If I'm Out of Line, Just Show Me the Door [CLOSED]

[ownperson]

Who: Agent South Dakota (ownperson) & Agent North Dakota (gooddefense)
What: Unresolved tension boils over
When: Mid-December, pre holidays
Where: North's farm, Northwest Hollow
Warning(s): Excessive alcohol/alcohol abuse, ongoing mental health crises, discussion of betrayal/fratricide by proxy, possible references to past emotional abuse/neglect, others added as necessary



She doesn't mean to get back so late.

One drink turns into two drinks into five into ten and, outside the Oak & Iron's windows, the world turns black and white as night creeps in and snow drifts down from clouds overhead. Midnight is already long behind her by the time the bartender finally cuts her off so they can close up, ushering her out to brave the chill as she curses herself for losing track of time. It's a long walk back from downtown to the farmhouse even on a good day and, between trudging through snowfall and her own drunken clumsiness, this is not a good day. Should've left sooner. Should've been back hours ago. It's just—

Been getting harder and harder to spend time in the house without wanting to scream, the last few days—fuck, the last couple weeks, really. Hours will go by where everything seems okay and then something will happen, something small, something she barely even notices, and everything gets weird again. North gets weird again. But then she doesn't say a word, and, eventually, things go back to normal. Until the cycle repeats. Over and over and over again and—

She just needed to get out of the house. Needed a drink and to clear her head. That's all. That's fucking all.

Her pale skin is red and her hands are shaking as much from the cold as the alcohol, by the time she hauls herself up the porch steps and fumbles with the lock on the door. It's not quiet, it's not considerate. When it finally clicks open, she shoulders the door and stumbles inside, shoving it back shut behind her. Her boots thud heavily against the wooden floor and she grunts, huffing as she fights to get the stupid things off so she can drag herself to bed.

Comments

[ownperson]

South deliberately tries to match pace, rather than let her tall-ass legs carry her ahead and make Carolina have to jog a little to catch-up. She saves that for when she's being extra deliberately annoying and Carolina's let her guard down.

"Pretty fuckin' much. Or, eh, that and just, like, fucking around with gender stuff. I was like, fifteen. Still kinda deciding how long I wanted my hair to be? I guess?" Even this is a bit fuzzy. Fucking memories. "And one day I just... dyed my whole head purple, for the fuck of it. I kept it for, like, months. Even though I had to steal the dye. And I liked how it looked when the colour grew out to the ends, so..."

She shrugs loosely.

"Did the full thing every now and then until we signed up to the military but the box dye lasted longer when I only did the tips, too. Had to stop when I was in y'know, the normal, boring military, but Freelancer never gave a shit."

Despite everything else, she can't say she didn't enjoy Freelancer's lax regulation on personal styling.

[cyansoldier]

"Funny. I stole mine too. From one of the girls in my block. They had us in dormitories. Two girls in a room, maybe three or four rooms to a block, with a common area— like, a living room. I don't know what I was thinking. When I used it, the girl was like, well, obviously that's my dye on your head, what the hell. She wasn't as mad as she could have been, I guess. Maybe because I was so awkward about it. I didn't know what to say, so I didn't really say anything."

Thoughtless, stupid move. Desperate not to be blonde anymore, and prepared to do whatever it might take.

"I managed to get away with it in the Marines. Natural color, or whatever. Which—" she gestures to herself; to her fire engine glory of a dye-job. "Where? This is a little more tame, but I mean, you knew what it was like before."

[ownperson]

"You? Doing crime? Easily busted fuckin' crime?" South says with surprise that is only somewhat played up. "Damn, you must have been fuckin' desperate—which, okay, I get."

Can't deny that a lot of the stuff she's done to her body over the years was at least a little about visual distinction from her brother. Or maybe it'd be better to think of it like— like just becoming herself, that was the important part. It's not like she doesn't want to look like she and North are related, it's just... it's complicated.

"Mine was just, like, from the store. Poor kid stuff. We did that a lot. Or, maybe mostly me, I don't fuckin' know. Point is, it was the only way we ever got some fun stuff."

It got her in trouble, sometimes, sure, but it was worth it in her eyes. Not like she wouldn't have just gotten in trouble for something else soon enough, anyway, may as well be for something she actually got something out of. So long as she didn't get arrested, whatever.

She snorts. "Bet they thought someone in your family paid for gene mods. I mean, your fucking eyes are, like, insane. Put it together and you're like the picture perfect green-eyed redhead. So:" she spreads her hands, like an asshole, "gene shit. Or they were just lazy 'cuz it was close enough. But I like my idea better. S'funnier."

