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Mingle - Emergency Potluck

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WELCOME POTLUCK

Greetings, residents! Those more observant sorts among you may have noticed a large influx of very crowded ferries. In order to welcome our new residents en masse, Town Hall is holding a potluck in Town Square. Please bring a dish if you are able and make a new friend!

All of our newest arrivals need only bring themselves. We look forward to welcoming you all into our community, and may your lanterns always be lit.

This event is open to all! In light of our new influx of prospective players following the Great Sail Migration, we've decided to offer a small public event to tide everyone over until the TDM this weekend.

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She's died, they say. Of course she has. So many times now in so many awful ways, she feels nothing but hollow regret. She's encouraged to go to a bank, to register herself. To get a job. She doesn't. There's free housing. So she avoids it, not wanting anyone to know her location. Ava does what she knows best, and hides.

Sleeping fitfully where she can, she makes it through a few days. Before the hunger hits.

The advertised potluck sounds like a trap. But one she tentatively checks out, because invisibility means nobody has to know she's there at all. If she can steal a few bites...

But there's at least one face she recognizes. Still hiding behind the table, there's a hushed and urgent, "Lieutenant."

Nothing terrible has happened as a result of her showing her face here, and she has managed to get herself a plate laden with hearty and unobjectionable food. Tayrey's calm, or at least as calm as she's going to get, when she hears that urgent whisper.

She drops her fork with a clatter, and her hand hangs frozen above the plate. That's Ava Starr's voice; she hasn't forgotten it. She'll probably never forget it. So what does this mean, that she's hallucinating voices now? That no matter how hard she tries, the traces of that old prison are going to cling to her?

She will not let it happen, she tells herself. She will not let her captor win, now that she is out of his clutches. Arilanna Tayrey is going to do whatever is required of her in this place so that she can take back what is hers. Her life. Her career. Her home.

It's when she's giving herself this mental encouragement that she recollects that Ava can turn invisible.

Well.

She has to know for certain. Slowly, she stands, leaving the plate behind, and she walks away from the group. In case there is an invisible person who needs to speak to her. Tayrey tries not to think too hard about how this would sound by any rational measure. She just does it.

The fork clatters in response, but there's no further acknowledgment. Of course she may not want to speak with her. Ava tenses, swallows down her words as she prepares to bolt away again. The last she had seen of Tayrey, she had been horrifically injured in bed, in hiding from retaliation. Even if Ava had promised not to be the one to inflict it.

When the young woman stands, Ava hesitates before following, uncertain if it's an invitation or a retreat that she's violating. Away from the rest of the group, though, it's better to handle things with a sense of privacy. Still, Ava remains invisible, only iridescent flickers giving away her presence until she speaks again. "You're..." alive, she wants to say. But she's been told otherwise.

"You escaped."

Maybe Tayrey should be afraid, out here alone with Ava, but she isn't. Ava has had every chance to do her harm, and has never taken it. The possibility exists that she might turn out to be a contract-breaker, but with no supporting evidence for it, she has no reason to make that assumption. When she hears Ava speak again, therefore, and sees those telltale flickers, the emotion she feels is closest to relief.

This is real, and not inside Tayrey's own mind, and that means she's not as far gone as she fears.

'I escaped,' she echoes. 'Those wounds I was dealt - I wouldn't have survived them. But what I did-' she's still claiming sole responsibility, because Fever is here and Tayrey owes her that much, '-it must have released my captor's hold on me. Someone got me out of there, as I was dying. Someone gave me my freedom, and the chance to find my way home.'

That someone is a mystery to her. The white-haired woman? Or was she only a messenger? Tayrey's savior could be anyone from the enigmatic friend who sent her a note, to the goddess Ishirin, whose followers she had always regarded with a little condescension. Maybe she'll never know.

Ari Tayrey has had her liberation day, but what of Ava? Her voice softens. 'For what it's worth, I'm glad you got out too. Glad that you chose to be here. And... I'm sorry that it isn't what you wanted.'

