On Any Other Day

[earthborn]

Who| Shepard And Her Adoring Fans
What| The Customer Complaints Desk Is [OPEN]
Where| A lovely little park outside a lovely little café on a quiet day when the sun is shining, just after a certain network post
When| The morning after Shepard's Exposé goes live.
Warnings/Notes| Talk of murder, genocide, cussing, and political discourse. God help us all.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, she's got a rail-thin barrista with a shock of violet-pink hair, and he keeps bringing her coffee from all the way across the street. On any other day, she'd call it perfect— he keeps sarcastically saluting her and she keeps sarcastically thanking him as 'private', and the coffee is damn good in addition to cheap and hand-delivered. On any other day.

But despite the shining weather and the convenient caffeine-drip, she's not set up here with the empty chair beside her own for the sake of simple joys.

Come at me, bro.

Comments

[earthborn]

"It's not as simple as that. They train you first; drills, and endurance, and weapons proficiency. I'm a biotic, so I also had a lot of surgery to deal with, and then I needed to be trained up in that stuff too," she picked up her coffee and gestured with it, as if to give a nod to the amount of time and work it had all represented, took a sip and grimaced for the temperature; too cold, gross. Then she took another, because she wasn't raised to waste perfectly edible food just because it was awful.

"I wanted to be an officer, not just a grunt, so there was school for that, too, and after I had a few missions under my belt, I got invited into the N-program. That's kind of...like extra optional training and testing on top," Twenty-two hour days in the sweating jungles of Rio, attempting to lead a group of similarly headstrong potentates, each as eager to prove themselves as you are, almost no food and water, and just as little rest, "It's about as much fun as the Hunger Games, except it's not televised, you don't usually die if you lose, and you only get invited back to continue the program if you did really well. Which I did. And then they sent me out on missions and bumped me up a rank."

At twenty-eight, she used to look back at her and wonder. It had been something of a whirlwind, even if her progression was anything but unwarranted. Maybe that opinion was biased, but after Torfan, after N-school, stepping onto the Normandy as her new XO under the captaincy of an old friend felt right. It felt like home.

"I wasn't supposed to be the boss right away. I was gonna be the executive officer, which is sort of like the second in command to the Captain. But my Captain had a better idea, and I ended up getting command of the Normandy a lot sooner than I would have," Not the youngest anyone had commanded a vessel of that class, but it was unusual enough to send out ripples, "A lot of people didn't think I should have gotten it, but I'd say I handled it just fine."

[justoutrunyou]

"Well you're still standing." Sandy observed "And people like you and listen to you."

At least the people Sandy had seen.

"So, you do everything you do because it needs to be done." Trying to wrap her head around complex ideas was nothing new to Sandy. It came from being a clever girl without enough proper schooling to beat down her imagination.

"For peace? Is that even a thing that can happen in a universe so big?"

[earthborn]

"I don't know if it can be permanent, but even if it's not completely possible, almost anything is better than the way things are right now," she believes that whole-heartedly, with the calm certainty of death, "People are complicated and the future is kinda...infinite. But eventually everybody's gotta grow up and act like adults or else die off. It's just a matter of how long it takes."

Nasty coffee thusly disposed of, Shepard is back to wishing she had something stronger.

"As for the rest, people only give respect to the kind of person who demands respect. And I don't put up with being given 'no' for an answer."

[justoutrunyou]

Something about that seemed so cool that Sandy couldn't help but smile.

"Then your universe will definitely have peace sooner or later, at least for a little bit with you driving them to it."

She was not however fully prepared to make the same hopeful statement about this place.

"So how do you get people here to respect you? The Capitol people...they're just so into all of this. It's their lives."

[earthborn]

"Well..." she looked around her at the mid-week morning city. There was some foot-traffic, a few bikes or little hovering personal transports that varied from luxurious to merely fancy. Some people hurried, some walked slowly, but all of them were wrapped up in their own experiences. No one thought farther away than their family, their friends, or themselves. It was a beautiful morning.

Or so it seemed.

"Remember what I said about humans and opinions? Talking about the whole Capitol as if they all agree with this stuff is stupid. But they're on the winning side, so even for the ones who might want to, starting the fight means giving up a lot. Revolutions only happen when enough people love their cause more than they love having enough to eat every day," More than they loved food, more than water, more even than their own notion of liberty, that's how much the Capitol's hidden rebels would have to hate the Games, "Kind of an uphill battle, there. Right now? I'm demanding people respect me by sitting here and talking to you about this. I didn't run away or try to hide anything when they put out that exposé about all my supposed war crimes. I gave 'em a day to think about it, then here I am."

