(ಠ_ಠ) (break_the_cycle) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-10-10 21:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, alice, commander jane shepard |
If you’re anything like me, you’ll be able to keep it together.
Who: Shepard and Alice
What: The two meet up for drinks to deal with their issues.
When: August 16th
Where: Bar
Warnings: None
Status: Complete. (it was almost at a good end, but then the mun disappeared :()
She’d dreamed it all over again last night, only this time it was more intense. Details that had been fuzzy the first go around were more clear this time, as were the sensations that came along with them. How was it possible for her shoulder, the same one she had landed on in her dream, to be so sore? She had a lot of questions where these dreams were concerned, but there was one thing she knew for certain: she didn’t have to understand how it all worked to know that she didn’t like it. Alice felt like she was being led down the rabbit hole and she was certain that she didn’t want any part of what she would find at the end.
Forgetting for a little while would be nice. Drinking wasn’t a big part of her life anymore, not since she’d taken on responsibility of Becky. It wasn’t as if it was a burden on her. Alice could just as easily spend her entire night curled up on the couch watching Disney movies, but recent events called for a distraction that was a bit more adult. At the very least, if the drinks failed, she was certain that her drinking partner would have plenty of stories to keep her mind occupied.
Entering the bar, she edged up to a woman who looked like the one she was there to meet. “You look like you need this night more than I do,” she said as she pulled out a barstool for herself.
When Shepard dreamed these days, it was might-have-beens, or just nightmares spawned from the dark tunnel that she’d led the galaxy through. Part of her was glad that’s all it was now. Or it had been until she’d discovered that none of it was real. She looked up at Alice, and the thought faded away, as though the woman’s presence made it impossible for her to vocalize anything about not being real, about being a video game. Apparently that was common among dreamers.
Shepard’s face was marked with faint scars, almost as though someone had put her back together after she’d been taken apart. In the dim light and for the briefest of moments they shone red. She had her long red hair tied back in a ponytail, and her drink had clearly had a few sips taken from it.
Her smile was tired but genuine. “Love life crashed and burned and I think my best friend hates me. Small things on the scale of life, really.”
Alice’s attention was caught more by the glint of red than the actual scars. She wasn’t a soldier, but she had been a warrior of sorts, and she knew what it meant to have battle wounds. Some were on the surface for everyone to see. Others weren’t that obvious. More importantly, it wasn’t any of her business unless Shepard made it so. Alice looked up from the other woman to motion for the bartender to bring her whatever it was that Shepard was sipping on.
“Maybe, but that doesn’t stop them from feeling like major things.” It might have sounded a bit like a platitude, but Alice meant it sincerely. “What makes you think they hate you?”
“That’s pretty much what they told me. But then everyone seems to be cranky.” She gestured for Alice to sit. “And enough weird shit happens out here to dismiss it, but I don’t know if people in general are just pissy, or if genuine feelings are coming to the surface.” And that was the part that her brain kept picking at. It was too personal to completely lack truth. She just kind of hoped that it was some kind of evil twin situation.
“I’ve noticed people acting really aggressive, or at least that’s how they seem on the network.” Alice had been fortunate enough not to come across anyone she cared about who felt the need to bite her head off today, but she wasn’t completely ready to write herself off as being in the clear. If there was something wrong with everyone, who knew how long it was going to last. “My first thought was that it could be one of the weird things you’d mentioned having to deal with. Even if it’s not ogres.”
She propped herself up on the stool she’d pulled out, just in time for her drink to arrive. Alice traded the bartender her card to start a tab and keep it open. Taking a sip of her drink, she hissed a little at the unfamiliar sting. Yes, it had been way too long since she’d had anything this strong. “Has anyone tried to fight you yet?”
“Orcs.” Shepard corrected, then tilted her head and amended. “There might have been an ogre or too. Not as scary as some things I’ve seen.” Nothing compared to a Brute, or a Banshee. While a Reaper was so large that it was hard to quantify, a Brute or a Banshee was much more up close and personal. And if they were up close and personal you were probably dead. She swiveled towards Alice. “Not in person, though I suspect my girlfriend might actually go through on her promise to rip my heart out. And my friend would probably get violent too. I’m supposed to be the unreasonable, prone to violence one.” Or was that ex-girlfriend now? It had certainly seemed final. Experiment. Fuck. Jane grimaced and took a shot.
Alice couldn’t help but smirk at her mistake. She wasn’t as seasoned where this weirdness was concerned. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be, but it was a lot better than being caught off-guard. All she had to go on were what she’d seen in movies, and if that was an accurate representation, she couldn’t imagine what it was that Shepard had seen that could be considered scarier. “Something that’s come to town, or...” Alice left the question open-ended, allowing the other woman to finish if she’d like.
She’d been in the middle of sipping her drink when the heart comment was mentioned and it made give a slight start. “Why do I have a feeling this might mean something different?” Alice wasn’t slow on the uptake, and she was quickly learning that everything that came with Shepard was more than it seemed. Maybe that was the case with everyone and she was just now realizing it. She watched the other woman take a shot and followed by finishing her own drink in solidarity before motioning for more. “Opposite day, could that be a thing? Or maybe everyone who has a calm head has suddenly lost their cool?” Even as she said it, she hoped it wasn’t the case. Alice considered herself fairly reasonable, and she didn’t want that to change.
“I don’t really know. Regina isn’t the nicest person around, but this was particularly brutal.” Shepard smiled, expression rueful, and she looked down at her own hand, twisting it a little as blue energy crackled around her fingers and knuckles. “Some people really can pull your heart out.”
