revenance_rpg | ☆ I'll think about it.

Entry tags:

☆ I'll think about it.

Who: York (

guerriera).
What: A certain conversation about 'After' is overdue. York decides to see if Carolina's ready to talk yet.
Where: Carolina's Apartment - Tram District, Twilight Town
When: Early-Mid morning
Warnings: Season 9 and 10 spoilers for Red vs Blue! Also, general Freelancer warning. Potentially lots of feels too.

The advantage of living in the Tram District was the proximity of that one little dead end alley. The one that seemed to refill itself with crates and boxes every now and then, just in time for someone to breeze through and smash them all. It made the perfect place to toss out the empty storage crates from the warehouse beneath the apartment she'd wrangled out of the moogles.

She hadn't had it long and hadn't really bothered to do much with it yet. But once she'd started clearing the unused building beneath her new place, Carolina realised she had found something to focus her attention on when the (seemingly futile) search for magical jewelry proved unsuccessful. And it also meant that she didn't have to think about topics (and people) closer to home..

She'd managed to avoid revealing where she'd holed herself up since quitting the hotel, but that couldn't last forever.

Lounging out front across the red pathing, Dax and Lela napped in the 'morning' sunset-shine, unbothered by trams that rattled on by and well out of their Person's way as Carolina cleared out their new living space. Though clad in her armor, she hadn't bothered with her helmet so close to home today, and the extra strength boost meant she could shift some of the heavier crates with ease.

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Carolina said nothing, neither agreeing or disagreeing with York as he talked. He couldn't meet her eyes and she couldn't look away. Eventually, however, she had to say something. "At least you pushed." Too little? Too late? That's hard to say here and now.

"Better that than do nothing." Nothing but watch how the cards fall and who else might get caught out as they tumbled.

"Maybe," she said evenly. "I don't know either way." And if she cared, she wasn't prepared to admit that, not even to herself.

Edited 2014-01-07 02:30 (UTC)

"Were you alone all that time, until you met up with him again?" York asked. Did you trust someone else enough to let them in, or did you keep yourself closed off for all that time? Did you let someone try to help you, or did you stew over the mistakes you made, over the way everyone hurt you and left you.

The question did not quite get under her guard, but the first ripples had begun, and Carolina felt herself sinking into her habitual glare. She didn't try to fight it.

"Yes."

When you're bleeding out from head wounds in the snow, emptiness present where once two voices shrieked a cacophony, and no one comes for you, not your team (what should have been left of them), not the support staff, not your father, not the UNSC.. When you're left for dead in the ice and all that giving everything for a cause you'd believed in gets you is a passing footnote in reference to the Project's decline...

That's when you learn the hard way that trust is a commodity that would only try to kill you as surely as Sigma had done. "I survived."

York shifted, looking a bit started. "Well, of course you did. You're the best." It's out of his mouth before he thinks about it and he instantly flinches. She was always the best to him, it wasn't about leaderboards, Tex could never have managed a team the way Carolina did. Tex was great at being a soldier; she cared more deeply than most people could see, but being the best fighter wasn't the same as being the best.

Not that being the best should have mattered. It wasn't about that, someone's value wasn't tied to how useful they were but he could never put that into words, much less do it in a way that Carolina would understand.

"Best?"

Her voice was sharper than she'd intended, wound tightly, but she couldn't help that - she felt as though York had slapped her through sheer force of words that he hadn't meant as an insult. For a moment Carolina was genuinely torn between harsh laughter and shock, as given by the flicker of -- something, anger maybe, or hurt that dragged her away from her propped pose against the wall.

She didn't believe him. Surviving was hardly an achievement, they'd be trained for that. So, best at what, exactly? At failure? At never making a Goddamned difference?

...She didn't want to talk any more. "Get out."

He should leave. He'd messed up everything again, but...she couldn't keep pushing people away. That was what had made her so tense and brittle in the first place. What would have happened if they'd gotten together and dragged her aside to talk with her? What would have happened if they'd tried to talk her down before she pushed them too far away for them to reach her? York shook his head. "No. I'm sorry, but...this is a talk we should have had a long time ago, and I need you to hear me out." And not toss him out.

