twelfth; voice (live through this and you won't look back)

[bekommen]

[The dust has settled, the suns have risen, and Nick survived, sure, but she's struggling with what survival in this instance means. So she's turned to her old trusty coping mechanism - alcohol, an emergency bottle she'd stashed away for just in case. She's not completely trashed by the time she starts talking, just drunk enough to feel as fragile as necessary to talk about herself with strangers about things she doesn't normally open up about.]

You know, I've been thinkin' ... now that we actually got time to think again ... how many of y'all fought in wars before? 'Cause we don't really got wars where I'm from. I mean - there are wars, sure, but nothin' like what happened here. Not anywhere near me, anyway - the last war that happened in my country was like, a hundred and some years ago. Wars are somethin' you read about in history books, or watch movies about, or you see on the TV, in the news, happening in other countries so far away you don't even really know where they are on the map.

[A pause; the slosh of liquid against glass as she takes another swig.]

I, uh - I grew up in a real small town in the middle of nowhere, and a lot of the kids in my school had dreams of joining the military and fighting to defend freedom or whatever, but that was never me. I didn't have dreams of doing anything with my life. Hell, I figured I'd be dead by the time I got as old as I am now.

[A whole twenty-seven years old. Practically a grandma, right?]

But I - I had this friend I made here, a while back - he's gone now, but he'd lived for like, a thousand years. He'd been through wars, personally, and we had this mind-link thing happen once, on accident, when Confusion first turned up. I got to see what war was like, through his eyes. It was every bit as awful as the history books and TV reports and movies will have you believe, but ... it still wasn't anything like what happened here.

[She misses Ushahin, even though he was gone by the time she returned. She misses Chris, too, now that he's disappeared. She inhales a shaky breath, and it's not enough to keep her voice from wavering.]

I don't - sorry, I don't really know what I'm doin' here, y'know? I'm just a bartender from Chicago - I used to sing in a band. I'm not a fighter. I'm not a hero.

[And then, muffled, through her hand, before she kills the feed:] ... This is stupid.

Comments

[wormintheglass]

Nick. Darling. We won and you didn't die. That's practically the definition of hero.

[bekommen]

Is it, though? [She not-quite-laughs, it's too weak and bitter to be a laugh.] I didn't run out to join the fighting. Shit, I hid a lot of the time ... I was scared. I'm not that easy to kill, but it can still happen. And - and I don't wanna die.

[wormintheglass]

So did I, dearheart. There's nothing inherently virtuous in being killed. I am no warrior. I hid and set traps; I appeared briefly, to lure them, and then I hid again.

We didn't start this war. We were never under any obligation to fight it at all, much less die in it.

[resistancemedic]

I wish I hadn't. I guess most feel that way. We were still fighting one when I was pulled here.

[bekommen]

Yeah? Bet that must've made you feel right at home, huh.

[resistancemedic]

[She sighs] A little too much.

[toiletseat_girl]

I'm not a fighter. I'm sure as fuck not a hero. But who says you have to be?

[bekommen]

What else am I s'posed to be? Shit, we just fought off an army of fuckin' robots - that's some bad sci-fi movie-of-the-week bullshit right there.

[She pauses, inhales a shaky breath.]

Y'know - I figured my life was gonna be weird as fuck after I Became, but I didn't expect it to turn out like this.

[toiletseat_girl]

Seems to me that this place already has lots of fighters and heroes. And I wasn't out there fighting, I was just helping at the clinic.

Became? What d'you mean, became?

[muchadoabout]

That sounds a lot better than being a hero to me.

[bekommen]

What, bein' a bartender?

[am_i_a_monster]

I wasn't in a war back home, but it kind of felt like I was in my own personal war. For a long time, I thought I would die as a teenager. Just surviving might not be heroic, but it's something.

[bekommen]

[That sounds familiar.]

That's all I've ever been doing - surviving. I survived high school, the shit town I grew up in, livin' with my ma - wasn't easy, but I had something to keep me going.

[Hope. Something Nick hasn't felt like she's had a grasp on for quiet some time, despite spending most of the past two years in a city with a god of the same name and persuasion.]

I don't know if just surviving's enough anymore.

[filmthenight]

I don't know if I could call what was going on back in my world a war, but HOMRA was definitely a targeted group. Nothing like what went on here, for sure.

[His voice is light, kind, and maybe gently humoured.]

Still, I don't think fighting is the only definition of a hero. There are lots of ways to be one. A hero to one person might just be the person next door to another. But they still exist to that one person. I think all that matters is that you try.

[bekommen]

What if you don't know how to try?

Audio

[mightypen]

Two wars.

[There's something bitter in his tone at that but it leaves almost immediately.]

Being a hero isn't about fighting. It's about doing the right thing whenever you can.

Besides, asking and wanting to be a hero means you're probably doing it wrong.

Audio

[bekommen]

I don't want to be a hero.

[But part of the problem is that Nick has never had a good grasp on what she does want.]

[dreamsallotted]

No one gets to live the life they dreamed for themselves. That's not the way it works. It's about taking what was given and making the best you can out of it. You survived. You more than survived. You have not massively injured and you still have your faculties.

You're doing fine.

[bekommen]

[It's a nice pep talk. However.]

Doesn't really feel like I'm doing fine.

Voice

[knifecollecting]

[Jo debates about responding for a while. She knows more about Nick now than she used to, and they seem similar. In the end, she shrugs and responds.]

What, you never got in a fight for your band?

Voice

[bekommen]

[Nick exhales something that isn't quite a laugh but sounds like it wants to be one.]

Only with the rest of the band. That was an uglier breakup than what went down with my ex.

@audio;

[warfares]

[ It's a new voice, level and composed but edged with a kind of curiosity as well. There had been some kind of conflict here? Recently, by the sound of it. ] I was fighting in a war before I came here.

@audio;

[bekommen]

Yeah? Guess that makes you more of an expert on it than me. [She huffs a not-quite-laugh under her breath.] You got any pointers for a newbie?

Voice

[elegant_and_proud]

I have been fighting since I was a child, but I am not a hero.

Voice

[bekommen]

Yeah? Y'know, my ex told me this story one time, some lit professor she had for a class, about how this whole class was about heroism in literature, and he'd said that you had to be willing to die for a cause to be considered a hero. If that's what it takes, then fuckin' count me out.