lifeaftr | put another x on the calendar [ OPEN MINGLE ]

[But he didn't think it through fully...? Not that she would blame him for that. Why waste your time thinking the ins and outs of something that may or may not happen. As chance would have it, it is a situation that has happened, and now it is something that they have to deal with.

In the grand scheme of things, Carolina can list off others who likely would be a bigger threat, who would want revenge against her, against anyone that she knows.

Not that it makes it any better. After everything... It's awkward and Carolina still doesn't know how to respond, how to feel. Things can never go back to how they had been, even before Freelancer. More or less ignore him? It's still a work in progress. She wouldn't blame others for hating him. Yet...

Her eyes drop to that gun, making no more to take it, not even crossing her mind to do so. That gun. The gun he used to take his own life...]

Probably for the best.

[Her mother had always been the one to have the better skills with weapons.]

I shouldn't have just left you to deal with him on your own. I was looking for you. Ran into C.T. instead. And then that guy who passed out, and...

[And he can't even pretend that it was inconvenient - the way things piled up so he didn't have to pay any attention to the goddamned elephant in the room. Before you know it, it's too awkward and too obvious to mention it.]

[What the hell do you say to that, anyway?]

I didn't...know what to do with him.

Hey.

[Both that firm tone that brokered no argument, yet a softer hint to it as well. All things aside, it likely had been best that he had warned CT that the Director was here. Having that surprise thrown on Carolina had taken her for a loop, and she had been there toward the end. CT hadn't. And, for better or worse, the man was her father.

And the rest?

Not like the Director is his problem. He might be a problem, but they'd have to see how it went. No need to shoulder that all on his own, and the gods only knew what Wash was thinking about the whole situation. Connie, too.]

I suppose shoving him back on the raft and hoping he returns isn't an option.

[Half joking to lighten the mood, and yet... Half not.

Of course, as she thinks about it, it's not like he could get up to too much. Her gaze shifts to that weapon again. More like than not, he'd end up in some sort of trouble or another and require help... It was half sad, that he had expected what, an after life and her mom to be waiting there for him? Surprise. Not that at all.]

But it's fine, Wash. And I mean that. I- I've had to deal with him for a long time. Surprised, but not ill-prepared.

[CT had gotten her used to the idea.]

[Sometimes he misses not wearing a helmet constantly, even though they know each other well enough that he'd wager she could read into the tiniest tilt of his head, the angle of his visor. As such, she doesn't need that extra insight into his body language; it's obvious from the drop of his shoulders and the way his eyes fall that he's trying to reconcile guilt with...everything else.]

We're supposed to be a team. It wasn't the sort of thing a team does. Ducking out when it gets...hard.

[He instinctively waits for Tucker to chime in. Remembers, too late, that there's no familiar singsong in aqua to drop superfluous innuendo, and hasn't been for months.]

[Every time he thinks he's adjusted, he goes and proves himself wrong.]

[That noncommittal noise as those uncanny green eyes remain pinned on him. Somewhere, for a moment, that bow chika bow wow, flickers though her mind, and perhaps Tucker has rubbed off on her, but not in any way he would actually want to rub off on her... She's found her own place with their group though, and sexual innuendoes aren't them. Watching them squirm and praise her because they are scared shitless of telling her the truth about how horrible she is as something...]

You didn't bail, Wash.

[When push came to shove, he had her back. Carolina doesn't doubt that for one moment. It was true at home, and it is true even here. Her sheer stubbornness likely would have had her choking to death on stinking flowers without him. She swirls that cup again, that piercing gaze back to her cup, in thought. The man she had found hadn't been the man in Freelancer. Heck, he'd been even further gone than the man she had ever called father. Just rewatching that same scene, again, and again... Yet as much as he had had a role in fucking up her life, others had paid that toll as well.]

... he was responsible for many things when he was alive. Things that just don't go away, Wash, things that aren't just packed away neatly because they're done. Time might give some distance, but it doesn't just erase it.

[Sure as hell didn't check up on her, did he? She forgives him and tells him that it isn't his fault because Carolina - Carolina, she never asks for the world to give her less of a heavy burden to carry. She only asks for more breadth to her shoulders to better carry it.]

I just didn't want him taking an easy way out again. Just...wiping away everything he did. To you. To Church.

[To the twins. To York. To Maine. To everyone who got in his goddamned way, chasing a ghost that he'd never find.]

[Maybe it's never too late to start doing better, in theory. But one has to want to try first, don't they?]

[Just because the flowers had given her room for thought didn't mean that Carolina would go spilling her guts. She does still hold her cards fairly close, less so with Wash, but she had needed time to process anyway. Still needs time, if she's being honest.

All this, over one woman, and there had been times when Carolina had wondered what her mother would have thought. Possibly punched him in his face, like how Carolina wants to do some days, but... Her memories are those of a child. Stories are one thing, but actually remembering what she had been like? She can't even tell the fiction from the reality some days.

