[ ...or ten. A decade that perhaps felt like one hundred, with countless worlds visited and countless worlds destroyed. Dozens of contracts broken, filled, and dozens more ended prematurely. Immeasurable years of drifting through endless stars, endless void, adapting and readapting to the ever-changing rules of the company, but some things have remained the same.
Teams and their colors and the tasks they are expected to carry out. The hum of fluorescent lights that line the long metal halls of the destroyer vessel. The sterile smell in the sleeping quarters, the artificial aftertaste of each scheduled meal, and the unit number Corvo Attano has been assigned since day one. Been there so long there are rumors it's haunted, that he's not a man but the ghost of fourteen.
It may be true, that fourteen is haunted. Almost ten years to the day he left, another of the bunk's original occupants knocks. Returned, though he has no memory of the place. Why would he? New recruits usually don't, but his cuff scans him through like it has so many times years before. ]
Hello? Anyone here?
[ A familiar voice, but different. Changed somewhat, matured. Footsteps fall heavy as he enters, making himself known. The smell of leather catches his attention first, stand-out against the rest of the ship. Old, familiar, not so sterile clean. The lights aren't all on, but there is a presence in the cramped quarters, and his eyes adjust quickly enough to the hunched figure there. The man, ghost, of room fourteen. ]
You must be Mr. Attano? I'm your new bunkmate. Jasper Khezek.
[ He is exceptionally good at what he does, after all. Infiltration, moving like shadows and leaving nothing behind, except when they need him too. He follows and does everything he is told to with a single minded focus. Or rather maybe that is the point, as the years progress and he remains where others don't, all he can do, is focus. Everything else, to the chaos of lives past that still do not die in his head, he must examine only the way forward, else he risks drowning in his own memories. Because he does that enough already. Talks to them at length, often, even. When he steps in and out one world and another, death is only so permanent when his every action, every thought is dictated by it.
Shaped wholly in the ashes.
So when enough time later, he is asked what he might like as a reward, he asks only that he might keep the rover. Just as it as, yes there might be better tech, now. He will adapt where he needs to be efficient but what matters most is keeping the ghosts in place, even as they say he becomes one. They do not understand, he is mad, because he does not know how to live as himself. But they do, those that he lost, so he must keep them to keep himself. The floor has been ripped out from under his feet too often now, that he must make up his own and force it to be real. He has places for them all, careful maintained as he moves through it. Terra's brightly coloured scarves that hang over her bunk, he always tells apologizes to where she sleeps, when he needs to wash them. The bottles of drink under deadpool's bunk, where he tells him to shove over where a mission is bad and he wants to waste some time drowning in the burn. The calm instruction to Jasper to straighten up his boots by foot of the bed, each morning then sighs, and does it himself. The goodbye he says to the empty air, the good morning as he readies himself for whatever his orders are.
( Others too, of course. Where Shepard was gone in a shatter of stardust, he sets two glasses out at the small table, and makes a toast to and they're all dead. Aeryn, the spot lent on the kitchen counter as he washed dishes, and he tells her of the anatomy of rats, the disease in their bite, the most effective way to deploy them in combat. Fiona, in the drivers seat, singing along with him. Sometimes, teaches her slow steps to dances when he was a younger man. Tess, with her head next to him on the pillow, and tsking quietly when he doesn't tend wounds properly, fingers skittering on damaged nerve endings. )
( and if he is a ghost, dead as could be to a shell of a man, it is alright, there's another heartbeat, another soul in its place. So long now, he has spent hours in argument with her, once he had nothing else left to lose, until they had beaten themselves hoarse, till there were no more words for them both, and she sighs quiet in his ears, the melancholy of a contemplated eternity they share now. Speaking he finds exhausting outside of the flow back and forth between them. )
He is fifty, and he is a ghost, and there was a thousand choices to be made, that were not, and he knows there are a thousand lives, they all could have lived, but didn't. So it is not so much to imagine Jasper would know him, but not. Come back but never remember. Not that he read the orders the right way, though Jessamine did for him, the way she always had. She sighed quiet, into the rattle of his bones. ( he is coming back grown, beloved and it was not your fate to ruin him, he seeks it all himself. )
Forgets how he seems, if he ever cared anymore, when he sees not a boy, anymore, the man that once, he'd promised Jasper he would always become. Rises one step in front of the other. Mouth a flat inexperessive line. Eyes dark and there's not much to say at all, except everything that hasn't been remembered. Stepped out for shadows, to peer at the boy he had known that has molded as all young men are. ]
Corvo. You never liked titles before. Call me Corvo. [ because whilst he might understand, it's too hard sometimes, to pick apart the then, and the now, and the could have been. A jumbled up thought. ]
[ The hunched shape rises, steps forward. Solid, not a ghost but indeed a man, though there's an unmistakable hollowness in his eyes. A rigidness that stands out in the tired curves of his shoulders and flat line of his mouth. Corvo. There is no familiarly in it. He croaks out the words, and to Jasper's sharp ears it suggests he hasn't spoken in... he's not sure how long. Perhaps he is a ghost in that he isn't living so much as existing. He is, according to the public files, the oldest recruit onboard and one of the longest serving.
