lucetilogs | Post-Event Reaction Log!

[He's welcome to sag as much as he likes. Adele can bear the weight. She's carried heavier burdens for longer than this without comment, question, or complaint. Bearing Rick is no trouble. It would never be.]

I am not...lecturing. I am saying I've been...here. Before. And that I understand. I'm saying I'm not in a place to lecture. I won't. It's not what you need to hear, at any rate.

[He almost wants to say 'I'm too drunk, you gotta be clear on these things'. But. Well, he's too busy suddenly feeling sick to reply; he's silent for a while, letting the cool night air give him some semblance of comfort.

There's nothing to say.

He's too stubborn to tell anyone why he's even drunk to begin with, too conditioned to just shove his problems off to the side. He thinks that once he's alone in his bed, he can stew in his dreams and thoughts, but right now? There's nothing to him. Not in front of anyone, not even the doctor.

It's not important. He'll get over it. Fuck it all; it's nothing he couldn't handle.

It's easy peasy.

Tomorrow he'd return to his snarky humored self. He'll pretend this night didn't happen. That's all there is to it.]

[Adele makes the remainder of their walk in silence, letting Doyle stew in his thoughts, or not, as he willed. She focuses on putting one foot in front of the other, steering this man to Community House seven. Whatever his thoughts, whatever his demons, they weren't hers to know.

She'll be satisfied with getting him abed without a second vampire attack. That would be their luck, to have another run in with Drusilla. Adele shakes that thought off and grunts, helping Doyle up the stairs. Blank as he was the motion wasn't entirely unlike helping a limp body move against it's will.

It was enough to make her grumble a low stream of curses until they hit the door.]

Rick. Which room is yours?

[So help her if he's above the fourth floor, she might just find the nearest empty room and dump him there.]

[He nods his head toward a nearby door. At least he's not drunk enough to forget that much.]

Just right here.

[He remembers for a moment that he can, in fact, stand on his two feet. So he uses the wall as a crutch and tries lamely to break off from Adele.]

I'm tellin' you, I got this part...

[Oh good. No more fighting her way up stairs while trying to keep him upright. She lets him stand on his own once he moves to do so and opens the door for him, returning to Doyle's side.]

You want me to walk back home. Alone. In the dark. When there is a vampire in the village.

[Guilt. How does it taste, Doyle?]

[Wobbly, he looks over his shoulder for a moment.

GRUMP.]

So you're 'quipped to deal with a vampire trying to eat us both?

[I REFUSE YOUR GUILT TRIP]

Edited 2012-04-19 00:38 (UTC)

She cannot enter uninvited. In here? We are safe. Out there...well. You've met her once already, haven't you?

[This was underhanded. This was cheating. This might not even work on Doyle but she is tired, concerned for him, and not at all willing to risk a second trip at night back to the house.

And it's entirely a response pulled from her time as Levarre.]

Just. Let me stay the night?

... [Sigh. He suddenly gets the gist, and leans his forehead against the door, closing his eyes and thinking straight. Yep. Nope. Can't let a woman run off into the night to get eaten by a vampire, could he?]

Alright, alright.

[He fishes the key out of his pocket, and with a moment to fidget he opens the door. Just don't expect it to look nice in here; it's pretty empty—not many clothes, not many sentimental or materialistic things. Bare. But there's a mess of a table area and the trash hasn't been taken out. He doesn't cook much. :|

He hardly cares that she sees his dusty place, though. He just wants to sleep.]

You can take the bed; I've been going back and forth between the couch, anyway.

[Adele waits, holding the expression until he caves. Victory. Levarre may have known what it was she was talking about after all. Adele makes a mental note to not abuse that expression. Or use it. Often. If at all. Ever. Doyle wasn't likely to spread it around.

Either way she follows him in, frowning at the mess. But. She wasn't here to judge or lecture. She was here to make certain he slept for once, and slept well.

And to minimize his hangover in the morning.]