Yet he isn't wrong in his assessment. She would take the burden, piece by piece, and not say a thing about it. Penance, justice, call it what one would, but she knows she's not a good guy. She's just someone trying to right some of her wrongs.]

To you, as well, Wash.

[Epsilon. Memory. But that also wasn't meant to be his AI...

Her jaw tightens.]

I- I don't know what he's going to do here. Maybe he doesn't know either. But, I'm not going to allow him to hurt anyone else.

That shouldn't be your responsibility. It should be his.

[Didn't learn a thing, did he? Just kept trying. Kept trying to get her right, and fuck anyone and anything that got in his way. Couldn't bear to face the consequences for what he'd done - prison, or worse. It was easier to just shove the muzzle of a gun to his temple and go out on his own terms.]

[If he won't face the consequences of his actions, what's that mean for the rest of them? That they're going to have to turn him around and force him to face it under their power instead of his own?]

I'm not blameless, Wash.

[And maybe that right there says more than anything else. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem... She knows that things aren't black and white in the real world, that there are greys. It's not one single action that leads to a set path, that there are many different possibilities. Little pieces that fall in to place, one by one, until that picture is painted. Yet that picture could have ended up different.

What she had found though... A shell. A ghost. More dead than alive. She doesn't forgive him and she certainly hasn't forgotten. Never that. Even now, that restlessness at night remains, haunted by those memories and those failings. About what she could have done better, about how if she had seen things earlier, stopped to listen to York...]

But it should be.

[Turning back to his original statement, circling back to the responsibility. They can't force it though. Like her, it's a realization that he's going to have to come to on his own to actually make it stick. Otherwise, it's not real.]

Even here- he's still hoping to find her.

You weren't responsible for what he did, Carolina.

[She was as complicit in the system, but they all were. They all fought and killed and lied and burned for the Director, for his intentions and his goals, and they worked with limited information and under the misapprehension that they believed they were going to help stop the war dead in its tracks. Obedience colored by desperation, frantic to be the magic bullet that would prevent the bleed-over of the human species fucking itself over and being fucked by a truly unrelenting assault on all sides.]

[A soldier acts, Locus insisted. He does not question.]

[Learning to question was a skill some of them only acquired after the fact.]

He seemed to think that I was...dead. That this was some kind of afterlife.

[But there will always be a part of her that does wonder if she could have done something. She had been a leader, although she'd turned in to a very piss poor one. She hadn't cared that the world had burned around her because she had been too caught up in Texas. There is little point in fixating on it, as she can't change it, but had she not let her jealousy get the better of her, had she not put her pride first, would it have been different?]

I know.

[With that but hanging there although the breath that is let out cuts that off anyway.

That shrug of her shoulders. Considering how Carolina had left him, no doubt he had expected that whatever came after, if there was anything, would be heaven- or hell. If she delves in to it too deeply, there is that niggling thought that he'd never see Allison again anyway... Some scales can never be balanced again, although it's not stopping her from adding a little weight back on.]

He would... Considering his possible last memory.

[As her eyes skirt down to the gun. Should be missing one bullet from the last count that she had done, at least if one bullet had done the job.]

Damn if i know whether it's better or worse.

He's never going to do anything about it. Is he?

[Wash slides the mag free from the pistol he took off his old boss. Five shots still left in it. Carolina spent a few on the Tex-drones, and one for the man who put the damn thing to his temple. She returned without it, but he hadn't asked. Hadn't needed to.]

[Given the way the entire place was shutting out, it wasn't hard to draw those conclusions.]

[Given the way he once felt a fragment of the imprint of the man's memory once self-destruct in his head, lighting him up in a blaze of nitroglycerin and acid, pumping adrenaline into his veins as he arched his back and screamed his throat raw, it wasn't hard to deduce what kind of ending Director Church saw for himself.]

He'd still rather run from it than try and do anything about what he did.

I doubt it.

[Which is her honest answer as her eyes track the motion of his hands. Should she feel something more as he reveals the answer to the question that she hadn't asked? He's stuck in that damn spot, not even trying to move on past it. Her mother was dead. People die. Good people, people that should be alive in her place, but it was the same thing, over and over and over... And it does frustrate her, as much as she wishes that she could just wash her hands clean of it all.

He's limited here. It's not like there are labs just laying around let alone the material that he needs to just pick up where he left off. But, he likely will attend every time there is a hint of new arrivals, calling out her name.... Not that Carolina can say that she will never show up, but it's different.

Her eyes do rise, and she fleetingly wonders if she would have continued down her own reckless path if Wash, Epsilon and the rest of the sim troopers hadn't been there. She had only had one thought on her mind, not caring of her own outcome after.]

I don't think he knows how to stop.

If you and I can manage it, what's stopping him? Hell, if Locus thinks he can try it -

[They were complicit in the carnage the Director caused, and the son of a bitch deserved to rot in the ground for what he did, make no mistake. But if he's going to be here, why should he get to simply...languish, and never realize that what he'd done was unforgivable?]

