Location - a disturbing hallway

[rlyprivateperson]

There is a passageway in Sojourner dotted with irregularly-placed stone plinths that serve as columns for a latticed ceiling. The first thing one might notice about it is the scent wafting forth; a sweet, warm smell that is... well, what is it? A scent from one's childhood, surely, a comforting scent. Fresh bread for some. Mown grass for others. But it's a scent that tugs one's lips into a smile, and twinges a string of nostalgia in the heart, and more often than not, draws feet in that direction.

Finch has one such pair of feet. He limps down the corridor, his leashed dog at his side; and he pauses occasionally to sniff the air, to smile absently, then to resume his forward progress and idle inspection of each of the rough-hewn stone monoliths he passes. There are no markings, but they glitter as if fine mica or quartz had been dusted along their slate-dark surfaces.

Another scent, replacing the fragrance of (for Harold Finch) a pot roast dinner. This one is... thick in the air, cloying, and Finch pauses with a slow blush creeping up his neck. (For Harold Finch, it's now the smell of a former lover's aftershave; for others it might be any number of scents that bring to mind intimate moments.) After a long, hesitating moment (while Bear whines in confusion, his canine nose registering entirely different things than a human might), he keeps going.

And any others who follow this fascinating olfactory trail to its conclusion - well, they find Harold Finch standing at a blank wall that fills the passage floor to ceiling. It appears to be steel - or something like it - its blank, ugly surface scarred and pitted with gouges and gashes, like a spoon put down the garbage disposal.

And for those viewing it? They feel a curious sense of existential dread, visceral, dwelling in the gut rather than the mind. There is no obvious threat. There is no sense of a knife-wielding maniac or a monster about to devour you. There is only that wall, flat, scarred, final as a summary execution, and the slow flooding awareness that all is meaningless, has been meaningless, will always be meaningless.

Harold Finch stands and stars, stands and stares. There is a cold sweat beaded on his brow, and he looks somewhat grey around the gills.

The dog barks, a worried sound, unsure what is wrong with his human but knowing that something surely is.

[ooc: Open to any! Finch is going to stubbornly return to this wall a few times, so multiple people should feel free to jump in and we'll assume chronological jumps if necessary. Feel free to add any details about this hallway you think would be interesting!]

Comments

[vampapalooza]

The first time he ventures down the corridor, it's because he's caught a whiff of Angelus- the olfactory tapestry of sandalwood, cognac and leather blending with that girly pomade and the underlying scent of Angelus himself. It brings up a memory so old it's faded around the edges, like an old photograph: back before he knew how to fight, Angelus standing behind him with his big hands wrapped round Spike's, showing him how to make a fist.

It's not something he consciously thinks about- the violent ballet of vampire life being as natural to him as not breathing, nowadays. He's drawn down the corridor, quickening his pace a little as he opens his mouth to scent the air, barely registering the massive slabs of rock he passes, dusted and sparkly like Vegas showgirls.

Somewhere along the way, the scent shifts. Spike frowns, because it's something heavier now, something with an undertone of musk and sweat, and-- dominance, if dominance had a smell. There's a new, second scent there now, light and floral with notes of citrus-- but that's impossible. How would she be here, of all places?

He frowns in consternation. He's confused now, and confusion has brought its ever-present plus-one, annoyance, along for company. He's even more curious now, though, and stalks along the corridor, half as swift and twice as stealthy.

The scents shift again, finally. Spike frowns, opening his mouth and breathing through it, because Angelus and Darla's presence suddenly is erased entirely and replaced with two new scents-- one human, one canine. He moves closer, very cautiously, possibilities blooming in his imagination. The dog yelps, a sharp, worried noise that rings off the high ceiling and glittery walls.

Spike picks his pace up ever so slightly. the human and dog come into sight, they're standing staring at a flat expance of what seems to be pointlessly dull wall- or at least, the human is. The dog is staring at Spike, pointy ears pricked and its own mouth slightly open, ruff on edge.

He smiles at the dog, consciously being cool, smoothing down the edges of the demon, thinking of placid seas and soft snowy valleys. He stands a non-threatening distance away from the human bloke, flicking an assessing glance over him before glancing up at whatever he's gawking at.

"Blimey, mate, you look as though you've--" Spike trails off when he claps eyes on it.

