Emily gathers her things and heads to her bunk for the first time.
The First Day |
Summary: | Emily gathers her things and heads to her bunk for the first time. |
Date: | 13/10/2017 (OOC Date) |
Related Logs: | If there are no related logs, put 'None' — please, don't leave blank!) |
Enlisted Berths |
MD #189 |
She's been ordered out of the brig and to earn her keep. Emily had been brought a couple stowage boxes to the brig to pack her dresses and corsets into. After folding them neatly with her shoes, she watched them get sealed and tagged. Handed a receipt, the girl was left to privacy in the brig to change out of her scrubs. Looking down to the duffel at the side of her bed, she wanted to cry all over again. She had been so sure of her choice, but then in front of everyone in the Mess, they had talked around her like she wasn't even there. "What have I done?" she whispered to herself. The new-found freedom of her mind flitted through, but she couldn't quite resolve it. She had been treated like meat again. And assigned to the galley, of all things. Her memory's, newly brought back, played out as she got dressed.
"No! No! Don't do this!" the woman had screamed. "No! I have a daughter! Don't do this!" The Cleric said nothing while the three militiamen held her down. That hand went to her forehead and Emily watched her mother's eyes flutter. Emily had stood silent, as her mother had taught her to. But inside she wanted to scream. The woman who came out looked at her with such disdain. "Mumma?" The slap that followed had stung her deeper than anything else in the rest of her short life.
Emily finished the thought as she pulled the last of the tanks on, trying to get a decent fit. It was far from ideal, but she didn't have anything else to wear anymore. Boots tied, she'd been ordered to take her duffel and haul it on her shoulder. The female MP watching her at the open cell door was waiting. With no alternatives, Emily turned and walked out of the brig. The MP didn't have any pity and walked her right to the Naval Enlisted Berths.
Stepping through the appropriate hatch, nobody paid her much mind at first. It was okay. But then people noticed the MP following her. "Hey! That's the Princess!" was the first call. Then people swooped in. So many who had lost their families to the Skath. And she came from a family that had prospered on the bodies of their own. One enterprising girl spat across her face before a PO1 grabbed the offender and shoved her against the wall, the MP shouting for her detainment. But the MP just pushed Emily along and marched her to the bunk. Word spread faster than she could walk through the massive hallways. People threw crumpled papers and wrappers at her.
Is this what Miri meant about changing stations?
Emily stopped flinching after a minute or so, letting things land on her. Arriving at her bunk, she looked back at the Marine. "Please do not leave me here."
"I'll be at the end of the bunk block. Sleep well." The MP then turned and walked away.
All around her Emily was looking back at people who had lost family and friends to the Skath. Several hundred people in this block and she had been apart of a family that presided over the survivors of a slavery holocaust. They looked at her with disdain. She was the enemy. Emily knew very clearly that she represented everything they were fighting against. And she had been delivered down here into the Berths, just for them. Even as the shouting and cat-calls for her body ceased, it got too quiet. The girl wanted to say something, but what? "I just want to be left alone." was blurted out. The looks she got in reply mortified her.
Emily didn't unpack her bag into her locker. She didn't want to stay in view any longer. The girl just ducked into her new home and pulled the curtain, hugging her duffel while she tried to ignore what the others said. Eyes crushed shut, "This was the right choice," was whispered to herself over and over, ignoring the questions being called to her.
"Don't fall asleep! You might get a visit!" was something that kept her awake.
Emily didn't sleep much that first morning. The galley's evening shift wasn't any better.