Your apartment, your bed. I will be fine on the sofa Rick.

[She's already making her way to whatever it was that served for a kitchen and getting him a glass of water to start.]

[There's half a gun dismantled on the table next to a pistol; he slides the gun out from the holster he hides and sets it on the table.]

Sheesh, you never listen to me...

[He sighs, trailing off, collapsing until he's sitting on the edge of his bed, holding his head in his hands. And then he's stone-quiet, staring at the floor. He has a hard time going to sleep if there's noise in the apartment, y'know.]

The fact that you were armed while that intoxicated is a little disconcerting.

[Soft, surprised, but nothing else. She wanders back with the glass of water and reaches out to rest her hand on his shoulder. The glass is offered without further comment.]

I'm used to being armed. Wouldn't try to use it unless I'm about to die. [...] Again.

[He takes the water wordlessly, hesitating before he drinks.]

M'not some common street thug who waves it around when he's pissy or sure of himself.

As long as I am watching, you will not have to worry about that Rick. Not if i am able to prevent it.

[Adele hesitates a moment before sitting next to him, fingers laced, hands hanging limp at the wrist.]

You are a solider. It is entirely different, I know...draw only when you've intent to shoot, shoot only when no other option is left to you.

[He purses his lips.]

No other option left...

[He thinks about it--about the last day of District 1, and shakes of his head. Districts from a world that isn't his come to mind as well; maybe his alternate universe isn't so different, really.

It's a mumble under his breath, a half-laugh, as he takes a drink.]

Sad t'know, not even NATO has that kind of logic.

Side effect of being an almost Jedi. [She chuckles and looks over, eyes half lidded and sad.] Were it logic I operated by, I do not think I'd be a member of the club.

[She'd be...alive, most likely. She never would have gone after Unger. She would have hidden and waited. But past is past, done is done, and there is nothing she can change. What is, is. Even in this strange place.]

Not many places in worlds like ours do. The victor is the one with the biggest gun that fires first, and fires fast.

Even that doesn't always work.

[He presses the glass against his forehead, feeling hot. Sets the glass down on the nightstand, trading in solemness for something... a little less solemn. Maybe he's broke through his drunk depression and fallen into drunk exasperation. Double-takes at her when he realizes he didn't give much insight into that.]

They tried to napalm bomb me, once.

...

[Adele sits. Waits for elaboration. Because after a comment like that there had to be some form of backstory. Infectious, civilization ending diseases aside their worlds could not be that different, could they?]

You specifically? Why...why on earth would they do that?

[He makes a motorboat sound with his lips, hands on his knees.]

... I disobeyed orders and went to ground level to help evacuate the people they were trying to napalm.

[Because that entirely answers the question, of course. He looks up, remembering with unfair detail of how it all happened. Being drunk hardly diminished the images. He laughs, low and unhumored under his breath.]

Was s'pposed to kill them all. Ordered to, anyway.

...you were concerned about civilians mixed in with the infected.

[With all she's seen in the ER, on the news, and in her own limited brushes with violence en masse Adele can't even begin to imagine, or hope to understand what it was Doyle endured. Still endures. Levarre did, in her way, but those memories are distant and fuzzed and don't help in the slightest.]

A crisis of conscious?

Yeah... They were all running outside, and I was staring them down through a scope; I had this kid—he was 11, 12, something like that—in my sights, aiming right at his chest, and I thought... what the fuck am I doin'?

So I packed my shit and found the kid. He had his sister, and a few others with him.

[He rolls his eyes.]

I managed to get four of 'em out of the blast zone, at least, before they wiped out the district with firebombs. Like you said: bigger guns, faster guns.

[Violence against children. Against the relatively innocent. That was...terrifyingly familiar, if for entirely different reasons. Utterly different situations. Her experience wasn't on so large a scale, nor was it sanctioned by any governmental or military body. At least as far as she was aware. It makes her uneasy, for a moment. Remembering that.