There's no reason a wall ought to make you feel this way. Like a wave of doom washing over you-- a gut punch of dismay, like all the hope and joy and good will has been sluiced out of you and there's no reason to think they'll ever come back.

Spike steps back a little, glances over at the dog. He resists the urge to sit down on the floor.

[rlyprivateperson]

The sound of a voice jerks him out of it; Finch turns in the direction of the voice, with his own awkward full-body pivot-- and that wretched, drowning dread vanishes almost like a radio switch has been flicked, just as soon as the visual-line-of-effect is broken. He almost staggers with the relief of that: he'd been pushing, struggling against the weight of it (even if only metaphorically), and with it so-abruptly-gone there's a certain overcompensation the other direction.

The air seems abruptly very sweet, there is more light in the world, even if only in subjective comparison to the emotions of just a few seconds prior. Finch feels rather like a man who had just come near to drowning, getting some much-needed oxygen again.

He blinks, hands tight on the dog's leash, staring at the apparition of a young punk rocker or something along those lines. Bleached hair, black clothes, pale skin. 'Goth' by way of... Billy Idol, Finch supposes, absently. His mind seizes on this mildly-surreal mundanity as a reaction against the wall, that-- that thing back behind him.

"Hello," he says, somewhat faintly.

[vampapalooza]

Spike's focussed on driving off a return of the black tsunami. Looking at the dog helped, so he's doing that at the moment. Resisting the urge to glance up at the wall again.

He turns sharply at the sound of movement, straightening up a bit. He doesn't touch the bloke, but he goes on point, as it were (like the dog, hackles definitely raised now and eyes focused with that bright sharp look that dogs get when something's wrong, tail hanging stiffly), ready to move forward to steady him if he seems inclined to face plant.

"Wotcha," Spike returns the greeting, looking the human over. "Do I look as crap as you do at the moment?"

[rlyprivateperson]

Finch laughs in answer-- a shaky, brittle noise. "Umm."

Bear whines a little, uncertain. Mercifully, Bear's doggy brain did not process this wall the same way, but the animal is still aware things are wrong, with his human, and this individual ahead smells-- strange.

It's easier to focus on Bear's unease than his own; Finch bends stiffly and gives the dog's head a brusque rub. It's a toss-up whether it comforts him or the dog more.

"You feel-- that-- too, then," Finch says, with a jerk of one hand backwards that carefully does not include any sort of actually looking at it, or even risking it. "How... how horrible. I think I'm walking this way, if you don't mind. Hier, Bear."

He starts a limping path back down the hall, currently wanting a lot of distance between him and the wall.

[vampapalooza]

The human keeps his back to the wall, and Spike is glad to have the opportunity to turn his own back on it, although he's not thrilled to know it's back there at all. He strides after the man, who moves with a slightly stiff awkwardness, the dog sticking close to his side.

Spike thrust his hands in his pockets, taking a few measured breaths. He's feeling almost light-headed with relief now, which is in and of itself annoying.

"You mean that sense like you're at the bottom of the sea, with about twelve thousand pounds of doom bearing down on you? I picked up something on those lines, yeh."

Spike usually isn't much for silence for any length of time at all, but they make their way briskly back down the corridor. He takes more note of the surroundings, this time, looking up at the high ceiling with its recessed cubes and the rough hewn stone plinths.

He raises his chin slightly, inhaling. His nose twitches and he inhales again, frowning. There's the scent of the human (understated cologne-over-light-flop-sweat) and dog, but otherwise, nothing. He inhales again, without slowing down.

I could eat a thousand chips right now, he thinks, hot chips with vinegar and tomato sauce. He refrains from saying this.

"You look like you could use a sit-down," he says, instead.

[rlyprivateperson]

Finch is also silent as he shuffles back down the hall. His mind reels: the notion of having an exterior emotional state imposed on his mind, whether positive or negative, is deeply disturbing to him. The closest analogue he can find to it (and Finch's mind is one that hunts analogues, seeks context and comparison) is the gauzey-cottoned feel of his brain after Root had drugged him, the sapping of all his initiative.

