sanctuaryrpg | And the station opens...

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And the station opens...

There were no flashing lights, no alarms. The doors to the quarantine chambers simply opened, the whoosh of seals breaking was the only fanfare.

Quarantine was on a quiet level of the station, a gently pulsing light set into the wall leading the chamber's temporary residents out into the station proper. Outside, station officials wandered by but paid no particular attention to the newcomers; new arrivals were nothing new to them, just a fact of life on Sanctuary. New people arrived in the chambers, station staff logged them, and the computers arranged everything else. So they went about their business, eyes glued to the screens they held.

Of course the newcomers weren't aware of any of this. Anyone who called out to the station staff was greeted with a wan smile and directed toward one of the many terminal screens lining the walls of the large open space between the central tower and the rest of the station.

The terminal screens asked for a fingerprint before offering any additional information. Their names flashed up with a map to their new home in the living quarters and some basic information on the currency contained in the chip in their hand and what it might buy them. A brief explanation of the silver communication unit followed, and then the news of the past twenty-four hours played. War on planets in a neighbouring system, the weather on a vacation world, sports scores for a game that seems a cross between lacrosse, hockey, and quidditch. Nothing of use, of course, nothing that could get them off the planet.

The quiet entrance to the living quarters was on one side of the atrium, and the sounds of a bustling marketplace that could not be contained came from a much wider opening on the other. People of all shapes, colours, and species walked through the space along with station officials and technicians using their tablet like screens, dark uniformed security officers chatting as they strolled their patrols.

The station carried on obliviously while the newcomers watched, each with only their credit chip, a place to live, and a basic outfit. Clearly that was all the welcome they were to expect; what happened next would be up to them.

[[Gathering post and opening of Sanctuary RPG. Put in your characters coming out their quarantine]]

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"No!" For a life full of learning to never let anyone touch her, Marie was still just fast enough to turn, letting the man's hand touch her covered wrist instead of her bare hand. To stumble over her own feet and land on the ground, quite painfully considering how close it was. "Fuck. Good to know some things don't change wherever you are. You couldn't have looked where you were going, sweetheart?"

Remus was quick to offer the girl his hand, feeling so badly about knocking her to the ground with his thoughtlessness. "I'm so sorry," he apologized, reaching for her hands but waiting for her to take his rather than grabbing without care. "It's entirely my fault, I was so overwhelmed," he told her. "Please, let me help you up."

"Aren't you the gentleman." A cute one, with an English accent. Which came first, the cute or the accent?

She pulled her glove out of her pocket, put it on, checked both for holes, before accepting his hand and getting up, winching. "That is a hard floor. Overwhelmed? Guess you're not the one with all answers either. Forget it, I'm in one piece. Just don't try it with someone grumpier.*

The way the girl pulled on her gloves, checking them carefully, Remus wondered if she knew what he was, somehow, if she was afraid to touch him. But he was used to it, to the revulsion, to the fear. He wouldn't hold it against her.

As soon as she offered her hands, he pulled her up dutifully, letting her go as soon as she was steady on her own feet. "I'll be careful," he promised with a soft nod. "I'm just not used to places like this," he tried to explain. "Are you? Is this normal to you?" he asked gently, hoping maybe she knew where they were, how one could come to be here like he had.

"Oh yes, just another Tuesday for me", she replied with a wink, because it had been ages since she had been around a man that wasn't a classmate or a professor and his accent was a distraction she'd welcome right now.

"No, I'm sorry sweetheart." It just slipped out, lilt and all, like she hadn't been up North since she was fifteen. "I'm used to many things, but I've never been transported into space without a clear reason before. Or with one." She offered her gloved hand. "Marie. Although after all that a shake might not be necessary, or recognizable to you as way of introduction. Pretty sure we're coming from different places. Maybe even different times."

Oversharing was a thing, Marie.

Remus reached for her hand, shaking it with an easy firmness. "We do shake hands where I come from," he told her as he released her hand, smiling warmly. "My name is Remus," he added. "It's nice to meet you, Marie."

