Nina Clarke: ᴍᴀʏᴏʀ, ᴀᴜsᴛɪɴ ᴛx & sʜʏ ʙʟᴏʙ (commonlaw) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-08-30 11:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [08] august, daniela diaz, nina clarke |
Who: Nina and Dani
What: a meeting and a drink or two
Where: The Chestnut Tree
When: Saturday, August 15th
On the occasion of the grand opening of the Chestnut Tree, Dani had chosen not to attend. In part it was thanks to work, but also because, truthfully, she wasn’t that interested in trekking through the streets of Austin just for a bar. But the people who had gone, including several of her coworkers, wouldn’t shut up about the benefits of escaping the hospital for a while. And, as much as she hated to admit it, the idea had a certain appeal. The same faces and the same places started to grate after a while. The next time a group made plans to visit the Chestnut Tree, Dani arranged to go along.
Like anyone who turned 21 after the dead started walking around and eating people, Dani had missed the chance to have any experience with going to bars. Not that she hadn’t had alcohol; that was a different thing altogether. Between the odd dorm party during her time at college, the frozen daiquiris served by her parents at their gatherings, and whatever liquor people managed to scrounge up during the apocalypse, drinking had happened. It was only the location that was new and different.
For a place that could only be accessed by braving the threat of raiders and the undead, the bar was surprisingly busy. By the time Dani was able to place her order she’d been waiting, arms crossed, for several minutes. At last, she turned over the canned good she’d brought as “payment”, and looked at the array of bottles on display.
“Any chance you could scare up a whiskey sour back there?” Ever since having the drink recommended to her on the freenet, Dani had wanted to try one for herself. And it wasn’t like she was going to get a better chance than this one.
Nina turned when she heard the request, wanting to see who else was ordering her favorite drink and thus, who else had just as good taste as she. She'd not been there for very long, but she already had managed to procure a whiskey sour for her own.
"Don't let them tell you they don't have the stuff," she said with a slight smile, raising her glass in a small toast to this stranger. "Unless somehow in the last fifteen minutes, they've experienced an ingredients shortage. Judging by the current economy, though, it wouldn't really be all that far-fetched." The bar was busier than she'd expected, too; it was the perfect change of pace from the Capitol.
Until the nearby woman spoke, Dani hadn’t really even registered her presence. She turned toward her now, just long enough to offer a grateful smile -- one that Nina returned after only a brief moment of hesitation -- before directing a comment to the bartender. “Well, you heard her.” He looked put out, but didn’t argue as he began to fix the drink. Dani leaned a hip against the bar, keeping one eye on the bartender’s actions, just in case he tried to cheat her by watering down the drink. It would be one way for the bar to keep their stock.
“Have you been here before? Is it always like this?" She addressed the woman this time, nodding her head toward the crowded room as she spoke.
"This is my first time, so my guess is just about as good as yours." Nina hadn't meant to strike up a conversation when she'd first spoke up, but so many of the chats she had these days were so fraught with danger and paranoia. It felt nice to talk to someone about something that wasn't death and schemes and snooping and zombies.
Once she'd fully committed to the conversation, she waited until the bartender set the woman's drink down before speaking up again. "My name's Nina, by the way." She gave a cool smile. "I don't like talking to strangers."
Dani raised her eyebrows slightly at that, but she could appreciate where Nina was coming from. There was no way to tell who anyone really was these days, or what they might be capable of. Not that she held any reservations about the woman before her, who exuded a calm confidence even before introducing herself. She came across more as a white-collar professional than a possible raider or ghoul.
“I can respect that. I’m Daniela, thought I usually go by Dani.” She returned Nina’s earlier salute with her own glass before taking a careful sip. Dani really had no idea what to expect from the drink, but it was nice, better than the post-apocalyptic rotgut she’d been prepared to accept. A whiskey sour might just be her new favorite.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Dani." Nina took a sip of her own drink, the gears in her head turning as she put two and two together -- the unknown person with the username '3dani' she'd talked to on the Freenet, their conversation about whiskey sours, and the woman in front of her now. She couldn't help but smile. "I think we may have gotten acquainted online, though, if you remember. I'm 'quidproquo' on the Freenet."
Daniela nodded at that; she remembered.
Such an odd thing, to still have that ability to communicate even now, but Nina wasn't going to deny its usefulness. "You look a bit familiar, too."
It was a funny coincidence that Dani should run into the very person she'd been thinking about just a few minutes earlier. Austin was a small place these days, though, so it was probably wasn't as unlikely as she thought for Nina and 'quidproquo' to be one and the same.