[cyansoldier]

"I wasn't always smart. I did stupid stuff all the time. I was biting people like crazy until I was like, eight or something... You're from an outer colony, right? I always wondered what those were like, as a kid. We talked about them sometimes, but it was..." She grimaces. "Not very charitable. Important, yeah. But not somewhere you wanted to be. I'm an Earther, born and raised. Which, I know."

Doesn't exactly help the Perfect and Privileged and Gets Everything Easy image she's had going for the duration of the Program.

"Earth was... weird. We were told we had it good— the best— but they also told us how scared we should be, all the time, of being found. That really kills a good night's sleep."

She looks over, deadpan, to South spreading her hands like an idiot. "Ha ha. Right. Very funny, Miss South my eyes are so blue they'd melt out of my face if you put me in the sun Dakota." A beat. "How do you feel about the whole name versus alias thing? You know I know your name, right?"

[ownperson]

"I mean, they're not fuckin' glamorous. 'Least, mine wasn't. Novaya Mechta—" her voice takes on a momentary hint of a Russian accent, if only the kind you learn from second language practice, "—was us, all Russians and Russian-Americans. Managed to even pick a fuckin' planet that still gets the authentic Russian winter experience, but worse. North and me lived in one of the cities and it was all fuckin'— apartment blocks and poor assholes crowded around the same like, ten useful things everyone needed outside of y'know, work."

Crowded, a community bunched together and varyingly better or worse off for it. South... isn't sure how she really feels about it. Mostly bad. Being stuck with the same people that mostly hated her all the time wasn't exactly fun. On the worst days, the idea a Covenant attack could wipe them all out was almost a sick comfort (ugh, she's such a mess).

It was North that got the most upset, when they heard it had been glassed. One of those rare times she really had to find ways to take care of him, which... being her mostly meant keeping him distracted, whilst pretending she was grieving at all. She's never been any good at actually helping him how he helps her.

"...but y'know, I'm uh, biased and don't remember it all that good. Dmitri's, like, better with home stuff." Which— right, speaking of. Names? "Anyway, yeah, no, I know you know. Wouldn't call North his if you didn't. I'm uh— I dunno. I'm used to the codenames, that's what everyone here knows us by, but I dunno."

Hesitant, for some reason, to admit how much she prefers her own name most of the time. Why? Fuck if she knows.

[cyansoldier]

"I sort of know what you mean. Again, privileged— we more or less experienced all four seasons, though I got lucky and lived in mostly warm places. Texas until I was fourteen, then in Sydney. That's Australia, if you know it. I don't know why they'd bother teaching Earth geography in other colonies, but..." Carolina drifts off, shrugs. "What I mean is, in school, there was a lot of us. People everywhere, all the time. I didn't love that. I wanted to be alone, but that wasn't something we were afforded often."

Worse when you kicked off your academic career with anger problems. That deterred some girls, but it was also broken out of her quickly. Train, train, train and suddenly you're able to turn that anger into good, healthy physical exertion. Right? That, and she never was very good at the friend thing. Learning to tolerate people came later, and largely out of necessity. Leaders needed to be able to work with people, and if she was going to do anything with her life, it was lead.

"Yeah, I'm torn too. I'm used to Carolina. It's a fine name, whatever. But it's his. I mean, it's not like my real name isn't also his. He picked it. I don't know." She shrugs again, imperviously calm. Today's a nice day and she's determined not to ruin it by thinking too hard about him.

And so she looks at South, instead. Bumps shoulders with her, both aware of the significance of name-sharing coming from a Program so doggedly secretive, and also perplexingly casual about it all. "Mine's Catherine." A beat. "You can use it, by the way."

[ownperson]

"Oh."

A quiet reaction, as South reactions go. The kind of surprise that isn't from a cold bucket of water thrown into her face, some grand revelation like every other she's had to deal with over the last month and change. The kind of surprise that's mundane, if not without meaning.

Still, she almost stalls for a step and has to catch back up with a couple long strides.

"...Catherine." Man, it feels weird in her mouth, far weirder than Dmitri's did after those seven years of disuse because it's totally new. "Huh. I uh—" wouldn't have guessed? Who the fuck would, you don't guess names like that, "—that's actually kind of a mouthful."

Stupid fucking reaction, she almost wants to slap herself for it. Right, like it doesn't have the same or less syllables than Natasha or Carolina. Please take that as a stupid joke.

