If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me [Reida, Alastair]

"Nowhere in mind. It's just nice to see the stars."

Reida slapped a fairly sizable wad of cash onto the counter, more than enough to pay for her own drinks, Alastairs, and frankly anyone else who came by tonight. It wasn't an act of drunken negligence, just general apathy. She knew exactly how much she'd put there, but money wasn't worth much at all to a woman like her. Couldn't buy what she actually wanted.

"Guess it ain't fair to do all this talkin' and keep puttin' ya on the spot, huh? Truth is, I can't tell ya if it gets easier. Still wonderin' that myself. Might seem like I'm plenty older than all y'all, but I wasn't like this til the war."

She almost went to take another drink from the bottle she'd brought with her, but instead she offered it first to Alastair. Southern hospitality and all that.

"Still see their faces. Still wake up in the middle'a the night, yellin' their names. Wonderin' if I coulda done anything else. Sometimes it's the little things. See someone who looks a little like 'em. Hear a kid callin' their mama. Never know."

Gazing upward, Reida's gaze grew glassy, as if she were close to tears but simply refused to cry. Perhaps most might have thought she was simply telling a stranger too much about herself, but she was not a woman who cared what others thought of her. If it helped someone else understand their own situation, that was all the reason she needed to share something like that.

"Dunno if anyone there was close to ya. Maybe it sounds a mite cruel, but it might help if they weren't. Keeps it all a little further from y'er heart. Last thing ya ever want is your heart to go south."

Reida listened, despite the distance in her eyes. Even if she looked past those distant stars, her attention was still entirely on Alastair. This was a topic of conversation that she would not dare to treat with anything less than the utmost gravitas.

"It'll do that. Over time it'll feel that way a little less. But ya won't ever go back ta being that kid, no matter how much ya might want to. Don't try'n cling to it, 'cause it'll only make them later days hurt more."

After a little longer walking, she chose a patch of grass near the city's edge, where one could see the ocean even in only the moonlight. She studied it, then simply laid down. It wasn't a matter of being tired, or too drunk to keep walking. Reida just wanted to lay down.

"You'd've been that faceless fallen man if someone else'd lived, ya know. They'd be here, maybe wonderin' about ya, maybe not. But it don't matter. Don't know if you're a religious fella, but I pray about those sorta things a lot. Why I'm here, why they ain't. If it's some sorta way of testin' me, makin' me stronger."

She paused, only long enough to down more of the liquor that kept her sane.

"If it is, it's doin' a mighty poor job of it. But I don't think it is. I think I'm here 'cause I'm lucky. Or maybe unlucky, dependin' on how ya look at it. But either way, we gotta live knowin' we made it out, and I know I'd be doin' all them people mighty wrong if I wallowed in it. Some days it might hurt ya so bad ya can't even walk. Might feel it all crashin' down. But it'll hurt worst if ya let yourself stay that way, let the life ya got to keep go to waste. It'll hurt like the devil, Alastair, but ya better keep on taking every step. If ya can't do it for yourself, do it for them."

Only now did she glance over at her conversation partner, away from the specks of light in the night sky that kept her focused on a single thing. Despite the overwhelming grief obvious in her gaze, there was nevertheless an earnestness to it, one that seemed almost at odds with such a spiel. It was, without question, the reassuring face of a mother.

"I meant it when I said ta call if ya need it. Sometimes ya can't take them steps alone. Lord knows I can't."

The bottle in her hand may have been nearly empty, but to Reida it was a heavy weight indeed.

"There ain't nothin' wrong with lettin' that little boy hang onta ya. It's good to know that lil' spark's still with ya, I think. That it ain't gone just 'cause you've been through hell n' back. Me, I reckon that little girl I used to be ain't around no more, but I don't think I'd want her to see how I turned out anyway. Might be for the best."

Reida finished off the last of her whiskey, setting the bottle to the side as she kneaded her forehead with her fingers. When she got this into her cups, she could definitely feel it, though that was obviously the point. She knew it was bad, obviously. Didn't change that it helped.

"I like to think I'm a good Christian gal. More'n plenty of other people I know, if nothin' else. Lotta people ask how I can hold onto that sorta thing knowin about how the world works, but I reckon it don't really change that much at all. Way I see it, life ain't really supposed to be easy, or nice. If it is, that's just sorta a lucky break."

Wasn't that the truth? Despite herself, Reida's fingers moved almost absently to the patch over her right eye, or rather, where it had been once upon a time. If she was being honest, she'd have given up the left one too if she could trade it for a few other things she'd lost. Her hand lingered for a moment or two longer, memories of simpler times refusing to leave her alone before she returned her focus to the conversation at hand.

