“I’d say that you don’t look a day over twenty-five,” the goateed Moroi said from behind the bar as he poured her another drink - Jack and Coke.
Octavia looked up and gave him a half-hearted glare. “Twenty-four,” she clarified.
“Ah, but still not a day over twenty-five,” Abe said with a bit of a smirk and topped off the drink with a shade more whiskey than normal. “Besides, for someone who has often sulked about her young age, I would think you’d be pleased with this new change.”
“Listen, old man, I do not sulk--” Octavia cut herself off the moment she got the knowing look from Abe. She rolled her eyes. “Anymore.” Much. She definitely wasn’t going to be doing much of that now or else she’d wake up tomorrow as a middle-aged woman who shared a place with her boss, had two fish, and two puppies that chewed on everything.
As for Abe, he was amused with the familiar name she’d called him, but hadn’t let on. In more than one way, Octavia did remind him of a certain headstrong girl also known as his daughter especially from some of their first meetings back in Baia. He simply shook his head and busied himself by drying the cleaned glasses while silently keeping an eye on her.
Sighing, Octavia drank back some of her drink; it wasn’t her first for the afternoon. She wasn’t trying to get trashed, but a nice and probably heavy buzz was the goal. Not only had she been dealing with the guilt of thinking she helped break up two friends whether she was in control of herself or not, but now she had to deal with a killer headache and a new set of memories. Six years of memories. The last time had only been a couple months or so. Six years? She could barely make sense of all of them much less deal with the fact that she’d just lost that same amount of time of her life. She might have lived it some place else, but she still had gone to bed a teenager and woken up as a twenty-something.
Even though he hadn’t been a part of the memories specifically, seeing home and the people there made her heart ache for Lincoln all over again. Physically, aside from her year or so in Atlantis, it hadn’t been that long ago since he’d been killed. Executed. But now, with all of these new memories, that horrific day and the months they spent together seemed like ages ago. The memories also made her miss Indra all over again. The woman who had been her mentor and friend and mother-figure to her in a lot of ways. Then there were the people she hadn’t seen during those six years. Clarke, Raven, Monty. Bellamy. The Blake sibling relationship was complicated at best, but she missed him a lot more now than she had not even a day ago. Having six years of missing him shoved into her brain all at once had that effect. Other than Clarke, she didn’t know if any of the others outside of the bunker had survived.
Turning around in her seat, Octavia leaned back against the bar with her elbow. The past week or so she’d been spending a lot of time at the Command Center, but not in her office going over her assignments. No, she’d been spending more time down in the training rooms kicking the shit out of a few punching bags. She wasn’t sure yet if that or day-drinking was the healthier option. There wasn’t much time to think on that dilemma, though, because a familiar face had shown up and started over towards her.
“I started without you,” she said and held up her drink as a cheers before taking another sip.
“Sounds like I’ve got some catching up to do then,” Cappie replied, sliding onto the bar stool beside Octavia. He spent about as much time on this side of the bar at Dive as he did on the other, serving drinks, and he knew exactly how to look at home in the place.
“When you’re ready, I’ll have four shots of tequila and a beer, boss,” he called to Abe, giving him a friendly wave. Cappie would never win any prizes for being employee of the year, largely due to the number of times he’d failed to show up to work, but Abe tolerated him and Cappie liked and respected him in return.
“At least one of those shots is for you,” he added, as an afterthought, to Octavia, turning a little to face her.
He looked her over, studying her for any evidence of her newly gained years. He guessed she looked a bit older but not so that you’d immediately notice.
“So,” he said, with a grin. “How does it feel, being all old and stuff?” Cappie was the first to admit that he hated the idea of growing up and getting old but he was happy to tease other people about it.
“You know, he seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t fire you for getting on his bad side but would make your life miserable for a few days.” Octavia eyed Cappie for a moment as he sat down and glanced over towards Abe who still wore that bemused expression on his face while preparing the requested shots. Sometimes she had trouble figuring out if he was actually amused with the people around him or if he was amusing himself with plotting the torture of the people around him in half a dozen creative ways.
She made a face at ‘being old’ as she was taking another drink of from her own glass. “It feels like I just got six years worth of memories stuffed into my head. I’ll let you know whenever I’m able to sort through and make sense of even half of them.”
Abe slid the shots over to them along with Cappie’s beer, and Octavia took the one that was meant for her. “Cheers to…. living past the age of 21? Because I think I’m actually a little surprised I made it.”
“Oh, he knows exactly how to do that,” Cappie confirmed, shooting Abe a quick grin as he slid over the drinks. “He’s nowhere near bad to work for, though,” he added, downing the first of the shots. “To living past the age of 21,” he toasted with the next.