Looking familiar, on the other hand ... Dani tilted her head and studied Nina for a moment, trying to determine whether the recognition went both ways. Given her username, Nina had to be a lawyer, but Dani honestly couldn't say she'd ever moved within the legal world's social circles. Nina was attractive in both appearance and demeanor, certainly, but that was all that registered when Dani looked at her. There was no glimmer of remembrance.
"Do you visit the hospital often? I work in the lab there. Maybe that's it." It was the most likely explanation. Or else Nina had simply confused her with a different woman of similar appearance, but somehow that seemed less likely. This was a woman who didn't miss much.
Now that her memory had received a bit of help, Nina could vaguely remember seeing Dani in that setting. "And by 'a bit familiar' I more mean that I think I've glimpsed you once or twice in the hallways there, so that could be what I'm thinking of." Still, uncertainty or not, she was pleased to have solved that mystery.
"I live at the Capitol," she added once she'd taken a moment to have a few more sips of her drink. It was a fair assumption, she thought, that Dani lived where she worked. And if she did, she likely had the proper identification that would mean she could come and go as she pleased. "Have you ever been there?"
“A few times in the past, but I haven’t had much occasion to visit lately.” Which probably explained why she had never glimpsed Nina under similar circumstances. “To be honest, I’m far too likely to make excuses to stay in and work. Even tonight, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t change my mind at the last minute.”
Dani glanced around the inside of the bar, taking in the mix of patrons that you weren’t likely to find anywhere else in Austin. Sometimes the shelters were as isolating as they were protective, but the Chestnut Tree seemed to be creating a bridge between groups of survivors. It was too soon to say whether it would last, but it was certainly attracting interest. With this reflection, she turned her attention back to Nina, and the fact that she was already making a new connection was not lost on Dani. “I’m glad I came out, though.”
"Me too," Nina admitted, unable to stop herself from smiling as Dani unwittingly uttered a sentence that wouldn't have seemed out of place at all coming from herself. "At least, I used to be that way." Her reduced workload in the Capitol wasn't at all her doing, though; she actually would have preferred it the other way. "And it's easy to end up staying in and catching up on work, or reading, than to go out when life is what it is."
Her smile only deepened at the inadvertent turn of phrase Dani had chosen, too, to state how pleased she was that she was at the Chestnut Tree instead of home. That didn't seem like something to comment on right away, though, not with a stranger, so instead she added, "This place might turn me into a regular yet."
Though not much of a smiley person in her day-to-day life, Dani found herself returning Nina’s without a second thought. The relaxed atmosphere, maybe, or the fact that they’d already found common ground. Or the whiskey sour, she supposed, but it seemed early for the liquor to have had much of an effect yet.
“I used to be better about it, before. Not great, but better.” Nowadays, it was all too easy to just double down and let work keep her distracted from the current state of things. Like the Supply Scout Annihilator, specifically, who hadn’t been far from her thoughts since she’d helped that detective with his ultimately fruitless evidence.
Taking a sip of her drink, she added, sympathetically, “I’m sure there’s no shortage of work to do at the Capitol, either. The hospital is the same way, especially lately.”
What Nina wouldn't give to be as busy as Dani made herself out to be. But this wasn't the place to get into that long-suffered frustration, nor was she the type to confide so early on in an acquaintanceship. But she could still commiserate on another point.
"The world ending kind of puts things into perspective, doesn't it?" Dani had mentioned working in the lab, so Nina presumed she wasn't a doctor. It made no difference in her eyes. "The Department of Justice has been busy." She, personally, wasn't, but the statement wasn't a lie. "And my friend over at the APD sounds like he's been running around like a chicken with his head cut off, looking into the murders."
"Laberenz, right?" Dani nodded, faintly surprised to have Nina bring up the very thing she'd just been thinking about. Of course, the Annihilator was probably on a lot of minds at the DoJ too. Most of Austin wanted the guy caught and the matter brought to an end.
Nina nodded, eyebrows raising just a tad, unsurprised that they had the man in common given the circumstance. Austin was a hell of small world sometimes, though it hadn't always been that way. "The one and only."
"He's been out to the hospital a lot lately, reinvestigating the case," Dani explained. "I don't know where he was before, but it's good to have someone take so much interest in finding the killer."
Looking down at the liquid in her glass, she silently debated the next question in her head, trying to decide whether it sounded like she was asking Nina to gossip about a friend. With only this brief pause to signal any hesitation, she added, "Was he a detective before too, do you know?"
