Evie Frye is the intrepid sister (thesilentknife) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-01-29 22:45:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, evie frye, yang xiao long |
Who: Yang and Evie
What: A talk in which Evie digs her heels in on her emotional stupidity.
When: Early January before this
Where: A cafe
Warnings: Low, but mentions of Evie having been shot
Evie had just returned from Niger. She’d been working on a plan of action to do something in response to what happened to those American soldiers. Evie wasn’t American, but she was a soldier, and it angered her that nothing was being done. So she’d used her Assassin skills, formed a plan, and went to take down some terrorists.
Except that the whole incident with Freya and the mistletoe had unnerved her so much she’d launched into the mission before she was completely ready to. Though things had gone according to plan. For the most part.
So okay, she’d been shot, but it could’ve been worse. It was just her shoulder, which she’d had one of her contacts handle. Evie couldn’t risk having a hospital visit on her record. It wasn’t infected, but it was definitely sore and she was favoring her shoulder a bit.
And okay, going to Niger in such a rush had partly been to try and not think about the whole situation with Freya. Because it was more than entirely possible that Evie liked Freya as more than a friend, but she was trying not to entertain those thoughts. She was afraid it wouldn’t go anywhere, or that it would blow up in her face since she jumped out of the window and all after the mistletoe kiss.
So for the time being, Evie had gotten some tea and was taking a walk. She was trying to keep her head clear, but she was kind of failing. So much so that she bumped into someone with her bad shoulder.
“Ah, shit,” she hissed under her breath and gritted her teeth. “I mean, I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are you alright?” The jolt of pain was radiating through her body, but she was trying to hold it in and not cry out or let the pain show too much.
There’d been a lot on Yang’s mind too. Jaune had dredged up a few things in their conversation, and she had this dangling feeling in her dreams. She knew where she was going, but not what she’d find when she got there, and that bothered her. That her friends were all split up bothered her. Still, She was doing a bit better with Blake talking to her, even if she had to reign in some of her impulses around her.
Not that she hadn’t been reigning them in, but it was more important that she do so now.
Maybe she should just try to get over her...but kissing other people during the mistletoe thing had actually made that thought harder to process instead of easier.
“Hey w--Uh.” Yang realized who she’d run into. “I’m okay…” She squinted. “Are you okay?”
Evie looked up at Yang. She was inwardly wondering why it was Yang that she’d run into. Nothing against Yang, Evie just didn’t want to talk about certain things, her shoulder being one of them. “I’m fine. I should’ve been paying attention to where I was going.”
At least she hadn’t spilled her tea.
“I didn’t hit you that hard,” Yang pointed out. “Even with old metal-fist here.” She waggled her hand.
“I’m just a little sore. Dream stuff.” Which may have been true, but Evie wasn’t wanting to fess up to anything. It just went with the whole top secret job she had in this life and the top secret job she had in her dreams. She also didn’t exactly talk about personal things like injuries. She kept all of that close to her chest like a true Englishwoman.
“Get hit a little hard?” Yang punched her in the shoulder, light and playfully. If she was playing it of it couldn’t be that bad, right? So she’d treat it like normal.
That, or she was flushing out the truth.
Evie grunted and grimaced, trying hard to soak the jolt of pain that ran through her. However, she did wince a bit. “You could say that, yes,” she said through gritted teeth again. She just hoped that she could hide this from her superiors a lot better than she was hiding it from Yang.
“What happened?” Yang didn’t sound angry, just concerned, her voice gentling and her eyebrows furrowing. “You can tell me.”
Okay sudden flash of anger, “Did someone hurt you?”
Backed into a metaphorical corner, Evie knew she couldn’t lie her way out of this. “Yes, but they’re dead now so it doesn’t matter.” And Evie had only been hurt because she’d been stupid and had gone on the mission before she’d been entirely ready for it.
This was why she needed to plan everything out and not just fly by the seat of her pants, so to speak.
“They’re what?” Did Evie just say they were dead? It took a full second for Yang to remember what it was Evie did, both in her dreams and in her real life. “Oh… yeah…”
She rubbed the back of her neck. Maybe things really had worked out for the best between them, since she didn’t know how she actually felt about that. Except she still cared about Evie. “I mean. That’s good. Wouldn’t want them shouldering all the responsibility.”
