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Momoa hasn't slept well lately.
Not to say she’s had a good night's rest before; a chronic over-sleeper and under-worker like her isn't privy to such privileges. She's become nocturnal over the years with how late she rises, though it's convenient for intel, as only the most audacious of criminals operate any sort of precious dealings in the stark light of the sun, where the Hell Guard foot soldiers clamor about in constant patrol.
But being caught by a witness that recognizes the Raider's insignia on her defectively stitched puffer jacket has become the least of her worries, as has been eating or bathing, or anything at all.
Because for a while, she wasn't even there— instead running on a cafe wall chasing lilacs, seeing the figures of her wife and mother-in-law, and other such nonsense that should not exist in her teenage mind, but has buried itself in it like an invasive species. Optical illusions or some such.
A month has passed since she pricked her finger on that raven-haired salesman, which felt like both a blink and a decade. When she's awake, her legs are wobbly, and her fingers are fidgety, uncharacteristic to her usual composure but still, she pushes onwards because she needs to.
Even as her tongue feels dry and dead in her mouth, she relays all the information that makes sense to Zodyl, although the words don't sound like hers, he nods anyway. Zodyl gives her the list of ways to take care of herself, and the words don't stick, they simply glide across her brain and fall to where her eyes are pointed on the floor, at the tethers of his jacket and the dirt that accumulates.
“Are you listening?” Zodyl's voice comes back into focus, his index and thumb flicking together to clear the fog in her head like a smoke signal.
She nods, slowly. She wants to listen but—
It's too loud.
That's become a daily occurrence now, random pangs of blasting noise in her head, something no cushy headset or painkiller can quiet. With every bite of food in her mouth comes the morning broadcast, and the transatlantic voice of someone that isn't native to the ground. Every step in the street sounds like a walk in the zoo, with the nicker and neigh of animals only found in the archival section of any local library.
She's caught herself muttering disjointed sentences, carrying a rhythm she can't complete. She tries passing the time by solving puzzles and being convinced repeatedly by her fellow raiders that “mimsy” and “chortle” were most certainly NOT words featured in any lexicon, yet despite that, she seemed so adamantly sure they seemed that way when she wrote them.
The worst of it is not being able to use Asyl— how kind it would be on her trembling mind to rest in the hot spring of another's, to lounge and indulge her voyeuristic needs, how she longs to be a ghost in someone else's psyche and not her own body; It's been making her homesick.
When that putrid noise spikes, Momoa has found a few ways to shut it out. for one; the ceaseless pouring from the shower head works as a blocker, but it's too costly, and wet.
for second; she might bump her head against Zodyl's knee, curled up and closely watching the static he finds captivating. It beckons her forward, close enough that it doesn't take long before Zodyl stands to pull her by the scruff of her jacket, after her ear had been glued to the television's shitty speaker long enough that the next day, her ear goes inflamed and angry red.
And with those solutions proven faulty, her prescription became simple:
Jabber's mouth. Specifically his voice.
Because Jabber talks— it's mostly what he does. He talks while he's chewing and threatens to send his food back out from where it came, He talks when they scout, about the crows and the dirt and the trash, he talks when he knows she can hear him, he talks even when she can't.
He talks and talks and talks. If he punctured his lung and he would talk, and if he injured his throat he would laugh, and if he couldn't do either then he was dead.
Momoa doesn't label this a positive or negative trait, if he talked about anything incriminating that would be interesting, but Jabber's memory bank holds space for only toxins and torture, not what she's usually attuned to.
Right now, she wants unfiltered and unregulated sound from the outside to silence the sound on the inside, and Jabber is perfectly willing to be that, in fact, he'd be delighted to.
Momoa knows the way to the yellowing and rotten apartment Zodyl has chosen as their current stay, she's clattered up and down and here and there to every hall and set of stairs her slender legs can take her, from the path to where Jabber's room is and how long it takes to get there, trusting instinct to lead her because her mind is occupied battling against itself. At some point she's turning the knob to a carelessly unlocked door and tossing herself onto a messy mattress.
“You don't look so hot, mo-chan.” Jabber usefully inquires, leering over his shoulder to shoot her a quick glance, before turning his attention back to the jar of a blue-green plant he's been preping to sit on his shelf, all nice and noxious like its other sisters.
“distract me from the banging in my head.” Jabber chuckles at how muffled Momoa’s voice sounds wadded by dried cotton, face buried in the bed as her feet sway behind her lazily.
“Well you're gonna wanna hear about this baby,” Jabber says excitedly, picking off one of the makeshift ecosystems stored in a bottle. Momoa barely lifts her head, unable and uncaring to decipher whether ‘baby’ refers to her or the fungus, staring absentmindedly at the collection of spores overlaying one another in the cramped space.
“these little guys—” so she's ‘baby’? “i snatched from the east ward, a No Man's Land specialty!” jabber announces with all the galore of a discoverist. “it's the sorta fungi type that came from evalu—” he blinks. “Evolution from those black waters i told you about, oozing in the ground and mixing with the minerals to help it grow? kinda like brown sugar and baking soda y'know?”
Momoa watches more than listens, as Jabber raves about his guesses on how the fungus gains its color and texture, even how Mankira registers it as a new toxic despite its effects not being anything Jabber hasn't tried before. The words blend together after a while, but Momoa finds entertainment in Jabber's tizzy hands and the clacking of his loc cuffs, and in the way his vocals lose their thrill and become raspy and maybe soothing if she were delirious.
Momoa's thick lashes flutter once, twice, before they succumb to drowsiness, Jabber's finger tips flirts with tiny nameless containers before settling on the one that sticks out to him most, swallowing a deep breath and spinning back at Momoa to find her knocked dog-tired on his bed, hair fuzzled and body slumped.
Jabber arranges the container back in its place, shuffling through the mess of his bedroom floor to reach where she lays, bending halfway to inspect her from side to side, deciding on brushing away a few loose strands and closing her drooling mouth.
Jabber hasn't slept well, not that he rests much at all.
But sleeping on a hard floor started to become a habit of his.