Perhaps one of the longest surviving is a better way of putting it.
Jasper bites back a dry swallow and meets dark eyes with steady red. When he was younger encountering a man like this, dark and staring at him all see-through and bordering on menacing, would have made him nervous enough to avoid. But he's here to work and has a contract to complete, so he believes, (like so many first time recruits now and before him). Now he is older, knows better how to conceal the nerves that once threatened to make his hands shake. Knows better than to waste time hiding in his bunk. Hiding from change, from strangers he'll have to live and inevitably communicate with.
Even if they're already spouting crazy assumptions. ]
I never...? Right. Corvo, then.
[ He takes it as a simple mistake. Narrows eyes, but doesn't bend his ears out of shape over it. Instead he turns his head, the angles of him all sharp as he quickly scans the cramped space. For a rover with only one resident, it looks well lived in. Every bed made as though untouched, folded and clean with soldier's precision, but each living space is occupied with personals. Patterned scarves and a lady's hairbrush, not one but two glasses on the table, magazines of... questionable content stacked on a shelf. And a uniform, folded neatly at the end of an upper bunk, new to Jasper but already recognizable. A Green team jacket and pants, worn, used, patched up on places, (burned?) but undoubtedly similar to the one he was given upon entrance.
None of it is particularly important to him. None is sentimental or remembered. What's strange is it doesn't look like there is any open space for him to leave his pack and start making his own. Sure, fourteen is rumored to be haunted and lonesome, but he was looking forward to the luxury of it being mostly empty. ]
Thought this place was just you. Who else is here?
[ it takes a moment, it seems like, for the words to even register. Even longer again to gain a response, not until there is the bark of a harsh woman's voice in his ears that prompts him, more than anything else to work through the haze of being spoken and trying to remember who said way. Eyes flick to her briefly, watching her slouched against the kitchen bench. The slow flick as he wets his lips on cracks that have dried and bled and dried and healed. The split where the skin now seems to pull apart at the edges. A ripped seam, his skin is more stitches than it is organ.
Frowns at her, tells her, to his mind, he doesn't take orders from her, not anymore and she turns her stiff shoulders and proud tilt of soldier's grace to the man in front of her and says, well then, he should at least say something to the person that asked, instead of standing there looking like an idiot.
So he swallows, shakes his head, both in response and to shoo away the dark shapes that sit at the edge of the bed. The laughter of the woman behind him telling him to hurry up. Considers the responses, the old ones that aren't... aren't appropriate. the girl made woman you wished to court, the man that taught you to laugh at violence.
No, not that one. Here, here, he has to be here. ] No one. It was always yours as much as mine, take what you wish.
[ He never belonged very much to himself, and in this contract, less so. So these things are Jasper's as much as his because there had always been so very little he held back from then. Pathetic, probably, he'd do anything he was asked, and they only ever asked the worst of him. ]
[ Silence lingers for too long in the place a simple answer should have filled. Jasper watches as the man turns, twitches almost. Tilts his head as if listening, licks his lips, darts a glance elsewhere. It's uncomfortable and Jasper knows he's staring, but at least he's still being attentive when Corvo does finally speak up. However, it's... not a response he can make much sense of.