“They were a terrorist, so don’t worry.” Evie’s qualms about killing had been subsiding of late. Of course, she’d been a soldier here, and had been in combat, but an Assassin was different. Even if she only ever hurt and killed bad people, she still had to come to terms with that. But she seemed to have finally settled into what she was in the dreams. And she actually kind of liked it. It allowed her to take action in this life when no one else did. Such as what happened to the American soldiers in Niger.
“Yes, fewer terrorists being alive is a good thing.” Evie wouldn’t go into details. Best to give people plausible deniability in the event Evie’s superiors ever caught onto her extracurricular activities. But being both an Assassin and MI6 tended to give her enough tools to be able to do end-arounds and keep things under wraps. So long as she was smart about it.
Sometimes she really liked having that Eagle Vision that allowed her to see secret messages that only Assassins could ever see. It allowed her to keep plans top secret from everyone else. No paper trail. Only another Assassin would ever know to look for something that was invisible, after all.
That was something that Yang could agree with, the freedom thing. In Remnant, a Huntress had a great deal of freedom to do whatever she wanted, as long as she still helped people, still did her job. Here, there were nights Yang felt rudderless. Without her sister in a headspace to lead, without Weiss and Blake at her side, she didn’t know what to do with herself, and figuring that out was pretty hard.
Yang hadn’t been in a party mood in a very long time. She wanted to do something good.
“They still got you though. Getting a little sloppy?”
“I made a mistake, and it’s not one I will make again.” Evie was an extremely harsh critic of herself, but she had made a mistake. Or, well, more than one, but she’d made a mistake and ended up injured because she was running from her emotions and another mistake she’d made.
“Distracted by something?” Yang knew how focused that Evie could get when it came to her job and doing it right. It took a lot to distract her, but she was also aware of certain mistletoe incidents and jumping out of windows. It was the only thing she could think of that could have rattled Evie so much.
And Yang wasn’t above calling it out, either. “Like girls?”
“No, I just wasn’t as prepared as I should have been.” It was true, she’d left before she’d been fully prepared for the mission. It just happened that she’d left sooner just so she could avoid the fallout of a certain incident involving a kiss and a window. Evie was also very much in the same mindset her dream self was, and that wasn’t a good place.
Evie was fighting with Jacob and Henry at every turn. And it wasn’t just sibling fighting with her and Jacob. It went deeper than that, and it was rubbing off on her and upsetting her. She couldn’t picture ever hating her brother or fighting with him to the point of going their separate ways and never working together again. And Henry, well, she was taking anger at herself out on him, which wasn’t fair, but it was how she reacted to these things.
“I can’t see you as being unprepared for anything.” Yang really couldn’t. She reminded her of Pyrrha in being very prepared for everything - and super talented. “What’s been on your mind, for realsy reals?”
That was the truth, Evie always was prepared. She was the careful planner, crafting her plans down to the tiniest details. Evie never left anything to chance. In her line of work, she couldn’t risk leaving things to chance. People’s lives depended on her succeeding.
“In part, my dreams. Things are...not good in them.” It was rare for Evie to even mention her dreams, so the fact that she’d brought it up spoke volumes.
Yang did like to plan too. It just took different form, and way less than Evie did planning. But she still noticed and still remembered. Yang didn’t forget details like that, even after breaking up with someone.
“.. wanna get a drink, sit somewhere, and talk about it?”
Evie looked down at her tea, which had gone cold and was mostly gone by now anyway. “I could use another tea.” Or something stronger, but she was trying to stay away from alcohol currently. Mostly because of whenever she needed to take pain medication to take the edge off of her shoulder.
“But yes, talking may help. If I’m not keeping you from something else, of course.” She didn’t want to inopportune Yang if she could help it.
“I’ll buy,” Yang promised, moving past Evie and winking at her. There was a place just down the street, and she’d gone there a lot for her coffee fix, and because they brewed one of Blake’s favorite teas, and she like to surprise her with it. While Weiss had been Blake’s tea-friend and she’d never want to interfere with that should Weiss ever show up, Yang still paid attention. “I don’t have anything to do. My last roommate moved out.”
Maybe she should move back with her dad and Ruby.
