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

[warfares]

[ Expert might be a stretch for all that she's not wrong. ]

Do you plan on engaging in many wars in the future?

[bekommen]

Didn't really plan on engaging in this one. That's the fun thing about this place - it keeps finding new and exciting ways of fucking with us all.

[So ... yeah, it's a possibility in her mind, that she might need to fight again. And Nick's honestly very Tired.]

[warfares]

Most generally don't. [ It's not sympathy so much as it's a statement of fact. Exhaustion hangs heavily in her words, and a kind of resignation that speaks of time spent in this place. ]

There is no shame in having survived.

[bekommen]

I ain't shamed about it, I just ... don't know what to do now.

[It's called trauma, Nick. It's a thing you work through.]

I mean, what if they come back? Or - what if they don't, and what comes next is worse?

[warfares]

Live. [ it's said like it should be obvious, easy. Like for some of them the war never really ends. ]

Learning how to survive is different than learning to fight in a war.

[bekommen]

[His answer pulls a thin laugh out of her, 'cause yeah, it's just that easy.]

I think I got the surviving part down - it's what I've been doin' my whole life. But see, back home, I had stuff to do, jobs to work, things to get me through from one day to the next. I don't have a job here - Delight's bar got blown up, and I don't really have what you'd call marketable job skills. I mean, I signed on to be a firefighter, but how often do we get big enough fires here that need my help? Not that I'm complaining about that - we got enough bullshit to deal with as it is.

[So her struggle is really more about finding a purpose - Nick has always had trouble envisioning a future for herself, so stuck in survival mode from day to day, never planning ahead, never reaching for goals.]

[warfares]

Then you're fortunate, perhaps, that this place seems to not put much emphasis on what is and what isn't marketable.

[ Though he's beginning to get the gist of Nick's problem. ]

What did you do before you came here?

[ To establish their baseline, you understand. ]

[bekommen]

Yeah, no shit. [She laughs again, quietly.] More of an emphasis on can you kill a monster with your bare hands, or do you know how to start a fire without any matches.

[Which. The first one she can sort of do, at least. She just still has trouble wrapping her head around the concept of her own strength and the powers she possesses, sometimes.]

Mostly, I was just a bartender. Don't gotta be all kinds of book smart to work that job, just pay attention to stuff. I sang in a band, for a little while, but that wasn't really a job, it was - for fun. 'Cause I love music, always have, and my ex wanted me to join her band, so. I did.