come_sailaway | You saw my pain, washed out in the rain (OPEN)

Who: Arilanna Tayrey and YOU!
Where: The infirmary
When: Early October
What: Visit her! Or visit the infirmary for another reason and notice her.
Warnings: Head injury and its consequences, discussion of violence, possession, and the ethics of torture.
Notes: Also works as a catch-all for later threads when she's better!

1. But you saw no fault, no cracks in my heart

[This is what it takes to get Lieutenant Tayrey to actually rest. A nasty head injury with concussion. She's been in and out of consciousness for days, and while she's out of danger now, she's staying put. This is new territory; while the infirmary is well-supplied and Doctor Watson is very competent, the resources here don't compare to the advanced technology of the Tradelines. Her genetic enhancements protect her, mean that she heals quickly, but she can't tell just how long it might take - and given what she witnessed on her visits to Earth's past, she's very worried about infection.

That and function, although she's held off on running cognitive tests on herself just yet, in case the medicines she's taking have some side-effects. (She needn't worry, Cardalek genetics are more impressive than even Miri Carrington realised, and she'll be fine.)

Now, however, she's well enough to sit up in bed, her head bandaged. Despite everything, she's still wearing her Tradeline jacket. It keeps her warm, and it's a comfort, and now that she's feeling a little better, she's once again concerned with the impression she's giving. It's her intention to stay as cheerful as she can, not complain about the pain or the unfairness of the situation. Physical injury was always a hazard of her job, and she'd been taking a risk by trying to use Harvey for her own purposes.

When a visitor arrives, she might be sipping a mug of Cardalek coffee, or trying to braid her hair to keep it neat and away from the bandages, or watching a comforting old episode of For the Company on her slate computer. Using the computer for work isn't advisable yet, but holovids are no trouble.]

2. So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light

[Wildcard! For anything else. PM or

MillisaK if you'd like to discuss ideas.]

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"...It wasn't my first plan." Erin's ears droop, and she just.

Sags.

Again, her burst of hopeful energy gone. "I don't even really know it'll work. Maybe the chip just does a fucking factory reset, but I can't get at the chip without killing Crichton. Which! Needs! To be avoided! I'm so far in uncharted territory here, if I was fucking confident do you think I'd be asking advice? You know me. When I'm sure, I act."

Her face is so lost.

'It isn't right.' Her voice is still quiet, but firmer now. 'You know it isn't right, and you and I have talked enough about ethics that I daresay you knew what I'd have to say about it. If you need permission not to do this awful thing, you have it. It doesn't matter whether or not it'll work; it's an unimaginably cruel thing to do to a thinking being. Harvey has caused enough damage. Don't cede him the damn moral high ground, Erin. Don't do that to yourself. I know you're a better person than that.'

She extricates one hand from the fold of the blanket, reaches out to touch Erin's arm. 'There will be a better answer. We'll find it.'

"...Alright. I won't go hard out the gate, but an exploratory dive is gonna be useful either way." Erin takes her friend's hand, and squeezes softly. "I can protect Crichton easy, minimal risk of entering the dreamscape causing Harvey to escape. Once I'm in there...well, I imagine it, and it happens. One person on this ship can contest me in dreams and she's currently possessed."

"...And not to leave it unsaid, I quite literally can't access anyone's dreams without their formal permission."

'Exploration. Not torture.' She gives Erin's hand another small squeeze in return. 'And I'll try to come up with our better plan. It's not as if I have much to do here but think.'

Her expression softens, as she can tell that Erin is considering Tayrey's own feelings, her fears. 'I know you wouldn't do that to me anyway,' she says. 'Although most nights, I dream of home. I wouldn't mind showing you that someday.'

"Heh. It'd have to be by contract, but if I'm in there anyway I've got a fun offer. Remember when I said I can use dreams to teach?" Erin ventures a shy smile. "Would you like to learn lucid dreaming?"

'Contracts, I can handle,' she says eagerly, but then has to backtrack- 'although if there's not a Tradeline rule against settling contract when you may still be feeling the effects of a concussion, there probably should be.'

Her smile takes the edge off the seriousness of the words. 'I'd love to learn lucid dreaming. It's something I can do occasionally. At random, really. Doing it whenever I liked would really be something,' she says.

Fun? Maybe even fun, and if she has to sleep anyway, not the time-wasting kind.

"Don't worry lass, I don't want any part of your dreamscape while you're concussed. If I wanna go through that shit I'll take LSD and then let someone punch me in the face reaaaaaalllly hard." Erin squeezes Ari's hand, and her wings...relax, just some. "...I can't thank you enough for hearing me out here. I owe you."

'You don't. I'm happy to see you, you know? It means a lot to me that you trusted me with this, and that you value my opinion enough to want my advice.' Honest as always. All too often Tayrey feels that nobody really cares about her perspective on anything important, so this means a lot to her.

'I could do with some nova right about now.' Tayrey's recreational space drug of choice. She doesn't have any, and it'd be a terrible idea at this particular moment, but there's no harm in imagining. 'Being hit with a bowling ball is one experience that I really don't recommend. Almost makes me feel sorry for those wooden pins!'

"Yeah, blunt force trauma is a bitch like that. When Arthur - the one at home - kicked my ass he uh, squeezed my wrist to splinters." Erin waggles her free hand, which is working Just Fine. "I'll be back tomorrow to report. You need anything then? Food, company, trashy porn from the library, whatever."

[ooc: Ari's thread with Crichton in this post is set sometime after this Ari/Erin one, so we can have a new thread timed after both that and the Erin/Crichton dream thread if that works!]

Tayrey winces, imagining how much pain Erin must have been in. 'That's rough. I take it you didn't have the benefit of accelerated healing either. Not that this feels accelerated right now, but I guess it could be worse.' It could have been. Without her genetic advantages, someone else in her position could have been measuring their recovery in months, not weeks, with the risk of lingering neurological or cognitive effects.

She can't help a little laugh at Erin's last suggestion. 'I didn't think you could get that in a library. It'd be much more discreet than the holovids. Not that I have any of those with me!' Yes, even fine upstanding young Tradeliners are well aware of the trade in three-dimensional porn! 'I do miss overnights,' she says, sounding wistful. 'But no. What I actually want is company. Platonic company. And maybe you could check if any parcels came through for me? I hadn't done that in a while, even before all this.'

"Well...not accelerated healing in the sense that I heal naturally, not that bones do that on my Earth, those get to be fucked forever without medicine. But magical healing? That I've got." She pauses. "Used to have. Can't do it here."

She's not bitter, you're bitter.

Anyway.

"Can do. I'll catch ya tomorrow, Tayrey?"

[ooc: two parcels, one small and one huge.]

Ordinarily, she'd ask questions to tease out how this "magical healing" actually works, but she really doesn't have the mental energy right now. Something to file away for another day.

'Tomorrow.' She does manage a small smile. 'Let probability smile on your efforts, between now and then.'

You saw my pain, washed out in the rain (OPEN)

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Possibly new thread after Crichton?

Yes please!

Excellent, This One Should Probably Wrap Soon Also DOES She Have Parcels

Sure! Good to wrap here if you are. And she does!