[ Again, it's with an almost comical and willing obedience that he does what she says — steps back, away from the gun, boots heavy against the grass, leaving imprints in its blades as he moves one, two, then three steps away. He feels too distant from his own body; someone else moves him, wills him to stand upright, though the dizziness is only more unrelenting as the seconds tick by. He feels as though he'll be sick any moment, those coils waves of nausea unbearably tight and slick.
She asks questions he doesn't quite know how to answer. what are you, what are you doing out here; he doesn't know, he doesn't know. None of it makes sense.
Until one does, and he latches onto it as desperately as a man dying of thirst and squeezing whatever drops he can.
'Who are you?']
First Lieutenant Edward Little, of Her Majesty's Royal Navy. [ The title doesn't exactly come out confidently, but rather with the natural, ready flow of someone who's spoken it many times, as natural as a surname, as a birthdate, as the basic facts that constitute a person's physical appearance: my hair is brown, my eyes are brown. A thing that comes without needing to think, or remember, wound into the foundations of his bones. ]
I serve aboard Terror, madam.
[ As if she, this impossible woman in this impossible clothing pointing this impossible weapon right at his face, would be familiar with such a thing (he hopes desperately that she is.)
But speaking is... a strain on a body that is already immensely strained, the stress of it likely to knock him sideways. He tries to keep his composure, but there is none really to be kept; he's lost all of it when the mechanical beast she'd been steering nearly struck him, and—
—he falters, stumbles, abruptly looking extremely pale and extremely sweaty, eyes fluttering and lolling back a little. ]
no subject
She asks questions he doesn't quite know how to answer. what are you, what are you doing out here; he doesn't know, he doesn't know. None of it makes sense.
Until one does, and he latches onto it as desperately as a man dying of thirst and squeezing whatever drops he can.
'Who are you?' ]
First Lieutenant Edward Little, of Her Majesty's Royal Navy. [ The title doesn't exactly come out confidently, but rather with the natural, ready flow of someone who's spoken it many times, as natural as a surname, as a birthdate, as the basic facts that constitute a person's physical appearance: my hair is brown, my eyes are brown. A thing that comes without needing to think, or remember, wound into the foundations of his bones. ]
I serve aboard Terror, madam.
[ As if she, this impossible woman in this impossible clothing pointing this impossible weapon right at his face, would be familiar with such a thing (he hopes desperately that she is.)
But speaking is... a strain on a body that is already immensely strained, the stress of it likely to knock him sideways. He tries to keep his composure, but there is none really to be kept; he's lost all of it when the mechanical beast she'd been steering nearly struck him, and—
—he falters, stumbles, abruptly looking extremely pale and extremely sweaty, eyes fluttering and lolling back a little. ]
I'm— First Lieu— HMS Terror....
[ Yeah, he's about to throw up. ]