Evie Frye is the intrepid sister (thesilentknife) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-10-09 19:06:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, evie frye, freya mikaelson |
Who: Freya and Evie
What: Evie needs to vent. Freya’s been cautioned from coming home. So they both meet up at a gym.
When: August 23rd
Where: A gym
Warnings: Pretty low, though some discussion about assassinations and such
For the first time in two and a half months, Evie wasn’t depressed out of her mind. No, now she was feeling bitter, and that was in large part due to the dream she’d had. The dream had put a bad taste in her mouth, and she needed to do something to try and work out the issues as best as she could. But she wasn’t precisely wanting to get drunk and spill her guts to anyone. She could use a trip to the Middle East and taking out another terrorist cell, but she’d just gotten back from such a trip. So, it was a punching bag and Freya’s company, and hopefully she could find a way to not be completely terrible company herself.
Don’t let personal feelings compromise the mission.
Her father had drilled that into her head both in this life and in her dreams. So she’d abruptly pulled herself away from Henry in the dreams, forever angry at herself that she’d let herself be put in that position. Evie had come to the conclusion that maybe Assassins were simply meant to be lone wolves. Having emotional attachments only made doing her job that much harder, and it wasn’t an easy job to begin with.
Evie had taped her knuckles to better protect them as she unleashed herself on the punching bag. She wasn’t a boxer, but she’d learned how to tape her knuckles when needed. She was in workout pants and a sports bra. She left her dog tags on this time, mostly as she only planned to use the punching bag and not get overly physical.
“Thank you for coming to meet me. I just hope that I won’t be completely terrible company.” Evie’s body language was more rigid and detached. She was trying to keep everything inside. If there was one thing she hated doing, it was laying herself bare for others to see. It only opened her up to be hurt, as was evidenced with Yang breaking up with her.
Freya wasn’t quite sure what to expect. However, between Elijah’s text about how she probably should stay away for a bit so as not to be traumatized and then seeing Evie’s post soon after, she had figured why not offer to hold a punching bag for the other woman. Besides, she had helped her get a better grasp of the Dreams outside of her siblings and she wanted to help out if she could.
So after saying goodbye to Percy and putting the address into her mobile for directions, Freya had found her way to the gym and changed into her own pair of sweatpants and a sports bra, hair up - just in case.
Nor was she blind. She could see the different in Evie’s body language from when they would meet up after yoga and now. Freya wasn’t quite sure on what to make about it, but that was why she was here. To hold a punching bag and provide an ear if Evie needed to vent. Honestly, it wasn’t all that different from what she did for her siblings.
“No problem. And really it’s fine if you’re not great company. I got the feeling from the post that you weren’t in the best of moods.” It wasn’t like Freya was expecting anything beyond offering support in whatever way she could.
Evie took some moments to flex her hands and wrists enough to ensure the tape was done well. Brushing a few strands of hair that had fallen loose from her French braid out of her face, Evie took up a stance at a punching bag. She really didn’t know who she wanted to envision the bag being. She could pretend it was Yang. Or perhaps Jacob. Or maybe even Starrick.
“It’s been a bloody shite couple of months. Almost three months, actually.” Of all the times for her to get in a bad mood, this seemed like a really odd time. But it had been her dream that had been the catalyst for the change in mood. Evie was angry and kind of bitter. In her dreams, said feelings were directed towards herself. Here? Well, she’d be lying if she didn’t say Yang was the focus of a good portion of the ire.
“I suppose you could say I hit a breaking point.” At least Evie wasn’t depressed in this present moment. So there was that. She raised her fists, taking a fighter’s stance then started punching the bag methodically.
“That’s a pretty specific time frame,” It wasn’t like Freya knew what had happened. She had still been in Kiev at the time. But the fact that it seemed whatever was upsetting Evie had been bubbling for that long? No wonder she had wanted to punch something. Especially at the second part of the comment. “Like it or not, we all hit a breaking point eventually.”
It was part of life. No matter how much Freya managed to juggle, she knew that sometimes she also got to that point where yoga wasn’t enough, where burying herself in work wasn’t enough. Of course that also tended to be why she could never pinpoint where her bad mood started initially.