[cyansoldier]

Carolina laughs an easy, low sort of noise. She's never met anyone with such a capacity to say the wrong thing at the right time. It's funny— no, hilarious. In the stupidest way possible. It makes her wish she weren't so difficult— so focused and self-isolating—during her time as CO. They're oxymorons, aren't they? Make friends and Lead the herd. She could never figure out a balance.

She butts the taller woman's shoulder again, harder this time. "I wasn't asking for critiques on my name. You want less of a mouthful? Make it shorter." Hah. "So. This mean I get to use yours?"

[ownperson]

South butts her right back, not quite hard enough to drive her off her straight trajectory but enough to jostle her a little. No one's more prepared to give back a bit of light roughhousing than a lifelong sibling.

"Hey, look, I don't know what fuckin' nicknames you like." And nicknames are important. (To her, anyway.) They have to feel right, the other person has to like it. "But uh. Yeah. Yeah, I'd—"

I'd like that. Why is that so hard to say? She clears her throat.

"Yeah. Go ahead." A beat. "...and if you wanna shorten shit, just, like, go with 'Nat'? Stuff with the other half's, like... Dmitri's. That probably sounds stupid, but..."

It's just... how things have always been.

[cyansoldier]

Carolina sways with the shove, then rights herself. "I get it. Special bond. Nat's good, though. I—" I like it. Is that weird to say? People compliment each other's names. That's a thing people do. So why does she feel stupid saying it out loud? Forget it.

"—I'm bad at nicknames. Capochin says Cathy, but that's a him thing. Cat's got potential. We could match. Or if you want to come up with something else, be my guest— oh, hold on." She cuts their path toward a broad, familiar building in the square. "I want to stop in the library. I'm out of stuff to read. Objections?"

[ownperson]

South blinks for a second at the interruption and shrugs. "No objections? You're the chore master right now, Cat."

She's trying it out, okay. It's... yeah, that doesn't feel as unnatural as Catherine did, though she's got an eye on if Lina seems to feel the same. Nat and Cat. Silly, really, but... well, sue her, she kind of likes it anyway.

"...Dmitri and me always had nicknames. Barely ever use our full names to each other's face. Hated the program taking that away. Making us match again."

And she hates that she hates that, after everything North said about how her frustrations made him feel, but when she first got the assignment all she could think was of fucking course.

"But we're here now. That shit doesn't matter."

[cyansoldier]

"Chore master. I like that."

Cat, too. The sound of it. The feeling. It ticks some box she didn't think she had on her list of stupid, inane list of wants. Does this make them friends? Do nicknames denote some kind of progress she doesn't know how to measure? If I said you were my friend, would you disagree?

She steps into the hush of the library and swans toward the non-fiction area.

"Makes sense. Anyone would want to be their own person. Oh, hey. Look. This book's about you."

She flashes a book on porcupines common to the area.

[ownperson]

South deadpans at her. "Hilarious. You're hilarious. Look at how much I'm laughing."

The corner of her mouth twitches and the blank expression gives way to her normal, relaxed RBF with the edge of a smile and a roll of her eyes. Lina's too quick, there's no way she can find some other book to get her back fast enough.

"...it really pissed me off, y'know? The way the stupid fucking program worked like that. Took the rank I earned and the name I fuckin' chose. And we just... went with it. 'Cuz what other fucking option did we have?"

The UNSC would've nailed them with some charge or another eventually, once they found enough evidence of what the twins had done to survive, and then the best case scenario was being dishonourably discharged and sent back out into a galaxy where their home colony didn't even exist anymore. With no life experience outside the military. Worst case... jail.

[cyansoldier]

"None. You know, I beat myself up for a long time. For agreeing to it. I entered the Program voluntarily. I left my position— a solid position— to be... used. They didn't have anything they could hold against me. The decision was mine. And I know that's stupid. None of us could have anticipated—" She gestures one-handedly. "Everything."

Your fault. She might as well have tattooed it on her goddamn forehead.

"Then there were agents like you, Dmitri, David. They knew you couldn't say no. They— it's coercion. I'd be pissed too. I don't believe any of them— Project, UNSC, whatever— saw us as people. And, like—" she exhales, a tiny frustrated noise, "what do you even do about that?"

[ownperson]

...David? Which Freelancer is David? York? Did Lina fuck a David? Girl have some standards.

"Nothing," South grumbles, rubbing the back of her head and messing up her hair worse in the process. Ugh. It's not even like she's necessarily proud of what she and Dmitri did, leaving their team behind like that, but it was that, or die. And she was not letting him die. (God. The fucking irony.) "Ugh, sorry, I'm being a total fucking downer again. I just keep fucking thinking, lately. S'driving me kinda nuts."