But this had been wholly clear-minded, no chemical impairment of his facilities (or was it? the scents-- perhaps an aerosol-based chemical agent? The wall, was there some odorless chemical in the air or - no, it had ended so abruptly when he'd looked away. A sight-trigger, how, how could one instill a psychological trigger of that sort with a sight? Epileptic seizures can be potentially be induced via specific frequencies, certain patterns-- is it something along those lines--) ...

He puts it aside. He will think about it more later; at the moment, the relief of being away from that sensation is replaced by the knowledge that he is walking with someone he-- doesn't know at all, has never laid eyes before. Someone he knows nothing about, who saw him in a rather vulnerable moment. His attention diverts to a sidelong study.

Long leather jacket, clunky boots, platinum hair, young face: this is not the sort of person to whom Finch has an extended exposure. Different social circles. Also not the sort of person Finch would generally expect to be asking do you need to sit down, though he supposes that's something of a stereotype, and one is definitely on shaky ground when making assumptions based on stereotypes. British accent, very fair-skinned, and... and.... he really has not-much-else to go on, does he?

Bear seems uneasy. Bear walks bumping into his leg, every few steps, keeping himself glued between Finch and this young stranger.

"I think I could at that," Finch says aloud. He cannot help but appear vulnerable, as part of who he is and his own failings-of-the-flesh; but that too can be deployed, tactically, as needed. He moves to the nearest... bench, or something that can in a pinch serve as a bench (what is that, petrified wood?) and he sits down heavily on it, then blinks owlishly up at the young man.

"I'm sorry. Harold Finch. Hello," he says, and offers a hand up.

[vampapalooza]

There's a bench of sorts- or some sort of low platform that might've initially been intended as ornamentation, but will serve nicely as a bench. The human makes a stiff beeline for it and Spike strides alongside. He keeps an eye on this bloke, on the off chance he's going to have to make a hasty lunge to catch him before he cracks his head on the floor in a swoon.

He's deliberately distracting himself from thinking about the wall, but all the same, the line of thought runs quietly in the back of his mind. What is it? It's obviously not a coincidence, the sweeping tide of dread and despair and the flat blank ugliness of the wall. He can see it in his mind's eye if allows himself to.

Instead, he focuses on observing the bloke. Brown hair that looks to be trimmed on a regular schedule, so the slightly odd sticky-up effect must be deliberate. Blue eyes, magnified behind specs that would probably induce quite a headache, were anyone other than their owner to try them on for a lark. Somewhere in that point of middle age where things start to spread and soften. The fingers of the hand that isn't clutching the dog's lead tremble slightly.

All in all, he gives off an impression of a man who spends long hours at a solitary and engrossing pursuit that isn't considered 'thrilling' by the general public. Maybe he's a dramaturge, focusing on culinary references in the plays of Kit Marlowe. Maybe he's an entomologist. Or a tax accountant.

Except as far as Spike knows, all those types tend toward short-sleeved polyester shirts and knobbly jumpers, often frayed at the cuffs, and this bloke is wearing a suit that even Angelus would approve of. 'Understated elegance,' Angelus would call it.

Spike sneaks a glance at the shoes and thinks they're probably bespoke. Also, someone polishes them within an inch of their life. He looks over at the dog again so as not to seem to be staring, then flashes a brief, cheeky grin and extends his own hand.

"Spike. Pleasure, Mr Finch. And that's Bear, then?" Spike takes the proffered hand and shakes, feeling the heat of it, the man's life pulsing lightly under the surface of the skin.

He can feel the slight tremor as their hands touch. Spike's own hand is calloused, and cool, and he has a hangnail that he hasn't bitten off yet on his thumb. The chipped black nail varnish coating said thumb stands out in bold contrast to the whiteness of his skin, a paleness that is perhaps a shade paler than Finch's own pallour.

"Blimey, I wasn't expecting that." Spike remarks, after they've disengaged from the handshake. He rummages in his pocket and pulls out a tube of Smarties, shaking a few brightly coloured disks into his palm, and offering the tube.

[rlyprivateperson]

"Spike," repeats Mr. Finch with a faint note of wryness, as if repeating a word from a foreign language. "Yes, this is Bear. Bear, easy, boy--"

He reaches down to the dog's head, petting the blunt, solid skull. Bear is... restless; idly, whimsically, Finch wonders if he's about to be mugged or something. Not that he has much worth taking, unless a cell phone with a dying battery that connects to a satellite system not-extant here is considered valuable. (He could likely fix the issue of the charger, he thinks. He can rig a charger, possibly. But he can't make a satellite.)

