voyagers | [party post] come sail away with me

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[party post] come sail away with me

You've come through a door, and you are on a boat. Specifically, you're on a cruise ship in the middle of some giant body of water. You've come through the door behind you which is attached to nothing and may now be locked. It's relatively empty as giant as it appears to be. The only other passengers that are here appear to also have come through the door for the most part and it is not nearly enough to fill up this entire cruise ship.

Also, who knows who the hell is driving this thing since all of the employees appear to be either ghosts or holograms...

Is this your first time here or your hundredth time here? Do you want a drink or a dip in the pool? Is it day or night? Do you stumble on your room or some other situation either fun or painful within its many rooms, shops, and facilities? Do you run into someone you know or a complete stranger?

The possibilities are unlimited!

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Secrets are important. There might've been a point in Liz's life where she undervalued the importance of secrets and judged those who kept them, but those days are long over. Even she has something to hide, a cross that she bears that nobody will ever be allowed to see. She was shot and died of the floor of her parents' café and given a new chance at life by an alien king from another planet who was destined to be with someone else. It was a secret that, in spite of the danger, was too depressing to share with anyone else. A failed love story not worth publishing.

When something isn't worth publishing, you get really good at lying about the words that could be printed but can't. Won't. You get so good at it that even you start to believe your own deceptions and the things your head tells your heart, even though your heart knows they aren't true. Funny thing about the heart, is that it doesn't always get what it wants. Very rarely in fact. It's easier to listen to the lies and guard your heart than it is to embrace the truth and watch your heart get hurt in the process.

"You're the second person to use the word usually." Liz gets up, rising to her feet. "Though the first to insist that the ship is sentient. I'd call that crazy and impossible, but so is being picked up from a desert town in the middle of New Mexico and dropped off on some ship in the middle of nowhere."

Which, she realizes in sudden, panicked hindsight, sounds more alien than it ought to be. People make alien jokes and cracks about her hometown all the time. It shouldn't be this alarming, but when you make FBI watch lists, it's not so funny anymore.

Secrets save lives. The truth can be dangerous. Most of the people who found out his secret, they ended up dead so he stopped telling people, and for a year, he kept the secret to himself close to his chest. Now his girlfriend is the only person that knows his secret. He told her the truth before he told her how he feels about her, but the truth can be heavy too. Being one of the only people who know the truth, it means being in the line of fire, knowing so much that every sign of trouble brings fear and worry. Secrets are heavy to carry even when carrying someone else's secret.

Peter leans back as she gets to her feet, and there are still tools scattered out all around him. He found this stuff in one of the other endless rooms that appear on this ship. There are 'stores' that never require any money. There are restaurants and clubs and rooms that just happen to have whatever someone is looking for at the time. It all goes into the mystery that is this place, and he's yet to solve it though he is planning on trying. Any place that grabs people against their will can't be good.

"Well, I've never heard of anyone who couldn't go back, but I don't want to say always in case one time I'm wrong and then it's like... I gave someone false hope," Peter says, and then he shrugs a tiny bit, biting at the end of the tool that he has in his mouth without... thinking. He makes a face at it when he realizes what he's doing, lifting up a hand to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I haven't found a scientific explanation for any of it yet or I'd be explaining... under those terms. I really wish I knew... why this happened or how to get back when you needed to, or why this happens--"

Any of the above? It'd be really, really good to know, but answers aren't really easy to find.

Very, very dangerous. If what the FBI learned about Max in the white room got out, it would be the end for them. All of them. Not just the royal four, but her, Maria, and Alex, too. Even Kyle and Sheriff Valenti. All their names were on that list, Topolsky had said so and she believed it. Nasedo was supposed to be doing something about that, but she had the sinking feeling that it would never be over. Which is why the truth would always be told in the form of a lie with the real story buried forever, hidden from everyone.

It would never be truly safe for them. Safe was relative to have careful you were, how much distance you put between those secrets and yourself.

The middle of the ocean was a good distance from Roswell, at the very least. Upside? Not really. Not by a long shot.

"No scientific explanation for it means there's no pattern to follow. The appearances are random, no telltale warning sings that someone's about to pop up?"

Safety is a feeling and a state of being that one can have and feel for such a long time without even realizing it or appreciating it or understanding how important it is. Then one day something (an event, a death, a threat) shatters it, and it's hard to remember what it used to be like to feel safe. He doesn't really remember it anymore.

It's not even his own safety that he is concerned about. It's the people around him. They're the ones that get hurt, that get killed.

Peter always survives somehow, always comes crawling out of the wreckage.