"Yes, he was. I've known him for a long time." Nina found it awfully funny to think that her two oldest friends in this city, James and Theo, could be so different. "He's good at what he does. I'm glad he's been working that case."
It made sense, too, if Theo had worked with Dani. Nina didn't think it was her place to pry about what business Theo had in the lab -- it couldn't be anything good -- but it sounded like progress, and she thought she could make an educated guess about their work together. "Do you typically do that kind of forensic work in the lab?"
Though Dani had already been most of the way to thinking Detective Laberenz competent enough to handle the serial killings, it was still something of a comfort to hear someone else share the same opinion. Nina did not, she thought, seem like the type to artificially inflate her opinion of anyone, even a friend.
"No, it's strictly a medical lab. Or I suppose I should say it was strictly a medical lab, until recently." They'd had to improvise, some, scavenging equipment and other resources from the DPS crime lab. The main reason Dani had ended up with the job of running the tests was that she could crunch the information on how to do procedures the fastest, those all night study sessions paying off at last.
"As much satisfaction as I derive from our regular work, it's nice to pursue something different too,” Dani said, with a small smile. She enjoyed challenging herself, and developing new skills in a related field certainly applied. “I didn't expect to have the opportunity."
"Desperate times call for desperate measures." Nina couldn't imagine where else they'd possibly take evidence of that kind. The Capitol didn't exactly have the lab equipment the police force had one directly controlled. She looked at Dani with a fair amount of approval. "I don't know if I'd be able to pivot like that as quickly. And if Theo's continuing to work with you, you must have some capacity for it."
There wasn’t anyone else for Theo to work with, as far as Dani knew, but she appreciated the compliment for what it was nonetheless. “Thank you,” she replied, simply.
Nina acknowledged the response with an approving smile. Still, though, she hadn't meant to get caught up in a conversation about work at a place like this. She shook her head slightly as though to clear her mind of any productive thoughts. "But I didn't mean for us both to bring our work here, tonight." Assuming Dani still wanted to keep chatting with her. Nina hoped so. "I already know your favorite drink," she said, lifting her whiskey sour. "Are you originally from Austin?"
“No, I’m from Corpus Christi, actually.” Not that the city often entered her thoughts, anymore, except during the occasional moment of wondering whether any of her family had survived. She felt almost no remaining connection to the place. “I was attending UT Austin at the time of the outbreak, though, so it’s sort of a second home here.”
Taking a sip of her drink, which was nearing its end despite her best efforts at making it last, she returned the inquiry. “Are you?”
"You're still a Texan," Nina said with a wry smile, her tone more deadpan than you'd expect from the words. She'd never been one to flaunt her home state with as much fervor as some. But still, she'd left a comfortable life in Pennsylvania to return to Austin. It'd been like a magnet, pulling her back.
Her drink was nearing its end point, too. She hadn't intended to drink all that much and hadn't brought that many supplies along with her, so she tried to sip more slowly. "I grew up here. So at least there's still some tiny feeling of home for me, even if I never thought we'd end up like this."
"I guess I am, at that." The slight smirk that passed over Dani's face matched with the tone in Nina's voice. The Don't Mess With Texas sentiment ran strong where she was from as well. And there was a possibility that spirit had something to do with the continued survival of Austin, but Dani wasn't about to ascribe causation to something that might very well be a coincidence.
But Nina saying this wasn’t how she thought they’d turned out … No, neither had Dani, or anyone else. “That’s something, at least. It's harder, I imagine, for the people not from this area.”
"I'd like to think so, at least," Nina replied. Her mind drifted momentarily towards the people she'd known in Pennsylania, the people she knew now who'd found themselves in Austin by mere chance. What would life have been like if she'd never returned home?
Lifting her glass, Dani drained the rest of the whiskey sour. A glance told her that Nina’s drink was also almost gone, and Dani could see the rest of the evening going in two directions. Either they could conclude their conversation along with their alcohol and go their separate ways, or maybe there was no need to end things just yet. Dani looked around the bar, eyes lighting on the rest of the party she’d arrived with, none of whom she particularly cared for greatly. Nina, on the other hand, was someone whose company she enjoyed.
"Buy you another?" Dani asked, nodding at Nina's glass. "In thanks, for recommending the whiskey sour to me in the first place."
"I'd like that," Nina said, stepping closer to Dani to further signify her intention to stay a little while longer. "Next time, the drinks are on me."