Finch's gaze lingers distractedly on the stark contrast of black nail-polish and very pale skin, not registering anything unusual at the moment. The young man might be a rock musician, he supposes. A guitarist. Their hands get very callused. Don't they?

He looks just as blankly at the candies on offer, brow slightly furrowed, before he registers he's being offered some. "Oh. No. Thank you, but no, I'm not sure I want to eat anything just now."

He shudders delicately despite himself at the vivid sense-memory of the wall. "I wonder how long I was standing there. Fortunate for me you came up, I think. Did you want to sit?"

[vampapalooza]

"Nice lookin' horse," Spike remarks, popping the sweets into his mouth in one smooth motion. "Yeh, I feel a bit queasy myself. I reckoned chocolate would help. Spose I ought to ration these things."

He glances at the brightly coloured cardboard tube, and reluctantly tucks it into his coat pocket. Still, future scarcity of Smarties is not going to dampen his enjoyment of the Smarties currently in his mouth. He munches them thoughtfully.

"Sort of sucks you in, doesn't it? Like a great bloody vortex of despondency." At the offer of sitting, Spike gives a nod and settles onto the bench. This brings him closer to the fairly antsy dog, who he offers another friendly smile toward.

"What d'you make of it, then? Some sort of trap?"

[infinitelystranger]

It is not the smell of the fresh-laundered bedsheets that brings Sherlock Holmes to the passageway, but rather the obstinate intent to plot an accurate map, starting with the cluster of buildings, if you can call them that. The sheets are an afterthought; the sheets are dismissed as a malfunctioning dispenser, from Sherlock's brief experience so far with dispensers. They get an unnerved start out of him, to be sure, but no hope: just recognition and a mote of curiosity. They are not enough to turn him off his steady and meandering course.

But eventually, his course does take him there, and the mote is satisfied. He too passes each column with an interested frown, crouching down in front of one to study the material, the way that it glisters from one angle to another.

As he wanders along, the scent changes--to something completely unfamiliar. Not only something Sherlock doesn't recognize, but of which he can't catalog the attributes; he has no idea whether what he's smelling is sweet, or musky, or astringent. It can't be placed. It must be some chemical having an olfactory effect. Having come to this reasonable enough conclusion, Sherlock covers his nose and mouth experimentally with his hand and then lets it drop. Well, he doesn't seem to be being gassed--no more than with the warm fabric and the detergent--it's just almost as if, almost like...

His feet take him around a corner and he finds a man staring at a wall. The man is middle-aged and well-groomed, carrying a blanket of some sort, though not in quite as good of physical health--he has a canine companion with the present manner and reactions of a concerned service dog. This is probably because his master is staring at the wall. Sherlock's eyes flick to the man for signs of seizure or post-traumatic flashback, and then to the wall--

The map Sherlock is making is pointless, he realizes; all his attempts to create a new frame of reference for himself are pointless. His world is gone. It didn't have much of a place for him to begin with, maybe, but it's certainly gone now, and with it his life's work. The stubborn effort to find a signal in the noise is just that--an effort, busywork. Human endeavor is as chaotic and meaningless--and evil--here as everywhere, and anything Sherlock does will make no more of a dent in it than it ever has.

His eyes come unfocused. It doesn't immediately occur to him to look away, because it doesn't immediately occur to him that anything could affect his cognition this deeply.

Then the dog whines, and something in the back of Sherlock's now deeply depressed mind reminds him: yes, but this man might be having a seizure. He glances over at the stranger--and blinks, as the depression ebbs. He looks back at the wall. He looks back at the man. It's having a very choppy effect on his serotonin levels.

[rlyprivateperson]

Finch supposes it's stupidity that led him back to the wall, again. It is absolutely stupidity to have done it without John Reese, at his side to serve as guardian against unknown threats. Although--

--well, it's perhaps not the worthiest thought in the world, and he wouldn't vocalize it aloud on pain of torture, but on some level, Harold Finch's estimation of his friend-and-employee's mental health is: not always the most solid.

