A Bar in Baltimore, Saturday Evening

[myownface]

If anybody were to ask Sparkle, he'd happily tell them that the last person he ever figured he'd be going for drinks with was Seivarden. Like. Ever. He'd also admit that he'd put more time than he had ever figured he would into picking a bar they could both probably enjoy, something with live blues music on Saturdays that still didn't get too rowdy. He had no idea what kind of music Seivarden liked if she even did, admittedly. Mostly he just wanted some sort of guaranteed background noise, in case whatever drunken conversation they had turned into something weird.

They lived on Fandom Island. That was always a pretty good possibility.

"Huh," he said as he stepped in and looked around for an empty table. "Cozy."

It was that sort of bar that always kind of felt like it was being lit by the streetlights outside, with the occasional neon sign or dim lamp doing the rest of the work, though the light on the singer at the stage was doing wonders to brighten it up the slightest bit, too.

"What do you think, Seivarden? How's this for tonight's drinking establishment?"

All the other places Sparkle knew were gay bars and dance clubs. So.

[OOC: For one!]

Comments

[myownface]

"Never been to any of those stations," Sparkle mused, taking another mouthful. "Been to a few more questionable cantinas in my roommate's galaxy, but I think you'd probably like those even less than the dance clubs."

Unless Seivarden liked Twi'lek dancers.

And let's be real, who didn't like Twi'lek dancers?

[1000yearstoolate]

"Oh? Why?" Seivarden could guess, but why not let Sparkle explain? She smiled, enjoying the effects of the alcohol.

[myownface]

Sparkle made an amused snorting sound.

"The kind of bar that's more worried about entertaining its patrons than it is about, like, cleaning the glasses you're drinking out of?" He grinned and took another mouthful of whiskey. "Come on, seriously, you'd hate it. It's great."

[1000yearstoolate]

"You're right, I'd hate it," Seivarden said, filling up Sparkle's glass. "I'm glad we're here instead."

[myownface]

Sparkle blinked down at the glass, and then sighed, though he was grinning a bit.

So much for topping that off with Coke, huh?

"It's a nice place so far," he decided. "I'm liking the music. Very groovy."

[1000yearstoolate]

"I have no idea what groovy means," Seivarden said. "I assume it's good at least?"

She emptied her second glass and reached for the bottle to fill it up. "It's strange though, I understand people here much better than when I woke up from the suspension pod. Maybe it's a multiverse thing? Because I really couldn't, they didn't make sense at all, and my implants were to old so station couldn't translate, although it might just have been that horrible, provincial place, you should have seen the bars, they might have been to your taste."

[myownface]

"Groovy, you know? Like..." He wiggled a little in his seat, to the beat of the music. "Like, when you... I don't know. Groove."

Very helpful, Sparkle.

"But... I mean, that sounds like a multiverse thing to me, you know? We've got people from so many different realities, times, galaxies, different universes, and I haven't met a single one I can't just sit down and talk to, bullshit with over drinks, that sort of thing. Got a life goal of drinking in seedy bars anywhere I can, though."

Which, knowing his luck, would turn into a life goal of being shot at in seedy bars everywhere, too.

[1000yearstoolate]

Seivarden just looked at Sparkle wiggling. She clearly didn't get it.

"That's... good. Fuck, I hated that, not being able to understand what anyone said. It gets... complicated."

She straightened herself a little. "But I'm sure I could find you plenty of bad bars in my universe. Especially outside the Radch. They are worse there... But I can't go back, so..."

She took a sip again, deliberately trying not to drink too fast now.

[myownface]

"So," Sparkle agreed, as if that on its own was enough of a point, right there. "Hey. Maybe someday. Fandom never holds on to anybody forever. Not really."

[1000yearstoolate]

"I hope you're right," Seivarden replied. "Not that I have much to go back to. You know, I can't get my old job back because my aptitude data is out of date, and I know I did lose my ship, but there should be something better..."

She shook her head, reaching for her glass again.

"Let's talk about something else. Tell me something about yourself."

[myownface]

Sparkle was taking mental notes, here.

Lost her ship. Lost her everything. Thrown out of time...

"About me, huh?" He pursed his lips a moment, and then laughed. "God, what even is there to me? I mean, been on the island since I was like fifteen? Keep ending up back there. By choice. Stupid, right?"

[1000yearstoolate]

"You must have a reason," Seivarden said, raising an eyebrow. "I can't imagine what your home is like if you prefer Fandom."