She used to try and avoid thinking about a lot of things. Easier to handle the bullshit that way. Until there were things she couldn't stop thinking about, like how bullshit the stuff around the board was, and now after the last few weeks all these other things keep slipping through the cracks.

[cyansoldier]

She picks up a book and squints at it. "I'd be worried if you weren't thinking about it. There's so much crap sometimes I feel like I need to break it up into categories and schedule it to specific days." (Not a bad idea...) "So, really. Don't apologize. I get it. It's days like these— doing stuff, normal stuff— where I catch a break. Feel sort of normal. It's nice."

She adds a few books onto her pile— mostly historical nonfiction.

"It blows my mind that people here have lived their whole lives like this. Just— living. Working. Doing their tasks. I hated it, at first."

[ownperson]

South keeps following her around, occasionally glancing at titles but mostly not paying too much attention. "Yeah. I'm— still not fuckin' used to it, I guess. Spent most of that first month just drinking any time I wasn't on some fuckin' building project."

And then once she was done with all that she was just drinking. Either at the bar or around the house. It's only been recently she's started going out to work, first few test shifts with the Bizzies.

"We signed up basically the second we turned eighteen to get off that fuckin' planet. Military life is all I really remember. I don't get how Dmitri's like, adjusted so fucking fast. Guess he's always handled that shit better."

Change. Adapting. Or maybe he's just better at hiding how much it's thrown him off, she doesn't know.

[cyansoldier]

"Might be that he was already prepared to pack it in. Do something simpler. Did you have plans for what you were doing after the Project?"

Probably not, she assumes. And if they did, it probably included some fashion of sticking together. Soldiers are notoriously shit at planning ahead, then again why would you if you could die at any moment? But she's curious. Knows she would have served and kept serving for as long as she was able. Make them proud. Bullshit. The Director wasn't eyeing her to admire her— he was waiting for the right moment to pull her in.

"He seems like he holds a lot in."

[ownperson]

South almost laughs. "Fuck no. Not that we ever, like, talked about anyway. Honestly, I figured I'd be in the military until I literally fucking couldn't do it anymore. Him... I dunno. Guess I figured he'd stay if I did. Maybe that was stupid. Always figured he wanted the like, partner and kids life, one day."

Replace 'stupid' with selfish, then. Or make it both, that's probably more fucking accurate. She's always been holding him back—ugh, don't go down that train of thought, right now.

"But. Yeah. He's kinda always done that. I'm the big, messy emotional one and he locks it down like a fucking vault. I have to pry shit out of him and even that doesn't work half the time. Drives me nuts." She chews her bottom lip, sighs. "...and, y'know, makes me worry. But I'm not, like, good at helping him, so."

[cyansoldier]

Another book for the pile. Probably picking up too many of them. Then again, once an overachiever, always an overachiever. She needs a steady queue of something to keep herself busy on the nights she can't sleep.

"It's hard trying to meet someone where they're at when you're opposites. You can never really wrap your head around what's going on in theirs. That was the problem between York and I. On a friendship level, not just— you know." She waves her hand. "I couldn't fathom him being so easygoing. It made it seem like he didn't care. Like he wasn't thinking. I wanted to punch him. I wanted him to take things seriously, for once— which meant doing things the way I do them." It's stupid, really. Trying to jam someone into a shape that makes you feel less insane. Stupid, frustrating and deeply understandable.

Maybe she's talked for too long. Has she? Embarrassing.

"If he finds a partner, and you find a partner, I think that could be good for both of you."

[ownperson]

South, without really thinking about it, plucks some of the books from the pile to carry for her. Look, if Lina keeps going like this she's going to run out of arm space and it's not like South's doing anything else, right now.

"He always did make jokes at the worst fucking times in the field," she says, thinking back again. They all joked, of course they did, sometimes it's the only thing between you and losing your cool at the worst time, but York never was very good at shutting up. "But y'know, we never got on that good. Always figured everyone else liked it that way."

York was always more gregarious than even North, constantly chatting, seemingly liked by everyone in a way she just wasn't. There's a lot of reasons she didn't feel like she really fit in on the team and York's entire existence wasn't not one of them.

(In hindsight, that's... probably some skewed perspective.)

She snorts and gives Lina a look. "Right, like it's that simple. Not all of us can go and get engaged in like, a fuckin' year, Cat. If he finds someone he'll have no trouble and I'll— I'll be happy for him, but let's be fucking real, here: I haven't dated in almost a fucking decade for a reason. I'm not what anyone would call a fuckin' catch."

