i hear the voices getting louder

[resleeves]

» WHO? takeshi kovacs + ota
» WHEN? throughout the weekend and next week
» WHERE? chapel, fitness area, bar, and various others
» WHAT? causing trouble
» WARNINGS? language but nothing else as of yet

001. chapel

[ he's not here to pray.

he's not here to do anything but sit in the quiet and think. it's been a few weeks since the arrival of the backpack (which sits on the bench beside him) and he'd thought, for a few hours, that maybe more things would arrive. maybe a gun or an oni or fuck, he'd take ortega herself showing up. but nothing else familiar arrives.

he's even started seeing less of quell. she's still there when he sleeps but the glimpses of her he used to catch from the corner of his eyes are happening less and less. he's not sure if that means his fragged mind is healing or getting worse.

maybe it seems she's alive somewhere. yeah right, what a fucking miracle that would be. he'd seen her explode and he'd probably walked on the ashes that had been her body as he'd tried to get off harlan's world.

while he's alone, he reads a few of the quotes off the wall and then reaches into the backpack to physically throw garbage at the ones he doesn't like (which is all of them). he knew that some of this shit would come in handy and making a mess was juvenile but he had fuck all else to do.

it wasn't like anyone would notice. this place was a mess anyway. ]

002. fitness area

Well, this is just fucking boring.

[ ever since the new sleeve, he's never really done a lot of solo training. quell's training two sleeves ago had stuck and from then on, a life spent being hunted and taking out those he'd been paid to kill had left him in decent enough shape.

then, there had been the life sentence and over two centuries spent on ice doing absolutely nothing. ryker's death had left a physically capable sleeve behind even if it was a sleeve that she had a fucking attachment to, unbeknownst to him until he'd been wearing the sleeve for awhile.

he drops the backpack on the ground and circles the room, staring down at the pool and making a face. didn't look like any place he wanted to take a swim in. plenty of people had probably pissed in that.

these facilities were a long way from even carnage's shitty little spectacle. at least he'd had a cheering section and some competition. ]

Ain't none of that here.

[ of course he'd think that. of course. ]

003. bar

[ even kovacs could tell the alcohol was running low. he kept expecting to stop in (during one of his daily walks through the station) and see more of it. but, that hadn't happened yet. bottles were half empty, knocked over and collecting dust.

kovacs spends some time behind the bar, remembering the one time he'd had a bartender who made some decent drinks before she'd up and disappeared. lucky fucker. if she wasn't here, she had to be somewhere better.

and yet, he's still here, stuck. one of the bottles he picks up and brings up to sniff is filled with something so strong that it burns the lining of his nose and actually makes him blink. ]

Smells like fuel.

[ which meant it was fucking perfect.

kovacs made his way over to one of the booths and laid down, long legs dangling over the side. the backpack was placed on his stomach and the bottle on the table. he stared up at the ceiling, wondering how plausible it would be to just kick his way out of this place.

answer: not plausible at all.

where was poe and his arsenal when you really needed him? ]

004. wildcard

[ got something else in mind? feel free to make it happen. hit me up at spoonishly to plot! ]

Comments

[pampa]

He snorts, humorless and dry as ever. "Nah, I left this hat on Ceres-" Miller picks it up off the kiddie backpack and turns it in his hand idly, touching the inside pocket to make sure Julie's picture is still in there. "Dick move, too. Should've given it back to that friend I told you about, he probably would've wanted to be buried in it. Or, you know, maybe not get shot by Amos in the first place."

Yeah that's right, his 'beratna' on board murdered his bestie. This is normal?????

[resleeves]

"Amos? The same Amos who hulks around the station like a an angry bear?" Kovacs hasn't actually met Amos in person but he thinks he's learned enough to be able to call him that confidently.

"So, this guy shot your friend and you and he are...what? Friends? Acquaintances? Because I haven't heard any stories of you going after him and him breaking you into pieces so you must have some kind of relationship with him.

[pampa]

"That's the one. Why, are you doubting he's as trigger-happy as he looks? Because - don't."

This really shouldn't be so easy for him to joke about, he knows. Sematimba was his oldest friend, and the only person he'd trusted for a long damn time. Until he'd met Muss, at least. Maybe longer. But then Semi had gone and there was a part of him that felt abandoned, maybe. Lonely, definitely. Why it's so natural to tell Kovacs all of this is the part he really hasn't sussed out yet.

"I did go after him, and he almost broke me into pieces. Naomi stopped him." He says this with the same detached interest. "Aqua under the bridge." The truth is Amos is the closest thing he has to family here.

[resleeves]

"I don't doubt that at all. Wouldn't surprise me to find out he sleeps with that fucking gun," Kovacs says with a disdainful shake of his head. Honestly, if you wanted to sleep with weapons, keep them away from your head. That's where 'real death' happened.