"You... I didn't. Know you were gone. Until that- a woman arrived. Malin. Wouldn't negotiate with the rest of us." She would have tried, tried to claim to be Lieutenant Tayrey. Except others immediately had outed her as having gone. "Crichton didn't-" take the offer presented, as an honorary Tradeliner. Took a shot at Malin instead, and the next thing she knew they were all locked into very literal prisons. Ava's statements are fragmented, too much has happened, and she's still so horribly shaken from it. From arriving here.

She finally fades enough into view, arms wrapped tightly around herself, shaking. "Was going to put us on display in a zoo. Sell the rest of us away. Peter- I can't... I..." there's a degree of begging in her voice, hoping that the Lieutenant has seen him. Because getting out means nothing while separated from the man she loves.

If she arrived planetside for a rescue operation and found that her contact had been brutally killed, she might not be inclined to negotiate with someone else either, thinks Tayrey - but that's far better kept to herself. Crichton didn't what? Didn't step up, as her second? But then what became of Cassandra? Of Flan? Of Clarke? All the plans she had set in motion when she realised she might not recover.

Then Ava comes into view, and Ari doesn't ask any of her questions.

'I haven't seen him. I'm sorry. But that... that doesn't mean he isn't here. This is my second day here, and I've spent most of my time working.' She reaches out, wanting to touch Ava's arm in comfort, but she's hesitant, in case it's unwelcome - from her, or at all.

'Erin's here, and Fever, and the priest-' sorry Father Mulcahy, she still only recollects your number, and won't use it.

She knows Peter would want her to be strong, and it's all she can do to keep from falling apart completely. But there's nobody here that she's particularly close to, even if there's names she recognizes. Erin that she's fairly certain she long chased off. Fever that she's met a couple times at most. A priest...

Ava doesn't move away from the touch, though her blurred trembling makes her a bit difficult to do so. She closes her eyes, damp at the edges. Tries to steady herself. "I'm sorry, okay. I f-" her voice breaks. "Failed. I was wrong."

'No,' says Ari, her voice firm but kind. She keeps her hand right there, steady pressure regardless of Ava's flickers and blurs. An anchor. 'No, it isn't like that.'

There are other people, but those Ava is closer to are likely to be the very same ones that Ari is steering well clear of, still fearing further retaliation, and she won't mention any name without confirmation. César and Watson aren't the same people at all. Same faces, different individuals. Besides that, she's in no place to judge Ava, because even a failed negotiation shouldn't put anyone in a zoo. She clearly hadn't been right about it all either.

'Back there, we... we did what we had to. To keep going. To stay sane. That didn't look the same for everyone. I'm not going to blame you for anything, because you were never cruel.' Others were, to poor desperate Tayrey, but never Ava. She'd been taken in by their captor, probably manipulated, deceived - but even if not, Tayrey's mission succeeded. Not simply, not without cost, but the fact that they're here is a victory, and she's going to be gracious about it.

'We have our liberty. It doesn't matter how,' she says, insistently. 'If you had been right about everything, you'd still have wanted good things for me, yes? I want them for you. So much. Peace and prosperity.'

She hadn't wanted to be cruel, even to those that had openly criticized her. Even when Tayrey's actions threatened everything she was trying to protect. It didn't make sense to her to go after each other when they all wanted the same thing, all had the same right to defend their freedom. She couldn't ever hold that against Tayrey, never believed she deserved to be mauled for her actions. But it did go so horribly wrong after she left.

It's not so easy to forgive herself. She had volunteered for so much of it, had been so determined to solve the suffering with the empathy and kindness that had been long denied her. Even as Tayrey had tried to break through to her, that she had deserved better than to waste away as fuel for an unending nightmare. Words she had Peter repeat, trying to reinforce.

She shakes her head, unsteady. "Of course I want good things..." but without the people she loves with her, it's hard to see a way forward. Her self worth has been beaten so far down by her inability to fix anything, she feels the bottom threatening to give way and sink her deep back into the grave of depression. Still, she mentally claws and grasps at anything around her to keep her head above.

"You're not... not trying to escape here too?" Ava had hoped. If anyone could find a way out, it would be the Lieutenant. "I need to find him..." she had promised.