(Meanwhile somewhere in town, Haley continues to think they've been dating a month.)

[cyansoldier]

God, York. She's never met a man who could so succinctly kill a mood and legitimately call it an accident. Bad jokes at the wrong time all the time. She should have gagged him when they slept together. Hell, she should have gagged him in the field. 'You know the Director can hear you, right?' Said more than once, to which she could reliably expect a reply like, 'You know the Director has a tiny—'

Probably better he's not here. She might have killed him several times over.

Always figured everyone else liked it that way bothers her in particular for how deeply she empathizes. Carolina slides her tongue across her teeth. Folds the statement and tucks it into her pocket to ask about later.

"You think that. It doesn't mean everyone else will. Besides, didn't you and CT have something going on? That's something."

[ownperson]

South huffs and rolls her eyes. Are they really doing this? Does she really wanna fucking answer that and not just— flip Carolina's hair in her face and change the subject?

Except she hasn't... talked about this with anyone except that she maybe kind of told Haley that CT existed (like that would matter to her) and that argument with CT herself that didn't really count as talking about anything. North knows, of course he does, he was the one stuck managing her reaction after CT left, but... that's not the same as talking about it, either.

South sighs. "No. We didn't. Not— not really."

Even now she doesn't know what to call whatever— that, was, that happened between them. Isn't even sure you can call it anything at all, when for all she knows any interest on CT's side was all in her head. Wouldn't be the first time she thought she saw something that wasn't there. Sure wasn't the first time she never dared to act on it.

"...I— liked her a lot, sure. Obviously, she's hot. And she was... the only one on the squad that actually liked spending time with me." God, that's pathetic, makes her sound like a child on a playground. "But nothing ever happened. We were just... friends. Until, y'know, she fucking left. Maybe we play-flirted or— maybe sometimes I thought..."

She presses her lips together and exhales out her nose.

"...like I said. I haven't dated in almost a decade. Haven't even had a one-night-stand since before we stopped getting fucking shore leave."

[cyansoldier]

Thought they liked you, Cat thinks but doesn't say. She doesn't need to. "Guess I assumed something was going on because you were together so often. You know, you find your person out of everyone. And you were all so damn—" Horny. She stops herself, not appropriate talk for a library setting, and steers them toward check-out, taking her sweet time walking the aisles.

"You should consider talking to her about it. Productively. I'm not saying it would fix things or that you need to do it right now, but it might give you some..." she shrugs, "...closure, when you're ready for it. She left you. It hurt. Maybe it'd hurt less if you said your piece. But what do I know. If someone told me York moved into the neighborhood, I'd probably go berserk. So. I get it. Just an idea for the future. And you're already getting better at talking about things. Not so much of a stretch to say you'd be able to articulate what you want, then move on."

A brief exchange at the front desk— books signed for, thanks and have a nice day's— and they're off to the next spot. Her kitchen cupboards are a goddamn wasteland.

Carolina looks brightly over her shoulder. "For what it's worth, I think you'd make a nice girlfriend. Carrying my books? Very chivalrous. Someone's gonna be all over that."

[ownperson]

South snorts, staring at a very interesting patch of floor. "I already fucked that up. Fucking drunk called her at fuckoff o'clock. All it did was make shit worse. No fucking way she'd let me try to talk to her again. Even if I did know what to say."

And she's still not sure she even does. What the fuck does she want, from CT? Anything they could've been is out of the question, now, and not just because she's already seeing someone else. Does she want to be friends, again? Maybe. (Yes.) But what the fuck is that meant to look like? How could she ever ask for that? She can't. CT made it damn clear she didn't trust her and she couldn't even argue that she was wrong not to.

"...also no offence but that advice is insane from the woman who also doesn't talk to her."

They're doing great at this.

Onwards they go, bags and books in hand, and South really hopes her ears don't dare to go pink at the compliments coming out of Carolina's mouth. That's something else that was never going to happen, and she's fine with that, this is... this is nice, as it is, it really is, but christ, she's still just a lesbian in the middle of the longest dry spell of her life and her— temporary roommate (jesus christ, anything to avoid the word friend—) is still hot.

"Yeah you're just saying that to torment me because I got a boner over you before," she jokes, because if they get caught in a loop of her insisting she's unlovable while Carolina keeps insisting she's not, she's going to get agitated and ruin the day, and she doesn't want to do that, so. Terrible jokes that barely make sense it is.