Stolen Flowers Die
Invictus - Cargo Bay =>Invictus<=
This is the largest area of the Dragonfly class: a huge, cavernous room nearly the full length of the ship minus the Engine Room. The reinforced metal floor is littered with quick release clamps to easily attach or detach standard cargo containers. The huge cargo ramp is broad enough for the MULE parked on it to head in and out to load cargo. To conserve space, the MULE is usually parked on the ramp, causing it to be halfway outside the ship when it opens, although there's enough space left to park it inside when the ship's bay isn't fully loaded.
Beyond an airtight bulkhead to the aft is the ship's Engine Room. To the front, closer to the ramp, a stairwell leads up to the crew deck; and just beside it is some equipment for the crew to work out and exercise. Apart from that, the cargo bay contains shelves and lockers for the ship's own supply of parts, food and other things, along with any cargo onboard.
The sound of humming can be heard coming from the cargo bay, over by where the exercise equipment and Wren's hydroponics system sit. Lost in her own thoughts as she works, Wren is diligently checking the nutrient solution level and testing its composition using a series of vials and pipettes.
Isabella wanders down the stairs from the crew deck, her frail body wrapped in a heavy, down blanket. Her movements are slow and unsteady, at best. One of her hands is free from beneath the blanket as she holds onto the railing, helping to keep herself supported as she descends the staircase. Her hazel eyes search out across the bay as she moves along, looking for any other signs of life. Spotting Wren, she pauses a moment and curiously watches the other woman, trying to figure out what it is that she's doing. As she steps off the staircase, she slowly begins to make her way towards her.
It's an old, old tune that Wren is humming, old when Earth-That-Was was all there was, and the Black was still only filled with stars. Her movements flow in time with the rhythm, holding up a vial to check its color as she adds in another chemical agent. Isabella is right in line with the little chemistry experiment, and Wren peers at her for a confused moment.
"Sorry," Isabella replies weakly, as she is noticed. "I didn't mean to interrupt. I..I'll just head to the Engine room. It's warmer in there..." She turns as she starts to walk away from Wren and her experiment, moving off in the direction of engineering. As she walks, she pulls the blanket a bit tighter up around her body, keeping it pulled closed with her exposed hand.
Wren frowns, canting her head to one side as she watches Isabella. "You're wobbly," she observes, a hint of curiosity held in her voice.
"I'll be fine," Isabella offers softly. "I'm just a little sick. It's a cold...or something." A cold. People don't generally look as if they were going to fall over dead, from a cold. Isabella on the other hand, does. She slowly makes her way over to a wall, using it to lean up against as she walks, her shoulder sliding along it, to keep herself upright.
Shivering a little, Wren carefully puts her vial and the pipette down beside the slowly rotating wheel of seedlings. The tiny green shoots have started to fill out, putting them more in the class of plants now. Worrying at her lower lip, she considers Isabella for a long moment before moving forward. "I won't tell," she promises, her own voice just as soft.
"Thanks," Isabella replies softly. "I don't want my husband to worry about me. He's got enough on his mind, without having to worry about my health. I'm sure I'll either be fine, or whatever this is, will get me..." She pauses just outside of the engine room door, looking inside of it. "I'm so cold...I just wanted to get to somewhere, that I could get warm and take a nap.."
Wren frowns again, deep furrows forming between her brows. "I guess," she says uncertainly, trailing Isabella like a lost shadow. "Engine room doesn't seem like a good place to sleep, though," she offers, peering inside it as well. "Maybe lots of blankets? And, umm, oh! Tea," she determines with a quick bob of her head.
"I tried that," she offers softly. "Did not help. Something is wrong with me and I don't know what it is. I can't fix it. I think that I'm going to take myself to Londinium and stay at the estate, that way..something happens to me, Grey won't know it yet." It sounded like a good idea to her, at least on the surface. "I just need to get some sleep.." Even though she had just woken up, the trip from the Captain's Quarters had exhausted her.
"You don't like Grey anymore?" Wren asks, puzzling over what Isabella says, and moving around so she can look at the woman's face again.
"I do," Isabella replies. "Which is why I need to go somewhere that he won't be around, if I die. I don't want him to see it, if it happens. My plan, is to just stay here until he goes to bed this evening, and then I take our other ship and head off to Londinium. I just don't want to hurt him.." She steps away from the wall and starts to move inside the engine room, heading over to a spot next to the engine, where she can curl up and be virtually unnoticed.
"I think... I don't-- that doesn't seem right," Wren comments, following Isabella into the engine room. "People leavin' hurts," she states unequivocally.
You are entering Invictus - Engine Room. Invictus - Engine Room =>Invictus<=
Like the rest of the Dragonfly-Class Transport, the Engine Room is more accommodating in length than in width. The rectangular metallic room was one painted a vibrant red, but age and grime from the engines have since turned it a more somber rust color. Three massive cylindrical engines run parallel to each other here in the center of the space, a trough of sorts underneath them providing access for repairs and maintenance. When they are running, the noise and heat in this room can become tremendous. Cables snake here and there from along the floor from the engines, providing power to various ship systems, housed in metal cabinets along the walls. In one corner of the room, near the door, a hammock has been strung between two metal support struts. The only exit is to the front out into the ship's Cargo Bay through a massive bulkhead.
"Watching someone you love die, hurts even worse. So, I pick the lesser of two evils. He'll be fine without me, I promise. He likely won't even realize that I'm gone, for a while. He's far too busy with the crew and with trying to find Gabby.. he'll be okay." She sighs softly, settling herself down onto the floor, starting to curl herself up in the corner, back behind the engine.