It all looks so lived in, but the housing assignments said only two in fourteen... so he takes the standard issue pack off his shoulders and moves to set it on the bunk with the extra uniform folded at the end. ]
Guess I'll leave this here for now and move it if the owner comes back.
[ It's placed carefully, to not wrinkle the perfectly smooth sheets much. Despite the unwelcoming and awkward confusion, this is still his assigned living space, and so he tries to make himself more comfortable, (difficult as that is under that darting dark gaze). Unzips his storm jacket, hangs it by the hood off the bunk post. Pulls off his gloves, not minding the reddish burn scars that coat the skin of his right hand like he used to. Twists a simple silver band on his ring finger as he circles the small living area. ]
My familiar was hopin' she could poke in here from time to time, but she's way too big. You'll have to meet her in the hangar sometime.
[ There would be no worries of Jasper being separated from the other half of his soul for too long this time, no unintended or ill magical side effects. She had been dragged out of her world with him, not to be held in an unnamed place. But this Jasper has never worried about that. He's more worried about simpler matters- ]
Kitchen's real small... how do you cook anythin' in here?
[ He sees - so often too much. He sees there, and he sees here. Then and now. He never found the revelling in it that Granny Rags had had, where she turned smiling into the embrace. He had not asked for such, but it had crept up on him regardless. He did not feel her open joy, maybe if he did not fight so hard, it would not be as it is now.
There's a lot to say as he looks at Jasper-that-was ( a boy with eyes nothing like his ), stand by Jasper-that-is, whilst Jasper-that-will-be ( a boy with eyes too much like his ) dances between them somewhere. He frowns at him, then deeper, jerking his head as if to tell the ghosts of past and future that they weren't welcome in the present. Swallows to find the wet in his mouth for the words. ]
She is always welcome. She grew quickly, did she?
[ Another moment, to shake his head. Why was he asking such simple questions, thinks Jasper already knew. ] I do not cook, you do very often. I tried to... keep it clear for you.
[ Because it is small, but it is sparse. He keeps it clean. Everything is put in place. Everything is tucked away exactly where Jasper had left it. Not touched for days, except once a month, they would be washed. Corvo ate when he needed to now, when the ghosts that hung about reminded him. Poked and prodded him into place. All soft tugs on his forelock when he had to drink to heal his wounds was Terra's kind words in his ear, less soft tugs when Tess told him his face was getting thin again. She insisted always that he was wasting good food, acting like he did. She was best on those days, she never gave him much mercy. Not even in memory. ]
[ He stops his circling by the small sink, planting his feet far enough away from his bunkmate so that he can examine him from a safe distance. The darting and twitching continues, as do the eerily knowing comments, when he opens his mouth between nervous movements. ]
Yeah, she... she did.
[ A narrower glance back down at the polished kitchen sink, at everything so neatly in it's place. It's almost as if he had organized the small space himself. He places his good hand, the one with the ring, on the spotless counter top, and looks back up at Corvo. When he speaks again it's more guarded, his shoulders straight and tense. ]
I do cook often, but not here. Back home yeah, for my husband. They put that in my file or somethin'?
[ He hasn't looked at his own yet. Either they're more needlessly detailed than he originally thought, or something else is going on. And Jasper is slow on the uptake as ever, that much hasn't changed. ]
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It's been 100 years
[ ...or ten. A decade that perhaps felt like one hundred, with countless worlds visited and countless worlds destroyed. Dozens of contracts broken, filled, and dozens more ended prematurely. Immeasurable years of drifting through endless stars, endless void, adapting and readapting to the ever-changing rules of the company, but some things have remained the same.
Teams and their colors and the tasks they are expected to carry out. The hum of fluorescent lights that line the long metal halls of the destroyer vessel. The sterile smell in the sleeping quarters, the artificial aftertaste of each scheduled meal, and the unit number Corvo Attano has been assigned since day one. Been there so long there are rumors it's haunted, that he's not a man but the ghost of fourteen.
It may be true, that fourteen is haunted. Almost ten years to the day he left, another of the bunk's original occupants knocks. Returned, though he has no memory of the place. Why would he? New recruits usually don't, but his cuff scans him through like it has so many times years before. ]
Hello? Anyone here?