He'd had to tell John some very unpleasant news, quite recently, and it had inspired an existential crisis for John Reese back 'home,' and he is not altogether certain that this Wall (it's acquired a capital letter in his mind) might not... be... the best thing... to inflict on a man who is just hearing of the death of a friend.

(It does not really cross Harold Finch's mind that it's probably not the best thing to inflict on a man who's recently buried two friends, namely himself; with unconscious arrogance his mind swoops past that.)

It needs to be dealt with, is all, so he has returned, grimly determined to deal with it. He has Bear, if there are threats, and Bear doesn't seem affected by it, after all. And he has a blanket-- a thing from the dispensers, and it's a coarse ugly scratchy woolen thing that he is just as glad he isn't intending to actually use to sleep on, but for these purposes, it should suffice.

And he is standing here, forcing himself to stare at the damned Wall, when the intelligent thing to do (some corner of his mind acknowledges this) would have been to approach it backwards, or by feel, and spare himself this, this, this hideous lurching oily weight in his belly that screams that everything he has ever tried to do, every life he has ever tried to save, is so much pointless chaff...

Motion from the corner of his eye pierces the bubble of blackness. With an effort, Finch wrests his gaze away, pivoting with his whole body to see--

--another pale young man, as respectably dressed as the other one wasn't. Finch takes him in perfunctorily, his senses still swimming a bit with the dizzy relief of not feeling like that again.

"Hello," he manages. "Awful, isn't it. I came here with some notion of covering it up."

Come to think of it, this new young man is rather tall; he could be of use in that, Finch thinks.

[infinitelystranger]

The American has the affect of an academic, but he's not dressed like one, by far. He moves like someone with nerve damage, Sherlock decides, localized in but not limited to his spine--injury more likely than illness, reminiscent of a collision victim or a veteran. But he's certainly never been in the military. It's an unusual combination altogether, dress and manner and disability, and Sherlock finds himself flicking over the stranger's appearance more than once for new details: his clothing is ever-so-slightly creased in a way that suggests new arrival, because this one has the habits and resources of someone used to changing clothes for the occasion, not just the day, yet he hasn't.

The dog looks friendly. Sherlock is unsure what to do with friendly assistance dogs: or animals in general, really, but particularly those engaged in a duty. He looks back up to the master.

"You should consider posting a warning in the hallway instead," he says; he looks at the wall through his eyelashes, he unfocuses his vision as far as it will go, experimentally. At a certain point with both methods he finds himself remembering that once a junkie, always a junkie, and-- Well, never mind that. "I was thinking it might be another psychoactive gas here that's undetectable, but the effect at least seems to be connected to looking at the thing. That still doesn't rule out the possibility."

In saying this he's brusque and half addressed to himself; part of him is clearly accustomed to periodically thinking aloud, and the American stranger is a substitute for whomever this is usually directed to.

[rlyprivateperson]

"I'm not familiar enough with neurology to be able to speculate on exactly how it works," Finch admits, observing the young man since it's certainly better than letting his gaze drift back to the wall.

Intelligent, he thinks, and rude. There'd been no automatic greeting of response to his own hello, not even the nod that passes for basic social courtesies. The vocabulary is that of a scientist. Finch absently wonders if he himself at, oh, eighteen or so, had come off quite like this; Nathan had told him more than once he lacked in the social graces (Nathan, of the effortless charm).

But this young man isn't eighteen... mid-twenties, Harold might say if he had to guess, and if he's a scientist he's a well-dressed one. Most of the 'brain trust' Finch remembers from MIT had been young men (and the rare woman, in those days) more concerned with matters of the mind than matters of their wardrobe. Even in the thinking of it he acknowledges the stereotype-- there's nothing wrong with his own wardrobe these days, is there-- but all the same...

"A warning in the hallway wouldn't be exclusive," he points out mildly. "Doing both would be prudent. Would you mind giving me a hand with this?"

Said as he lifts the blanket, awkwardly. The stiffness of the gesture isn't exaggerated-- that's the bad shoulder, he doesn't need to feign any extra lack of mobility-- but it's also not concealed. He could have used his other arm, but Finch has discovered most people are more willing to help those they perceive as incapable.