She shifts a bit, stands, busies herself with refilling Doyle's glass and returning with a damp rag. The glass is offered, the rag laid across the back of his neck. Easier to take care of others than it was to sort out her own mind.]

It doesn't make it right. Just. Efficient. And with most military excursions is that not the key word? 'Efficient.'

...

You're a good man, Rick.

I'm a failed man. I don't even know if any of them lived. Hell, the car might've puttered out moments after I got here... [He presses his hand against the rag, breathing more steady.] The NBCs could've torched them, too. Scarlet couldn't have outran those flamethrowers. Those kids would have been on their own in an infected hellhole, if they weren't already dead.

And I wouldn't have been there to help them.

[He looks at her, eyebrows furrowed, throat dry, searching for his own personal answer.]

... What if I made their deaths just more painful?

[And there you have it, Adele. A huge chunk of his inner turmoil, a drunken desire to know everything was justifiable. A bitter hope that he didn't go in vain, that he didn't give them hope only to crash and burn.

It's really fucked up, he thinks. But he can't get it all off his mind. He's had a lot of nights like this, where he wonders if he did the right thing on a mission, if he was good enough.

But this was a thousand times worse than one or two dead men.]

Edited 2012-04-19 06:36 (UTC)

And if you had done nothing? If you risked nothing. If you had stayed above, obeyed orders, and pulled the trigger?

What then? They would be dead for certain, by bullet or fire. You gave them a chance, which is more than they would have had otherwise. You stacked the deck in their favor, even if it was not by much. You helped them as best you could.

[Had it been worth it. Did his choice to lay down his life hold meaning. If, at the end of everything, whoever he'd saved survived. Made use of the time he gave them.

Different worlds. Different lives. Different circumstances. Eerily similar nightmares. Neither of them would ever know. And coping with that? She can't begin to articulate how she's managed it, because she hasn't. There is no pill for this, no suture, no injection.

Uncertain, but willing all the same, she reaches out to rest a hand on his shoulder. Squeeze it. Keeps her voice low, and kind. Saying what she knew she would want to hear, what may yet grant Rick some peace.]

No one can ask more of you than that. No one can say that you failed. Least of all yourself. You gave them more time than they would have had if you'd done nothing. That is worth...everything.

[He looks down, ghosting a hand to pat hers after a moment, letting out a crackly, short laugh. It's a good attempt, he knows. She said good things, common sense sort of things that a doctor-type could dish out like script-work—not that it wasn't genuine. He'd be a fool to say it wasn't.

He looks through the archive in his head, split down the middle: one from his world, one from an alternate one he was never actually a part of. They both held a lot of regrets. Tiredly, he rubs his face with his hands. It doesn't wipe away the dread or the regret, or the pain of never knowing. Doesn't really burn off any doubts or self-implemented theories.

But it's a start.]

... I don't regret stepping down.

[He says at last, lowering his hands. He's meeting somewhere in the middle, between peace and chaos in his head. It's one thing he knows for sure he didn't regret—not killing that kid. Even if it ended in a worst-case scenario, even if the entire world blew the fuck up, he couldn't bring himself to hate that decision.

Selfish, maybe, gratifying your conscience instead.

But he didn't give a single fuck.]

Definitely not.

[He could have stayed where he was. He could have pulled the trigger, followed his orders, lived to follow them the next day, and the next. Lived with himself, with those lives on his conscious for however long he would have had in his world.

And he had chosen not to do so. That, to her, is everything. That choice.

She squeezes his shoulder again, and lets her hand drift down his arm to his hands. Rests it there. A point of human contact amidst whatever Rick's thinking, or not thinking. Adele has no way of knowing.]

Then it was worth it.

[Her voice is firm in this. It has to be worth it. To him. For them. Because as long as that meant something, her own death might have been equally worthwhile. Even if Ricks' was the nobler of the two. Especially since Rick's was the nobler of the two.]

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