Ziggy Berman (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shadysided) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ximilialog2024-02-28 10:53 pm
shadysided) wrote in ximilialog2024-02-28 10:53 pm
[Open] in the wink of a young girl's eye
CHARACTERS: Canon Updated Ziggy and You!
LOCATION: See each prompt.
DATE: Just after the mission.
CONTENT: Ziggy canon updates... like... 2 decades. Shit has happened.
WARNINGS: Conversations/narration about mental health issues, addiction, and PTSD.
(Feel free to wildcard!)
I. Local Ohio Woman Threatens Civilians | Hallway
[C. Berman — no, Ziggy, her nickname is Ziggy — wakes up with a jolt.
Wakes up with a jolt somewhere she has not seen since she was 18 years old: the Ximilia.
She's in her thirties now, having drank maybe a little too much after a small, unfortunate backslide in the months following the breaking of a curse and the quitting of alcohol. Two fucking decades. It's been two decades of really bad choices and mental health as flimsy as wafer paper, and so... she doesn't quite remember things clearly yet. It'll come, with time: those memories of her coupla' years aboard the ship, which will no doubt be eerily clear, despite the distance.
But for now, she is dazed, confused, and mildly hungover when she stumbles out into the hallways of the Ximilia. She has a knife clutched in one hand, poised and ready to lash out if she needs to. In fact, someone who is tiredly walking the halls mere hours after their return from the mission will suddenly find a knife held up to their neck from behind. The voice that speaks is a little rough from a disuse and two decades of on-again-off-again smoking habits.]
Instead of trying to move, how about you tell me where the hell I've been carted off to?
[And why it feels so goddamn familiar?]
I don't know what creepy Sunnyvale mental hospital this is, but I'm out of here.
II. Far Away Thoughts | Kitchen
[So. Anyway.
She's gotten her memories back. Mostly, and with some unpleasant blurriness that still needs time to fade. She's in her thirties, and so much time has passed — time that includes becoming a PTSD-infested alcoholic with agoraphobia (lots of watching the same VHS movies every night after a fifth of Jack Daniels, or tail-spinning into guilt over Camp Nightwing and paranoia that the curse is coming to reclaim her). She's improved a lot since breaking the curse, for the record.
It's why she can sit in the kitchen to stare at a bottle of wine, instead of hoarding herself in a room decorated for a teenager who is into high School Musical. It's not easy, but she can do it. She just happens to stare at the bottle for an uncomfortably long time, unaware that she's even doing it. Force of habit, really; time passes just fine when you're zoning out into another world.
It also helps you not drink the thing you really want to drink, if you zone out.
One epiphany, belated, finally hits her:]
... Holy shit. I'm really here. Again.
... I can't believe this is really happening. Again.
III. Memories of a Different Life | Ziggy's Room
[It's funny. Back home, she still feels her skin crawl when she takes those daunting steps out of her home. It had once been a mental sort of prison, one she erected herself. And she had swore to herself and to her sister that she would start really living again. If only it weren't so fucking scary to do something as simple as meeting someone at a cafe, or walking your dog down a sidewalk.
But the Ximilia doesn't make her feel like that. Not really. Not with the memories she has here, still bleeding in so effortlessly and filling the cracks that she had only started mending back home. It makes her realize that perhaps her healing had started a long time ago, in a place she couldn't remember anymore: this station.
She stands in the middle of her room, taking embarrassing posters off her wall and grimacing at teenaged Zac Efron's face. Not just him, either. Somewhere along the way, young her had started really getting into the Jonas Brothers while staying here. How many Disney Channel original movies can one girl hoard?]
... Ugh. So glad I'm over this chapter of my life, suddenly.
[She rolls up a poster and throws it in a box.
Redecorating a little, is all. She stops to look at some little polaroid images and tiny letters on a corkboard — there's some lovey-dovey messages from what she can see is Finn's handwriting and unerring drawing skills. It's amazing how clearly she's suddenly remembering some of these moments in time; it's also a relief to know that at least she had some kind of teenaged childhood here, in a way. Especially when she thinks about the parallel childhood that happened the moment she returned home.
The door to her room is open, anyway; feel free to pop your head in.]
LOCATION: See each prompt.
DATE: Just after the mission.
CONTENT: Ziggy canon updates... like... 2 decades. Shit has happened.
WARNINGS: Conversations/narration about mental health issues, addiction, and PTSD.
(Feel free to wildcard!)
I. Local Ohio Woman Threatens Civilians | Hallway
[C. Berman — no, Ziggy, her nickname is Ziggy — wakes up with a jolt.
Wakes up with a jolt somewhere she has not seen since she was 18 years old: the Ximilia.
She's in her thirties now, having drank maybe a little too much after a small, unfortunate backslide in the months following the breaking of a curse and the quitting of alcohol. Two fucking decades. It's been two decades of really bad choices and mental health as flimsy as wafer paper, and so... she doesn't quite remember things clearly yet. It'll come, with time: those memories of her coupla' years aboard the ship, which will no doubt be eerily clear, despite the distance.
But for now, she is dazed, confused, and mildly hungover when she stumbles out into the hallways of the Ximilia. She has a knife clutched in one hand, poised and ready to lash out if she needs to. In fact, someone who is tiredly walking the halls mere hours after their return from the mission will suddenly find a knife held up to their neck from behind. The voice that speaks is a little rough from a disuse and two decades of on-again-off-again smoking habits.]