"Life's hard. S'posed to be that way, far's I can tell. Easy to be a good person when things're calm, when nothin's at stake. When ya find yerself livin' like this, though, that's when it's a hell of a lot harder. When bein' a bad person don't seem like such a bad option. I figure that's why we end up with these sorta burdens. Don't mean it's easy. Don't mean it ain't hell for us. Don't even mean it's somethin' we're supposed to just accept like it's some sorta terrible gift. But I don't reckon it just happens for nothin'. Who knows, maybe I'm just wastin' my time thinkin' all this."

The phone ringing in her pocket shook Reida from her thoughts, and she had to say that was probably a good thing. No sense unloadin' all this onto him, least not all at once like this. Then again, wasn't like she really talked about all this too much. Most of the people around the Vandenreich didn't see things how she did, she'd noticed. Maybe they just handled it all better, if all the stories she'd heard about before she joined were true. But Reida was a woman who knew exactly how self-destructive her choices were. She knew she only ran from her grief. That was miles better than trying to face it.

"Can't say I've got anyone else. You're mighty nicer to talk to than the bottle, that's for sure."

She didn't know if she really had the ability to call him herself. It was easy to say all these things when it felt like it was for his benefit. Maybe it was just that natural motherly instinct to try and help. But it was awfully more daunting to think about fixing her own problems, calling him and asking for help. Didn't feel right.

Even if the metaphor wasn't especially amazing, that didn't matter too terribly much to Reida. She was, after all, a simple woman. She didn't need him to give her some deep poetry or a life-changing answer. Honesty was more than enough.

"I sure can't argue with all that. Holdin' it all in...ya get bitter. Don't wanna live your life like that. Life's short, even if ya live a thousand years. One day you'll have to look back, and you don't wanna have to look back and feel like ya wasted your time bein' angry, bein' sad. That's...that's no way to live."

What a hypocrite she was. She knew that. She knew that all too well. But knowing something wasn't the same as doing anything with that knowledge. It was only the invitation to join him at his place or hers that distracted her from that particular train of thought, and more than anything, she found it sort of comforting. When people asked her those kinds of questions, she just turned them down, told them she wasn't looking. But Alastair didn't exactly seem to be after anything like that, and besides, she couldn't say she wanted to go back to her place just yet. Nothin' there but whiskey and her own thoughts.

"My place is pretty far. 'Sides, it'd be mighty embarrassing bringin' anyone there. My mama would raise a fit just thinkin' about that. Lead the way, just don't walk too quick. I'm not lookin' to rush out of a nice evenin' like this."

Standing up certainly wasn't easy at this point, but Reida was more than used to nights like that. It was just a matter of patience, of focusing in on the world spinning around you and doing your best to keep it from doing that. Maybe the fact that she was so clearly practiced at operating this drunk only made it that much more pathetic.

"Well ain't you just a gentleman and a half? Maybe I'll take ya up on that just for the conversation, we'll see in the mornin'."

Reida had, frankly, already accepted that she would almost certainly be passing out at Alastair's place, and while she would want to apologize for all that later on, for now there was a little more interesting stuff to talk about. More important. It'd been a long time since Reida felt like talking to anyone about herself, and she'd had enough to drink that any inhibitions were far from gone. Didn't matter to her.

Taking Alastair's hand gratefully, it took her a fairly long moment to fully straighten herself out, and her steps were certainly not as steady as they had been before. Not that it made more drinks sound any less appealing, of course. She wasn't sick yet.

"Bein' angry sometimes, takin' a minute to cry, that ain't the same as livin' your life angry or sad. When ya let it be everything ya know, everything ya are, you ain't ever gonna grow or learn anything."

Beating around the bush about these things, speaking in hypotheticals, that didn't do either of them any good. Reida didn't give much of a damn who knew about her life, anyway. She didn't want other people living one like it. When she continued, her voice had lowered, a smoldering tone that carried with it the restrained fury of a woman with nothing to take it out on.

"I ain't got a thing left, Alastair. Nothin' but a burnin' hate for the people who took my family from me. But you gotta fill all that empty space with somethin', or you just end up empty. And ya gotta fill that void with somethin'. Work. Drink. Anything that keeps ya from really stoppin' ta think about it for even a little. Because when ya get like this, ya can't even handle it anymore."

Gritting her teeth as she stopped walking, Reida slammed a fist into the building next to her. She wasn't strong enough to cause any damage, of course. Wasn't strong enough to do much of anything, really.

"If ya wanna cry, ya oughta do it, or one day you'll realize it ain't in ya anymore."