[ A familiar voice, but different. Changed somewhat, matured. Footsteps fall heavy as he enters, making himself known. The smell of leather catches his attention first, stand-out against the rest of the ship. Old, familiar, not so sterile clean. The lights aren't all on, but there is a presence in the cramped quarters, and his eyes adjust quickly enough to the hunched figure there. The man, ghost, of room fourteen. ]
You must be Mr. Attano? I'm your new bunkmate. Jasper Khezek.
no subject
Shaped wholly in the ashes.
So when enough time later, he is asked what he might like as a reward, he asks only that he might keep the rover. Just as it as, yes there might be better tech, now. He will adapt where he needs to be efficient but what matters most is keeping the ghosts in place, even as they say he becomes one. They do not understand, he is mad, because he does not know how to live as himself. But they do, those that he lost, so he must keep them to keep himself. The floor has been ripped out from under his feet too often now, that he must make up his own and force it to be real. He has places for them all, careful maintained as he moves through it. Terra's brightly coloured scarves that hang over her bunk, he always tells apologizes to where she sleeps, when he needs to wash them. The bottles of drink under deadpool's bunk, where he tells him to shove over where a mission is bad and he wants to waste some time drowning in the burn. The calm instruction to Jasper to straighten up his boots by foot of the bed, each morning then sighs, and does it himself. The goodbye he says to the empty air, the good morning as he readies himself for whatever his orders are.
( Others too, of course. Where Shepard was gone in a shatter of stardust, he sets two glasses out at the small table, and makes a toast to and they're all dead. Aeryn, the spot lent on the kitchen counter as he washed dishes, and he tells her of the anatomy of rats, the disease in their bite, the most effective way to deploy them in combat. Fiona, in the drivers seat, singing along with him. Sometimes, teaches her slow steps to dances when he was a younger man. Tess, with her head next to him on the pillow, and tsking quietly when he doesn't tend wounds properly, fingers skittering on damaged nerve endings. )
( and if he is a ghost, dead as could be to a shell of a man, it is alright, there's another heartbeat, another soul in its place. So long now, he has spent hours in argument with her, once he had nothing else left to lose, until they had beaten themselves hoarse, till there were no more words for them both, and she sighs quiet in his ears, the melancholy of a contemplated eternity they share now. Speaking he finds exhausting outside of the flow back and forth between them. )
He is fifty, and he is a ghost, and there was a thousand choices to be made, that were not, and he knows there are a thousand lives, they all could have lived, but didn't. So it is not so much to imagine Jasper would know him, but not. Come back but never remember. Not that he read the orders the right way, though Jessamine did for him, the way she always had. She sighed quiet, into the rattle of his bones. ( he is coming back grown, beloved and it was not your fate to ruin him, he seeks it all himself. )
Forgets how he seems, if he ever cared anymore, when he sees not a boy, anymore, the man that once, he'd promised Jasper he would always become. Rises one step in front of the other. Mouth a flat inexperessive line. Eyes dark and there's not much to say at all, except everything that hasn't been remembered. Stepped out for shadows, to peer at the boy he had known that has molded as all young men are. ]
Corvo. You never liked titles before. Call me Corvo. [ because whilst he might understand, it's too hard sometimes, to pick apart the then, and the now, and the could have been. A jumbled up thought. ]
no subject
Perhaps one of the longest surviving is a better way of putting it.
Jasper bites back a dry swallow and meets dark eyes with steady red. When he was younger encountering a man like this, dark and staring at him all see-through and bordering on menacing, would have made him nervous enough to avoid. But he's here to work and has a contract to complete, so he believes, (like so many first time recruits now and before him). Now he is older, knows better how to conceal the nerves that once threatened to make his hands shake. Knows better than to waste time hiding in his bunk. Hiding from change, from strangers he'll have to live and inevitably communicate with.
Even if they're already spouting crazy assumptions. ]
I never...? Right. Corvo, then.
[ He takes it as a simple mistake. Narrows eyes, but doesn't bend his ears out of shape over it. Instead he turns his head, the angles of him all sharp as he quickly scans the cramped space. For a rover with only one resident, it looks well lived in. Every bed made as though untouched, folded and clean with soldier's precision, but each living space is occupied with personals. Patterned scarves and a lady's hairbrush, not one but two glasses on the table, magazines of... questionable content stacked on a shelf. And a uniform, folded neatly at the end of an upper bunk, new to Jasper but already recognizable. A Green team jacket and pants, worn, used, patched up on places, (burned?) but undoubtedly similar to the one he was given upon entrance.