Then he realized why her gloves were especially strange to him; he didn't have anything on him he'd came here with, not his clothes or his wand, his shoes or the charm he'd been wearing around his neck. "Your gloves," he said, nodding down toward her hands. "Do you mind if I ask why you need to wear them?"

"England?" Remus? Like the Harry Potter character? He was about fifteen years too old to be named after a Harry Potter character, so it was probably a mythological thing. She was pretty sure she had a clue, just not right now.

"Hm, of course you can." And this was where Marie had to explain about mutations and the like. Usually she had more luck keeping that subject a bit further into the distance. Maybe she could ease him into it. "A condition I don't want to hurt you with. I'm glad I found them here, to prevent having to have strangers walk into me and try to catch me."

Remus nodded, indicating that Marie had guessed correctly, that he'd come here from England. Marie's accent seemed to indicate she was from America, possibly in the south, but Remus didn't know enough Americans to be certain.

He didn't spend much time contemplating it, however, because Marie's answer to his question about her gloves made him exhale suddenly in sympathy, her words ones that could very well have been spoken by him. It had been part of his life for so long, knowing he had to be careful when he got close to people, that he had to be sure he could keep the people he cared about safe from himself. She was smiling at him as she teased him for his clumsiness and he tried to smile back, but he felt so instantly sorry that Marie knew the same worry he did.

"Are you sick?" he asked her carefully, kindly, because his own condition wasn't really an illness, not something that would hurt him, but it was a disease all the same. "What I mean is, does your condition make you ill as well?" he tried instead, concerned for her well being already.

Wh-!

She felt her hackles rise when all the years of being called demonic, devil's spawn, a curse, a tumor fought Sam's and Jean's and Charles' lessons about how what her body did, didn't matter as long as she stood by what she did with it. She wasn't a monster.

Her hands balled into fists and she inhaled deeply to keep from moving, grabbing onto the factoid that this was a question out of curiosity, an innocent one, not a taunt.

"N- no, it doesn't. There had been some mental effects, depending on who's involved, but is has never made me physically sick. That's always the other party." Marie exhaled. "You have a condition that makes you ill? On a regular basis?" If they were going to be into the deep end at first meeting, she was going to pull him in as well.

The look Marie gave him was intense, affronted and offended and maybe a bit angry, and it caused Remus to blink under the weight of it and take a step backward.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, but he didn't move any farther away, hoping his remorseful expression on his face would show her how genuine he was.

"I, em. In a way," he stumbled over his words as he attempted to answer her question. "I do get sick, yes. But that part isn't really so important," he went on, unsure of the best way to explain but feeling he owed her honestly. "I can hurt other people too, as a result of my condition. I will hurt other people, unless I lock myself away."

"Lock away?" That sounded like Henry in the basement, Bruce in his own designed cell. Lock away wasn't something a decent human being should have to do to himself.

"It's fine, it's an old wound." She didn't want to hurt him, nor alienate a possible ally that quickly. "You're not locked away right now, should we worry? Or is your condition dormant, except for certain situations?" Was Marie really going to skirt edges, even in this strange as hell situation?

"I have a mutation that makes me drain people through touch. Of energy. And other things." Marie jumped into the deep instead, and hoped for no hidden riffs. "Let's call 'm talents, the other things."

"I'm safe now," Remus assured her, because the full moon wasn't for another two weeks. Of course that was on Earth, and he very clearly wasn't there anymore. And, being that he'd never not been on Earth, Remus had no idea how his transformations would work here. Was there a moon near this station? Would he turn if ever it was full? What if there were two moons, or three, or a dozen of them? What would happen then?

Remus shook off the unpleasant worry that had settled in his stomach. The one comfort he had now is that he felt fine; before the full moon he always felt rotten, exhausted and worn , cold and sick to his stomach. There was certainly no indication that he was about to become the wolf anytime soon.

