forgetting who he is--might be faintly jealous if he did.

It might be nice to forget who he is for a little while.
"I'm Jack," he says. "Bucky's a ridiculous name." Well it is.

"It is hard to hallucinate a pulse change. One you accept you are not in a hallucination, someone can explain how you ended up on a space ship."

He shrugs, "I like it."

"Actually, space is a bit of relief." Considering the view, the other option was 'Heaven' and his father's connections with any heavenly members aside, Jack wasn't sure he qualified.

"It's still ridiculous." Oh let him have the last word. "Why are you me?"

Bucky raises an eyebrow, "Why, were you expecting to find yourself in a city under the water."

A metal hand slides out of Bucky's pocket and clenches into a fist. "I could ask you the same thing."

"What? No. Why would I be expecting that?" Not-Jack is weird.

Jack takes a step back at the shiny metal hand that's being curled into an aggressive motion. "Yeah well, I could argue that I was me first."

Bucky shrugs, "It is an old joke." He's showing his age and it makes him smile to himself, he's remembered something else from his childhood.

The private little smile only makes him look more dangerous. "I have been Bucky Barnes since 1916."

The expression on his face was unmistakable. She supposed it made sense since he just looked out the window. Even with her time on the ship she hasn't quiet gotten used to the windows but then she really didn't understand space outside of her own gravity spell.

"Everything alright?" She was sitting at a nearby table with a note book open in her lap. It had taken her awhile to find a note book and she coveted the treasure as simple as it was. Her expression was a little worried but her demeanor remained relaxed. Her feet were propped up lazily on a chair.

"Sure."

No. Nothing was all right. He was stuck on a...what was this, a floating house through space? Heaven? Or this was where his mind had decided to send him after it had finally had enough and sanpped.

"You don't sound convinced."

Yuna's head rolled to the side watching the boy curiously. She wasn't going to make him talk to her but he certainly looked out of place. She wondered what funny thoughts might be going through his head.

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

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Prince in the tower? [Open]

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