"I don't know if I could forgive and forget that easily," he admits thoughtfully. But, then again, "I also don't have a friend like that."

Did he have any friends at all? No, not anymore. They were all dead and gone, ghosts that wandered Harlan's World. And he has no fucking clue what Rei is right now.

[pampa]

It gets a dry, brief laugh. "Would you look at that: neither do I. Not anymore."

And it doesn't hurt anymore. There's just a cool patch of numbness where he used to house all of his memories of Semi. He wouldn't be who he was without him; hell, he wouldn't even be alive. Maybe that's enough in the end, even if he's just about the worst vessel to carry on someone's memory there could be.

[resleeves]

"Yeah, but you got those bunch of shits that know you," Kovacs point out with a wave of his hand. "Telling me you haven't grown closed and bonded while you've been with them? I thought extreme situations and close quarters made it impossible not to have that happen?"

But really, Kovacs doesn't know a fucking thing about where they came from and how they traveled. He's just making assumptions on what he knows and how the others of Miller's world have talked about him.

Miller was a fungus. He grew on you and you kind of just had to deal with it. Maybe not the foundation for a great friendship.

Kovacs doesn't care.

[pampa]

Something almost wistful passes over his expression, but he's still reading the inscriptions on the wall, looking anywhere but Kovacs' face.

"There was a time they were ready to call me family. Had my own bunk on their ship and everything." His voice grows tight, even if he tries to hide how much he wanted it at the time. Maybe how much he still does, here. "Kill one genocidal fuckhead and suddenly - that was it. Off the team."

Miller shrugs, suddenly standing and turning so he can face the other man, putting his hat on his head for lack of better things to do.

"You done here?" Because apparently he's sticking to you, Kovacs, like the veritable rubber cement he is. What it really means is we.

[resleeves]

Kovacs frowns, trying to figure out how killing someone who was cool with genocide would be a bad thing. He'd have thought that taking out someone like that would actually be doing some good for the world.

Wondered what that said about Miller's friends, that they were in support of someone capable of genocide staying alive. Maybe he'd ask them one day.

"Didn't know they were the cheerleaders for genocide," Kovacs says, pushing himself to his feet and letting that serve as his answer.

[pampa]

Miller glares at him, but waits for him to shoulder his backpack still loaded with his precious Rhino. That's trust right there.

"They're not, sabakawala." Remember that one?

[resleeves]

"Christ Miller, when you talk like that, I lose the ability to walk straight," he quips, rolling his eyes and leading the way out of the chapel. He can feel the weight in his backpack and decides to think on the fact that Miller's put something that important and that valuable in his hands later.

Needless to say, it's a strange thing and he's probably going to curse about it when he does remember it happened later because how dare you, Miller.

"Would you call them your friends?" Kovacs wonders as they walk. "People you trust?"

[pampa]

Matching the eyeroll, he falls in line with the taller man, trying not to think on how natural it had become to wander the station with him. As Kovacs asks about the crew, Miller realizes that they're friends. That he even sort of trusts Kovacs. This is the worst day ever. Especially since now he has to be nice.

"I don't call them anything, alright? ...But out of everyone on this pathetic excuse for a space station, they probably know what they're talking about. We could've been dead in the water when that gravity shit happened." See how he refuses to take any credit for that, still? Even though he'd saved Alex and kept a fair few people alive while they were extracting space debris from the rings. "So yeah. I trust them."

Miller looks down at his boots while he walks, hands shoved in jumpsuit pockets until he can feel the surface of Julie's beads. Without them, he never meets Julie. But that hasn't happened for him yet. All he can do is try to get them out of here so he can die in peace.

[resleeves]

"So, I'm the only one who gets called your filthy other language names? Touching," Kovacs says, shooting him a look and smirking. This is a bit like Vernon, he thinks, in that he's spent so much time around the man that it doesn't bother him anymore that he is tagging along and that his gun is in his backpack and they are talking about some pretty personal things.

That doesn't mean he misses Vernon. It just means Miller's...okay.

"I'm sure some of us would have figured out what to do without them when the gravity shit the bed," Kovacs muses, snickering. "Maybe after about the second or third person ended up pressed against the ceiling. Wasn't that hard."

[pampa]

"Yeah, well, there aren't many other Belters for me to yell at and Naomi's usually a sweetheart, so."

Yep, just you. Prax would recognize the word but he's tragic so Miller wouldn't even as a joke. Do guys missing a daughter joke? Not unless their names are Jules-Pierre Mao. Miller's fist tightens just thinking of that smug sabakawala's face.

"So you knew the second this place grinded to a halt that space junk was clogging up the centrifugal motion of the rings?" He lifts an eyebrow, then shakes his head. "Inyalowda." Typical, fucking typical.