But as Evie started punching the bag, Freya made sure that she was grounded and kept a hold of the bag so that it didn’t swing out of control or anything.
It was a very specific time frame indeed. Evie still really didn’t like that it had happened during that whole singing epidemic thing. She now could never listen to Adele’s “Hello” without sobbing. Even in her current mood she was certain it would bring out the waterworks.
“Yeah, we do. It takes a lot before I hit mine.” Evie couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a mood like this. But of course the whole keeping her emotions to herself didn’t help anything. It tended to only make these sorts of situations all the worse and all the more dramatic.
Evie punched in an even rhythm, mostly to try and keep herself semi-focused for the moment. She didn’t want to start things out by going ape-shit on the punching bag and potentially knock Freya over in the process. “I had a girlfriend earlier this year. Things had been going well, and I was learning to not be a complete workaholic, that maybe there were things outside of work. But she broke up with me nearly three months ago. What made today the tipping point was a dream I had last night made me realize that my father was right.”
She landed a harder punch. Evie didn’t have any superhuman strength, which was definitely a good thing for Freya.
And as for her father being right and her ultimate decision to finally embrace his teaching about personal feelings, it made sense in context. Evie’s mother had died in childbirth, and she’d never really had a mother or mother-figure in her life. Her father had never re-married, never dated anyone else. Evie had simply seen him as a man married to his job, so that was what she had grown up learning and emulating. It was why she was more rational and less outwardly emotional. She seemed to be wired the same way her father had been.
That was something Freya understood. Burying everything, for her it was so that she could manage all the projects she needed to do and the fact that when it came to her siblings, she was the older sister and so she was supposed to fix things. With Dahlia, she was more just trying to run from her by never being anywhere for long. Still, she could understand that some people reached a breaking point sooner than others did.
As Evie found her rhythm, Freya found it a bit easier to keep hold of the bag as she now had a better grasp of when to expect a punch.
“So out of nowhere she just broke up with you even though things were going well?” Because that’s how it sounded from the way Evie had spoken and if that were the case, no wonder it had been getting to her. Breakups were hard enough and would make sense for being upset, but if things had been going fine and then suddenly being broken up with… well, that would do it.
“How did your dream show that your father was right?”
Because well, Freya wasn’t quite sure how that worked out. Though she did have to wonder if that was also something about the Dreams, that they seemed to mirror your life in some ways. More intense ways from what she had gathered from Elijah and Klaus, but that there were similarities even when there were things that were clearly different as well.
“Not completely out of nowhere,” Evie responded. “For a while, she was the only person here who dreamt of the world she dreams of. Then back in the spring, someone from that dream world showed up. She eventually told me that the woman who had arrived here was someone she had feelings for in her dreams. So, really, I had warning about it. She’d needed time to think and sort her feelings out, which I gave her. Three months ago she made up her mind and broke up with me. As my really impeccable luck would have it, she broke up with me the day after the London Bridge terror attack. And considering I work counterterrorism, I’d pulled an all-nighter and then that bombshell got dropped on me.”
Evie’s punches became more forceful as she spoke. To say she was bitter, and a little angry, about it was possibly an understatement. She hadn’t really talked about it to anyone other than Ezio, and even he hadn’t gotten all the details. Evie didn’t give details out about her life or her dreams. Part of it was she was used to the classified nature of the work she did with with SIS, and part of it was the secretive nature of being an Assassin in her dreams.
“My father taught me and my brother to never let personal feelings compromise the mission. It was something he taught us both here and in the dreams. Here, he was a military man, could be very rigid and seemingly uncaring at times. But now I know he was right. Let’s just say I followed my heart instead of completing a mission in my dream, and it most likely will cost innocent lives that I could have saved if I’d continued to do what I needed to. And here, with my job, I don’t want to be put into that position. I’ll just marry my job, and it’ll be better that way.”
Though what Evie really meant by that was that she wouldn’t be hurt again. And oh, her walls were built extra high and extra thick now to protect her loving heart. She’d fallen for the wrong person, and she wasn’t going to ever make that mistake again.
