[MINGLE] PLOT: Down the Tubes: Alarm

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: The bunker & elsewhere
WHEN: 1 September 2018
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn on threads
NOTES: Plot Details | Bunker Details | Bunker Map & Key
Threads may take place ANYTIME during the plot, including before, during and after the tubes have been opened, just please do not godmod tube arrivals without explicit permission. Related threads not in the bunker are welcomed, as are general bunker exploration/reaction threads that have nothing to do with the arrivals. Please reference the bunker key doc for what is and isn't available to explore at present.

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Deep under the mountain, tucked away in the newly-discovered bunker complex, there is a room where everyone begins. It is filled with equipment — Computer consoles, monitors — but the point of it all resides within ten vertical stasis tubes lined neatly along a far wall.

One of them has been cracked and lies dormant, dry. In six of the remaining are bodies, unconscious and floating in their familiar vari-colored scrubs, vital signs ticking calmly off on their respective readouts.

In the corner, near the cracked tube, the ceiling has shattered and tumbled inward, across the floor and over the largest console in the room — The one flashing 24 HOURS UNTIL STASIS FAILURE.

Comments

[oorah]

He had been there when Elena discovered this place, but it took him a few days to decide to come down, though he already knew what was waiting for them. Thanks to Kira and Ravi filling him in on the specimen room from before, he had correctly guessed there would be one here, too. Teal hood drawn up over his shaggy hair/beard combo as it had been since he'd received it at the party, Frank ducks into the room silently to take in the odd assortment of "samples." One or multiple for each villager. His fingers brush along the vial labeled J-J and he slips it into his pocket before looking up to see a familiar face nearby. Something jumps in his gaze, vaguely registering the M-M on the matching one she's holding. The whole set-up leaves him oddly numb, but it's a familiar feeling. He knows already that he won't be equipped for whatever comes out of her mouth next, so he opens his to preempt it.

"Hey, Karen," is his dumb greeting, a smile tugging up one corner of his lips and aborting there. There's an easiness to his frame that perhaps shouldn't exist in a place like this, but for once he doesn't feel helpless at all. He feels like they're on the cusp of solving this whole damn thing.

[digging]

There's hardly anyone in here. Karen doesn't know if that's out of ignorance, self-preservation or sheer coincidence, but all the better if her impending emotional breakdown has just now decided to be less impending and more immediate. The scrape of footsteps snags her attention, opens damp eyes to watch Frank's approach in the bright, industrial lighting. It's warmer than she might have thought, the light down here. It doesn't seem right, especially not in a room like this one.

He looks tentative but calm, and why not? This is old hat to him. Probably pointless of her to have kept her suspicions from him all this time, even if her intentions were good.

"Sit with me?" she asks, her voice wobbling as she reaches out with her free hand. "Please."

[oorah]

With Jessica's blood in his pocket, allegedly, Frank feels safer than he has his whole stay here. And he goes to sit by her without much ado.

"You think this place is real?" he asks after a beat, probably the only one hoping that it is. If this is all just an elaborate ruse then they're back at square none, right? Frank nudges in his shoulder against Karen's and lets out a long, steady breath in hopes of influencing her with his own serenity.

[digging]

"I don't know," Karen replies with a swift shake of her head, tears shining in her pale eyes. "I don't know."

Frank's real, though, and she reaches for him without thought, slender arms wrapping tightly around him, fingers clutching at the fabric of his hoodie as she ducks her face in against his shoulder. "I love you, okay?" she wrenches out, breath hitching. "I need you to— to know that. I just love you and I need you here, please." As if he has any control over that at all, over whether he gets blinked out of existence only to be replaced by some other him.

[oorah]

He nods, it's not like he knows any better. But he's so used to Karen having the answers - theories that always stack up to the truth, even when she's the only one who can see it. The hug is expected, more-or-less and he manages to get an arm around her shoulder loosely, letting her cling for a moment before she's saying that to him again. The words bring a tide of self-loathing to rise up against the back of his throat and just as quickly Frank is ducking out of her embrace so he can meet her eyes.

"Karen," he starts, voice still even though he hates the wetness in her gaze. There's still a degree of separation here that keeps him from giving into his desperation. He uses his hand on her arm to push her back, hold her at arm's length like she's always claiming he does. "I know, okay. It's fine, I know."

But he can't have this conversation with her again. He doesn't really want to talk at all right now, which shouldn't shock her really.

"You could've told me," he says, impossibly soft. Hearing it from Kira had hurt, more than it should have. She had never hesitated to share things with him before, so is it just this version of him she doesn't trust? Or this version of her doesn't trust him? Either way, it's the last thing he wants to internalize.

[digging]

Confusion draws her eyebrows down a moment before her expression smooths, sobered. She slants her gaze away, but it isn't guilt that's twisting her gut.