[myownface]

"Home's fine." Sparkle shrugged and downed a rather large swig of whiskey. "Home's... like. It's like Baltimore, sort of. Big Earth city. It's fine. Cold in the wintertime, though."

[1000yearstoolate]

Sparkle didn't seem to want to talk about himself, Seivarden had noted by now. It wasn't much that she could do about that, though, but it would have talking a bit easier.

"Space stations are more comfortable, I suppose," she said with a shrug. "Good climate, Station makes everything work. I'm talking about Radchaai ones of course. Even if the provincial ones are terrible in other ways. And frankly, they can be a bit boring. What do you do during the cold winters?"

[myownface]

Sparkle laughed. It wasn't even necessarily a genuine laugh. It was rough around the edges, a little sharp. He washed it down with another mouthful of whiskey. A bigger mouthful of whiskey.

It burned. It was a welcome burn.

"During the cold winters, you stay warm, or you die. For some people, that's almost a full time job all on its own."

Almost, but not entirely, and the sort of endless nothing that he'd had to fill his time during those hardest winters had led to him making some stupid choices. Boredom was almost as bad as desperation, in those times. At least people understood desperation. They never seemed to be able to relate to the maddening boredom that came in those hours not actively spent just surviving.

Of course they couldn't.

[1000yearstoolate]

Seivarden was at this point too drunk to pick up on the unspoken things there, so she said:

"That must be horrible. At least Fandom doesn't get that bad, does it?"

She topped up Sparkle's glass.

"I had to stay on a planetside in what was almost an ice age once. They hadn't gotten started with the terraforming yet. Of course, we could get the ancillaries to do the hard work, they don't care, but still, I was really happy to leave. The ship had just picked up some cheerful songs too. It always kept doing that, and for some reason that icy place liked happy music."

[myownface]

Sparkle sighed at the glass, and then looked at his untouched can of Coke. He was strongly starting to suspect that Seivarden was trying to get him drunk, now.

"Music's a good way to pass the time," he noted. "It's why people come to places like this, with the live band and all. If you find music you can relate to, and people you can share that with, that can mean a lot to people."

Or ships, apparently.

[1000yearstoolate]

"I suppose you're right, and I generally didn't mind it," Seivarden said. "I do like music."

And yes, Sparkle's conclusion was correct.

"We always suspected the medic chose bodies with good voices for One Esk, or everyone serving there would have ended up trying to strangle her." She paused, added: "Not literally. We don't strangle medics."

Just in case Sparkle was going to misunderstand things here.

[myownface]

"I figured," Sparkle said, smiling wryly. "Strangling your medics would be kind of unhelpful if you needed them later."

He sighed and took another drink.

"Bodies? One Esk was the ship?"

[1000yearstoolate]

"It would, wouldn't it?" Seivarden said with a laugh.

"No, One Esk was one of the decades, the one who liked songs. The ship was Justice of Toren. So, the One Esk ancillaries were constantly humming some song, and it kept finding new ones. I served on that ship before I got my own command. Apparently it's gone now."

She emptied what was left in her glass.

[myownface]

Sparkle was only kind of following along, now. Decades? Ancillaries?

He understood gone, though.

"So... the ancillaries were the bodies? For..." He paused a moment, puzzling through with his whiskey-addled brain. "For the ship?"

That the medic supplied- oh god.

[1000yearstoolate]

Now Seivarden realized that this might not be a good topic. To try to sort it out, she said: "Yes, bodies. They are just part of the ship, they don't remember anything. Prisoners. Non-citizen prisoners."

This might not make things better.

"Anyway, One Esk liked choral music, so having twenty bodies made that easier."

[myownface]

Yeah, Sparkle's mouth was kind of hanging open for another second or three. He tried to hide it with another mouthful of whiskey. At this rate, he was going to need to be drunk, after all.

"I... guess it would," he agreed, finally.

Seivarden, your people were getting no less horrifying, here.

[1000yearstoolate]

She was quite drunk by now, but Seivarden did notice that what she had just said bothered Sparkle. Since he didn't visibly react too badly, she just ignored it.

"I tried to look for the ship. Justice of Toren. When I returned, I mean. It would have been the only thing I'd know that wasn't gone. Oh, did you want some of this?"

She nodded towards the bottle of coke that she had deliberately ignored.

[myownface]

"If we're going to get home tonight, I'm gonna need some of that," Sparkle agreed, making a reach for the Coke. Though in light of the current conversation, he wasn't entirely certain he didn't want to be completely drunk right now after all. "So, you looked for your ship, but couldn't find it?"