"You were always amazing in ways no one could ever touch. It wasn't about fighting, it was about the fact that you cared about your team, that you cared about the people who made up Project Freelancer. We all wanted to save our home from the aliens; that's why we were there, but you were the highest person in the program who gave a shit about anyone else. I knew that you'd be fighting even when the Project fell apart because I knew you wouldn't stop until you'd gotten your goal. Even after everyone...everyone but me wrote you off." York paused. And now she'd kick him out.

Carolina hadn't expected him to say no. That much was clear from the single blink she gave him, before her face shifted in anger. "I said, get. Out." She was already moving, not really listening in spite of York's request - she didn't need or want to hear anything more he had to say right now. It was a small apartment, making it easy to cross in a handful of strides. The prospect of her tossing York out the door and down that short flight of stairs didn't seem to phase him, and she could feel her anger swell as she reached to seize his arm.

Even if they weren't in their armor, Carolina had no reservations about the fact she could take him down.

Except he wasn't. He was still talking, talking about her specifically, and the redhead stopped, stared incredulously up at him even as her grip tightened. "And look at the good that did! For any of us!" she spat back, shoving York as she did so - at the wall, at least, and not the door. "Not a damned thing!" She'd done everything she could, everything humanely possible, and simply couln't complete. (A very cruel irony, knowing what she knew now regarding Texas.) "The Project crashed and burned any chance of doing our part to the ground. The war went on without us, York." The war ended without them.

The muscles in her jaw bunched, but she didn't say anything to his last statement. That much, she knew, had been true. And when he'd finally given up, that had been her fault too.

Edited 2014-01-08 05:32 (UTC)

York pulled back, shifting towards the door. "...I'll go. I just want you to know you're worth something. You're worth everything. I never knew how to tell you." If she let him go, he'd just leave now. Maybe she'd think about what he'd said, and maybe she wouldn't, but at least he wouldn't have left anything unsaid, this time.

Even as York pulled back, he wouldn't find himself going very far. For someone who had just made it clear she wanted him to leave, Carolina's grip on his arm didn't seem to be going anywhere.

Or maybe York didn't get to say something like that and then just walk away.

"No. I'm not." Her head shook for emphasis, heavy swathe of hair shifting into her eyes. Carolina didn't look at him, then, even as she stayed where she was. Maybe she had been, once. Her temper, now diverted, seemed to drain away. "I should have been," and oh, how she'd tried, and failed and failed and failed again, "but I wasn't." And the fact he had thought otherwise - still thought otherwise - simply made the weight of that much worse.

York sighed. "It doesn't work like that for everybody." It did work like that for some very important people in Carolina's life and he hopes that they suffer for a long time, each and every one of them. "For me, for all your friends, all you have to be is you. The good and the bad. We love you. Not some number on a board. I - we - don't count things up in columns and decide if you're worth our time."

I never should have stopped looking, but my faith wasn't strong enough he doesn't say, because this isn't about him. If he can make her see, if he can help her heal...he has to try.

That Carolina was uncomfortable was an understatement, because while she knew that York was not lying, what he had to say didn't match any of her life's experience. What was (apparently) normal for other people had never been so for her, and it was hard, so very very hard, to remove yourself from that. And being stuck here, in this dream, meant she couldn't finish what was started anyway. So close, and yet..

And yet, did it really matter, in the end, that they had cared -- love had been the word he'd used, and Lord knows she wasn't sure she really wanted to look closely at that when she didn't know what she felt -- when almost all her friends were three years dead?

So she didn't answer him, hand still on his arm and not really seeing what York wanted her to see. Not when her shoulders were already bowed by the weight of responsilities she'd taken on because no one else would. And because there was no one else to do so.

She hadn't meant to make this about her, not when he'd just wanted answers about their future.

"I should go," York said gently. She had a lot to think about. They could discuss it later, if she started talking to him again.

Carolina glanced up, green eyes half hidden by red hair, before nodding slightly in acknowledgement. After all, she'd told him to leave, hadn't she?

Part of her was still angry. But another part wished, wanted, to apologise. She hadn't been a very good friend at the end then, and she wasn't doing any better now. Reluctantly, fingers relaxed on his arm, before Carolina drew them along it and then away, leaving York free to move as he wanted.

At least she hadn't punched him.

"...I'm always around, if you need anything," York said. He headed for the door and the stairs. It would probably take a while for her to talk to him again, but that was okay. They'd get through this. They'd gotten through worse.

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☆ I'll think about it.

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