The timing was completely horrible, but Freya was more caught up in the fact that apparently what prompted both the ‘need to sort through feelings’ and the eventual break up was because of the dreams? How did that work?
“No offense but that’s really messed up, even without that timing of it.” And it was clear Evie obviously felt as such given how intense the punching was coming. “Is that actually a thing that happens here? People just… dumping someone they’re in a relationship with that is going well just because someone shows up from their dreams? Who does that?”
Freya couldn’t understand it. Yes, she had seen how intense emotional bleed over could be, she had seen it in her brothers in regards to her dying and thus not being in the dreams. But to leave an otherwise perfectly fine relationship just because someone shows up?
Then there was the second part, about what Evie’s father had taught her. Freya had a feeling there was more to it, that it was a self protection Mostly because wasn’t that also what she did? While what happened with Christina was completely different, Freya had shut herself off from falling for anyone else thanks to everything that had happened. So instead all she did was work on project after project and never put down roots to stay in one place.
“I’m not exactly one to talk since I’m practically married to my work as it is, but I don’t think it’s as simple as just saying you’re not going to have feelings for someone. I think they happen whether we want them to or not.”
“None taken,” she responded. Evie was far from offended by it. After all, she’d started asking herself why Yang had even bothered dating her when her heart belonged to someone else. She never stood a chance against something like that, and now it felt like it had been a waste of time. Evie could have saved herself a lot of pain and a deeply miserable past three months if they had never gotten together in the first place. “It doesn’t seem to be a common thing. I only know of one other person who had the same thing happen to them.”
As much as Evie wouldn’t wish this on anyone, it was nice to know that she wasn’t the only one having to deal with being dumped for someone better, someone the former partner had always had feelings for.
“I feel like a contradiction because while I want my ex to be happy no matter what, I’m bitter about this now. What was the point in even dating me when I was never going to win her heart? I feel like I wasted my time, and frankly I could have done without sulking the past three months.” Evie felt a little stupid for sulking as long as she had, but she had fallen for Yang, so the break up naturally hit her hard. Which was also probably why she was only now moving into the bitter and angry stage of things. But perhaps this was a good step towards working through it and getting over it.
“No it’s not, but I am still in control of whether I tell anyone how I feel about them if someone does come along.” And Evie was not going to give up her heart so easily again. She refused to go through this again, so she was building her walls extra high and extra thick.
“I don’t know if that’s better or worse.” Better because it seemed that at least most people were able to move on with their lives and not be held up because of dreams in such matters, but then why would you enter a relationship if you knew you were so hung up on someone who was more or less imaginary until they showed up that you just had to leave a perfectly good relationship?
“You wanting her to be happy proves you’re a good person. I don’t know, it seems selfish to me or just someone not wanting to be alone and so they enter a relationship for the sake of a relationship and companionship.” It wasn’t like Freya actually knew the circumstances. But she knew of people who would settle more or less just because they wanted to be in a relationship and then both partners weren’t actually happy in the end. “Either way, it’s not fair to you, so you being bitter seems perfectly understandable to me.”
They did say that anger and bitterness was a step in moving on, so at least there was that as Evie had said that she’d been sulking for three months.
“Well, there is that.” Because there wasn’t much that Freya say to counter that. It was true, even if you couldn’t control what feelings you might develop, you were in complete control of how you handled them. And again, it wasn’t like she was in any position to talk as she kept to herself to avoid letting someone in only to lose them. Even while she no longer was under Dahlia’s control, she was scarred by what had happened when she’d been in university.
“It certainly has its pros and cons, that’s for certain.” Every relationship was unique because every person was unique, but there were general things that were common across the board. Break ups rarely being easy was one of them. Sometimes even if both parties involved were mutual in their wanting to end a relationship, that didn’t necessarily mean it was going to be easy to do so.
“Sometimes I honestly do wonder about that, being a good person. Yes, I work to protect innocent people from terrorists, but I do bad things to do that sometimes.” Evie knew she was doing good, protecting the greater good in both this life and in her dreams. But she had blood on her hands. A lot of blood on her hands. Sometimes she did wonder if she could still claim to be a good person when she essentially committed murder on a regular basis.