“Thank you,” she said as she walked along with Yang. Evie wasn’t going to fight that. As much as she may be in a less-than-favorable mood, she didn’t really have it in her to fight over stupid things like that. She’d fought enough with her brother and Henry in her dreams, she didn’t need it carrying over to this life.
“Ah, I’m sorry.” She knew that Yang liked people and such, so living alone might be difficult for her.
“Probably for the best.” She flashed a smile at Evie, hiding whatever her true feelings might be on the matter. “I can’t afford the place alone, and I miss being near my sister. So yeah. Probably for the best.”
That assumed Ruby wanted her around. There were days Yang didn’t feel like she was wanted or needed, but she wouldn’t burden Evie with that.
“What about you? Like living alone?”
“Lucky for you that your sister is here.” Evie’s brother was on the other side of the world. Sometimes she missed his stupid face. Others she was very, very glad for the distance. “But everything happens for a reason, as they say. Sometimes it just takes a while to see what that reason is.”
As they passed by a trash can, Evie tossed the remnants of her tea into it. “Yes, I do. Though I’m not completely alone anymore. I got a dog. Who I should probably be walking right now, but I was at work earlier.” She shrugged a bit.
Yang missed Zwei, another reason to maybe move back home. “We should do a doggy date, if I could convince Ruby to let me take Zwei out. He’s a corgie that’s way too smart for his own good.”
She got the door for Evie when they got there, not really thinking about it.
“I think Eden would like to make a new friend. Hopefully Zwei can handle an overly energetic husky.” Evie was working with Eden on that, but sometimes dogs just got excited and there wasn’t much to be done about it. She gave Yang a thankful little smile as she stepped inside.
Remembering Evie’s order, Yang was careful to not mix it up with Blake’s. That would be embarrassing and unnecessarily hurtful. She didn’t want to do either thing. She wanted Evie to feel better, and to maybe open up to her. While they were on less thin ice than before, she didn’t think they could be called friends again just yet.
And Yang wanted that.
She set the order on the table and took a seat.
It was nice to see that Yang remembered what she typically drank. It was still difficult sometimes, but Evie had at least moved on emotionally. She’d just closed up for the most part since their breakup. Except for when she was around Freya, but that was something she was trying to ignore.
“Thank you for the tea,” she said with a smile as she took it in hand.
“You’re welcome, anytime,” Yang said. She wrapped her hands around her coffee, studying her with a practiced eye and waiting for her to talk. No pressure.
Evie sipped her tea, taking some moments to figure out how to best explain the state of her dreams. Doing that would better explain her behavior in this life thanks to the emotional bleedover. Finally, she brushed her hair behind her ear and looked at Yang.
“Things have slowly been unraveling in my dreams. Jacob is running around acting on impulse. He broke the Bank of England once, so badly that had I not acted to fix his mistakes, England’s economy would have completely tanked. I’ve been cleaning up his messes, and it’s been irking me in the dreams. Then, there was Henry. I’m falling for him in the dreams. He shares my passion for research and history, and we’ve been taking some missions together of late.” She paused to sip her tea.
“But there was a recent mission where I made a mistake and jeopardized the mission. Henry and I were infiltrating a Templar stronghold to steal a map we needed in order to keep the Piece of Eden we were hunting from falling into their hands. However, during the mission, Henry got captured. I let my personal feelings compromise the mission. I abandoned the initial mission and rescued Henry. But in the process, I let the Templars get that map and discover where the Piece of Eden is. I may have doomed London, and possibly even the whole of England, to suffer.” She sighed heavily. “All my life, both here and in the dreams, I adhered to my father’s teachings. And I ignored them and now I know why he instilled them in me. An Assassin should never have to choose between duty and love because our duty comes above all else.”
Yang was the last person to ask about choosing between duty and love. She’d always put Ruby, Blake and Weiss first, even if she liked to think she’d do the right thing when it came down to it. She’d never been faced with that so she couldn’t say. But her family was capable. Sometimes...
“Those are the dreams though. And what works there doesn’t always work here. Sometimes you have to be willing to trust others to handle it on their own. Sometimes you have to be willing to find a third way.”
“Dreams or not, it doesn’t stop my anger at myself from bleeding over for choosing to be selfish instead of selfless. Now all I do is yell at and fight with Jacob and Henry. We don’t work together anymore because I don’t trust myself to do the right thing when they’re around. Just like I don’t trust myself to do the right thing here if I get close to people.” Evie sighed.
