The mirror flood, or BookFort 2.0

[mrs_persson]

Who: Una Persson, O'Brien, and semi-open (see Notes).
What: In which Una tries to keep O'Brien safe, tries not to get killed, and probably tries to keep other people from getting killed.
Where: Una's cabin and elsewhere.
When: Throughout the mirrorverse flood.
Warnings: For Una and O'Brien's threads, much bitching. For the others, probable dark

Comments

Shortly after O'Brien is secured in Una's room.

[mrs_persson]

The walk back to her room felt like it went on for miles, but they made it. Once there, she made something of a show of shoving O'Brien inside before slamming the door behind her.

Gracelessly, she flopped down in the nearest chair and buried her head in her hands.

[mrs_persson]

She glared at him. "If you think spending the duration of this flood suffering the death toll-if we're lucky-is your idea of a good time, be my guest."

Day 2, for Una and O'Brien

[mrs_persson]

Una had every intention of pulling a Howie on Luke's doppelganger-drug him and tell him later what a great time she'd had. But no such luck this time, and in the end the only thing for it was, so to speak, to lie back and think of England.

Afterward, she left him with his drugs and hurried back to her room. She ignored O'Brien and locked herself in the bathroom, where she proceeded to take the most scalding shower of her life.

She emerged half an hour later, hair still damp, thoroughly muffled in a t-shirt, a jumper, and baggy army trousers. She made a beeline straight for the sideboard and poured herself a healthy slug of whisky.

Re: Day 2, for Una and O'Brien

[mrs_persson]

"More's the pity. You could have gotten away with a lot when you were a young man, I expect," she shot back, surprising herself with her own bitchiness.

She'd told him where she was going. She'd said, "I'll be right back." She'd been gone, what, an hour? Definitely not "right back", anyway. O'Brien's commentary was not unexpected, but it grated all the same.

She drank off half the whisky in one go, paused, and thought the better of doing the same with the rest.

Elsewhere...

[mrs_persson]

Una was trying to keep up appearances for the affected individuals, and at the same time trying to make contact with the unaffected people, to try and keep them safe. Unfortunately this involved occasionally leaving her room, generally at mealtimes, but also to put in general appearances around and about to ensure that it didn't actually look like she was hiding.

Sometime on the first day?

[hopeless_hacker]

Toshiko hadn't taken long to realise what had happened to the ship, either - a flood so violent had only happened once before in her time there. After checking her journal for confirmation and battling down the urge to burst into tears of sheer relief that she wasn't that woman again, she prioritised. Rinzler first. A little research to find out where her counterpart was up to with her 'friends'. Then try to establish who else was unaffected.

She managed to run into Una on her very first attempt to leave her cabin. Bollocks. She should have done her background reading first. Nothing was ever more important than research; why was she ignoring that fact now? What had her relationship been with Una?
She settled for a curt nod, keeping her face blank. "Persson."

[OOC: If Una has had the sense to do some focused backreading, she'll have noticed that M!Tosh is a good deal, uh, 'friendlier' than this towards Una.]

Sometime on the first day

[mrs_persson]

There was one flaw in the "keep O'Brien locked in my room" plan-food. They had to eat, so eventually she left him to carp to himself and headed out to the dining hall.

And there was Toshiko. She'd read back far enough to realise that 1) her counterpart was practically the Barge bicycle, albeit at least with enough wicked cunning to be sure to get something (quite a lot, it seemed) out of it every time, and 2) Toshiko had very likely taken a ride at some point. So the blankness and curtness ... Una would have expected something friendlier. Maybe Tosh was unaffected. Please, she thought, let it be so.

"Just Persson? I thought we were on better terms than that," she drawled, carefully searching Toshiko's expression for anything that might hint that she was all right.

[hopeless_hacker]

Fuck. She'd forgotten that her other self was quite so personable along that one specific axis.

"Even your novelty wears off eventually, Una," she said crisply, playing to role even as her nerves were rapidly fraying. Could she be unaffected - could she be that lucky? If Toshiko had to pick a list of people to have on side at a time like this then Una would have easily made the top five.

Re: early third morning

[happinessboys]

Beatty had come in earlier and had stayed off to the side, too alarmed by what the barge had become to care about what had happened before. He had been content to hide for a while, but Cissie's message had alarmed him.

He woke up to the sound of water and, blinking a bit, sat up, rubbing his sore shoulders.

"What are you doing?"

Re: early third morning

[happinessboys]

The stare that he gave O'Brien was a mixture of confusion and revulsion. Yes, he knew what that meant, but...to hear him talk about his warden like that was more than surprising.

"No. You didn't tell me about that at all." He stood up and stretched his arms over his head. "I think you should."