'I'm not,' Tayrey answers, her voice softening. 'I agreed by contract to be here. To make this place my purpose. My payment for that will be to be returned to my old life. To my home and my people, like I always wanted.'

Any other Tradeliner would question the validity of a contract to which the alternative is death, but for Ari Tayrey, in pain, utterly exhausted, death had been a very viable option. She had made the choice to live carefully, consciously. It had not been a quick decision.

'I don't expect it'll be easy, but we were hardly in a strong negotiating position, and at least here we have a chance. At least we're free.' She sighs. 'I'll help you look for him, and if he's not here then maybe... maybe that means that the life you'll be sent to when you fulfil your contract here is your life with him. I don't know how they decided which of us to invite here.'

She pauses, giving Ava a searching look. 'You won't be alone. I-'

It's her fault that Ava was parted from the man she loved, and Tayrey can say whatever she likes about how that prison of a bubble universe was collapsing anyway, but she was still the catalyst. That's a debt, arguably, and Ava's lack of hostility towards her means that it's a debt she's starting to feel.

'Look, are you hungry? Can I get you a plate of food from over there? We can sit on the grass and eat together.' She's guessing Ava won't want to join the busy gathering.

Ari says they're free, and Ava doubts. But without her husband, none of it matters. She's not happy anywhere knowing he's potentially trapped elsewhere. Not knowing if he's alive or safe.

"I don't want to go back," Ava whispers shamefully. Not to her home world where half the population had been obliterated, nor to the human zoo display that awaited them. She has nowhere but here. The choice really hadn't been much of one at all.

"But I..." she's overwhelmed by the sense that she failed everyone back on the ship. That she urgently needed to get back to keep fighting. Skulduggery had said he expected it of her, if she managed to get out. Come back for the rest that hadn't. She had promised to protect Fio and Darcy, and here she was without either.

Except she must have died in the process. Maybe there was truly nothing she could do, after all. Just as useless in the end as-

She sways weakly on her feet, the movement fractured. And then nods, sitting in the grass in a slump. Ari is correct that she much rather stay away from the crowd. "A bit." A lot, but the idea of eating too much makes her nauseous.

Tayrey takes that firm tone again. 'You don't have to go anywhere right now. Or make any decisions. Not until you've had a decent meal and a good night's sleep and you can consider it all properly.' Not that she takes her own advice; Ari barely slept in that tavern, and has been spending all her time looking for a job and then working at it. She knows, however, that her way isn't the healthiest way, so she gives Ava an encouraging smile. 'Wait right here, I'll get us something.'

She heads back over to the tables, and puts small quantities of all the foods she's tried on a plate for Ava. That means it's all vegetarian, but on the upside, there's no waste. Anything Ava doesn't want, Ari can have.

'Here-' she hands the plate over, sitting down on the grass across from the other woman. 'Try to eat at least a little. It'll help - and it's all really fresh!'

There's comfort in the firm tone, reassurance that no decisions or actions have to be taken now. Now that her body does indeed require food and sleep, it's harder to power through the lack of.

She plucks at the grass, idly twirling blades between her fingertips, waiting until Ari returns. Luckily nobody else seems to glance her way, or if they do they don't approach. Run her off. Ava manages a grateful smile as she takes the plate, not fussy enough to care about the selection or lack of meat.

"What sort of work are you doing?" After a few slow bites. It seems like Tayrey, to immediately put herself to work. Keep occupied and productive. Not Ava.

'Day labor for now,' she admits. 'I'm helping on a building site for now; much of it isn't any more than fetching and carrying, but they let me start straight away and paid daily, so it'll do until I find something more permanent.'

Tayrey sounds proud of herself for securing work immediately, even though she knows her family back on Cardalek would be horrified by the very thought. It's the sort of work that would make them consider the Tradelines extremely respectable by comparison. Tayrey doesn't care. She has nothing here, profit is profit.

'I'm in talks with a couple of mercenary captains,' she goes on to say. 'Pay's not so bad, you get company housing - I'll be honest, I'll sleep much better somewhere safe.' The Oak and Iron decidedly isn't. Too crowded, too many familiar faces.