[infinitelystranger]

Sherlock shrugs both shoulders: as if to say, Certainly, but in fact it is just a shrug. His message is a bit clearer when he takes up one edge of the blanket, taking pains not to look directly to one side; "I'm not a neurologist," he says, "but I've studied the subject. What I would imagine is a powerful hallucinogen and dopamine inhibitor--something that binds with the receptor sites quickly and catastrophically. I wouldn't know how to go about accomplishing that chemically, but given the proper tools I could try to create something similar. Of course, the proper tools aren't exactly--" He grimaces. "--Easy to come by. The laboratory I used to work with--"

If talk of science doesn't precisely make him friendly, it certainly brings him much closer to 'chatty.' It's not on purpose. Problems like this just tap into a vein of unadulterated interest--being on one topic centers him. Well, half on one topic, anyway. The other half is drifting over the man he's talking to, idly teething on his disability, the stiffness of his movement. He chances a glance down at the man's shoulder, the way it locks up.

They're carrying the blanket closer to the wall now. Both of them are looking anywhere else, which has the somewhat socially odd effect of making them look at one another.

"--You weren't in an accident," Sherlock suddenly interrupts himself. This is an idle comment, akin to You're American, aren't you? "How long ago was it? Three years? Four?"

[rlyprivateperson]

Scientist is confirmed, with emphasis, even if the exact field is still up for debate. Finch idly wonders: a general chemistry student? Physicists and astronomers and that ilk tend to not study the brain, in his experience, too interested in the cosmos for the minor details of grey matter to, erm, matter. Mathematician? Not an engineer, he doesn't think.

He lifts his corner awkwardly-- injury aside, Sherlock has several inches of height on him, and longer limbs as well--

--and almost drops the blanket, at that off-hand statement, the out-of-nowhere pinpoint targeting of a fact about him that shouldn't be knowable.

He stares. Sherlock Holmes no doubt finds it validating, when people do that; when they react to his effortless knowledge display with shock and bemusement and demands to know what the trick is. But Finch stares with a certain gobsmackedness that verges on hostility: his pupils dilate a bit, his breathing shallows out.

When one goes through life with a careful screen of anonymity, invisibility around one's actions and person... it's deeply disconcerting to stumble into someone who saunters past one's maintained illusions with such reckless, nonchalant confidence.

The blanket is sliding from his nerveless fingers; Finch grips tightly before it can. His mind races. He forces out a steadying exhale: it's disconcerting, but it's immaterial. Wherever they are now, whatever this surreal place is, it doesn't seem to be some sort of government operation, and the CIA and FBI are not lurking behind the coarse blanket he's gripping.

This young man is not a spook ready to finish the job a car bomb failed to do. Surely.

"That's rather a personal question, don't you think?" he says flatly, after he's convinced himself his voice will be level when he speaks. Finch presses his mouth together and swings his end of the blanket up and over.

[infinitelystranger]

Sherlock tucks his edge of the blanket in. Finch's reaction is no surprise; if anything, it is validation, confirmation that Sherlock is correct in the brazen limb onto which he's gone out. He's accustomed to shock. He's even accustomed to... this. No, not accustomed, he supposes, there's something particularly frightened about this man's reaction-- but that's surely not Sherlock's doing. Well. It is, obviously, Sherlock's doing. That's beside the point.

Obviously he has touched a nerve. He is well used to ignoring nerves that he's touched, but is not quite sure what to do with them besides that; the man has clearly had a deep well of self-assurance disturbed, if not ease of living in the first place. It has already occurred to Sherlock that someone caught in a bomb blast might live a life of day-to-day safety concerns. It did not really follow for him that saying something might trigger them.

And now he's faced with a man struggling to pull together his composure. Coldly, in Sherlock's mind, it only confirms more things he already knows: that the stranger has enemies. Interesting.

The awkwardness of the moment has not passed. Sherlock thins his mouth and looks away, and says, "Yes." He adds, after some consideration: "You're not the first survivor of a bomb blast that I've met. Though most of the others have been in the military--you've lived an interesting life, haven't you?"

[rlyprivateperson]

Finch inhales. He's better braced for it this time, at least. Rather than raw shock, his mind jumps tracks to start with the wondering instead: how does this man know these things?

