Come Sail Away IC Inbox

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's voice mail message is in a weary voice: "Erin Peters. If you called in the middle of the night and I didn't answer, I'm dying. If I pick up and someone on your end isn't dying, they will be shortly. Text otherwise."

Comments

[crushed_pearls]

Yes I am aware you may recall recently when I experienced it while very small and on your body. It is messy and wet and ugly and undignified and it is also helpful.

Don't mind Erin just a-strollin' down the stairs, definitely not heading to the cabins on purpose not at all.

[serialskiller]

There. Is a silence from Murderbot's cabin. It's still holding it in, for now. It's still trying to keep it together, for now.

[crushed_pearls]

Would you like me to bring you something? Nuggets? Muppets? I can raid a bar for fruit juice if fruit juice is your jam.

Erin stands at the end of the cabin hallway so her fuckass phone doesn't give the game up.

[serialskiller]

Five minutes. Then...

Chamomile tea. Please.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin turns and goes to Sand Dollars, sending an On my way en route. She comes directly back with tea for SecUnit and an atrocity for herself that was once Earl Grey before becoming her victim.

She knocks softly.

[serialskiller]

It answers the door in its biggest hoodie, weighted blanket around its shoulders. The blanket smells like chamomile and lavender--perhaps related to its request for chamomile tea. Comforting, familiar, warm.

It has not cried yet, but its voice is thick when it speaks. "Thank you."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin gently offers SecUnit its tea. "Least I could do, buddy. I won't impose if I'm not wanted but, like I said...I'm available. Any time. You might be surprised how many others are too."

[serialskiller]

It stares at a point above her head, frowning, and doesn't immediately reach for the tea. Processing something thick and heavy as a lump in its throat before it speaks.

"If you disappeared, it would hurt a lot, too."

[crushed_pearls]

"...I'm working on that," Erin promises in a soft voice. "Not just hearing it with my ears but believing it. People keep saying it to me and I. Need to believe them. I want to believe them. But it turns out being your own enemy is a habit you can't just break in an instant."

[serialskiller]

"I wouldn't say that to just anyone, Erin. But the point wasn't about believing it, it was about saying it. I don't think I ever said anything like that to Jinx. I don't think she'd have expected me to hurt about her."

Finally it takes the tea, taking a sip to try to break up that lump.

[crushed_pearls]

"...I didn't know her well." The regrets in that sentence swarm thickly. "But I suspect, from the few times I've seen her, that Jinx didn't like herself very much. And when you live like that it can be hard to believe you'll be missed."

Erin's not trying to be talking about SecUnit with that description. But it sure does rhyme, doesn't it?

"I'm sorry, for your loss. And..." A long breath out. Erin takes a steadying sip of what is, for lack of another thing to call it, her own tea. "...I'm touched, SecUnit. I -"

(Hey, remember how there were drones at the game show?)

...FUCK.

"I won't go offering my life up again. I can't promise not to risk it. But anyone who wants it is going to have to pry it out of my hands."

[serialskiller]

"Good, because the next time you try, I might kill you myself to make a point."

It won't, it never will, but that last word comes out as a heavy sob instead of a proper part of speech and it leans into the door and buries its face in its arm and tries to take in a breath but it comes out ragged and wet.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's voice stays soft. "Let's step back inside here, buddy. D'ya really wanna do this in the doorway where concerned folks might try to help?"

Not that there's anything wrong with that in itself, but...

...Well, SecUnit doesn't like being touched on a good day.

This is not a good day.

[serialskiller]

It nods, not up to words at this point, and steps back into the cabin, moving to the bed. It sets the tea on the nightstand and...

just...


...

...weeps.

[crushed_pearls]

Wordlessly, Erin steps in, closes the door behind her, and sets her own cup down so that she can retrieve the weighted blanket and drape it, with as little contact as possible, around SecUnit's shoulders.

[serialskiller]

It curls itself into the blanket, making all sorts of ugly crying sounds:
- harsh, rasping breaths
- gulping for air
- hiccups
- shuddery exhalations
-- sometimes mixed with strangled wails
- mucusy snorts and sniffles
-- the occasional nasal sound that can only be described as a honk
- that gaspy sound one makes when trying to get control again
-- only for it to dissolve into even harder crying

[crushed_pearls]

Erin almost sits on Jinx's bed without thinking about it, but she realizes better in time; she pulls up the desk chair so she can be close, deliberately turning her head away from her friend.

It's important to be here, now. Even if it's not in the way she's used to.

[serialskiller]

Eventually it works its way down from a rolling boil to a light simmer, as all cries eventually do. Snuffling wetly and rubbing at its face with its sleeve.

[crushed_pearls]

Generally one offers a tissue here and Erin realizes she forgot to get anything like that just now when she actually needs it. So instead she gets up, retrieves SecUnit's tea, and offers it patiently with her head still turned away, so she's 'looking' off to its right.

"I'm sorry, SecUnit," she repeats, though this time it's out of her human mouth at least and she can express her sympathy, her worry, in her voice.

[serialskiller]

It takes the cup and takes a small sip. The tea's now cold. That's okay.

"Can...you please grab some toilet paper from the bathroom for me?"

[crushed_pearls]

"Yeah, one moment." Erin retrieves the requested supplies, taking some care to walk quietly. She's familiar with SecUnit's cabin in any event, but also just...trying to be soft, be gentle. She offers the toilet paper out with an apologetic look. "I should have thought of tissues when I was getting the tea, they'd be gentler on your face."

[serialskiller]

"My face doesn't need gentle. I just need..."

You know, to blow its nose, which it does quite cacophonously here in demonstration, before grabbing for its tea again.

"Um...thanks."

[crushed_pearls]

"Least I could do," Erin says, with a little shrug. After a moment she gets her own tea and sips it. Some part of her wonders if this is the first time SecUnit's...mourned, so openly, so messily, but there is no kind way to ask that. So she won't.

"...Who was she, to you?"

[serialskiller]

"My roommate. Maybe my friend, too. And an engineer. She installed the speakers on my drones."

Maybe. It shakes its head. "We died on the same day of the battle royale. And woke up together. And...didn't talk about it, not much. It was hard. I don't think she'd ever died before. I had, but this was a different one. I adjusted my settings to generate heat, for her. Something warm. I thought it would help, and it did."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin nods, softly. "...Part of why we didn't hit it off immediately, she and I, is we had something in common. Or I think we did, anyway. Seeing, hearing, things that aren't there. It can be lonely and distressing even with people who love and support you, and...I don't think she was used to having that. It's good that she had you."