For milliways_bar. Unrelated to dear_multiverse.

[remindmeof_me]

To the ears of someone accustomed to the sounds of a human city in their heydays, or the sounds of Milliways, it's quiet. There's no machinery to be heard anywhere, no engines of any kind. There's no music trickling through the background. There's no sound of human speech

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[subject_lj_here]

Chell finally comes awake to a startled gasp, the nightmares of her catatonic state and subsequent blackout flooding back to her, slowly. Her dream recall was never as good as her recollection of memories, and that's the only reason she doesn't immediately discount everything as a very, very bad dream.

"Oh, cube," she moans out of habit, even though now she remembers more conventional oaths, and clutches her portal gun. "It was all real. Oh, cube." She lays back down on the burlap, just glad that it's quiet and dark as opposed to quiet and bright, as Aperture was.

[remindmeof_me]

There's a vague smell of raisins in the air, if Chell's the sort to notice. Probably not, though. She's got other things on her mind.

The fire flares a little, crackling loudly for a moment as a chunk of wood snaps in half. As it fades, a man's muffled voice says, "You okay there, ma'am?"

[subject_lj_here]

"I... I think--I don't know." She shudders, even though it's not cold.

"I'm--thank you." She doesn't even want to speculate where she was dropped, and what time, but she knows that she probably would've died if he hadn't found her.

[remindmeof_me]

"Welcome, ma'am. Least I could do. Don't get excited, I'm comin' over there and I got a mask on."

Not the theatrical sort, that becomes evident pretty quickly. The speaker is a man a little shy of six feet tall, helmeted and wearing a military-issue gas mask. The heavy armored vest he wears has pretty obviously seen a lot of service, and we won't even go into the condition of the urban camo fatigues he's got on under it.... well, no, that's not really fair, there's visible signs of cleaning and mending.

His hands are empty. That's abundantly clear by the way he stops a foot or two away and holds them both out in a placating gesture.

"'m not gonna hurt you, but some folks get spooked by the uniform."