She may have been a soldier here, and she was fully accepting of her life as an Assassin, but here she sometimes questioned her Assassin lifestyle and the toll it could take. She hadn’t been born and raised in that lifestyle here, she was still somewhat adjusting to it based on the morality that she’d been raised with in this life.
“No it really wasn’t fair to me, but Yang deserves to be happy. I like to think I made her happy for a while, but I know she’ll be happier now.” And Evie would content herself with her work. Her work was her life, even if Ezio insisted on setting her up on a blind date. She wasn’t precisely looking forward to that, but she knew Ezio meant well in getting her out and away from work for a little while. Which was about the only reason she didn’t fight the matter more when he’d brought it up.
That was a complicated situation to be in. While Freya worked in a similar field with the same goals - to help people, her work was more situated in programs to help people as they adjusted to a new country or work in a refugee camp or work with disadvantaged women and children to get out of abusive situations. She wasn’t actively out there fighting people, killing people. So that wasn’t something she could understand. Some people were more comfortable with the idea that the ends justify the means, others were not and because she wasn’t in that position it was hard for Freya to know where she actually stood on the matter.
“The fact you feel bad about the things you sometimes do I think proves you’re a good person. Because yeah, sometimes things aren’t so white and black in the choices you have to make in any given situation. There will always be casualties and there will always be sacrifices that have to be made. But at the end of the day, we only answer to ourselves.”
There were plenty of situations where doing something that might be seen as bad or illegal might be the only option available with no time and you had to weigh what that cost would be. Do it and save millions, don’t and other people will certainly die.
“I’m sure you did and her deciding to leave you because someone just shows up from her dreams is more a reflection on her than it is on you even if it doesn’t feel that way.” It wouldn’t make it easier but Evie’s ex was the one who decided to enter a relationship with someone while being hung up on an illusion and then decided to leave because illusion showed up in the area. Yes apparently there had been time to consider her feelings but it was still on the ex the decision that was made.
Evie put a couple more punches into the bag before she paused, letting her hands rest for some moments. “See, that is where I have a dichotomy. In my dreams, I was raised in a certain lifestyle, one where I would protect the innocent, but to do that I had to kill our enemies. I was okay with that sort of life in the dreams, I was raised with it from a very young age. But here? I’m a soldier, but I wasn’t raised to be the same as I was in my dreams. I’m trying to rationalize my dream lifestyle, which I’ve accepted except for the whole having blood on my hands thing.”
It was really difficult to explain what it was to be an Assassin without actually talking about it. But Evie took her Creed seriously, even in this life, and she wasn’t one to freely talk about her life as an Assassin with those outside of the order. “That’s one thing I can’t wrap my head around yet. The difference between my having blood on my hands as a soldier, and having blood on my hands from my dreams.”
She took a breath, then started another set. Punching the bag was definitely helping. And talking was also helping. She wasn’t feeling as worked up as she had been earlier. “No, it definitely doesn’t feel that way. I spent the past couple months wondering what was wrong with me that she didn’t want me. Hell, I even wondered if telling her how I really felt about her would’ve made any difference. But now, I know my feelings wouldn’t have made a difference to her.”
That explained the issue with trying to figure out if she was a good person or not, two lives that were opposed in method despite being similar in aim. That and not everyone was very the ends justify the means.
“So it’s more your soldier training here and expectations? That could certainly make things complicated. Okay then. Thought experiment. Nazi hunters who go after Nazi fugitives, but to get them they either kidnap them to bring to justice, or assassinate them because they know that they won’t be charged. Where would you fall on that?”
Because even if Freya didn’t quite understand the assassin thing, she did understand that there were times where things weren’t so clear cut in actions that were taken to protect others. As for the relationship aspect….
“That’s the annoying thing about feelings, they don’t always line up with what we know logically. Though if part of her was always with this dream person, I don’t know what anyone could have done.”