Just because he's been abducted to a- to a-- an alien space-ship, apparently, with mind-altering blank walls-- is no reason to start succumbing to irrational explanations, so he's not going to entertain the immediate paranoid response of wondering if this is the stuff of which Twilight Zone episodes are made: the young man is not a psychic, for instance. (No, he is not going to entertain it.)

It's obvious that Finch, himself, is injured, of course. To his own eye, he can't guess what possible clues there would be that would lead someone to guess not a car accident, let alone to correctly guess bomb blast, but-- if the-as-yet-nameless young man does have past experience of bomb blast victims, then perhaps there is some sort of tell that Finch himself is unaware of. It's not impossible. It's more probable than psychics. (Isn't it?) The conclusion that he's not military doesn't faze him as much: Harold knows he has zero bearing of the military man, no hint of physical capability in that regard. That's Mr. Reese's sphere.

The blanket is in position. Finch lets it go. Bear is plastered to his leg, not quite growling at the lanky young man but with his hackles up, because Bear can pick up on his emotional distress, animals are perceptive in a way humans are not.

Excepting, perhaps, the human in front of him. Finch bends down enough to collect Bear's leash, taking some solace from the soft zip of the smooth leather cord through his fingers until he reaches the end of it. He has a highly-trained violent canine literally within arms' reach; he is not defenseless, in the instance of a physical attack.

"If we're playing a game of unsolicited, unwelcome, and intrusive questions, very well: You don't have many friends, do you?" Finch's voice is several degrees cooler and sharper than it was for his mild initial statements.

[likegrier]

Brier finds the corridor in the dark.

The first time the lights went out, she wasn't sure what to make of it. Had she gotten the rhythm of day and night here wrong? The second time it had been, oddly, more comforting. From the reactions of those around her she knew - this was not a normal part of the day to day life here that she had misunderstood. This was strange. It was a problem, maybe, but it was not only a problem for her.

This time, when the lights went out, Brier feels her way to the nearest wall and feels her way along it for a few moments. She pauses as her fingers find a corner. That is when she smells it.

She can't explain what was different about the fire in her family home in the mountains than fires in the city, fires in hearths all over the kingdom, but it had a smell all its own. That is the smell she encounters, here.

Brier had gotten used to being alone, to avoiding the leers and the whispered comments of her fellows on the guards. Even the rare friendly face, like Toby Gokie or Captain Hill she had been careful to trust. She had held up against the loneliness. How was it any different here? Her concern about Imogene and Gabriel and Zara aside. People here were not even hostile the way many had been at home.

And yet, it is different here. No matter how she pretends, she longs for her mother now more than she ever had in the palace. The smell of her mother's hearth brings tears to her now closed eyes and she feels her way towards it, growing stronger.

Then it gives way to something stranger yet. Lavender, sweat and the cloth of her own jacket mixing in that peculiar way...

Zara Beck. Why is she smelling Zara Beck here?

She feels her way to the ground and buries her face in her knees until the lights flicker back on. She glances up to see a wall, covered in a blanket.

[rlyprivateperson]

His earlier visit to the wall hadn't... ended well. Distractions, Finch sums up crisply to himself. And he'd meant to return promptly, to place a note on the wall, but there had been further distractions, and, well, one thing and another-- it was surprisingly time-consuming to try and adjust to surreal dreamscape that was supposedly an alien artifact-- and... he hadn't made it back to the wall.

And then gravity and light had stopped being reliable.

(The issue of darkness had almost been a comfort: not the darkness itself, but the chance to do something productive, to take control of his environment in some fashion, however trivial. Finch had ascertained that if the ship-issued comm had a 'light-up' function, it was somewhat inaccessible (for now), and had instead turned to his own cellphone, glad now of having turned it off earlier to conserve the battery. He'd used the cellphone's glow to illuminate a search for a more durable light source-- there were those glowing crystals at the park, could they be used to..... [Short answer: yes, yes they could.] )

Finch had a lantern, now. It was a strange thing, and he could not help but feel something like a character out of a novel, holding to light his way: it was a pretty thing too, a faceted cylinder of a thin transparent substance (organic, he thought, albeit with reservations-- it had been growing in tube-like formations by one of the ponds), and several blue-shining crystals inside. They reacted with water, and that reaction was to glow. Not overpoweringly, but enough to see by. So: his lantern, held together with strips of copper wire, sloshing gently with water, sending out a cerulean radiance over the dark, strange dreamscape of the ship's tunnels...