None of it is particularly important to him. None is sentimental or remembered. What's strange is it doesn't look like there is any open space for him to leave his pack and start making his own. Sure, fourteen is rumored to be haunted and lonesome, but he was looking forward to the luxury of it being mostly empty. ]
Thought this place was just you. Who else is here?
no subject
Frowns at her, tells her, to his mind, he doesn't take orders from her, not anymore and she turns her stiff shoulders and proud tilt of soldier's grace to the man in front of her and says, well then, he should at least say something to the person that asked, instead of standing there looking like an idiot.
So he swallows, shakes his head, both in response and to shoo away the dark shapes that sit at the edge of the bed. The laughter of the woman behind him telling him to hurry up. Considers the responses, the old ones that aren't... aren't appropriate. the girl made woman you wished to court, the man that taught you to laugh at violence.
No, not that one. Here, here, he has to be here. ] No one. It was always yours as much as mine, take what you wish.
[ He never belonged very much to himself, and in this contract, less so. So these things are Jasper's as much as his because there had always been so very little he held back from then. Pathetic, probably, he'd do anything he was asked, and they only ever asked the worst of him. ]
no subject
It all looks so lived in, but the housing assignments said only two in fourteen... so he takes the standard issue pack off his shoulders and moves to set it on the bunk with the extra uniform folded at the end. ]
Guess I'll leave this here for now and move it if the owner comes back.
[ It's placed carefully, to not wrinkle the perfectly smooth sheets much. Despite the unwelcoming and awkward confusion, this is still his assigned living space, and so he tries to make himself more comfortable, (difficult as that is under that darting dark gaze). Unzips his storm jacket, hangs it by the hood off the bunk post. Pulls off his gloves, not minding the reddish burn scars that coat the skin of his right hand like he used to. Twists a simple silver band on his ring finger as he circles the small living area. ]
My familiar was hopin' she could poke in here from time to time, but she's way too big. You'll have to meet her in the hangar sometime.
[ There would be no worries of Jasper being separated from the other half of his soul for too long this time, no unintended or ill magical side effects. She had been dragged out of her world with him, not to be held in an unnamed place. But this Jasper has never worried about that. He's more worried about simpler matters- ]
Kitchen's real small... how do you cook anythin' in here?
no subject
There's a lot to say as he looks at Jasper-that-was ( a boy with eyes nothing like his ), stand by Jasper-that-is, whilst Jasper-that-will-be ( a boy with eyes too much like his ) dances between them somewhere. He frowns at him, then deeper, jerking his head as if to tell the ghosts of past and future that they weren't welcome in the present. Swallows to find the wet in his mouth for the words. ]
She is always welcome. She grew quickly, did she?
[ Another moment, to shake his head. Why was he asking such simple questions, thinks Jasper already knew. ] I do not cook, you do very often. I tried to... keep it clear for you.
[ Because it is small, but it is sparse. He keeps it clean. Everything is put in place. Everything is tucked away exactly where Jasper had left it. Not touched for days, except once a month, they would be washed. Corvo ate when he needed to now, when the ghosts that hung about reminded him. Poked and prodded him into place. All soft tugs on his forelock when he had to drink to heal his wounds was Terra's kind words in his ear, less soft tugs when Tess told him his face was getting thin again. She insisted always that he was wasting good food, acting like he did. She was best on those days, she never gave him much mercy. Not even in memory. ]
no subject
Yeah, she... she did.
[ A narrower glance back down at the polished kitchen sink, at everything so neatly in it's place. It's almost as if he had organized the small space himself. He places his good hand, the one with the ring, on the spotless counter top, and looks back up at Corvo. When he speaks again it's more guarded, his shoulders straight and tense. ]
I do cook often, but not here. Back home yeah, for my husband. They put that in my file or somethin'?
[ He hasn't looked at his own yet. Either they're more needlessly detailed than he originally thought, or something else is going on. And Jasper is slow on the uptake as ever, that much hasn't changed. ]
Or are you some kinda seer?