"My condition is generally very predictable," Remus finally added. "No need to worry at the moment," he continued with what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

Then he took a breath. "I want to ask more about your condition," he said carefully, "but I don't want to upset you, or pry. I'm not usually so nosy, I swear."

Predictable, safe for now, and the na- "You're not the werewolf from Harry Potter, are you?"

Yes, of course, just throw that out there. Marie was thinking she was meeting up with fictional figures, in space. But the latter was true, so why not the first? Wasn't that how some people viewed fiction, truth from other worlds? And had she seriously just called someone fictional?

She hid her eyes behind her hands, peeking at him through her fingers. "Erm. My condition? Eh, yeah, sure. It's just a mutation. I come from a place where people have all kind of different mutations. Some fly, read minds, have fire coming out of their finger tips .. Yeah, yes, ask away." Her hands slid down her face. "Nothing wrong with being nosy. Usually."

Could Marie for once think before opening her mouth?

The words made sense, of course; one of them the curse Remus had carried with him for almost two decades, the other the name of his best friends' child, the only living memory of those people he'd loved. But together, the way Marie said them, was like someone had given them to her without context, coming out jumbled and confusing but pointed like a weapon.

"I... I..." he tried, his chest aching, unsure how to answer what she'd asked. "I am?" he stumbled, licking suddenly dry lips. "A werewolf," he clarified, his voice shaking, and he realized he'd never admitted it before, had never been asked, and he had no idea how Marie might react.

Swallowing, he was thankful that she went on, offering her own admission, telling her own story. "Mutation?" he repeated, the ideas in his head not matching what he could see in her, a girl who looked beautiful and perfect in his eyes. "And it, your..." Remus's words collided again, and he took a breath. "Your condition," he started again. "It causes you to pull energy from anyone you touch?"

She was talking to a fictional werewolf. No, a real one, a fictional one sounded like something out of Discworld and when had Marie turned into such a pop culture buff a k a someone that needed to go out and have some more human interaction more often?

Either way, it didn't look like Remus was going to devour her soon, most nervous lithe werewolf ever, and Marie's knowledge of them was little. "Geesh." A werewolf in space. Take that, London.

She nodded. "Anyone that comes in contact with my bare skin. Anyone humanoid, it doesn't work on animals. I tried with d- dinosaurs." Maybe that would distract him from basically going But Not You just now. "And I think I like mutation better, no-one conditioned my body to do so." That was one ugly truth for sure.

Edited 2016-05-22 12:35 (UTC)

"Dinosaurs?" Remus echoed, and he was trying to keep up, he honestly was, but there was so much happening, and he'd just told a girl he'd only just met he was a werewolf. He did wonder if he counted as humanoid, or if his lycanthropy made him an animal as far as her condition was concerned. It wasn't something he was like to test, however; he wouldn't want to risk her catching what he had, even if only temporarily.

"It isn't so bad," he said after a moment of silence. "I've gotten used to it by now," he added with a smile. Her mutation, though, it meant she couldn't touch anyone, not with her bare skin, couldn't hold someone's hand or kiss them, and his heart ached for her.

"Have you always been this way?" he asked her carefully.

"Dinosaurs." Lord, he was cute enough to eat, and it was a pleasant distraction. Marie was just an alien life form now anyway, so she didn't have to worry about sharing any more things that would turn him off. He'd probably never been on anyway.

"Same", she replied with an one-shoulder shrug. "Mutations usually manifest around puberty, and manifest it did. But it's hereditary, so yes, I have probably always been this way. You? Is there a difference between bitten or born, where you come from? Can you even been born one?"

Remus nodded, and he felt sympathy for Marie again, the idea of going through that change and puberty all at once sounded horrific. He'd had his own issues, of course, but he'd been going through his monthly change for years before he'd hit adolescence, so it was only the added hormonal changes that he'd been forced to struggle with.

"This probably sounds daft, considering what I am," he said, answering Marie's return question, "but I don't know if you can. Be born one, I mean." He offered a sheepish smile. "I was bitten when I was five years old," he told her, and he was thankful that he'd been so young, because he doesn't remember much about the bite itself, or the first few times he'd transformed. "But, where I'm from, werewolves aren't very kindly accepted. Most of them stay in hiding, and those who don't are killed or captured."