“Dude, I can’t even sort through the last six weeks worth of memories,” he said with an over exaggerated sigh, shaking his head heavily. The third shot slid down his throat easily and he made a stack of the empty shot glasses, pushing them away, before picking up his beer and taking a swig.
“I’m guessing a lot can change in six years, though,” he added, more seriously, glancing at her sideways. He knew that Octavia came from a world where she had to fight for her very survival. He could only imagine the sort of memories she might have gained from six years there.
“Yeah,” she said sort of vaguely. A hell of a lot could change in six years. She tried to think how long it had actually been since she and the others had been sent down to the ground from the Ark. Minus the months she’d spent in Atlantis, and minus the extra six years in her head. They hadn’t even been on the ground a full year, and so much had changed. She’d changed. Octavia wouldn’t have even recognized that girl who used to live under the floor anymore.
Finishing off the last of her drink, she waved her hand for another but this time it was the Jack and coke without the coke. “We were inside this underground bunker,” she tried to explain. “The whole six years. The last set of memories I’d gotten led up to this nuclear event where all of us still on Earth would die if we didn’t find somewhere safe, so we found this bunker and locked ourselves in. Well, some of us. Clarke was still on the outside and my brother and some friends tried going back up into space. Clarke only survived because of the Night Blood she’d injected herself with.” Pausing, she shook her head at his questionable look. “Don’t ask. It’s way too complicated.”
Octavia took a sip of her whiskey. “But hey, I was their leader for all that time, so cheers to that,” she said kinda sarcastically. She shook her head and sighed. “So, what’s up with you?” She wanted to ask the obvious question again about why he was acting like an idiot with a certain area of his life, but she held her tongue for now.
Cappie had been about to ask but stopped himself at her behest. He guessed he’d just have to forever wonder what the hell Night Blood was. He couldn’t deny that it sounded like Octavia and her friends had literally been through hell on Earth, whether he understood the intricacies or not. It made his problems look very minor.
“For the record, if I were ever to be trapped in a bunker after a nuclear event, I would totally want you as my leader,” he told her, hoping to boost her spirits a little. He wasn’t exactly lying either. Octavia was one of the most capable people he knew. He’d definitely want her on his side at the nuclear apocalypse.
Cappie was a little disappointed when the conversation turned to him. He didn’t really want to talk about it but the alternative was reminding Octavia of everything the alcohol was working hard to dull out.
“You know the button? The big, red, shiny one that says DO NOT PRESS so, of course, you just have to press it?” He took a swig of his beer. “Yeah… I have one of those, marked SELF DESTRUCT.”
She smiled a little and knocked her knee against his from where she sat. She knew he was probably half-kidding, but Cappie usually always had this way of making her feel better by being, well, him. A friend. “You can be my lieutenant,” she said and took another sip.
The way he described his self-destruct button reminded her a lot of her brother. He had one of those too even if he thought he was pressing the I’M DOING THE RIGHT THING button. At least that’s how she always saw it when he did something stupid. Which was a lot.
“Is there a reset button?” She asked. “Because one of those would really be handy every now and then.”
“I don’t know if that would work, me being your lieutenant,” he told her, a teasing smile spreading across his lips. “I’m too used to being the Captain.” Even without her knowing his real name, he knew he could rely on Octavia to get the joke.
“Nope,” he said, nursing his beer bottle between his hands. “Once it’s done, it’s done.” He could think of a few times in his life when he’d wished he could go back and do things differently but, until someone here invented a time machine, which wasn’t a complete impossibility, that just wasn’t an option.
“Anyway, I find it all usually works out in the end,” he added, taking a drink from his beer bottle. “Karmic synergy.”
“I walked right into that one, huh?” Octavia wasn't even sure how captains and lieutenants would compare to the order of command for Grounders. She, and others before here, were known as The Heda or The Commander. There were the leaders of the individual tribes, and O had been Indra’s Second during part of her initial training. But the that hadn't lasted very long because Octavia rarely took orders very well when it went against what she thought was right and had pissed off Indra less than a week after being named her Second. How she'd lasted as Becker's Second this long was a miracle.
“Karmic synergy?” She asked in a teasing tone. “That I sounds like a fancy way of saying karma gets what's hers one way or another.“
There was a lot Octavia could probably bring up that they could or maybe even should talk about, but damn if she really didn't want to. She liked this: their steady and familiar banter that felt normal instead of awkward or strained. She'd come to the bar to brood and try to forget a few things, and she figured that maybe he was here for the same reason. He wasn't pushing her, so she wasn't going to push him.
“Let's get another round of shots,” she said and waved over to their favorite bar keep.