[Semi-Open, Arrival] Dreaming Wide Awake

[oyedeng]

WHO: Naomi Nagata, James Holden, Amos Burton, a Rescue Crew and OPEN
WHAT: A woman falls out of space and onto Thedas. Some damage is incurred, some recovery time is needed, some reunions are happening. Also: Space resident's first exposure to snow.
WHEN: Covering arrival, quarantine/recovery and first steps in a snowy Kirkwall
WHERE: Wounded Coast, Riftwatch Infirmary, Kirkwall
NOTES: If you want to continue any CWs for description of/discussion of injuries sustained, pain suffered, Holden being a sap

At first, there is nothing. She floats, as she has done all her life, when the ring gate decelerates everything in an instant, and Naomi is knocked out cold.

Her dream is a simple thing. To stand aboard the Rocinante, to hug Alex, to touch her forehead to Amos', to hold Holden close. To tell them all she has to say, and to be welcomed back.

Instead, she comes to when she falls, thin body impacting on hard ground, vision flooding with flickering green, and beyond... the horrifying sight not of metal, not even of the darkness between stars... but of a grey, cloudy sky.

[ ooc: Closed and Open Prompts in comments below. If you'd like to do something else or discuss handwaving/continuing TDM threads, feel free to shoot me a message: inkcharm or Discord: inkcharm#4573.

Please also take a gander at Naomi's Permissions/CWs/Opt-Outs as well as her Info post. ]

Comments

[acreage]

He breathes out, remembering that. The Roci completely fucked, comms dead, locked out of weapons, and even Amos and Alex wondering if he'd set up the destruction of the Seung Un. In retrospect, it's hard to blame them; he had been acting completely out of his fucking mind. He'd felt like he was going crazy, flickers of Miller's ghost appearing at random, spouting bizarre bullshit. It's weird that he misses the presence now, his mind quieter than it's been in a year or more.

"That was the only move she could make." He remembers Alex hitting the controls, Amos trying to get weapons back up, somehow being able to convince them to go for the Ring. "We all knew it. Clarissa Mao — Julie's sister, by the way, who was trying to discredit and kill me — had her backed into a corner."

[oyedeng]

Now that gets some surprise out of her. Mao was not a name Naomi expected to be tied to this, and that opens up a whole different can of worms. "I'll need a play by play of that at some point," she muses, rubbing her forehead. Wrapping her head around everything Fade and Thedas is taxing. Add trying to untangle 'Clarissa Mao tried to frame and kill Holden' and suddenly it's a new level of mental acrobatics.

Naomi can't blame Camina - even if she will never be okay with the shot taken. It was the right call to protect everyone on the Behemoth. It just almost came at the expense of nearly everyone Naomi loves.

"There was a rousing speech when we followed you into the Ring. Very idealistic." And he'll know the weight of that. The shadow her past casts forwards onto moments like that. Some day, she thinks, she'll share that story in its entirety, not because he asks for it, but because she will be ready to speak it. "Speaking of... causes and idealism." A small gesture, indicating the universal idea of 'all of this'. "Tell me what you and Amos make of Riftwatch?"

[acreage]

He knows. Of course, he knows. And it shows in a softening of his eyes, a squeeze at her hand. No wonder she'd left; not just her love for all of them at the Roci, but the show of her past couldn't have helped.

Amos had asked him almost the same thing, while they were in quarantine themselves. What's your read on this dump? It'd been months longer ago then he'd ever intended to stay here.

"I think there are a lot of people here trying to do the right thing. They're trying to make things better. I can't fault them that."

[oyedeng]

She slides her fingers between his, a fit so comfortable and familiar that it almost hurts. On the limited space of a ship, you find small ways to carve intimacy out for yourself when you can't exactly have too much in the way of privacy during the day to day. Naomi knows all the little ways in which they fit together. It's a comfort to rediscover them here.

"That sentence sounds like there's a 'but' coming."