We don't have any authorities here. We can't turn him in. All we can do is keep an eye on him, and one day that might not even be enough. Not if he starts thinking he can try again.

[What's stopping him? What the hell is ever stopping him?]

Sharkface.

[His name slipping past her lips after a moment. He hadn't wanted to change, had wanted to kill her, and had gone down with that. She had given him the chance to stop, to pull back, to cease. Carolina knows that it could have been her, had it not been for Wash and the sim troopers. Had it not been for Epsilon.

Too invested? An inability to change? Not wanting to? Carolina doesn't know, but she can recall how hellbent she had been on killing the Director. It had consumed her, but no where close to how trying to get Allison back had for her father. Almost her whole life had been about that for him.]

If he even thinks about it- [She'll be there, making certain that he doesn't.]

[And how had that ended?]

[Going down in a flame of self-destructive ash, a comet-tail of lead and cordite and an unresolved vengeance that never got him anywhere. Swearing bloody retribution on all of them, only for Kimball and Wash to exchange a wry look and simply cut the knot where it stood.]

[Maybe he was what she could have been, but she'd never become that.]

What's the solution there? We can't just kill him every time he thinks he can get one under us.

[There is that contemplative expression back on her face, eye brows slightly furrowed as she glances down at her cup. Life has never been about easy answers for her. Just the opposite, although her own personality likely plays a roll in that.]

Only time will tell what he's going to do. Whatever arises, it'll be dealt with.

[Keep an eye on him, as Carolina will. He's not exactly the most soldier-type person that she has ever met, so it shouldn't be that hard. Yet, they could drive themselves in to the ground trying to think up what he might do. As much as she is someone who likes control, who wants to have things in order, she'll admit that she's wasted enough time thinking about that man.]

["Dealt with."]

[He won't venture to wonder what that means. One of those "we'll burn that bridge when we get to it" things, he'd guess. If he had to guess.]

You know I can...it doesn't have to be you. If you need someone to handle it. Or do whatever we need to do.

[As responsible as she feels for all he's done, it was his sidearm once. It can be down whatever's chambered there again.]

[Eta and Iota. She knows her legacy, being that she didn't function well with them... And she didn't function that long either, given that the Meta had taken them. As far as she knows, they'd been destroyed in the EMP. Yet no matter what Wash says, there will always be a part of her that will shoulder whatever comes because of taking those two, two that had been intended for others, and even if it might have ended in smoke and flames, they'll never know. But it would have kept Epsilon out of Wash.]

I know you can. But, you don't need to. Maybe he needs some catalyst to shake him. Maybe he'll need many catalysts.

You sound pretty certain of that.

[Which is...fair, he'd suppose. Wash suspects that no amount of catalyst will truly make the man want to atone for what he's done, but what will?]

[He was forcibly...taken in, more or less, against his will, against his expectation, against his judgment of the Reds and Blues. That had been his catalyst: for them.]

[Can the same be said for the Director? He's personally not optimistic, but it's not his job to be.]

[Does she?

She certainly doesn't feel certain, but Carolina has always been one to set a certain image to the world that might not necessarily be reflected within. Yet, she does mean it. Even if it takes a hundred attempts, she would be there to stop any idiocy that her father got in to or caused.

She'd ask how many times someone can try the same thing, but given the number of drones that they had found... He had kept at it, again and again and again, and just thinking about it now made her frustrated.]

Or maybe this place will send him back.

[It's certainly the simplest solution. Simpler than trying to put him in the ground, over and over, and wondering if that will change a damn thing. If he'll come away learning anything, understanding what he did wrong and how he can't fucking change what's long dead and buried.]

[Wash shakes his head with a soft snort.]

Is that the best case scenario?

[Best case scenario...

Carolina isn't even certain what the best case scenario would be. Likely that, she supposes, as cold as that might sound. The alternative? Tie him to a tree and keep him there? Build him a cell? Shove him underground in a hole and keep him fed? For starters, too much effort, and additionally, it doesn't sound like a good plan for anyone.]

Afraid I'm not really the creative expert of the group...

Neither am I.

[He stares at his old sidearm. Then, at last deciding there's no point in assuming she's eventually going to try and take it, re-clamps it to the mag-strip at his thigh.]

So is it just...us making it up as we go? [The usual?]

[She isn't. It was his to begin with and he'd taken it back. No doubt if she needs it, Wash would hand it over, but she's good for now. His remark does have a low throaty laugh from her. Somewhere, the older Carolina is rolling over in her grave, cringing at that.]

... is it bad that the Reds and Blues have rubbed off on us that much?

[Because that is where her mind goes.

Yet she recalls her old words, about having the best team, the best weapons, and the best training, and still losing. Yet the sim troopers... Sometimes she still can't believe everything that they've actually accomplished.]

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