He paused then for a moment, so many old questions and worries rising to the surface again now in light of this conversation. The truth was Remus didn't know what his life would or could be beyond where he was now. He didn't know if anyone who truly knew him could ever fall in love with him, knowing what he was and what he could do, didn't know if he'd pass the curse on to any child he fathered. He didn't even know if his condition would, one day, kill him, tear him apart from the inside out.

"There's a lot I don't know," he said after a moment with a nervous, breathy laugh. "But I'm thankful for the things I do."

"Yes - yes, I know." It was best to keep that answer vague, to which comment she's replying to. Because how to explain 'Yes I know that people are super rude towards werewolves in Hogwarts world because I read it in a book considered fiction' without sounding like she needed a very different outfit. One with sleeves tied behind her back.

"Five years. That's .." Hopefully more than ten years ago. Marie's never been great with ages. "Damn. That's extreme, Remus. Don't feel sad for me, feel sad for yours- or don't do either. All up to you. I just - I just decided that I'm not a victim of what my body does. I'm Marie, not a mutation. I hope it's similar for you, even with so many people thinking you're nothing more than something they wrongfully fear."

"To be super dramatic", she added with a laugh that came out much more awkward than desired. "Want to go explore a bit with me instead? See how far our kingdom reaches?"

Edited 2016-05-26 01:46 (UTC)

Marie's words stunned Remus into a momentary silence; she'd so succinctly put so many of Remus's fears into words, and then, amazingly, assuaged them. Obviously he still worried and he'd still always have to be careful, but knowing Marie understood what he was going through, that she'd experienced something so similar, was a comfort unlike any Remus had ever known before.

"Yes," Remus said after another minute's pause. "I would love to go exploring with you," he clarified with a smile, offering the crook of his arm for her to take.

Edited 2016-05-27 05:54 (UTC)

"Rookie mistake." He was awfully gallant, but that was probably just the accent. Remy had had the same power, stupid accents. And Marie was only thinking about Remy because his jacket was in her living space for some reason, and hopefully it was an I'm-here-as-well-shaped reason. She could do with some bravado.

Instead, she checked if her arm was covered before accepting, keeping the touch as light as possible like you're used to when everything you touch dies. "I don't know if we can use wind directions in space, but to the west we go?"

The gesture wasn't a mistake, as Marie had called it, but rather a way to show her he wasn't afraid of her touch. It was only fair to return the favor, considering she didn't seem to be afraid of what he was on the inside. He liked her, felt comfortable with her, all the way to a point where he wondered if there would ever be a way he could kiss her, even just briefly. She was sweet and pretty and kind in a way that reminded him of Lily, though her personality was certainly a little more that of the American South than English.

"West it is," he agreed with a nod. "If you lead, I will follow."

"Oh, I'm the one in charge now? I didn't sign up for that. I'm a bad leader, a horrible leader. I'm the one person to the side that makes snide comments and curses a lot as soon as things seem to fall apart."

She nudged him with her elbow. "So is this a feminist move or a ploy to avoid responsibility?"

"Em, neither?" Remus replied cautiously, his face going just a little hot. "I thought maybe you had an idea where you wanted to go," he explained. "Or a preference, anyway. And I'm agreeable, so it doesn't matter to me which way we go."

He paused and bit his lip before he added, softly, "I'm just pleased to be spending more time with you."

"Agreeable." Remus was more than that, but she didn't want his brain to overheat. All this was probably a coping mechanism, shallow flirting to not acknowledge being in space in unknown space, but hey, was Marie hurting anyone with it?

.. by the sounds of that, she wasn't. "Well, I'm not going back into my room and a tall blond lady told me that behind me isn't worth my time either. Sometimes you just go for the only yes in a sea of no's, right? Or like, if you want to do things the easy way. And I think it's best if we start out like that."

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