redshiftlogs | Things get worse before they get better, but this is a worse that feels too big.

Who: Julie & you, maybe?
What: After flickering out into a canon update and back, Julie isn't having a good time
Where: Anchor, throughout
When: Mid-March

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i. the glitch

It only takes a moment. She's walking up to the agriculture level when she seems to flicker in place, like a bad television signal, then suddenly her clothes are different and the mostly-healed wound of her amputated finger is fresh and bandaged over again, and she's dirty and red-eyed and--

She looks around like she doesn't know where she is, straightens up from the strange posture she'd re-entered in.

"No," she says. Quietly at first, then again, louder, panicked, until she's running blindly across the levels of Anchor like something is chasing her. Looking for a way out. Any way out. Now and then she pauses, feverishly tapping at a computer screen. At least once, she punches one and yells.

Just let her out.

ii. the aftermath

Julie is sitting in the park, by the lake, and she is drunk. There's no sign of the small cat which has been trailing her around since those odd blob-creatures showed up (though it's around, somewhere), and she's petting a small blue-white dragon shaped creature that has its head draped over her thigh.

She appears to be a little over half way through a bottle of tequila, and is possibly not capable of walking as the only reason she is still sitting down. Her eyes are still red, and though her jaw is tense she hiccups back something that sounds like a sob every now and then.

Join her? Try to... quietly sneak past?

(Run the hell away?)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The park is a place Jacob often finds himself, whether it's because of the giant plant or the fact it's the landing point of so many of his Leaps, or simply for the fact it's the most pleasent spot in the place. It's also the place things tend to happen, and he's always gravitated towards trouble.

And this woman sat drunkenly on the grass? Looks like trouble.

But when he gets closer, close enough to hear that little sob-hiccup-bump, maybe he feels a little bit of empathy for her. He's tried to drink his problems away before too.

He moves to crouch close to her, arms resting on his knees as he glances from her to the dragon to the bottle, and back again.

"You alright miss?"

Of course she isn't. But he's not about to make her day harder if she doesn't want the company of a man dressed in a Victorian top hat and box coat.

If she wanted to be alone - really alone - she could have gone to her room and cried there instead. Maybe it just feels too close to things right now to go back there... when it had been the first place she'd gone and found it strangely empty.

"Um-- yeah," she lies immediately and poorly, given the redness of her eyes and the hiccup that follows. She scrubs the corner of one of her eyes with the heel of her hand and shakes her head, sniffing.

"... Guess I'm not really fucking fooling anyone, am I..."

"Can't say you are," Jacob replies, pulling out a proper linen handkerchief from his waistcoat. Normally it was used to swipe blood from the throats of his targets, but they work well for tears like every other handkerchief. "Here."

He settles down then, opposite her, not speaking while she composes herself some what.

"They say a problem shared is a problem halved. I'll take on half of yours if you take half of mine." And as he really doesn't have many pressing issues here, she might well be getting a good deal out of this.

"Thanks."

She just holds the handkerchief for a few long moments, looking at it and rubbing her thumbs over the fabric. It's used to rub away a few tears, but they keep on coming without any noise or shaking breath to announce them.

"It's a shitty problem," Julie says then, shaking her head. "I just-- found out my mom isn't dead. But what she is is... fucking worse. Being dead would be better."

"Oh."

Angel had a similar problem with her father reappearing in the City. He doesn't know if Jack should have been dead, but it had thrown their lives into chaos. How she'd coped was beyond him. He can#t imagine how he'd feel if Ethan came back.

"Do you mean like... a monster worse, or really-terrible-parent-worse?" He asks, trying to be gentle. He was never very good at comforting people. That was Evie's forte, but he can't just walk by this girl. Not when she seems so upset and so alone.

"She isn't a monster."

The reply comes too quick, too sharp, and Julie presses the heels of her hands against her eyes because-- stop crying, stop it you stupid girl. She sniffs, and she doesn't want to dump all of this on a total stranger but he's there, and he asked, and she forces herself to look up at him again.

He has one advantage here, at least. Julie's never really needed anyone to be gentle with her.

"Where I'm from, like... fifteen years ago, people started turning into zombies. My mom..." She huffs out a breath and a humourless smile flashes across her face for a moment.

"We thought she'd died. But I found her."

He frowns, a crease between his brows as she speaks, as she gives a very brief explanation. Zombie isn't a word he's familiar with from home, but he was made to watch enough horror movies since arriving in the future he has some idea what the girl means.

"Does she... did she recognise you?" He has no idea how it works, if a corpse reanimated has any memories or feelings, or can somehow be cured.

From the tears, he thinks that latter option is probably unlikely.

Did she? Julie thinks back on the discovery that she and R made, the rows of undead strapped up to the walls. She can still feel the skeletal form of her mother pinned firmly between them both as they rode the motorbike back to the plane. The way she kept trying to snap at the back of R's neck through the helmet they'd put on her to keep her from doing that very thing.

"... No." She sniffs inelegantly and rubs the heel of her hand against her cheek. From around behind her, a small feline peers out at Jacob.

"But that doesn't mean she never will. I couldn't just leave her. I had to do something."

He pauses, watching the little spotted cat watch him. He's not got any strong feelings about cats either way, and perhaps he has always been more of a dog person even before Charles.

"I think trying to save someone you love is completely understandable." He says quietly, his gaze flickering back up to the young woman. He would do whatever he could for angel, Connor and Charles. Or for Evie, or Henry.

"And I'm sorry that you are here, not there and able to help her."

Things get worse before they get better, but this is a worse that feels too big.

Option 2

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