Labor not a glamorous source of income, but it is one nonetheless and having that control over her own financial situation seems the important part to the Lieutenant. Even though she respects Tayrey for not viewing herself above such work, she's not surprised it's intended for only a temporary arrangement.

But the mention of becoming a mercenary does make Ava wary. She knows it's a purely profiteering pursuit, getting involved as a soldier in a foreign land. Ava hasn't been here long enough to know the complexities of the political landscape, of the ideologies or history that make up this world... and thus getting involved in it doesn't quite settle right with her. But maybe Tayrey has a better idea, even if talking to the captains probably only provided one side of whatever issue requires enlisting mercenaries in the first place. "Ah," she says neutrally, between bites. "What's that involve?"

'Depends on the captain,' Tayrey answers with a shrug. 'The ones I'm seriously negotiating with? They mainly go in for border patrols, peacekeeping support for organisations that don't have their own military presence - it pays less than getting involved in other people's factional conflicts, but I've still got to uphold Tradeline code. I'm making that real clear in my negotiations: that they're hiring a Tradeliner, and what that means.'

She won't do anything against her conscience, and anyone who takes issue with that can't be the right employer for her.

'If none of them want me on those terms, guess I'll teach myself bricklaying,' she says with a chuckle.

Depends on the captain almost sounds like a potentially loaded sort of bait, but not one that Ava is willing to latch onto for the sake of her own peacekeeping. Still it's strange to hear the title used with something other than false and disdain from Tayrey. Who clearly feels far more comfortable to be in a position where she is able to negotiate her terms, rather than sent away with childish mockery.

Entirely understandable.

Still, Ava misses the Captain. Worries. It's hard not to, when her memory of everything after the ship's seizure is a fragmented mess that she doesn't even know how to begin piecing back together. Ava lowers her head, quiet, still picking at her food but at least eating.

"What's your code... entail?" Ava asks, curious. She has some insight into Tayrey's boundaries that she won't negotiate upon. In the specific context of the ship. Not wanting to have her emotional trauma used as a power source probably isn't amongst what she'll face here. She knows the Lieutenant puts a lot of weight on upholding contractual agreements, but actually knows little about the sorts of terms she likes to set.

Tayrey didn't mean anything else by it, because if she refers to her captor at all it's by calling him an evil djinn, or sometimes even that bastard. She'll never again be that excitable young Tradeliner who was overjoyed by any compliment from a captain, but to her, normality is reasserting itself. There are good captains and bad, those she'll work with and those she won't, but they're all leaders, one way or another. They all know how to take responsibility. Their captor did not, and hearing his kidnap victims continue to call him captain disgusted Tayrey. Especially after the Village, when people had latched onto a silly name for Number Two and understood the power in it. She simply doesn't think of him by that title at all.

She's all too eager to explain her Code, though. 'It's to do with our values,' she tells Ava. 'The most fundamental is that we don't initiate aggression. No pre-emptive strikes on people who haven't done anything yet, no cautionary arrests because some planetary council got worried - no aggressive action at all unless harm is done to us, our business, or the people under our protection. We end conflicts, but we don't start them. Then we've got to safeguard life, liberty and property - people's essential freedoms, in other words. So I won't do work that means restricting innocent people or seizing what they own. I will act to protect people from harm, safeguard them and their property and their right to live and do business in peace and freedom.'

Having her trauma used as fuel is a clear violation of her rights, but one not mentioned in the code, because the founders of the Tradelines never imagined that kind of depravity. Kidnap, imprisonment and torture covers the situation comprehensively enough, though.

Oh she thinks Tayrey subconsciously means something by it, by virtue of how unwilling she was to use the title at all. Or more specifically, his name. Given he never received one at birth before he was stolen away. But Ava had been the one to name him, through a dare, and this simply isn't the audience to share that with.