She was about to make a comment on Regina when her eyes dropped to Shepard’s hand. Her eyes widened a little, but she managed to keep it together -- with the help of alcohol, of course. Alice downed most of her second drink as she watched the blue energy swirl around the other woman’s fingers. “Here’s to never experiencing that first hand.” She tapped the bottom of her glass on the counter before swallowing what was left. When the bartender looked her way again, Alice ordered four more shots -- two for Shepard if she wanted them. “Maybe it’s a good idea to give her a wide berth until all this blows over. Which I’m sure it will.” Her emphasis on the later made it questionable who exactly she was trying to convince. Alice was still trying to assure herself that the dreams would be over sooner rather than later.
“Or until the next disaster strikes.” Shepard snorted. Sometimes she felt like Regina’s magic storybook life was something she couldn’t be a part of. And maybe part of that was her own fault, and part of that was circumstance. But she’d welcome Regina in battle any day. But magic storybooks weren’t generally the kind of battles Jane could fight. She picked up a shot and looked at the liquid in the glass, deciding she’d worry about all of that once (or if) Regina was reasonable again. “Any dreams keep you awake?”
She would get no argument from Alice, just a smile of amusement. What else was there to do? Outside of brace yourself for the next event that would inevitably come and ride out the storm when it hit. She had always been a quick study, but it didn’t take an overabundance of common sense to see that was how things worked. Alice had already downed one of her shots by the time that Shepard picked hers up. Maybe she was just taking advantage of having a night to herself, but the odds were more likely that she was working toward dropping into a dreamless sleep. “Nothing earth shattering, but then again, I can’t shake the feeling that something worse is coming.”
“Kind of like a rock sitting on a ledge, about to tip over. And when it tips over it’ll hit another rock, and then those rocks will hit a boulder and before you know it the whole damn mountain is coming down on top of you.” She toasted Alice with another shot and knocked it back. “Maybe yours will be all daisies.”
“That’s probably the best comparison I’ve heard so far.” In her head, she had been comparing the experience to trying to keep her breath in a pool of rising water. Maybe she’d just gotten in her own head, considering how often she had seen other people warn against what was to come. Who knew what she would dream next, and maybe Shepard was right that everything would end well. But Alice had always been a realist. “You know, I don’t think I believe that any more than you do.” She took a beat to contemplate, then added, honestly, “I’m just hoping that when it’s all said and done, I’ll still be able to keep it together.”
Shepard snorted. The world was swimming nicely around her and she was comfortably numb. “No one gets daisies, and if you’re lucky you get the good ending and it’s only marginally less shitty than the bad one.” She shifted in her chair. “If you’re anything like me, you’ll be able to keep it together. At least most of the time. A couple times I….well it wasn’t pretty.”
Alice smirked at the sound Shepard made. The alcohol she’d drank so far was starting to have its effect on her, and she could feel it improving her mood -- at least as far as the current subject was concerned. Her primary concern, as always, was Becky. She’d done a lot to make sure that the girl had someone to watch out for her. If the decision was hers to make, Alice would have stayed as far from these dreams as possible. But it wasn’t, so the best she could do was make sure that she didn’t fall to pieces. “Not pretty how?” Usually Alice was the kind of person who respected boundaries, and though she wasn’t about to be insistent, Shephard had piqued her curiosity.
“I let it get to me. The pressure. I mean I’d stopped dreaming for awhile, so I didn’t know how the recovery went, I just knew we’d won, but….” Shepard twirled her hand. “The price was paid in oceans of blood. Half the galaxy was on fire from the Reapers, I’m pretty sure I blew up the Mass Relays. They’re what let people travel between star systems quickly. On thousands of planets there were trillions of bodies. It ate at me. Sometimes it still does. Without my crew I don’t think I could have stopped it at all. But so many of them fell in the process, and the things I did to ensure victory weren’t always the morally right thing to do. One day, it all kind of came crashing down on me. I still can’t look up at the sky, or glance out a window on the Normandy without wondering if the enemy I fought in my dreams will come here.” She lowered her voice, still a little ashamed that she’d broken down at all. “And I already know they did. My cousin had similar dreams. They stopped that one, but that was just one Reaper. What happens if there’s a fleet?”
The words together didn’t really make much sense. Alice didn’t know what Reapers were, or Mass Relays. Shepard dreamed of space, and there something horrible had happened to her, that was all she needed to know to understand. This was the kind of talk that made someone want to reach out, offer a supportive hand to let them know everything was going to be okay, but Alice had been around people like Shepard before, and she didn’t think such a gesture would be received as well as she meant it, at least not on their first meeting. “Hope for best,” she shrugged as she swirled around her drink. It wasn’t meant to be dismissive, just to lighten the mood in case Shepard needed it. “I’m the last person who could say that’ll never happen, but if it does, you get your people together. You make a new crew and you fight with everything you have.”
A smile tugged at Jane’s lips. It wasn’t full of mirth, but it wasn’t entirely bitter either. “Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? I guess If I’ve done it once, I can do it again. Added benefit of a really varied and interesting skill set, here. Might be harder to lead. Lot of people are used to leading. How many of us are willing to step aside and follow?”
“If it’s for the sake of humanity, I would hope enough to surprise you.” Then again, Alice’s experience when it came to teams were groups of officers who had been trained to fall into line and listen to orders. It was different when it came to civilians, people who didn’t understand that just because you had a strong personality didn’t necessarily mean that they had what it took to be a leader. She could only imagine what it was like dealing with people who were leaders in their dreams. “The Agency certainly sounds like they could keep everyone in line.”
“They can certainly try.” Shepard’s own role in the Agency boiled down to a similar one as her dreams. Leading soldiers, and fighters. Fighting a war. It was a job that she didn’t often have to actually do, but it was always there. Always an option. “I think half the reason the Agency exists is to fold everyone into an actual chain of command.” And the other reason was to Keep Things Quiet.