“Maybe your dream self needs to sit down and talk to them. Keeping things bottled up never works well.” Yang smiled ruefully. “Not that she’s able to listen to us. She’ll just do what she’s going to do. So what you should do is do things differently in your real life. Otherwise you’re just going to trip all over yourself and make it worse. So. Talk to people!”
“Keeping things bottled up is what I do. It’s how I was raised, and it’s how I am. I don’t think that’s ever going to change.” Opening up wasn’t always easy, especially where her feelings were concerned. Evie didn’t exactly wear her heart on her sleeve. Maybe under the right circumstances and with the right person, she’d open up more easily. But as it was, it was nearly impossible for her to see that ever happening.
“Well, no one is asking you to change… But letting people in isn’t bad. It just means you’re human.” And being human meant being vulnerable, be it to bullets or emotional distress. Something that Evie was dealing with at the same time, honestly.
“Perhaps, but I also have a Creed I live by. My duty to protect comes before anything else. I’m not the best when it comes to emotions. They get in the way more often than not.” Not to mention it also made people a target if Evie’s enemies discovered who she cared about most.
“Well, other than like… occasional dreams crossing over, you don’t have anything to protect against,” Yang pointed out. Most events seemed to last a few days to a week. “Are you going to be constantly vigilant until a bunch of Templars show up?”
She didn’t consider who might be enemies in this world, but she also didn’t think Evie would be attracted to people who couldn’t protect themselves.
“I must always be vigilant. Even if the Templars don’t show up, I am counter-terrorism for MI6. I must be vigilant for terrorists. And that’s outside of what happens here in Orange County.” Unlike most people in the world, Evie was on the front lines of the war against terrorism. She’d served in Afghanistan and saw it all first-hand. Those things always stayed with a person.
“Yeah, I get that. But most people don’t cut themselves off from friends and family when they do stuff like that. Usually it’s kind of the opposite. You need us to ground you so you remain human.” Yang was pushing boundaries, with the ‘us’, but this was too important.
“I’m not cutting myself off from friends and family. My brother is the only family I have left. I hate being so far away from him, but I have a job to do.” Family was a sore spot for Evie, considering she had none left. She’d never known her mother, and her father was dead. Her grandparents were gone as well. Jacob was all she had as far as family went.
“You’ve got friends. Freya?” It might be some kind of thin ice, but she was stepping out onto it and hoping it didn’t crack underneath her feet.
“Freya could be questionable after I jumped out of the window on her. I fucked up there, but I can’t exactly undo it.” Evie rubbed her forehead. “I want to make things not awkward between us.” Just to make that clear.
“To quote a great man.” The Genie from Aladdin, “Tell her the truth.” Yang put her hand over her chest. “In my dreams, all I want is for people to come back to me, and talk to me. Give me a chance. Tell her the truth, and let her decide. Because the thing is, your friends can make their own choice, and if they want to put themselves in harms way for you, they’ll do it, whether you want them to or not.”
“They’re more in danger of me putting myself in harm’s way for them than the other way around. But yes, I should just apologize profusely and tell her I’m an idiot for jumping out of the window instead of just taking it like a normal adult should.” Evie was refusing to vocally acknowledge any personal feelings on the matter because to her, those only complicated things and made her job harder to do.
Yang couldn’t help the smile that crossed her face. She leaned her chin on her hand, “Apologize profusely and tell her you’re an idiot over and over again. That’ll help. But just talk to her, normally!”
At least one of them might get somewhere, Yang thought.
“I already know I’m not going to live it down. I’m just glad my brother’s not here. I’d have broken his nose more than once already.” Evie sighed and sipped at her tea. She liked to pride herself on being a mature adult, but jumping out of the window on Freya? Suggested she was completely the opposite.
“Was the kiss good at least?” Yang asked, unable to help herself.
Evie gave Yang a little look. “As far as mistletoe-induced kisses not done by our own free will? Yeah, I guess.” Not that Freya was a bad kisser because she wasn’t, but Evie would rather have had a kiss done of their own choice, not because some stupid plant made them kiss.
“Well. Yeah. It was nice when it happened to me, besides you know, that part.” And the fact that it wasn’t Blake. But that was probably a good thing. Yang wanted to kiss Blake, but she wanted it to be because Blake was open to the idea.