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy let the words wash over her and wondered just how bad things would have to be before they had the majority on their side. In the end that meant if the tributes rebelled they'd be the villains in this world.

But the end of Shepard's reasoning had her smiling softly and nodding.

"You're kind of awesome like that."

[earthborn]

"I'm not arguing," Enough to make her grin. Sandy was good for the ego, that was for damn sure. Have to make sure it doesn't go to her head, "Might get me killed or avoxxed one of these days, but if I let the fear of dying stop me, I'd never get out of bed."

She shrugged expansively. Life was too short to waste in regret; you did what you could, and eventually you ran out of time. Some people got more than others, and nothing about it was fair, but it was better than the alternative, which was to have nothing at all.

"You worried about any of that stuff, kid? I've killed a lot of people. I'm not a nice person, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not even a good person. You're alright with that?"

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy looked surprised by the question, "Well...not really?"

It came out as a question because she hadn't considered that she had anything to worry about. And that in itself surprised her. She thought about it a moment more.

"The last arena, I thought I met someone really cool. Then she used me to piss off my best friend enough that they would attack her. She killed Pruna all to try and teach me a lesson and get me to actually fight back." Even talking about it now made her stomach knot up.

"I thought it would be hard to trust anyone after that...but I trust you." She decided.

[earthborn]

"I'll try not to let you down."

Another for the quick-list queue. Each Arena generated more than a month's worth of footage for every tribute, between the multiple angles. You could watch all of it, of course, but only if you did nothing else. Shepard liked a lot of 'else' in her life. But she had her priorities.

"What you need is a... alliance. A group of people who promise not to screw with each other. Take me, for instance; so long as you're not actually trying to kill me, I've been letting you go," Though, at this point, the Sandy-and-Pruna ambushes were getting to be almost a tradition, "You wanna be careful about picking your people, though. There are a lot of assholes around here, and it's a strong incentive to turn on your friends. They have to be smarter than that."

[justoutrunyou]

She nodded with understanding already stacking up her allies in her head.

"I have a few...and I wouldn't betray them. You're on that list." She promised though she couldn't imagine how her betrayal could do much to hurt Shephard. Maybe slow her down but hurt?

"Even Mindy isn't a bad person...she just was so full of herself. Like she's the only one who knows what's right. It's not that easy. I know that now."

Right and wrong weren't exactly so clear in this world.

"I'd be easier if we could all just work together. Even the worst humans can pull together and be decent when there's something bigger and badder to fight against...right?"

[earthborn]

"You'd think so, but sometimes that just makes people even more selfish. Or panicky," She could think of a few very good examples, but nothing that wouldn't involve a lot of explaining, so she let it go. People needed a leader, a figurehead, or a symbol to rally around. Usually that came down to Shepard, and she was more than willing if it would just move things along.

"Mindy's only a little older than you, but now she's gotta do my job," Shepard replied, gesturing sharply to illustrate the severity of the task, "And somebody back home definitely gave her some serious training. Go easy on her, she needs all the help she can get in getting people to fall in line."

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy nodded gently feeling a bit of guilt for still being upset with Mindy when she had tried so hard to lay things to rest.

"We gotta do what we gotta do right?" She thought out loud. It wasn't a matter of what Sandy wanted, or even so much what she needed. It was what would be required for her to keep going.

"I've been ripped apart, dragged around a mangled leg for a month, eaten three times, and blown up. I even had some kind of monster burst out of my chest. If I can handle some hurt feelings after all of that maybe I'm doing it wrong."

[earthborn]

Shepard considered that, momentarily nonplussed by the laundry list reckoning of Sandy's various handshakes with death, then laughed.

"Good point," What a good kid. She'd go far if nothing really killed her, "And after all that, you deserve a free drink, at least. Hot cocoa, on me?"

[justoutrunyou]

Her eyes lit up with what was left of her childhood. A faint glimmer of unbridled joy at the simple happiness of being given something sweet for seemingly no effort. She smiled a crooked smile and nodded.

"Thank you Shepard." She stood up to follow the woman inside and then a funny thought crossed her mind. She stiffed her posture a little the way she'd seen people do in the video and saluted the woman.

"Ma'am." She added sheepishly.