Wren continues following her around the engine, and finds a spot on the floor to sit nearby. "Everybody dies," she asserts with a little shrug. "Can't help that. But not everybody leaves-- not 'less they choose to," she continues, words coming slowly as she tries to work them out. "People choose to leave-- that hurts."
Grey steps softly into the Engine Room. "Izzie?" he calls out, not able to see her from the doorway, but he was pretty damn sure he heard her voice and Wren's coming from this direction. "Ya in here, love?" He takes a few steps in, trying to see if she's inside somewhere, maybe working on the engine system or something. "Coulda sworn..." he mutters to himself, leaning against the reactor casing for a moment, the pain on his left leg too much for him to move at the moment.
Isabella is somewhere near the back of he engine, having curled herself up with the large, down blanket she had wrapped around her. She's nearly not visible back in that space. She's about to open her mouth to say something and then she hears her husband speaking and she falls silent. She didn't want him to see her like this and so she tries to keep herself hidden as best she could, pulling the blanket tightly around her. She just looks at Wren from where she is, waiting to see what she does.
Tucked away in the same shadows as Isabella, Wren isn't visible either from where she sits. Watching the other woman, her head tilts as she hears Grey come in, her eyes darting in the direction of his voice and then back to Isabella. Who is hiding even more than before. This presents a dilemma, and Wren clearly isn't certain what she's supposed to be doing, fidgeting and shifting restively for several moments. Eventually she comes up with an answer, "No-- nobody's back here!"
"Oh... okay," Grey calls back to Wren, assuming that she means nobody but herself. "Hey, if you see Isabella somewhere, tell her I'm gonna be seein' ta two new potential recruits 'bout the ship, an' ta comm me if she needs, 'kay? Same goes for you. An' don' eat my gorram engines, or grow plants in my Reactor." He draws in a sharp breath in preparation to walk on his bad leg, and limps out of the Engine Room, heading upstairs.
As Grey starts to leave the room, Isabella exhales softly. "Thank you," she says quietly to Wren. She moves slightly, to peek around the other side of the engine, making sure that Grey was actually on his way out of the room and not pulling one of those tricks that made someone think you were going, when you really weren't. She leans back in behind the engine again, resting her head against the wall behind her as she curls back up once more.
Wren lets out a long sigh of her own, the quickly shifting expressions on her face making it clear she's not certain how she feels about this. Shrugging a little eventually, she sits quietly for several more moments, listening to the sound of the engine and Isabella's breathing. "Maybe I could get you something warm to eat?" she offers awkwardly when she finally does break the silence.
"No thanks," Isabella offers softly. "Not hungry anymore." She had gone from eating three meals a day, to eating once, every two or three days, which is why she had lost all of that weight, back when Grey was ill and in the med bay. It's likely that whatever is wrong with her, is some sort of complication from that. "I'll just stay here to myself. If you have something you need to do..get back to your experiment..go ahead. I'll be fine.. Just do what you need to do, okay?" She lifts her head for just a moment and looks to the woman, then lays it back against the wall.
Fidgeting again, Wren scoots around to sit beside Isabella so that her back rests against the wall as well. "Do you like plants?" she asks after another silence filled pause, not looking over to the woman beside her, just staring out into the room beyond them.
"I...guess.." Isabella says, looking over at Wren. "Guess it depends on what kind. I don't really do much with them. I usually just wind up killing them. I have no skill in raising plants. Amazing I can raise children." She shakes her head a little, then sighs. "Oh yeah..I can't. I just lose them.." She looks up at the ceiling, preparing to get herself to her feet. "Can you go look and see if it's clear out there? I don't want anyone else to see me..." Her hazel eyes shift over towards the door as she peeks out from behind the engine.
Wren ignores the woman beside her, once she gives her dubious approval. "They're quiet... But I listen to'em. Little voices that breathe against my skin, askin' to be let in. Whispers nobody else hears, cuz nobody else listens. And when they bloom, people snip them, steal their flowers, take'em for their own. But they can't keep'em," she rambles, her voice wandering over the words like familiar territory. "Stolen flowers die."
The scary part is, Isabella is actually able to understand and comprehend everything that Wren is saying to her. In fact, the ramblings sound as if Wren had just described Isabella's entire life, with that euphemism. "Back on my estate, we have a huge garden. Lots and lots of flowers.. I love to walk through the gardens..it's so peaceful and it smells wonderful. I go out there and sit and just stare at the roses. They're my favorite..the purple ones.. That's why I wondered what sort of plants you meant.. Flowers, I love...everything else..is kind of boring to me.." She sighs softly, pulling herself up to her feet, starting to slide out from one side of the engine.
And suddenly everything seems to make sense to Wren. "Flowers are the best," she agrees, helping Isabella to her feet and walking with her around the engine. Peeking out the entrance to the room, she makes a quick scan of the cargo bay beyond. "All clear," she tells the woman behind her, glancing back with a brilliant smile.
Isabella makes her way over to the door, poking her head out for a moment, checking herself, to see that things were really clear. "Thanks for talking to me," she offers quietly." The blanket is pulled up around her some more as she starts to head out of the room. "Remember...you didn't see me. I wasn't here.. If you need me, you know where to find me. Londinium.. Temporalis Manor.." She then steps fully out, still looking around for signs of anyone else..
"Didn't see, didn't hear," Wren repeats, bobbing her head up and down. "I'll know," she continues, watching Isabella as she steps out. "Purple flowers," she calls after her, but softly.
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