Instead of trying to move, how about you tell me where the hell I've been carted off to?
[And why it feels so goddamn familiar?]
I don't know what creepy Sunnyvale mental hospital this is, but I'm out of here.
II. Far Away Thoughts | Kitchen
[So. Anyway.
She's gotten her memories back. Mostly, and with some unpleasant blurriness that still needs time to fade. She's in her thirties, and so much time has passed — time that includes becoming a PTSD-infested alcoholic with agoraphobia (lots of watching the same VHS movies every night after a fifth of Jack Daniels, or tail-spinning into guilt over Camp Nightwing and paranoia that the curse is coming to reclaim her). She's improved a lot since breaking the curse, for the record.
It's why she can sit in the kitchen to stare at a bottle of wine, instead of hoarding herself in a room decorated for a teenager who is into high School Musical. It's not easy, but she can do it. She just happens to stare at the bottle for an uncomfortably long time, unaware that she's even doing it. Force of habit, really; time passes just fine when you're zoning out into another world.
It also helps you not drink the thing you really want to drink, if you zone out.
One epiphany, belated, finally hits her:]
... Holy shit. I'm really here. Again.
... I can't believe this is really happening. Again.
III. Memories of a Different Life | Ziggy's Room
[It's funny. Back home, she still feels her skin crawl when she takes those daunting steps out of her home. It had once been a mental sort of prison, one she erected herself. And she had swore to herself and to her sister that she would start really living again. If only it weren't so fucking scary to do something as simple as meeting someone at a cafe, or walking your dog down a sidewalk.
But the Ximilia doesn't make her feel like that. Not really. Not with the memories she has here, still bleeding in so effortlessly and filling the cracks that she had only started mending back home. It makes her realize that perhaps her healing had started a long time ago, in a place she couldn't remember anymore: this station.
She stands in the middle of her room, taking embarrassing posters off her wall and grimacing at teenaged Zac Efron's face. Not just him, either. Somewhere along the way, young her had started really getting into the Jonas Brothers while staying here. How many Disney Channel original movies can one girl hoard?]
... Ugh. So glad I'm over this chapter of my life, suddenly.
[She rolls up a poster and throws it in a box.
Redecorating a little, is all. She stops to look at some little polaroid images and tiny letters on a corkboard — there's some lovey-dovey messages from what she can see is Finn's handwriting and unerring drawing skills. It's amazing how clearly she's suddenly remembering some of these moments in time; it's also a relief to know that at least she had some kind of teenaged childhood here, in a way. Especially when she thinks about the parallel childhood that happened the moment she returned home.
The door to her room is open, anyway; feel free to pop your head in.]
II
He pauses. What if she wasn't meant to be here? What if the woman is coming here with bad news of a different sort? Before he can ask, Ziggy speaks.]
"Again"? [She's facing away from him. Minimus takes a few steps closer to take a good look at her face; she could be someone from a previous mission, or from the previous crew.]
no subject
[She runs a hand over her face, turning to look at him with a perked eyebrow and a slowly grown amusement. It's been almost two decades for her — and yet, his name and everything else comes naturally to her. Fucking trippy.]
I'm looking at a robot man, and it's the most normal thing in the world.
How the hell does that happen so casually, Minimus?
no subject
You gradually get used to it until it stops being strange. Then you can never go back to the old "normal".
no subject
[She doesn't actually sound remotely offended. She's pretty well aware that the passage of time is a bitch, especially when you spend all that time living in paranoia. Not anymore though, right? The bad shit has ended, and the good can start back up.]
It's true, though. 'Normal' life has always been kind of difficult for me anyway.
Maybe I was meant to always end up here.
no subject
I wouldn't say that one is destined to arrive someplace, but if you're happier here, then I think you should remain. [He tries to step away to grab something to eat, but it's difficult to ignore Ziggy.]
It's always odd, seeing you humans age. You look so different, but at the same time, there's a resemblance to your younger form.
no subject
One of the perks of being a... Cybertronian?
[She remembers it from Megatron. From Drift. The two of them were always getting into scuffs with others in the mess hall. Like, bickering. The kind that you do when you really care but you're pissed. It's in moments like this that she recalls Rodimus, too.]
I wouldn't say I'm happy. Not right now, anyway. But I'm not sad, either.
Does that make sense? Kind of living in limbo. I'd lived there for so long, I'm just learning how to... Exist outside of myself. [She breathes out, pushing away the bottle she'd been staring at.] And exist outside of a liquor bottle.
no subject
[Megatron. Rodimus. Drift. They all found different answers.]
You'll need time to adjust. I can't say how disorienting this frequent dimensional travel must be fore you, but I will not hold it against you if you need time alone. [He was fond of Ziggy the child, but she might have changed too much when she became an adult to be familiar to him. That's how humans are - in a short few decades, they aren't the same anymore.] ...But avoid drinking. It will only ruin you.
no subject
[A pause.]
Planning on quitting, anyway. Or, well, it's been a work in progress.
[She was by no means getting her sobriety chip for a while. But considering she had a drink with every meal for the last decade, she thinks maybe she's getting something right, now.]
Is it really normal for you, then? The frequent dimensional travel thing?
no subject
[He's very good at hiding how he feels, and there's little opportunity to sit around and be shocked when you're in a war.]
...Do you need me to make you something to eat?