Did it make her a bad person that she was still hung up? That she couldn’t let go?
“So you know what you gotta do now, right?” Yang raised her eyebrows. “You gotta kiss her for real. Without any mistletoe. Just to compare. A real first kiss.”
“No, I don’t have to kiss her. What I have to do is not ruin our friendship anymore than I already have.” Evie hoped that she and Freya could get past the awkwardness and go back to being the friends that they had been before the mistletoe had come along.
“What if she wants you to kiss her,” Yang suggested. “What if she feels the same?”
But she knew how burned Evie felt, so she didn’t push any further, even if she wanted to see her happy and not alone. Maybe she needed to see that, to know that she hadn’t broken Evie forever.
“You’re presuming a lot, Yang,” Evie pointed out. Just because the mistletoe had forced them to kiss didn’t mean there were actual feelings. And Evie’s dreams had showed her being an Assassin was a very bad thing when romantic feelings got involved. She had to choose between love and her duty, and she’d chosen her duty in the dreams. And after the break up with Yang, she’d chosen her duty here as well.
“Yeah, I probably am. But wouldn’t you rather know for sure? I mean…” Yang waved her hands. “It’s kind of obvious you’re sweet on her.”
She pointed at Evie’s face, as if that actually explained everything.
“And ruin our friendship even more? No. I’m already a wrecking ball doing damage control. I don’t need to make it worse.” Evie was desperately trying to avoid the whole feelings thing. She didn’t want a repeat of her dreams. Or worse, a repeat of jumping out of the window.
“Evie, the thing about feelings is we don’t always get to control them. Sometimes they just… happen.” Even if Yang literally felt things more than most people. Higher highs and lower lows and all of that. When she was happy she was exuberant about it, and when she wasn’t, it cut her deeply and to the core. But she didn’t think it mattered. Even with regular people, emotions happened.
“And when they happen you have to deal with them or things just kind of build up until they explode.”
She should probably take her own advice on that last one.
“But when my personal feelings are in opposition with my ability to carry out my sacred duty, I can definitely ignore them. They will go away eventually. Or I’ll be sent elsewhere for work.” Or maybe she’d re-enlist because the world was going to Hell in a handbasket and she wanted to stop it. “That’s my final word on the matter, so stop pushing it.”
Yang held up her hands. “Okay, okay, chill! I’m sorry. I just…”
She wanted Evie to be happy, and she didn’t think all work all the time would be enough, even for Evie.
“I know, but it’s what I was taught and how I was raised in both of my lives. My duty comes before all else. The good of others comes before my wants and needs. It will always be that way, and I saw what happens in my dreams when I choose my personal feelings over my duty. I’m not putting innocent people in jeopardy ever again.” Evie knew Freya could handle herself, but right now her dreams were affecting her far too much. It was safer to simply try to repair the friendship than do anything else.
Great. Yang was pretty sure she’d made things worse instead of better. She should learn to just shut her mouth. And probably lock herself in her room forever. She inhaled and rubbed her fingers on the table.
“So… good tea?”
It wasn’t Yang’s fault that Evie had been convinced by her dreams that relationships and her line of work didn’t actually go together. It also didn’t help that there was so much in-fighting and animosity in her dreams to add to the feeling that she should just work alone since her brother was hindering her, and Henry was Evie’s Achilles’ heel.
“Yes, it is, thank you.”
Evie was probably the last person Yang should ask for advice about her own love life, but she already knew what she had to do. “Great. It was.. really nice running into you.” She hoped.
“It was, though I could’ve done without the literal running into,” she said, making a light joke as she gently patted her injured shoulder. It would make yoga difficult, but Evie was determined to carry on like everything was normal. She needed to hide her injury as best as possible.
“At least it wasn’t a jarring experience?” Yang offered. She fidgeted with the table again. “I should let you go.”
Evie chuckled softly. “Yes, at least it wasn’t jarring.” It definitely could’ve been worse. Like the wound got re-opened or something. “Yeah, I should get home and let my dog out. I’ll see you around, Yang.” She gave her a little smile before she stood up and took her tea with her.
Yang watched her go, the slowly sank down into her chair. She didn’t know why, but her chest suddenly hurt, and she didn’t look forward to going home to an empty apartment.