Gravity had been trickier. There was something marvelous about it, when it got light: to step without the jarring weight of the world on his bad hip and bad knee. Even though his calculating brain observed the risks of true weightlessness, it was hard to be scared of being light as air.

(Heavy was... another thing. A wretched thing.)

Finch was in the process of returning to the Wall, several notes prepared, when the lights went out. He had let out a grunt, almost satisfied for the chance to have his lantern be useful. He'd counted the steps, unwilling to come across the Wall in the dark (god what a hideous thought), and he'd made a careful, unhurried way through the corridor of smells...

And then the lights had come back on, and Finch had relaxed somewhat-- until he saw a figure some fifty feet ahead, crouched at the base of the wall.

"Don't touch it!" he calls-- but in time to be heard?

[likegrier]

Brier started at a sudden shout - a shout of "don't touch it." She looked towards the source with her tear streaked red eyes. In the same moment, she instinctively backed away from the sound, slightly. But slightly was all that was needed to push her back into the blanket, hanging on the wall behind her. It came loose on one corner and fell such that only half the wall was covered.

"Mr. Finch?" she asked, as she recognized the face. She turned to look at the wall behind herself again, climbing to her feet. "Oh. I'm sorry, I've upset the..." she trails off as she looks at what the blanket was covering.

"...the blanket." she finishes, after a beat.

[rlyprivateperson]

"Oh, no, don't loo--"

Too late. Finch snaps his own eyes shut and stands there a moment, wincing in a sort of empathetic fashion as he imagines what Brier might be feeling. Or rather he doesn't have to imagine it; he's felt it twice, after all. Finch exhales and gazes down in the direction of his shoes before carefully opening up his eyes. He walks forward, gazing down fixedly at his own toes, Bear trotting along fairly unconcerned.

"Miss Brier?" he says when he's closer, hoping he can jostle her out of what he expects to be the traumatic despair-bomb of the wall's impact.

[likegrier]

Brier takes a shaky breath. She looks down, and just like that, the near crushing despair lifts. She turns away and sinks back to the floor, on her knees. She can smell Zora again, the thing which had made her sad before, but the regret of knowing that Zora would live the rest of her life without her was nothing compared to the feeling that she'd been subjected to a moment ago.

"What is it? She asks, looking up at Finch. "You felt it too?"

[rlyprivateperson]

Finch takes a deep breath. He's being quite careful not to look at the wall again-- twice before was more than enough, thank you-- but he certainly remembers the sensation.

"Yes, I'd stumbled across it earlier. I put the blanket up to try and keep anyone else from doing the same," he admits with a touch of wryness. He shuffle-steps closer, and Bear is tugging on the leash now, so he lets the dog go-- Bear bounds on over to Brier, greeting her with happy whining and a blunt nose into her hands. Bear isn't bothered by walls, but he is bothered by the people he likes being sad, and Brier's managed to qualify as such.

"Easy, Bear, let her breathe," Harold murmurs half-heartedly, eyes still on his toes as he shuffles the rest of the way near. "Are you alright?"

[likegrier]

Brier pets the dog, careful to not look at the wall either. "It's a very strange thing. Thank you for the rescue." She smiles and scratches those every itchy ears.

"Thank you both."

"I found it in the dark. It smelled like...someone I used to know. I was sure she must be here." Brier doesn't realize how telling her statement is.

I'm sorry I upset the blanket. I'll put it back up." She turns towards the wall, but keeps her eyes on the ground for the moment, inching forward towards the half covered wall. She gets a hold of the corner of the blanket and stands, closing her eyes as she lifts it back to where it was, at the top of the wall.

[rlyprivateperson]

Finch... knows what he smelled, in that section of the hallway; he gives a slight blink at Brier, then clears his throat.

"Let me help you, it's a bit tricky just with one--"

Together, they manage to hoist the blanket up, even if Finch has a stiff shoulder and an awkward lurch to get it up all the way.

"There." He makes a show of brushing off his hands, trying to radiate a calm matter-of-factness about this all.

"You're very welcome. Have you had much trouble with the gravity? Things becoming too light or too heavy?"