001 👻 un: ghost

[disequilibria]

hi, i'm ava

[ she's gone through the various stages of grief in the days since her arrival. grief at losing her chance of learning how to live a normal life. grief at losing the first person who'd really understood her pain. grief at losing a cure that had been within her grasp.

grief at being on a damn space station, of all things. (maybe they should be renamed the various stages of anger.)

she's settled on something akin to resignation, for now. she's here. she still wants to try. ]

what are things you consider normal? how many of them can you still do here

Comments

voice; un: spectre-1

[kanyounot]

I think "normal" is relative. For me, normal is fighting a war with my crew, and training my apprentice. My apprentice is here, so I can do that part of it. But there's no war to fight. That's weird.

[disequilibria]

What do you do instead of fighting?

[kanyounot]

Meditate, mostly, or try to. When I'm not trying to figure this place out, and find a way to get back.

[disequilibria]

I've never tried meditation.

[ that's not true, she has - it just didn't help with her condition. ]

[kanyounot]

You're welcome to give it a shot with me sometime. I usually just do it on the observation deck. It's not for everyone, but I was taught how to use it to ground and center myself from a young age.

[disequilibria]

Maybe I will.

[ maybe. ]

What's your name?

[kanyounot]

Kanan Jarrus. Nice to meet you. What's yours?

[disequilibria]

I'm Ava. Ava Starr.

[kanyounot]

Is this your first time in space? [ He's quickly come to discover that it's even odds whether most people are familiar with space travel. ]

[disequilibria]

Yeah. I've only been on Earth so far.

[kanyounot]

Well, at least we're not traveling through hyperspace and the artificial gravity seems normal so far. Those are the toughest parts to deal with when you're new at space travel.

[disequilibria]

Lucky, lucky me.

[ is that sarcasm? you bet it is. having gravity might be lucky, but ava doesn't think she's been particularly lucky in life so far. ]

[kanyounot]

Just thought I'd try to help you look on the bright side. Trust me, I know it can be tough.

[ She's far from the only one who's been through some shit. ]

[disequilibria]

[ she's far from the only one, but ava isn't great at realising that. at looking beyond her own pain to see that of others. years of it have made her selfish and focused on only one goal (survival, finding a cure, finding a way to stop being in pain, all tangled together) and now that she's no longer in pain (for now), she's still falling into old habits a lot. ]

Yeah, okay.

[ she's... trying. maybe not hard enough, but she's trying. ] Have you been here long?

[kanyounot]

Not very long, no. I've heard a lot of bad things about this place already, though.

[disequilibria]

Like what?

[kanyounot]

That this place - or someone running this place - seems to want to mess with people's heads, for starters.

[disequilibria]

Places don't do that. [ she's pretty sure that's people. ]

[kanyounot]

Yeah, unless the place has somehow become sentient, which would be a whole other set of problems.

[disequilibria]

Is that even possible?

[kanyounot]

I would've said our current situation is impossible, just a few weeks ago. So who knows?

[disequilibria]

I guess. [ if she sounds a little reluctant to admit it, that's because she is. ]

[kanyounot]

[ He doesn't miss the reluctance, and it's understandable, but still - ]

Can't rule out anything, really. Not yet.

[disequilibria]

That sucks.