And she isn't going to interrupt Tayrey either, listening carefully as she outlines the values most important to her. They sound reasonable, even as an Earther. But from her own experience she knows it's the type of idealistic thing that leaders would say in front of public audiences and press conferences so everyone could feel good, and not actually support behind closed doors. Because Ava was part of the things that nobody liked to talk about or admit to. It had made Tayrey seem overly naive, at first. To cling to such ideals that were so obviously broken in her own world full of government overreach and a worldwide arms race in the form of transforming people into weapons. Felt like Tayrey just never had to deal with the reality of how things actually worked.

But now she's willing to believe Tayrey just comes from a better society that's actually capable of carrying through. Where things maybe do actually work that way.

Ava laughs, small and sad. "You'd have hated my work." Then a pause. "Were these values you held strongly before, or adopted because you joined the Tradelines?"

For her part, Tayrey took Ava's cynicism for damage. A spacer sees some of the worst of humanity. Warmongers, thugs, pirates - even ordinary people driven to do terrible things as their colony collapses around them. The difference is that people like Tayrey don't just accept that violence and corruption is inevitable. They stand against it. They demand better, and put their own lives at risk to stand against the evil done by others. They lead by example, living by their own values and expecting the same from those around them.

Tayrey tries, even after all she's been put through, to extend to every stranger the benefit of the doubt. To see the best in them and offer peaceable contract unless she's given a reason not to. That's how you create a better sector, you act as if it's within reach.

'I'd have hated it,' she confirms, 'but that doesn't matter, because you didn't ever have a free choice about it.' Which means Tayrey can't think badly of her for what she did.

What about those old Company values? It's hard to think back to being twelve. It seems unimaginably long ago. 'I adopted Tradeline code when I joined, but a lot of Company values were the same. People made a lot of the differences - ideas of loyalty don't match up, for one, and Tradeliners have a lot more restrictions on our own freedom and some of that grated, but the core values align. My father taught me life-and-liberty-and-property when I was very young. I guess I cared a lot more about voting rights back then, and colonists' Charters. Tradelines aren't democratic.' Tayrey shrugs. 'It seems absurd now that I got asked if a Company girl could ever adapt to the Tradelines. The two are more similar than... well, than anything I've seen from out-of-sector.'

She forgets the points where she'd struggled with adapting, because those difficulties were overcome long ago. She'd wanted to be a Tradeliner badly enough to make it work. Now she looks at Ava, curiously. 'So what would you call your own core values? Not the ones someone else gave you, unless you made a choice to keep them. The ones that matter to you now.'

It absolutely is damage. Damaged trust in systems, in taking promises and contracts at their word when the one thing that her compliance hinged upon turned out to be a lie all along. She wants better, really. But it's something she's learned that she has to earn herself, the hard way.

"I've never had free choice about much," Ava admits softly. "Never voted in anything. SHIELD was hardly democratic either, just operating in the space of a country that claimed to be, that I wasn't even a registered citizen of because they kept my existence so secret. But I've always prioritized my survival. Maybe selfishly. But I had lost anything else I was meant to care about, hard to develop values of my own when all I had was what they told me. Even when I instinctively knew things were wrong. Missions they'd send me on. Pushback and questioning wasn't exactly tolerated, I got labelled as defiant and difficult for things that... now, I realize, were very little. Their psych evals would tell me I was simply paranoid, and that I needed to be more grateful. When I finally escaped, I... tried going against all that. Knew that they had used and betrayed me, so I wasn't going to allow it to happen again," a sad laugh, because she's pretty sure what happened upon the Serena Eterna was her falling right back into the same dynamics.

"So I got mean and prioritized myself first, because I knew nobody else cared about what was happening to me. Instead of asking for help, I tried to take it. Nearly took the life of a woman... I think I told you before. How she showed me mercy and saved me. I wanted that to be my core value. To help others that were hurting, to be understanding of what causes them to do awful things. Instead of outright condemning. And trying to help... eliminate the distress. I really wanted to be as good as Janet." She wipes at her eyes, staring blearily down at her plate.

"But now. I don't know. I thought I was doing the right thing. But I wasn't, was I. So I don't think I have any values left."

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Mingle - Emergency Potluck

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