"I was trying to protect you," she replies, sitting back, away from the weight of his hands. "I didn't know if any of it was real and I didn't know what any of it really meant, and you showed up afraid to even open your mouth, talking about massive trauma and having died and being brainwashed, and I was trying to protect you."

She glances down to the vial still held tight in her fingers and then slides it wordlessly into her pocket.

[oorah]

He shakes his head, pulling his hand away and folding his arms over his chest instead. There's something poetic about Karen having Matt's blood and him having Jessica's. There's something even more so about her treating him with kid gloves because he'd been through trauma. His whole life had always been trauma, why is she acting differently around him here, now?

"Okay," he accepts, it's not like he was angry to begin with. He's so tired of being angry, and so sick of being tired. It just means he'll be less likely to tell her things in the future, he supposes, though she was once the only person he could count on believing him.

[digging]

"Yeah, okay," Karen quietly says, the two words heavy and resigned, almost regretful as she pushes her hair back from her face. Emotion wants to crawl back up her throat again, but she swallows it roughly back down; no place for that here, no matter how heavy the load.

"I need to get out of here," she decides, the cold concrete walls feeling suddenly too close, too hard and harsh and industrial for the lives packed in on the shelves between. Pushing herself up, she absently scuffs dust from her backside, then touches her pocket to confirm the the vial is still there.

"I'm not apologizing for it," she says, looking down at him, and then steps past to the door.

[oorah]

The second he loses the warm weight of her at his side, he's frowning and rising to his feet. "Karen, wait—" Frank starts, reaching out for her, fingers brushing her arm to try and get her to face him. He doesn't understand why this has her so upset, but he wants to. He wants to know what could be so bad that she kept it inside for so long. Maybe he couldn't have helped, they'll never know now, but he could have listened. "Apologize for what? Karen, talk to me."

He glances around, realizing this setting for this conversation will probably only make things worse.

"You're right, though. Let's go. We'll talk above ground." The ones under never went that well for him, in hindsight.

[digging]

"For not telling you about this thing I didn't even know was true," Karen replies, stopping despite herself, flipping a hand toward the door. "Or for needing a hug because I am—" Her breath hitches and she shakes her head, slanting her gaze away to the concrete floor.

"That's all I needed. A hug with no strings and no complaints. Because I have Matt's blood in my pocket, Frank. And I don't know if he's really dead or if he was ever alive or if any of this is even real. I don't think that's unreasonable."

[oorah]

He stops, with her, allowing Karen to dictate where they stop and when they start again. He's stuck to her like glue.

"When have I ever complained about a hug from you?" he asks, half joke and half sincere. He's sad for her, he wants to help, but he's probably going to make it worse again. That is his specialty, in any iteration. "You always talked to me before. It didn't matter- I just want you to be okay, Karen." It's a jumble of thoughts, but that's what's most important to him now. That she's relatively safe and has some chance at happiness.

[digging]

Karen doesn't know how it is that she continues to forget how oblivious he is, but it happens over and over again — She never remembers until she's standing there amazed by it.

"Frank," she says now, not angry or condescending as she lifts her eyes to him again, just trying to explain in the plainest way she can when she feels about ready to crawl out of her skin. "I just hugged you and you pushed me away. To tell me I should have told you about this before. In that moment, that wasn't emotionally helpful to me. Okay? I'm barely keeping it together, here."

[oorah]

The truth is: he really is that oblivious. Or maybe he's just been around people who don't need his support like this, at least not emotionally. Maybe they actively push him away when he tries so it's easier not to put himself out there. All he can do is shake his head, all that self-loathing teeming around his guts in a familiar pattern.

"Do over?" he suggests, opening his arms to her. Maybe it's too late, maybe he blew it. Still, opening himself up for rejection has to be worth something, right?

[digging]

Maybe she shouldn't step into those open arms, but Karen really doesn't know how to be that person. The person who can walk away from someone so baldly contrite, so obviously trying. She'd walked away from Matt, yes, but that had been the opposite. If Frank ever leaves her in the dark, it's only because he's forgotten how to turn on the light.

So she goes, even if she's not sure how she feels about it, the sting lingering. For once in her life she'd like to be the one having the breakdown and not the one holding things together, giving lessons on how to people. But just like we can't choose our family, we can't always choose the roles we're given in life. Being that person is apparently hers.

"Let's just get out of here, okay?" she says against Frank's neck as she gives him a squeeze.

[oorah]

His hands come up, winding gently around her back as his block of a head drops to her shoulder. He's trying to be comforting, he was trying to support her 'breakdown' from the beginning, but without understanding it he really didn't know where to begin. This seems safe, it's familiar at least, so he holds her for much longer this time, allowing her to choose when to pull away (as usual.)

"Okay."