Evie did actually think a little bit on the question Freya posed to her. She knew her gut reaction, but even with that, she still liked to think things over before she went and did anything. “My gut says assassinate them, that it would be the least they deserve. But my head would probably try to see if there was enough evidence against them, or even if they’d survive long enough for a trial. At least an assassination would be some sort of peace for the millions of people who died because of them. They certainly do not deserve peaceful deaths.”
And that was probably a view a lot of people held, that Nazis like that didn’t deserve to have peaceful deaths after all the death and destruction they had wrought during World War II. They had committed war crimes that went beyond counting, and those victims all had deserved so much better than they had gotten. Evie was one who didn’t stand people like the Nazis very well. It was sort of the same with terrorists.
“I can see that now. I just hope she’s happy, even if I’m still angry and hurt.” It undoubtedly spoke to the size of Evie’s heart that she still wished Yang well while being angry at her. But that didn’t excuse what she had done either, Evie knew it was screwed up, which was why she was angry. Perhaps once she calmed down, she and Yang needed to actually talk things out.
Freya nodded some, “Well, usually when the Nazi hunters would go after these people, they had the evidence but knew that either the country they were in wouldn’t extradite them, hence why they would kidnap them. Or if they knew that the courts had decided they weren’t going to prosecute them despite evidence, that’s when they would assassinate them. So with that information in mind would you still feel conflicted?”
Because it was true. Some people quibbled on it, but most people felt that these were war criminals, and it came down to evidence and either uncooperative states where they were hiding out or the courts deciding to focus on supposed bigger fish or just not wanting to keep at it. There were plenty of reasons a court would decide not to prosecute (not that Freya agreed but she understood that from when she’d been in grad school and did investigative searching in regards to the genocide in Bosnia as the tribunal continued). And from the sounds of what Evie was grappling with because of her dreams, the Nazi hunter analogy seemed a good one to use for a real world example.
“Which goes back to my original comment. Even though you’re still hurt and angry, by hoping she’s happy? It proves you’re a good person and have a good heart.” Freya had no answer on what to do about it. She could offer distractions ala holding a punching bag, talking it through, whatever. But Evie would need to figure out what she needed to do with Yang in the long run. She could only offer support.
Freya certainly had a point there. “No, I would not.” It was a strikingly simple topic when broken down like that. Sure the Templars weren’t precisely Nazis, though perhaps they would be, but that would be long after Evie’s lifetime. Or at least her Assassin days would be over considering she’d be in her 90s when World War II would break out in her dreams. At any rate, the Templars and terrorists in this life were on the same level as the Nazis. They all sought to hurt innocent people, to seek to control them through various means. Evie stood up against them and sought to protect the innocent.
“Thank you. I probably should have considered that, but sometimes it takes someone else to point out such things.” Evie gave Freya a little smile. She still had a little work to do on accepting that, but this went a long way to help that.
“And thank you, it’s good to know someone else thinks I’m a good person.” She still would question herself on that, question why things had gone the way they did with Yang. But that was probably normal. And those things would be reserved for discussing with Yang at a point in the future when Evie felt like she could talk to her. “I am only human, I have my flaws, but at least I recognize that. Just don’t tell anyone I just admitted that. Especially my brother.” Jacob would never let her hear the end of it that she admitted to being less than perfect.
Taking a deep breath, Evie got back in the pose and started throwing some punches again, waiting for Freya to brace herself, of course. Evie didn’t want to catch her off-guard and knock her over accidentally.
Freya had a feeling that it usually took an outside party to be able to see things that might seem obvious but when you were caught up in the immediate issue, it wasn’t so obvious. Sometimes it just took looking at it from a different angle and the blonde was always happy to do that for someone if they needed it. And it certainly had seemed that Evie needed that. She might not know the mechanics or specifics about the assassin thing, but it seemed that her analogy to Nazi hunters had been an accurate lens to look through.
“No problem, and that does seem to be the case more often than not.”
Smiling some at the second round of thanks, Freya nodded though then had to laugh some at the comment about not letting anyone know she said that, especially a younger brother.
“No one will hear it from me.” She knew how certain appearances had to be kept up when it came to siblings. Like she was going to break that image for Evie. Instead she repositioned herself and braced herself before Evie started punching the bag once again.