He smiles softly at the science talk, setting the tool to the side as he nods. "No sign at all that I have seen, and I started to pay close attention to it. They just appear, wondering how they got here and why and where here is. Unless they've been here before like I have then they wonder how long it'll be until the door unlocks again." Until they can go home.

It's true, safety is something people take for granted — something she'd taken for granted and hadn't realized how much of it she had until she hadn't. She'd been safe before she was shot, safe under the wings of her parents, secure in her promising future in science with the guidance of the various teachers who encouraged her to aim high and seek out her dreams. Safe was more like a memory these days, something she knows she had once, but will likely never have again.

"I don't know if having a welcome wagon upon a rival would be more comforting or not."

Peter has his head ducked a bit again, poking at the mechanical thing in front of him. He smirks though at what she says, looking back up at her slightly and scratching the back of his head half in thought. Peter tries to think back to the first time he ended up here, but it's... been a long time now. Maybe whatever the hell this is thought he really needed the vacation.

...not that he completely ever slows down or takes a load off even when he's here instead. Just not wired that way. He carries his guilt and his burdens and his responsibility always.

"Guess it depends on the welcome wagon," he says with a light smirk still, ducking his head again. "But appearing on a random mysterious, nowhere boat with a bunch of people waiting for you... might up the creep factor."

"Maybe, but it could be worse. Horror movie worse. Unless this is the Queen Mary, then we're definitely already in horror movie territory."

Somehow, being on the deck of an infamously haunted ship seemed preferable to being strapped to a chair with FBI agents surrounding her. She'd never been in the white room personally, but she saw flashes of it in Max's mind and it was probably the most horrific thing she'd ever seen. No movie would ever compare to the terror she felt ripping through Max while Pierce interrogated him.

Peter smirks at her response. "Uh, no. I don't think it is. Not that-- No one really knows what it's called, but I have seen ghosts around. They just seem to be pretty harmless," he says, scratching the back of his head with the pen in his hand. "You'll... probably see a few, but don't get scared. They don't do anything bad."

As far as he's seen anyway. He wonders if that'll... ever change or if something dangerous will happen on the ship at some point. People come and go regularly so there'd be no way of knowing when or who would be here when it happens.

She offers him a reassuring smile that's oddly as brave in execution as it is in theory. This is a girl that's been through more than she's letting on, who has experience with the weird, wacky, and downright terrifying under her belt. Liz is far too young to have been through some of the things she has, to have seen all that she's seen. She's well aware of that.

"I think I can handle a few ghosts."

Peter sees the reassuring smile, and it makes him smile in response before he nods. He knows better than to judge a book by its cover like that after all. Most people wouldn't think he can handle-- well, most of what he does. Barely. Handle.

"I'm sure you can," he says, and he means that. "So I'm guessing ghosts aren't the weirdest thing you've seen before. I mean you seem pretty chill about them."

"I'm from Roswell. We have people coming in and out of that place that are into all sorts of weird things. Wannabe alien hunters, SciFi conventions, actors, weirdos in general... Ghosts actually seem kind of normal in comparison."

At least ghosts were of this Earth, unlike her ex.

Peter smiles a little as he looks over at her, making note of all of those things.

"Yeah, I've heard of Roswell." And he thinks aliens are pretty cool in concept even if he hasn't seen enough compelling evidence yet to really fully believe that they're out there. Maybe he should change his stance given his life over the last few years though. Radioactive spiders. Giant lizards. "Does it get annoying? People coming through all the time, trying to turn your town into a spectacle?"

...Peter would probably get snarky at them. A bit.

One day, if she ever gets a point where she feels comfortable talking about her experiences without naming names, maybe they can swap stories. Likely around the time her own abilities manifest and she starts accidentally setting things on fire.

"It can, but it's good for business. My family's diner is sort of a shrine to the weird and wacky, full of alien themed orders to go. You make a killing on perpetuating the notion that aliens once landed there."

They should completely swap stories if she ever gets to that point... and that would be a really good time. Peter would likely admit to his own abilities to just try to help reassure her.

Peter laughs a little at what she says, tilting his head to the side as he tries to think of all the potential in an alien-themed restaurant. "I can kind of picture it actually," he says, and who can blame people for making the most out of it when curious tourists would come around no matter what? "What's the diner's name? Does it go with the whole alien theme or..."

Which Liz would appreciate the ability to relate, given the considerable lack of Antarian hybrids on this boat.

"The Crashdown. I'm not sure where my dad got the name from, but we had this one artist who works with plastic molds create this side of a flying saucer that sticks out of the front of the building. That alone brings in the tourists. Roswell has a larger tourist population on some days than we do actual residents."

