Drown Your Sorrows In The Sea | OPEN

[earthborn]

Who| Shepard and OPEN
What| That feel when your boyfriend ain't coming back
Where| Various drinking establishments, and also the Tribute center roof
When| A few days after Thane's death in the arena
Warnings/Notes| Talk about death, crude language, spoilers for mass effect maybe

1; A random Bar, or the Foxhole (your choice):

An hour ago, she'd just been getting started. In three, they'd kick her out of here. Half an hour ago, she'd sized up someone else for a barfight-- and only just barely let him go. There he was in the corner, a big guy with his skin dyed a fashionable emerald-green, daisy-yellow shading to his elbows, and lips painted pink. He looked like he lifted weights and masturbated to Arena footage for a hobby; Shepard amused herself by imagining his day job was something menial, like a janitor, or a sewage inspector. Something too important to give to an avox. Something nasty, and difficult, that he couldn't talk about over dinner.

God damn it, it wasn't worth it-- screwing with capitol civilians was a real easy way to get yourself in real deep trouble. But with every shot she had, it was starting to sound like a better idea. Why don't you slide on in here, stranger, and give her a distraction?


2; The Tribute Center Roof:

Shepard was drunk. She was drunk in a way that she hadn't been in a long time-- perhaps ever. She couldn't remember it ever being this bad, not without the assistance of hallucinogens or bloodloss, without that touch of venom to put an extra whirl in an already dizzy world. She was drunk enough, now, that she could think that far without wincing from it.

She'd been kicked out of three bars today, and turned away at a fourth. Even the fucking pillow fort felt too claustrophobic and so she'd abandoned it for the rooftop and bottles of piss-yellow beer. If she were honest, maybe Shepard could admit that some of this wasn't about how much she'd poured down her throat today. Most of it, really-- even the Capitol couldn't completely kill her metabolism, not this close to a revival.

But even if she wanted to be alone, she didn't really. And that pissed her off too-- so have an angry ginger up on the rooftop, Tributes, chucking bottlecaps and glass over the guard-rails and hating her life. Do with that what you will.

Comments

[pythianjudgment]

An expertly trained assassin. Terezi kind of already knew that, bu maybe not to the extent that Shepard is telling her now. The logical part of her brain is disappointed that they had lost someone so skilled in exactly the kind of thing they needed right now. The less logical part of her brain was still trying to engage Shepard in reminiscing about her dead boyfriend.

That part isn't doing so well at keeping up, though. "I still don't understand," she says, quieter--like someone staring at a puzzle and trying to talk themselves through understanding it. "I get the vigilante thing. I totally get that, but..." She trails off, trying to think at it from some other angle that might reach that conclusion. She finds nothing.

"Bad people don't deserve good things. Or good thoughts about them, religious or otherwise."

[earthborn]

"He was praying for himself."

She remembered it so clearly, sunlight burning orange and bright with fore-glass reflections through the window. The smell of Eezo in the air, Nassana's mercs scattered everywhere, like discarded dolls. His head was bowed over folded hands almost before she had drawn her gun-- It had happened so fast.

"Bad people... Good people... It's not that easy to just split people into the two groups. Life isn't about what anybody deserves," Shepard looked up at Terezi and considered her, the proportions of her face, the narrowness of her hips, "Y'know, sometimes I forget just how young you are. You live long enough, maybe you'll grow out of that attitude. Or, hell, maybe not. Garrus never did."

[earthborn]

She tilts her head up at him and looks, examining the tilt of his hair and the honesty in his voice until looking turns into staring. What a thing of contradictions is James Barnes.

"Stay?" It feels like a lot to ask-- she remembers, quite intimately, what it was to find him skittish. Like a dog who was just moments away from fear-biting, willing to please but uncertain of the consequences, "I think... It's better not to be alone."

[pythianjudgment]

"Oh."

He was praying for himself... Did he consider himself wicked? That seems bizarre to her. He wasn't a bad person. She could tell as much even from what little interaction she had with him. She was just mulling over that conclusion, when she hears Shepard's chiding of her classifications. Her ears burn at the embarrassment, but she bristles rather than hide her face.

"I'm not that young. And I don't think it's a bad attitude to have. Life should be about what everyone deserves. If there's no one who thinks like that, then what? We just let everyone do as they want and the consequences will happen if they happen? Nothing is ever going to change if we leave it up to chance like that."

[earthborn]

"Then what do people like me deserve, huh? I've killed so many people. Most of them didn't have to die-- maybe I could've talked 'em down. Maybe. I could have warned them," She doesn't believe it to be true, of course. And, even if she did, Shepard couldn't live like that, couldn't look back at the past and tally up her sins and keep breathing, "I'm not saying there shouldn't be consequences for people's choices, but it's not about what you deserve. Life just doesn't work like that. The Universe doesn't care about somebody's injured sense of right and wrong."

But she could lie to herself and say it didn't matter.

"What does it take before somebody's a bad person in your eyes, Pyrope? Where's the line, and why do you get to decide?"