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]

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?"

[1000yearstoolate]

Seivarden actually wanted Sparkle to manage to get them home tonight, since she definitely wouldn't.

"It's gone. No one knows what happened to it."

She shrugged lightly.

"Anyway, that's just one more thing at home that's gone."

[myownface]

"That and all the rest."

Sparkle could sympathize. Even while Seivarden painted a picture of a group of militaristic snobs who couldn't see the worth in lives or cultures besides their own... he could sympathize.

"I'm sorry," he said, topping off his glass with Coke before any more whiskey could end up in there. "Losing everything sucks."

[1000yearstoolate]

"It does."

Especially if you were very priviliged to begin with.

She fell silent, staring at the table.

[myownface]

Sparkle watched her for a minute, sipping at his drink, before sighing.

"That's what it is, isn't it? You went from having everything to having nothing, and no idea how to wrap your head around any of it. And then you end up here, and it isn't like any of this makes any sense either, so you're just going to double-down on what you know, because that's all you've really got."

Which probably wasn't making her many friends. But again, Sparkle could get that.

"You never had to adjust to somebody else's way of doing things a single day in your entire life before you lost it all, did you?"

There were probably gentler ways to say all that, but Sparkle was leaning into drunkenness himself, and his mouth never had much of a filter then. Not really.

[1000yearstoolate]

Seivarden looked at Sparkle.

"I didn't know you would share your insights when drunk," she said, stumbling om the words. She reached for her glass again.

[myownface]

"I have a big mouth when I'm drunk," Sparkle replied. "If you knew, I bet you wouldn't have kept topping up that glass, huh?"

He didn't seem to care much, one way or the other. Seivarden wasn't denying it, though, so he was going to go right ahead and figure he was right.

[1000yearstoolate]

Seivarden figured that denying it would be just the same as a confirmation.

"I didn't ask you to come with me because I wanted to get drunk alone," she muttered. "But since you like being so sincere why not tell me something that's not your conclusions about me."

[myownface]

Sparkle just raised his eyebrows and grinned a little.

"Since I like being so sincere? You really don't know me at all, do you?"

Sparkle strongly suspected that Seivarden would have difficulty getting an accurate read on almost anybody she came across, mind. She seemed... a little too self-absorbed for that.

"Sincerity, I save for talking about other people. Nobody gets to know about me. Not without a whole lot more work than a few glasses of whiskey. I can tell you plenty of stories, though."

Not a single one of them would be true. Or perhaps there would be some truth in there, hidden tidily in all the lies. Just enough to make people wonder.

[1000yearstoolate]

She had been mostly ironic but Sparkle was right in that Seivarden was too self-absorbed to to pay much attention to others.

"How generous," she said. "It doesn't sound like there's much truth to them though. Why so secretive? Do you think I'll judge you?"

She made a gesture with her hand. "And before you point it out, no, I don't think you would care about that."

[myownface]

"I mean... you've already judged me before," Sparkle pointed out. "Like, it isn't exatly outside the realm of possibility. You're pretty judgey."