[resleeves]

"I've yet to meet this Naomi who's a sweetheart," Kovacs muses, lips turning down in a thoughtful frown. He'd met almost every other person who'd come from Miller's world so why not meet them all and complete the fucking set, see who he could tolerate and who he wanted to toss into a garbage can.

Right now, that was just Amos even though that's probably where Miller belonged. He'd be at home there. Garbage was his people.

"I know everything, fucker." He didn't have any cool language so he went with a classic. It works and gets the point across. "I just didn't care enough to tell anyone."

Ha ha, yeah, exactly.

"I like to keep my secrets."

[pampa]

"Oh, right. That's why you were floatin' haplessly around the bar instead of fixing the problem yourself. Makes sense." Miller nods seriously, knocking his shoulder into Kovacs' arm as they walk. The issue of Naomi gets a thoughtful hum. "She's about as Belter as they come. I'm practically an imposter compared to her."

[resleeves]

"I thought it'd be fun." It hadn't be fun. It had been frustrating and fucking embarrassing especially to be seen by so many people. He'd try to do a better job at keeping those goddamn boots turned when he was up and walking around.

"She's another one like you, huh?" Kovacs asks, trying to picture the words that Miller often called him coming from a woman. Maybe that could be his goal, getting two of these Belters to throw horrible words at him.

"That mean she's gonna call me names?" Kovacs asks. "Or do I have to do something horrible to her before I get the special treatment?"

[pampa]

"Oh yeah, you looked like you were having a great day." He holds back the eye roll because it's cute you think you are convincing, friend. Miller pauses a step, considering that a moment. "I'm sure if you're your usual charming self, there won't be an issue." Ha-ha. He knows it's lame so he doesn't wait for the laugh track okay.

"Us Beltalowda are tougher than we look, so I wouldn't go underestimating her."

[resleeves]

"Your concern is noted." But, it would probably be ignored. Kovacs doesn't go out of his way to give people a hard time but it just tends to happen. He's just got that charm about him, the one that says 'I'm going to fuck around with you and you're going to take it'. Does everyone listen to that charm? No.

So, he just has to try harder to be more charming.

"Everyday's a great day when I wake up on this fucking station," Kovacs says, rolling his eyes. "I've always wanted a vacation out in the middle of nowhere. If I snap and start murdering people, blame this station."

[pampa]

"It's not concern, I'd pay to see her rip you a new one." She is tiny but she is mighty... with her words. Much like Miller, really, it's no wonder they get along. The rest just gets a sidelong (bored) glance from the detective. "If you start murdering people, I'm blaming you."

[resleeves]

"Don't have a stroke, old man, I know how to control myself," Kovacs assures him. He won't say he's left that life behind but it's not like someone's paying him to kill anymore and, contrary to what a lot of people might think, he doesn't actually want to go off and murder random strangers.

He's not that bad.

"Makes me wonder what would happen if someone did commit a crime up here," Kovacs muses. "Haven't found a jail, have we? Would they just get taken for a very pleasant space walk?"

[pampa]

"Death doesn't stick here anyway, right?" It's something he's been trying like hell not to think about. But it makes it pretty damn difficult to punish someone on multiple levels. He's not sure he trusts anyone on this station to be The Law anyway - he's certainly not fucking qualified and as far as he knows he's the closest thing there is.

[resleeves]

"S'what I've heard, yeah," Kovacs says, nodding. He's not sure if he really wants to find that out for sure (because he'd be the one to break the mold and actually fucking die) but it's relieving to know that, if some shit does go down, he'll at least be able to come back in this same sleeve.

"I talked to someone who died and when she came back, she couldn't see." So, kind of fucked up but better than being a corpse for the rest of your goddamn life. Corpses have no fun.

wanna wrap it up for us maestro?

[pampa]

For a guy with an actual deathwish, Miller hasn't been keen to try either; if only so he can back and die properly the way he was supposed to before being so rudely interrupted and brought here.

"Yeah, uh. Rogue, right? I talked to her, too. And then there was Alex." He's sure there have been others, too. But those two had resonated with him. "Guess it's only a matter of time before they punch our ticket, too."

i gotchu!

[resleeves]

Kovacs doesn't really want to sit around and wait for death but that appears to be what's happening. Sure, there was shit being done but it was slow and gradual and Kovacs gets the feeling that people are going to die before anything major or noteworthy is discovered.

"Waiting around to die. Sounds thrilling," Kovacs says, rolling his eyes. "Only thing better would be waiting around for someone like you to kill me. The anticipation alone would be so much fun."

Fucking shit, if that really happened -- if Miller ends up somehow killing him -- he was spacing himself.

Count on it.