"That... sounds really cool, the name of the place, I mean. I like it," Peter says with a tiny smile, and he'd probably visit it even if he wasn't a tourist. It just sounds neat. Then he laughs a bit, shaking his head at the thought of a place that could have more tourists than residents though he comes from two places that do have a lot of tourists just not more than people living there. "I wouldn't... know what that's like. I grew up in New York City, and then I... ended up in Chicago through this Rift. It's a break in time and space. Happens a lot there."

"I spent a summer in Florida with my aunt. Otherwise, I don't really leave Roswell much." Marathon, Texas doesn't count. As far as anyone's concerned, they were never there. "I do hope to be living on the East Coast, eventually. One day."

Someone still harbors aspirations of residing in Massachusetts by way of a Harvard admittance. Liz doesn't want to spend the rest of her life on the run with aliens. She entertained that notion once, but she knows now that she isn't part of ~~Max's~~ their future.

"Where on the East Coast?" Peter asks, looking over at her as he lifts up a hand to adjust his glasses a bit. His leg is perched beside him as he leans against the chair a bit.

She'll get there one day. The East Coast is a great place to go in general, but he might be biased. As much as he hates New York City sometimes, he also loves it. It's home. There's not another city like it though Chicago is becoming its own home.

"Cambridge, Massachusetts?" Liz tucks a stray strand of hair behind one ear and shyly, yet proudly, admits, "I sort of have big Harvard dreams. It's sort of been my life's dream to study and eventually teach molecular biology there."

Peter smiles at her at what she says, and they've just met, but he doesn't really have any doubts that she can get there. "That is a seriously awesome life dream," he says, adjusting his glasses a bit but he means that very genuinely. "And molecular biology is so cool. I mean, examining the cells themselves like the building blocks right there, and the interactions between DNA and protein biosynthesis and all of everything that it has to do with. It's a great path to pursue, and I mean all the things you can do with that knowledge and teaching others it so they can make advancements in the field is--"

Peter clears his throat a bit, realizing after a second that he's rambling, his science ramble thing.

He's a science geek too though, and while he is more into the technological side, he helped finish that formula that... created a giant man-lizard, but still. The point is he loves science as much as he hastily said it to Gwen to explain why he'd been sneaking into Oscorp, he really, really does.

He's rambling, but Liz is just — enchanted. Not in the boyfriend stealing kind of way, but where has this fellow science-inclined mind been all her life? She was always that lone person in science labs and classes who was a little more into the subject material than the rest of the class, who had a tendency to reference experiments and biologists who even the teachers were sometimes unfamiliar with. To hear someone talk as passionately about something she just loves is — it's nice.

It's human. And in this moment, Liz feels more human than she has since before she was shot.

(Maybe being on this boat isn't so bad.)

"It's amazing. And important. Incredibly important. More important than people realize. I kind of want to make them realize. You know?"

Peter smiles sideways at her at what she says before he nods in agreement, because he sees the importance of it. He loves science, understands it even if it isn't anything that he can do for a job full time because of his other gig as Spider-man. It's why he works as a photographer despite being as passionate about science as he is. Being Spider-man doesn't really give him room to have a fulltime job so it's really, really cool for him too to be able to talk about it again.

"Yeah, making people realize how important it is is really important too, and if you're passionate about it and passionate about teaching people, educating them on it? You're half way there," he says as his smile widens. She is half way to being able to get people to realize how important and amazing it is.

Being on the run from the FBI wouldn't have left her with many opportunities to pursue her scientific goals, either. In some ways, Liz is grateful to Tess for showing up when she did, for being present when the hybrids' true purpose on Earth was revealed. Rebirth and destiny — who was she to get in the way of that when she had a destiny of her own? One that didn't involve Max Evans or aliens.

"I think you're the first person I've met — and I'm talking ever — who thinks that's as important as I do. Usually people just brush it all off as a geek fantasy."

"Really? That must suck though. I mean, just wait until you get to Harvard or any big city, there's places of science, and they really, really get it. Not just geek fantasy, they live it too," Peter says with a soft smile as he leans back against the seat some, looking over at her. "My dad-- He was a scientist too so I guess I got it from him or something."

There is definitely a passion to science that people don't get, and he will never understand how others can't really process how important it is. This is how they make advancements, discoveries that could change the world for the better. As long as it's all done ethically, when he finished that formula, no one bothered doing safe tests on it before Dr. Connors injected it into himself. If they would, they would have known.

"It's Roswell," she says with a shrug. Her tone lacks the bitterness that might be present in other's, because she knows her town and she doesn't fault it for it's failings. "Geek fantasy's are sort of a defining aspect. At least, Hollywood seems to think so."

As does reality, but people don't know what Liz Parker knows. And they never will.

"What kind of a scientist?"

[party post] come sail away with me

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